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Enjoy Saturday’s extreme Super Worm moon

Mary Magee
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Enjoy Saturday’s extreme Super Worm moon

The Internet is buzzing with rumors that this month’s extreme SuperMoon might have caused last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the Pacific Ocean. But folks at the Farmer’s Alamanac note that, ”Most astronomers dismiss this line of thinking, though, arguing that the 2,000-mile difference is minimal in the grand scheme of things – less than 1 percent of the Moon’s total distance from the Earth – and unlikely to cause much disruption on Earth, beyond the usual proxigean spring tide.”
They note that proxigean spring tides are usually stronger when the Moon is new. “So the conventional wisdom is that the upcoming event will result only in slightly higher than normal spring tides.”

This month’s full moon, which rises on the eve of the first day of Spring, is historically known as the Full Worm Moon.

“As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins,” the Farmer’s Almanac notes. “The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.”

Whatever you call it, the moon that rises this Saturday will be the largest full moon in nearly 20 years, and could appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than usual.
This is because of the shape of the Moon’s orbit, which is oval in shape: as the moon orbits the Earth each month, it reaches a point furthest from the Earth, called apogee, and a point closest to the Earth, called perigee. An extreme SuperMoon occurs when the Moon is close to 100 percent perigee.

Or, as the Almanac notes, “When the Moon is full, it sits exactly on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. When it’s new, it sits between the Earth and the Sun. In both cases, the gravitational pull from the Moon and the Sun combine to create larger than normal tides, called “spring tides.” And when the Moon is also at perigee, the effect is magnified into what is called a “proxigean spring tide.”

This week’s extreme SuperMoon is the fourth since 2005, and the largest and brightest since 1992. The Moon will be 221,567 miles away, just a tiny bit closer than its average closest distance of about 223,500 (the Moon’s average distance from the Earth is 235,000, and its average furthest distance is 248,000 miles).
“Even though this particular full Moon is larger than normal and at its closest point to the Earth, it is unlikely to cause much disruption on Earth, beyond the usual proxigean spring tide. These tides are usually stronger when the Moon is new than when it’s full, so the conventional wisdom is that the upcoming event will result only in slightly higher than normal spring tides.”

Now, whether we’ll be able to see in between all the rain is another matter entirely.

Hip-hop heroes

Andrew Lam
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I’m rolling with the big timers: the executive director and founder of a community circus arts program, an after-school program b-boy teacher, the most beautiful family in Bay Area hip-hop, and my boyfriend, who is snapping photos on his Nikon of the rest of us. We’re standing under the high ceiling of Acrosports, in a room filled with trapezes, a balancing beam, an over-sized trampoline, and the contorting, jack-knifing bodies of young, aspiring circus professionals. The people assembled (minus me and my man) are using the power of hip-hop to bring a cultural skill swap to underprivileged youth in Zanzibar.

It’s a feel good moment, particularly because it comes during a week that hosted some of the darkest days in the past century of the labor movement, the start of unimaginable hardship in Japan, and disheartening scenes from our nation’s leaders’ announced Muslim witch hunt. But enough of that for now, Zumbi’s talking:

“This is the first time we’ve done a tour that benefited charities, which is cool… but it’s like, why has this taken so long to do? Why don’t more people do this?”

The emcee from Zion I is makes uplifting Bay Area hip-hop without major label representation, and now it’s been announced that his, DJ Amp Live, and the Grouch’s upcoming tour will be benefiting local community organizations at each of its 36 gigs on its “Healing of the Nation” tour — which is named after the artists’ second collaboration album, Heroes in the Healing of the Nation.

In the Acrosport’s basement, breakdancing students get their new skills battle-ready. Photo by Erik Anderson

“This album, it’s more focused, it’s about communities, families, self. It’s needed! These days, you’ve got Charlie Sheen occupying more time onscreen than the Middle East. Everybody’s all caught up on tiger blood,” Zumbi tells me. It’s positive music, much like the first Zion I-grouch collab, 2006’s Heroes in the City of Dope, but it’s far from Public Enemy-style protest rap. 

Track eight on the new album is entitled “Be A Father To Your Child,” in the chorus of track two the Grouch asserts “I’m a leader/I don’t want to be a follower,” pledging allegiance to self-motivation. There’s a song called “I Used to Be Vegan” on the album that I find particularly resonant given my own struggles with evading cheese. The message is: be a positive force, don’t get swept up in the forces that try to disempower you and make you sad. It’s conscious music, but conscious music meant to have a good time to.

Today we also meet Zumbi’s beautiful partner Tiffany and their three-month old prince, Kodi Shaddai. They pose prettily by the catapulting acrobats behind them and Zumbi tells me that Kodi may well make a cameo appearance in the album’s upcoming music video. He tells me he used to do capoeira himself and jokes about his bad knees with B-Boy Black, a.k.a. Ed Johnson, Acrosports’ outreach director and breakdance teacher who will be one of the leaders on the Zanzibar trip.

Acrosports’ professional track performers practice across the street from Kezar Stadium. Photo by Erik Anderson

Is Zion I’s hip-hop philanthropy new? Certainly not, but what is novel is the group’s maturing image. Zumbi says that Heroes in the City of Dope was “more commentary, more getting fresh.” Heroes in the Healing of the Nation focuses more on creating positive space — reflective of the three men’s new roles as fathers and, gulp, role models. Looking into the future (though he’s far from hanging up his touring hat), Zion I’s emcee tells me that he sees his role in hip-hop as that of mentor to youngsters coming up in the ranks. 

My star-struckedness aside, I should probably be spending more of this article talking about Acrosports and its planned trip to Africa. You wanna see bringing uplift to the people? The place is pretty incredible, offering classes in breakdancing, capoeira, tumbling, and parkour to community members from 10 months of age and up. They run after-school programs in over 20 school, YMCAs, and Boys & Girls Clubs whose philosophy is to empower kids through positive motivation and access to non-traditional sports. 

Community activist Dorrie Huntington founded the place 20 years ago when she realized the building she lived next door to was sitting empty after years as a high school, and then a homeless shelter. Some unemployed members of the Moscow Circus proposed that they start teaching tumbling classes. Soon the team was repurposing sleeping mats from the homeless shelter and donated paint to create the center, all with very little resources. “It took a lot of sweat equity,” Huntington smiles. But that was 20 years ago and the perspiration paid off – now the city has a place where people of all ages and levels of fitness can come to learn how to move their bodies in joyous, creative ways. 

In 2009, Huntington went to Africa to volunteer in a Tanzanian orphanage, and on a vacation ran into some kids flipping out on a beach in Zanzibar. “Their skills were so amazing. They had this truck tire wedged in the sand and they were doing flips off of it.” She struck up a friendship with the amateur acrobats and vowed to return with teachers that could help the kids develop their performance skills. 

It’s a mission that resonates with her staff. “Growing up in a black community,” says Johnson, “going to Africa was seen as learning about your roots. I want to go out there and meet these amazing artists.” I ask him how he felt when he learned that Zion I and the Grouch were dipping into ticket sales to help him and his team realize the dream and he gets a little bashful. “I had to keep my composure,” he tells the group, and turns to Zumbi. “I have the vinyl record of The Bay! I don’t even have a record player, I was just like, I got to have that album!”

Inspiring people creating space for each other to make great things happen. Like a little feedback loop of positivity, it was. And a real good break from the heartache of the news channels.

 

Zion I and the Grouch

Sat/19 9 p.m., $25

The Fillmore 

1805 Geary, SF

www.zioniandthegrouch.com

 

Thornfield calling! Director and star discuss the new “Jane Eyre”

Sue Vaughan
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Thornfield calling! Director and star discuss the new “Jane Eyre”

It’s not exactly the oldest story in the book, but with an 1847 publication date and dozens of adaptations, Jane Eyre has been done before. That presented director Cary Fukunaga, an Oakland native, with a unique challenge — making his 2011 film version of Jane Eyre (out Fri/18) different from what had been done in the past. But after his last movie, 2009’s critically acclaimed Sin Nombre, it was a project he was eager to take on.

“[Jane Eyre] was a story I knew as a kid,” he said in a recent roundtable interview. “The ’44 version Bob Stevens directed was one of my favorites. After spending six years on my last film, I really wanted to do something different in terms of scenery and style and location and even time period.”

But despite Jane Eyre’s status as 19th Century Gothic romance, Fukunaga felt it worked for a modern audience. Mia Wasikowska, who stars in the titular role, was inclined to agree.

“It kind of doesn’t need reinterpreting,” she reflected. “The popularity, as a character and a story, it hasn’t died down — it’s continued to grow, and people continue to connect to her story. If you took away all the costumes and the setting, at the heart of it is a story about a young girl trying to find love and a family, and that’s so, so much a part of what happens every day here.”

For Fukunaga, it was important to adhere closely to the novel, whose tone he believed had often been muddled in film adaptations. His Jane Eyre is consistently dark, with elements of mystery and suspense that remain even for those who know the story well.

“I wasn’t trying to make it more gothic than the novel,” he explained. “It was more that other adaptations had stayed more in the period drama sort of realm, and whenever you had elements of the story that seemed gothic or suspenseful, they seemed tonally out of the film you were watching.”

Fukunaga also split the story up in a non-linear fashion, a more modern conceit that adds to Jane Eyre’s tension and helps speed the classic romance along. With flashbacks throughout, the film reveals itself over time while engaging its viewers in a complex mystery.

“The structure was a way to turn the story into a modern tale,” Fukunaga said. “Typically these days you want to lure an audience into a story with just bits of information. Especially with our attention spans the way they are now, you don’t want to … start with just a chronological tale.”

Of course, it helps that Jane is such a timeless, relatable character. She’s more assertive than some of her literary counterparts, making independent choices that were uncommon among her contemporary women. Wasikowska fell in love with Jane when she was reading the novel for the first time, to the extent that she asked her agent to look for any upcoming Jane Eyre projects before Fukunaga’s adaptation was announced.

“What I love about her is that she has such a strong sense of self and a strong sense of who she is and what’s right and what’s wrong by her,” Wasikowska offered. “She’s not going to compromise herself for somebody else, and that’s the best thing. She’s going to make sure that before she commits herself to somebody, she’s a fulfilled individual and that she’s done everything she could to be that.”

While Fukunaga and Wasikowska reflected positively on the filming experience, it had its share of ups and downs. The tight schedule forced a lot of work in a short period of time. Meanwhile, Wasikowska had to contend with a different kind of tightness, squeezing into a corset for period realism.

“Painful. Awful. Everyone says corsets are hell, and I understand that, but until you’re really in there, it’s like a whole other thing,” she said. “They’re really helpful physically for the character. You really get a sense of the repression and the restriction.”

Fukunaga elaborated. “It basically takes your guts and squeezes them in half, and some of the guts go down and some of the guts go up,” he explained. “It’s really unhealthy.”

But the pain was worthwhile — Wasikowska’s portrayal of Jane Eyre is certain to be celebrated. Fukunaga’s interpretation as a whole is one of the story’s best cinematic adaptations. Perhaps some of the success comes from the deep understanding the director and actor had for the original novel.

When Fukunaga was asked about his interest in Jane Eyre, he rejected the common perception and offered his own analysis instead.

“For me, it’s not the bodice-ripping,” he said. “It’s more, I think, probably this kid’s journey and the person she became … Love can be all-consuming, and too often people compromise what they are in order to achieve it. And it’s the rare individual who can not do that.”

Jane Eyre opens Fri/18 in Bay Area theaters.

…And gaming for all

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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…And gaming for all

GAMER For a second there, the mighty PR machine seemed poised to devour the Game Developers Conference. The communal, feel-good GDC was built on sharing ideas, and in recent years the modest think tank had grown exponentially, as established game developers and publicity houses descended on downtown San Francisco with glossy preview events and headline-stealing announcements that previewed things to come at the summer E3 expo. However, this year the most talked-about events weren’t the off-site previews, but the conference-organized developer sessions, a phenomenon that marked a return to the sentiments that inspired the conference in the first place.

Big-name developers like Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead games and lead developer of Fable; Cliff Bleszinski, design director of Epic games and spokesman for the Gears of War franchise; The Sims creator Will Wright; Doom honcho John Romero; and outspoken French impresario David Cage were just a few of the draws in the “classroom” area of Moscone Center. While these industry giants lectured about their experiences in the industry and gave postmortems on their classic games, the notion was that they were speaking directly to a generation of developers who might one day become successors — or even competitors.

Inspirational stories were the highlight of the conference, but a handful of games were happy to share the spotlight. And one game set out to draw maximum attention to its upcoming release by staging a controversial rally in Yerba Buena Gardens and releasing hundreds of red balloons over the downtown area. With its near-future shooter Homefront releasing in just a week, publisher THQ embarked on the biggest media push so far this year. In addition to the balloons and the rally (themed like an anti-North Korea rally, complete with posters of Kim Jong Il, a diagonal line through his face and the words “Game Over North Korea”), THQ shuffled press into a themed event with barbed wire, smoke machines, and stony-faced Korean soldiers. With publicity like that, it’s almost beside the point how the game plays, but let’s say it’s largely familiar.

Other attempts to stay relevant came in the form of Uncharted 3, whose developers showed the previously-seen “burning chateau level,” this time showcasing the game’s 3-D feature and an additional story-driven animatic that promises the game will be as blockbuster an experience as its predecessors. Battlefield 3 held an impressive “reveal event,” though the game had been partially revealed weeks earlier in Game Informer magazine. The game has wonderfully realistic animations, but the event itself was designed to draw attention to its Battlefield Play4free online shooter, which offers free FPS gameplay if you don’t mind a microtransaction or two.

With most of the game previews having been seen before, it was nice to see a few publishers making their debuts at the conference, such as The Darkness II, which proved that interactive storytelling has a place, even in a post-Heavy Rain marketplace. With musician Mike Patton returning for vocal duties, the sequel mixes gunplay with gruesome “quad-wielding” tentacle murder and an original, hand painted graphics style. Also making a gameplay debut was Batman: Arkham City, which looks to improve on Arkham Asylum‘s successes in nearly every category and with an attention to detail sure to please gamers and comic aficionados alike.

The conference buzzed with goodwill for the industry shift toward indie and mobile gaming, a revolution that meant a much larger contingent of attendees were likely to already identify as genuine developers. In the conference keynote, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explicitly noted the shift, in the midst of a surprisingly defensive presentation that attempted to downplay the success of casual game developers and situate Nintendo’s place in the past and present of social gaming. If there’s one thing to take away from the keynote, and the 2011 conference as a whole, it’s the industry shift from conglomerate to individual. Nintendo’s threatened stance, and Microsoft’s noticeable absence, indicates a move toward dividing the industry just as gaming stands to enjoy unprecedented appeal in the form of casual gaming. In a world where anyone with a good idea can make a successful game, we might be looking at a return to the exciting, anything-goes Wild West atmosphere that marked gaming’s birth in the 1970s and ’80s. For an industry that could use a few paradigms shifted, it’s the best news yet.

Bay Area dance’s bragging rights

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bay Area dance’s bragging rights

DANCE When the 25th Annual Isadora Duncan Dance Awards take place March 14, the local dance scene will have much to celebrate. In advance of the event, I recently asked several local members of the community what makes Bay Area dance special.

Wayne Hazzard, executive director of Dancers’ Group, pinpoints the relationship between contemporary and traditional artists. “I’ve seen it [the dance community] really grow and continue to do what it’s been doing and attract new companies and artists to the area.”

According to Hazzard, the dance scene’s steady development is linked to the Bay Area’s “livability” and “the maverick nature of the West Coast, this region where you can find yourself. Even if you are coming from a tradition, you can deepen that and go in your own direction, which seems to be a truism of artists here whether [we’re discussing] the San Francisco Ballet or Brenda Way or Chitresh Das. They’re all traditionalists, yet they’re imbuing their formal structural ideas around theater and dance with current issues. Joe Goode as well.”

Jessica Robinson Love, artistic and executive director of CounterPulse, focuses on a different aspect of community. “We can’t talk about dance in the Bay Area without discussing the Ethnic Dance Festival and the huge amount of culturally-specific dance that’s practiced here,” she says. Love also believes the Bay Area’s proximity to Silicon Valley makes for greater interest in and use of technology: “Being on the Left Coast gives us a freedom to experiment. There’s less of a fear of risk-taking and failure, so there’s a lot more diversity in terms of the choices choreographers make about their work.”

“I also see a real emphasis on queer and gender-bending performance,” she adds. “There’s an emerging, blossoming conversation between the drag performance community and the dance community in San Francisco right now.”

Joe Landini, artistic director of The Garage, agrees that queer dance-makers are among the strongest voices to surface. Specializing in emerging choreographers, he produces an exceptional amount of new work. “What I’m finding is that a lot of choreographers coming out of the university system are choosing to relocate to San Francisco because the resources are less competitive than New York. San Francisco probably has more opportunities for emerging choreographers than any other place in the United States, so we have a huge pool of trained choreographers.”

Site-specific work also makes its mark on the scene. Hazzard points in particular to Anna Halprin’s long history of investigations, noting that, at 90, she’s still creating new work, including an upcoming trilogy honoring her late husband titled Remembering Lawrence. “Joanna Haigood particularly deals with space and ideas,” he adds, “so when you look at aerial artists that work here, whether its Haigood or Jo Kreiter or Project Bandaloop, no one anywhere else is doing what they’re doing. It’s uniquely about our region and space and relationship to dance and performance.”

THE 25TH ANNUAL ISADORA DUNCAN DANCE AWARDS

Mon/14, 7 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Divergent views on Chiu’s challenge

Sasha Cuttler
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Divergent views on Chiu’s challenge

The political season is definitely upon us, and despite all the sunny statements coming from mayoral hopefuls, I predict is going to get ugly. One gauge was the split reactions to my stories on David Chiu getting into the mayor race and how his belief that “there’s always common ground” to be attained on big issues will be tested this year.

Some in his camp were mad at how I characterized the problems progressives have with Chiu, believing it was unfair to blame two years worth of bad budget compromises and aborted progressive initiatives on him (indeed, some of his progressive colleagues did go along with some of those decisions). Then again, Green Party activist Eric Brooks was outraged that I went too easy on Chiu, writing in an online comment that Chiu has “totally betrayed and stabbed in the back the progressives who got him elected.”

As for Chiu, he was a little more circumspect about his role, and he basically agreed with the premise of my article that he’s uniquely positioned to prove or disprove his theory on governance as the board wrestles with some big issues this year.

“We have a lot of decisions coming up before us at the board on which I’ll be working with our colleagues to see if we can bridge differences and address everyone’s concerns,” Chiu told me, citing the upcoming debates over pension reform and the CPMC and ParkMerced projects as examples that will test his consensus-building approach.

An even earlier test will be the mid-Market tax breaks that he’s pushing with Sup. Jane Kim and the Mayor’s Office. All three entities have been trying to cast that vote as an unavoidable fait accompli, but many progressives and union activists are gearing up for a fight when that measure is heard by a board committee, probably on March 16.

In his campaign kickoff speech on Monday, Chiu alternatively sounded progressive themes and those of the fiscally conservative corporate Democrats. “We need to stop being a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and actually compete with Silicon Valley,” Chiu said.

Now, if competition means getting into a bidding war over which cities can offer tech companies the lowest taxes and most taxpayer-subsidized benefits, Chiu’s problems with progressives are only going to get worse. But if he’d like to address the “bedroom community” problem by building more affordable housing that working class San Franciscans can afford – rather than all the luxury condos favored by the Google set – that’s something progressives could get behind.

But Chiu’s actions this year will speak far louder than his words. And with lots of chatter still rippling through progressive circles about someone else jumping into the mayor’s race – a play that would probably come in mid-to-late summer – the clock is running for Chiu or someone else to win over the left.

Beth Ditto, “I Wrote the Book”

John Elberling
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One of our favorite Katy Perry-shredders, Beth Ditto serves a “Justify My Love”-era Madonna look and the kind of sound Madonna lost touch with after her first album. Guardian Video Issue cover star Justin Kelly made a fab recent Gossip video, but this teaser from an upcoming solo EP hints that it might deliver the dancepop Rick Rubin didn’t for Ditto’s group.

5 Things: March 3, 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5 Things: March 3, 2011

Each day, our staff picks five (or so) things we think might interest you

>>1. SUSHI FROM SPACE “U. F. T Ume Fried Tai: fried red snapper in u.f.o shaped sushi served with balsamic raspberry sauce“

>>2. HOP TO IT Bahama Kangaroo. That’s the ace sometime-moniker of Yukako Ezoe, along with her husband, Naoki Onodera. It’s also the title of Ezoe’s new art show, opening tonight at Kokoro Studio at 682 Geary St, SF. The fact that two of Ezoe’s main influences are John Audobon and animation and color master Yokoo Tadanori is enough to convey her uniqueness, but it only hints at her playful deployment of fabric, paint, and even metal (she also makes jewelry). Ezoe is one of those rare people who can party hearty in the most fun ways at night, help the likes of Larkin Street Youth Services and Precita Eyes during the day, and still find time to do her own work. She’s a wonder, and her opening — for a series of self-portraits that are a definite change in terms of in subject matter — should be a blast.

Yukako Ezoe at work on a children’s mural in 2006

>>3. ZION I LOVE YOU Oh Zion I, dreamiest hip hop group in the Bay Area: you’ve already organized your fans into mass meditation sessions, released seven albums of beats so good you almost forget the lyrics laid over them are uplifting as well, and you’re really hot. Now you’re donating ticketing fees to a community circus arts program? The group’s upcoming Fillmore show with the Grouch (Sat/19) benefits the Inner Sunset’s Acrosports  program, teaching 18-monthers through adults how to tumble with grace. Word on the street is the school’s capoeira squad will take the stage at the Fillmore between songs from the crew’s dope new album, Heroes in the Healing of the Nation. We’re listening to our press copy right now, and “I Used to be a Vegan,” plus the tracks featuring Los Rakas, Brother Ali, and Silk E … ah, sogood. (Check the new sound with the Grouch here.)

>>4. HOMESTEAD SWEET HOMESTEAD Did you know that that the phrase Urban Homesteading™ has been copyrighted? (It’s kind of a big scandal). Ploughing those trademarks aside, why not indulge in the spit-and-polish DIY ethics of How-to Homestead’s “11 in 11 Tour”? Each month, the resourceful website is visiting one of SF’s neighborhoods — there are apparently 11! — and thrwing a gaggle of workshops in handicrafts, mending, urban agriculture, and more — plus potlucks and occasional squaredancing! On Sat/5 they’ll be near the Castro at the Harvey Milk recreation Center in Duboce Park, where surely we hope there’s a live demo of this important Castro-related information:

>>5. LES VAGUES BLANCHES Bay Area producer extraordinaire Jason Quever trades slackness for varied arrangements and sings expressively on this lovely moment from the new Papercuts LP:

Comedian Amy Dresner talks sober comedy

Andrew Lam
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Twelve-steppers say in order for an addict to get on the road to recovery, it’s essential that they accept their addiction. But for comics Amy Dresner, Ian Harvie, and Felon O’Reilly, successful recovery is not just about acceptance: it’s about turning addiction into one big, serious joke. It might sound like funny business, but standing onstage with the mic and some yuks has been the only way all three have been able to maintain their sobriety. Now, they’re bringing the laughs throughout the country on their “Laughs Without Liquor” comedy tour, donating proceeds to local “sober living” causes along the way. Lucky for us, March 5th brings the tour to SF.

The three comics kicked off their tour in January, performing at the New York Gay and Lesbian Center in a benefit for a drug and alcohol program. But although the comics now travel and tour together, they didn’t always have a lot in common. Ian Harvie is a trans guy who has toured with Margaret Cho, while Felon O’Reilly has been to rehab 17 times and to jail 50 times more than that.

The two met eight years ago while performing stand-up and working out their respective sobrieties in Maine. O’Reilly proposed the “Laughs without Liquor” concept to Harvie, and soon the two were doing sober stand-up together.  Last year the two found comedian Amy Dresner at the Downtown Comedy Club in Los Angeles. 

“I was onstage ranting about rehab and my drug-induced epilepsy or whatever,” says Dresner. She was quickly added to the tour roster. 

Dresner, originally from LA, grew up in a showbiz environment. Her father was a television comedy writer, with friends and connections to household name comics who Dresner met and knew as a child. But comedy was something she left unexplored until her addiction was kicked. “It’s always been my secret dream to be a comic but I didn’t have the balls to do it until a few years ago. It takes real commitment and prior to that, my commitment was to getting high and being depressed.”

Now that Dresner is both sober and leading the life of a full-time comedian, she is able to reflect on how her career and her sobriety inform each other. “I’ve found that for a lot of people struggling with addiction, there is a lot of shame involved. That is another big trigger for self-destructive behavior. So if I can make people laugh at things they feel ashamed of – well, it can be very healing.”

She can also attest to the ways in which sobriety has improved her stage presence. “When you’re a sober comic you are really present and connected to the audience.  You can see what jokes are working and which ones aren’t. There’s no deluding yourself that you killed when you really bombed.”

Dresner appreciates the positive reactions, understanding and support that she has received from her sober audience members. But she wants to be clear that she doesn’t condemn alcohol or the people that drink it. “I think there’s a big misconception that if you are making jokes about sobriety, you are somehow undermining it. Being sober is not the same as being Mormon. We aren’t trying to bring back Prohibition. I loved getting drunk and if I could do it and not crash my car, ruin all my relationships, lose my job and carry my liver around on a dolly, I would.”

But it’s probably best to leave your booze at home if you want to see Dresner in this tour specifically. While you don’t need to take a breathalyzer test to attend, all of the shows on the tour will take place at churches, sober clubhouses, amphitheaters, and other places that are not bars. Instead of spending too much on drinks, your entrance fee will go to support a local sober living facility or treatment center.

The Laughs Without Liquor SF show will take place at a local church with poet and author Bucky Sinister hosting. All proceeds will go to the Castro Club, a sober gathering place and home for queer folks in recovery. 

For Dresner, the upcoming show in SF will hold a particularly special meaning. “I got strung out on speed for the first time in SF, so it will be very ironic to come back and do a sober gig here.”

 

Laughs Without Liquor

Sat/5, 8 p.m., $20

Most Holy Redeemer Church

100 Diamond, SF

(818) 588-7390

www.laughswithoutliquor.com

 

5 Things: February 25, 2011

Charles Russo
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5 Things: February 25, 2011

Each day, SFBG staff pick five (or so) things that might interest you

>>1. OHLONE, NOT BANKSY Jet Martinez and other Bay street artists are raising funds to resurrect SF’s oldest mural, an Ohlone wall painting tucked away behind a wall in Mission Dolores that artists rediscovered in 2004. The Ohlones did the art, apparently, under “supervision” of the Spanish missionaries at the time.

 

Hopefully Jet and co. won’t be threatened with indentured servitude and torture while they recreate the stunning shape-based work on the Mission Market building at 22nd and Bartlett, where it will watch over the kick-ass Mission Community Market on Thursday afternoons when the stands kick back into gear on April 14th.

>>2. HIGHBALLS ‘N LEGWARMERS Slow Comfortable Screws, Kamikazes, Birthday Cake Shots, Pink Squirrels, Frozen Strawberry Margharitas — yep, the retro ’80s cocktail movement is upon us (help?). You can journey back to the days of an only slightly less creepy Tom Cruise at the Heaven’s Dog “Drinks of the Eighties” event on Sat/26

>>3. TWO TO TIMBUKTU So you’ve been struck down global weirding’s unfortunate by-product: the “how’d it get so chilly again, it was 80 degrees two weeks ago!” cold. Never fear, just grab an easy-on-the-eyes graphic novel and glory in your bedriddeness. Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg, indie media couple par excellance – the duo’s Shitty Kitty write-draw-drink meetups are the epitome of intelligent cute-snark — have got just what the doctor ordered. Their new book To Timbuktu looks like a novel on the outside, but inside Scieszka’s tale of their post-collegiate world wanderings accompanied on each page by Weinberg’s effortless sketches make for multimedia fun time. (There’s a guide to beijing street food!) If you like what you see very much, get your copy signed by the two at their upcoming Mission: Comics and Art reading on Saturday, March 5.

>>4. LEFT BEHIND This picture by Ed Ou reminded us of the cost (and the gain, for some, especially in the US) of globalization and doing business with psycho dictators.

“Migrant laborers from Bangladesh working for a Chinese company watched as Chinese nationals fleed the unrest in Libya on a ship bound for Greece. Sixty-two Bangladeshis have been left behind by their employers who have not returned their passports.”

>>5. BART ON FLIP Local SF songstress Emily McLean proves that for a lovely little video, all you need is a BART pass, a Flip, and some fly kicks. You can catch her playing at Hotel Utah on March 10th, and trust us, her act even better when you can see her face and stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357Thd-ThxI

Contibutors: Caitlin Donohue and Marke B.

The dance of motherhood as … a dance

Sue Vaughan
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The dance of motherhood as … a dance

From Amy Chua’s “Tiger Mother” rules to Ayelet Waldman’s “Bad Mother” guilt, the stories about motherhood are not only filling bookshelves and mommy blogs, they’re being danced on stage.

Sat/26, Ellis Wood, choreographer and mother of three, performs the world premiere of Mom, an evening-length solo, at Fort Mason’s Southside Theater. Speaking about the angle of the work, Wood said, “Motherhood is not the prettiest thing in the world. There are so many sides to it and so many things you didn’t know you were getting into, and so many leaps you have to take, and so many crashes you have to deal with, and the piece addresses that. It’s not a stereotypically pretty picture of mom. Hopefully it’s a more thought-provoking look into a layered experience.”

At 46 with children ages 7, 5, and 2, Wood never really stopped dancing. “There were times when I performed when I was eight months pregnant and that was a lot of fun. If I just had the baby that was harder … but usually I performed.” said Wood. Ideas for Mom emerged when Wood was dancing in Japan just weeks before giving birth to her youngest. She considers the intimate nature of the Southside Theater well-matched for this raw and personal solo, a mix of dance and video.

Wood comes from a dance family. Her parents, Marni and David Wood, performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company when she was growing up. “We used to take classes from them when we were kids, little Graham classes here and there. We used to travel with the Graham company when we were really little, when they would go on tour, and there were always people like Merce Cunningham and John Cage and Carolyn Brown, and it was just normal to have all those people around. I didn’t know then but I think of it now as a special thing … being around people like Martha and [Isamu] Noguchi … I got a lot of info pretty young about the dance world and that did affect my whole path.” said Wood.

Visiting the Bay Area holds special significance for Wood. She has returned every year for about a decade, performing in the city and usually teaching at UC Berkeley, where her parents started the dance program. “My parents built the studio. There was no dance department and they helped sand the floors,” she said. “They literally built the studio, so it has so much nostalgia for me. My dad picked the building on campus that he wanted to be the dance studio. They had a different building chosen for him and he saw this church on the corner of Bancroft and Dana with these beautiful stained glass windows and he said ‘I’ll take this, I want the space.’ He and my mom built the whole dance department there.”

With Mom, Wood refocuses herself, returning to solo work, which is how she started 15 years ago with her solo Canary. Through the years her work has always addressed women either politically or energetically, and at the upcoming performance, audience members will have the opportunity to say a few words about motherhood, which will be filmed and shared at the end of the performance. 

“I had just finished [Ayelet Waldman’s] book Bad Mother,” said Wood. “It’s very provoking and maybe even controversial, but it is interesting and brings up a lot of issues that are taboo and I like that.  So whether I agree or not, it brings up things that a lot of people don’t want to talk about, and hopefully, not in a way that pushes people away, but in a way that draws people.  My goal is to do that too.”

Mom

Sat/26, 8 p.m., $20

Southside Theater           

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 345-7575

www.fortmason.org

Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

Mary Magee
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Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

With all eyes on Wisconsin, local labor leaders are suggesting that Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s proposed retirement/health plan reforms are really Tea Party initiatives, even as Adachi threatens to place another Measure B-like initiative on the fall ballot if city leaders can’t agree on a fix for the city’s fiscal problems

Last fall, Adachi started a war with the local labor movement when he placed Measure B on the November ballot. Measure B proposed increasing employee contributions for retirement benefits, decreasing employer contributions for heath benefits for employees, retirees and their dependents, and changing rules for arbitration proceedings about city collective bargaining agreements,

Measure B ultimately failed, but not after both sides spent a ton of cash. And now labor is refusing to have Adachi sit in on their pension reform talks with Mayor Ed Lee, former SEIU President Andy Stern is describing the fight in Wisconsin as a ’15 state GOP Power grab,” and SEIU Local 1021 leader Gabriel Haaland is pointing to Wisconsin as a reason for excluding Adachi from pension reform talks

“Adachi’s obviously scapegoating a group that’s part of a national agenda,” Haaland said, noting that in the states where Republicans gained statehouse control in 2010, there’s talk about eliminating collective bargaining, and ending defined benefit plans and paycheck protection.

“The problem is that pension reform has been blowing on the anti-public sector worker winds that are blowing in Wisconsin and other states, whether progressives want to acknowledge it or not,” Haaland continued. “There is a reason that Adachi got so much money last year, and the corporate interests behind him are part of this effort to bash public sector workers.”

Prop. B’s campaign finance records show the campaign raised $1.125 million in 2010, and that the lion’s share came from wealthy individuals.

Billionaire venture capitalist, former Google board member and Obama supporter Michael Moritz gave $245,000. Author Harrier Heyman, Moritz’ wife, donated $172,500. financial analyst Richard Beleson donated $110,000. George Hume of Basic American Foods donated $50,000. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s former economic policy advisor David Crane gave $37,500. Philanthropist Warren Hellman donated $50,000. Republican investor Howard Leach, who co-hosted a Prop. B fundraiser with former Mayor Willie L. Brown, gave $25,000. Investor Joseph Tobin gave $15,750. Maverick Capital partner David Singer gave $15,000. JGE Capital Partners donated  $15,000; Bechtel owner  Stephen Bechtel Jr gave $10,000: Matthew Cohler, a general partner of Benchmark Capital, donated $10,000; the California Chamber of Commerce donated $5,000 and philanthropist Dede Wilsey gave $1,000.

But records also show that Measure B opponents, which included San Francisco Firefighters, SF Police Officers Association, SF First Responders, the California Nurses Association, United Educators, San Francisco Gardeners, San Francisco Teachers, Library Workers, laguna Honda Workers, donated over $1 million in their successful bid to squash Adachi’s reform. And that just about every elected Democrat, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, then mayor Gavin Newsom, Sheriff Mike Hennessey, and Board President David Chiu, came out against Adachi’s original plan.
 
Haaland acknowledged that the argument could be made that the progressives’ version of the hotel tax didn’t pass and less attention was paid to the district elections last fall, because labor focused primarily on defeating Adachi’s Measure B.

“But at the end of the day, we did get the real estate transfer tax and we defeated Measure B,” Haaland observed. “So, we need to keep fighting anti-worker pressure. It’s challenging times, but I feel like the connections need to be made.”

Adachi was swift to refute Haaland’s claim that his Measure B pension reform is and was a Tea Party initiative.
“What’s not been reported is the fact that there are all these people supporting pension reform who are progressive Democrats,” Adachi said, pointing to Moritz, Crane and former Board President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, who all supported Measure B last fall.

“You are talking about saving basic services and that’s a progressive cause,” Adachi continued. “You might argue that pension reform isn’t a progressive solution. But then you are saying that the needs of one group of workers are subservient to the needs of other workers. And even if you raised every tax in the city, you’d not be able to keep up with pension and healthcare costs.”

“Even if we could raise parking tickets to $200 a pop, and tax folks who make more than $100,000 a year, that still wouldn’t solve the problem, because the problem is so huge,” Adachi added. “When you look at this crisis, you can’t simply redbait and say, you are a Republican, or Sarah Palin. Matt Gonzales has always spoken for progressive values, but because he supports pension reform, he’s suddenly a member of the Tea Party? At a certain point, it begins to become absurd.”

Haaland countered that he’s  “challenged by the notion that thousands show up in Wisconsin to fight some of the same people behind Measure B, but our discourse has lowered to whether or not Jeff Adachi is a good guy.”

And Adachi expressed doubt that Mayor Ed Lee can come up with a suitable pension reform plan.

“I’ve heard Lee say there has to be a solution involving pension reform and underfunded healthcare benefits that would save $300 million to $400 million in annual savings, and that corresponds with the solution he needs to come up with to close the budget deficit,” Adachi said.

Adachi said that he has met with Lee on his own to discuss pension reform, but the new mayor did not list specifics.
“He didn’t tell me what his plan was,” Adachi said, “The Prop. B supporters have a plan, but Lee did not ask what that was. But he said he sincerely wants to solve that problem, and that his preference would be one ballot initiative that everyone would agree on. And I fully support a solution that is going to truly solve the problem. I’ve always believed it’s important for the public to understand the gravity of the situation. For too long, it’s been the elephant in the room and there hasn’t been enough public information.”

Adachi said he had a beef with the idea of “groups of labor unions holding meetings at City Hall and deciding who can participate.”

“It’s also troubling that there is no information publicly available about what the ideas on the table are, no explanation of how they got there, and no documenting of the extent of the problem,” Adachi continued. “And that’s what got us here in the first place: a lack of transparency, and voters being asked to weigh in without the full information.”

Adachi said he has an upcoming meeting with Lee, the Department of Human Resources and Sup. Sean Elsbernd about pension reform that is separate from the working group that includes labor and philanthropist Warren Hellmann.

And Elsbernd told the Guardian he believes the pension reform process would go smoother if Adachi were at the table.
“I have no problem with Jeff at the table, it makes sense to have him there to avoid two ballot measures,” Elsbernd said.

Elsbernd added that it was too early to cite numbers when it comes to talk of capping pensions.
“It’s a mistake to pick a number right now because you don’t know what it’s worth,” he said, noting that the pension reform working group has sent a bunch of different scenarios to retirement actuaries to crunch the numbers to see how much they would save the city.

“I can see a case being made for asking the highest paid city workers to contribute higher amounts for healthcare benefits,” Elsbernd said. “But I’m not sure that’s equitable on retirement benefits, though I could see a situation where safety pays more, regardless, because they have better pensions.”

The children

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The children

Robert Moses may not know it, but he is a pied piper. The ability to hold the attention of 200 hormone-packed middle school students at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday in early February must qualify as some kind of superhuman ability.

But Moses, choreographer and artistic director of Robert Moses’ Kin, defers to his own pied piper, the one on stage who immortalized the German city of Hamelin. As the fabled character, Dexandro “D” Montalvo twitches, churns, and first commands the rats; then, with beckoning index fingers, he mesmerizes the “children” to follow him who knows where.

The Sunset District students may not have known the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who was cheated out of his justly earned wages and took awesome revenge. But they surely recognized the popping moves Montalvo so skillfully threaded into his character. One way or another, the kids were hooked. For close to an hour, they sat quietly and took in what Moses and his dancers had to show them from their upcoming world premiere, Fable and Faith.

As a kid, I was terrified by the Pied Piper story. No good grades or cleverness — usually assigned to boys anyway in fairy tales — were going to get me out of this scenario. No prince was coming, and there was no happy ending. I was going to be locked in that mountain. The adults had royally messed up. My mother assured me that “it’s just a story.” Well, mom, you were wrong.

Myths, fables, and fairy tales tell us about the way the world works. “Actions”, Moses explains after the performance, “have consequences. The stories talk about life, adversity and perseverance through hard times.” He admits that some of them can be problematic. Stepmothers, for instance, get a “major bum rap.”

Perhaps that’s what initially drew Moses to last year’s The Cinderella Project, which will be performed with the new Fable and Faith before going on tour later in the spring. Cinderella Project, his first collaboration with writer/actor Anne Galjour, who also wrote and performs the text for Fable and Faith, was informed by interviews with contemporary constructed families rooted in love, not blood. “Still, tough as it was,” Moses notes, “Cinderella stuck to who she was and it turned out alright.”

In the 1950s, there was a move underfoot to clean up some of these old tales; the thinking was that children’s psyches would be damaged by so much darkness and uncertainty. Fortunately, the stories have survived, though it’s good to know that Rapunzel no longer gets locked up in the tower because she was pregnant — it was just the evil deed of a jealous witch.

Moses takes a common sense, “age-appropriate” approach when he reads to his own two children, ages five and three. It was this fatherly task of sharing an imaginary world — everything from Dr. Seuss and the Brothers Grimm to African American folktales and Greek mythology — that got him to think about the contemporary resonance of some of these once-upon-a-time tales.

“Think of it,” he says. “Children are being abducted. Or today we talk about ‘the wolf at the door.’ ” In Fable and Faith, the wolf (Montalvo) goes to see a psychiatrist (Katherine Wells) to find out why he is behaving the way he does. The back-and-forth exchange in words and movement ends on a note of real poignancy.

Formally, Moses and Galjour decided on a structure “in which stories clash into each other.” The setting, they felt, had to be a village. “It’s where life happens,” Moses says. Elaine Buckholtz, who started lighting with Contraband and who has become a magician of visual installation, will do the honors on Fable and Faith. To keep a child’s presence at the forefront of these adult dances, Moses is partnering with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. They will perform, among other selections, the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem.

As the students were leaving for their classes, a teacher turned to me and whispered, “We have been very lucky this morning.”

FABLE AND FAITH

Fri.18-Sun./20, 2 p.m.; $25–$35

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

Noise Pop 2011 short takes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Noise Pop 2011 short takes

 

DAN DEACON

Don’t take drugs before a Dan Deacon concert — it’s a waste of your perfectly good toxins, because even sober attendees will feel totally fucked up after a show with the holy Jesus of electronic madness. Crawl! Spin! High fives! Jump! Close your eyes. Spin! Imagine you’re running in a forest, etc. You’ll leave a wolf. With Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Oona, and Altars, Tues./22, 8 p.m., Independent. Also with Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Sister Crayon, Lily Taylor. Wed./23, 8:30 p.m., Rickshaw Stop. (Amber Schadewald)

 

VERSUS, TELEKINESIS

Live through this — be it heartbreak, hearing loss, or the heavy-duty poker sessions in the basement of Lost Weekend Video. Versus’ Richard Baluyut has moved on from his gig at the invaluable Mission video store, but he hasn’t lost his way with a moody rocker: Versus’ On the Ones and Threes (Merge, 2010), its first album in a decade, finds beauty in the darkness — and in the return of old compatriots like original member (and Richard’s bro) Edward Baluyut and engineer Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter). Elsewhere on this insurmountable bill: Michael Benjamin Lerner of Telekinesis has grappled with hearing loss by way of a cryptic disease and coped with the demise of the relationship that inspired his debut. Sounds like he’s rising above, beautifully, via the gritty, grumble-y, bass-wrought numbers of 12 Desperate Straight Lines (Merge). With The Love Language, Burnt Ones. Wed./23, 8 p.m., 21+, Cafe Du Nord. (Kimberly Chun)

 

THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY LIFE OF JOSE GONZALEZ

If the trailer is any indication, this portrait of the singer-songwriter and Junip member uses animation and some Idiots-like live action to illustrate his music. “The best stuff is generally an unexpected twist while still maintaining a thread,” he says in voice-over, as directors Mikels Cee Karlsson and Frederik Egerstrand show him trying to write, slumped over a desk in a dark room. Wed./23, 9 p.m., Roxie Theatre. (Johnny Ray Huston)

 

WAY BEHIND THE MUSIC

Anthony Bedard of Hank IV and the Hemlock Tavern hosts as Mark Eitzel, Thao Nguyen, Beth Lisick, Linda Robertson, Michelle Tea, Bucky Sinister, Jesse Michaels, Paul Myers, and Tom Heyman read from some of the most bizarre American music memoirs. This showcase includes the words of Justin Bieber, Jewel, Gene Simmons, George Jones, Marilyn Manson, Tori Amos, Vince Neil, and Denise McLean (mother of Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean), among others. Thurs./24, 7:30 p.m., Make-Out Room. (Jen Verzosa)

 

APEX MANOR

Terrible-two Spoon meets newborn Dinosaur Jr.? Apex Manor, the latest project from Ross Flournoy, brings such post-punk pack leaders to mind, as the effortless strains of jingle-jangle bliss and well-hooked-up rock ‘n’ roll course out of the new Year of Magical Drinking (Merge). But, really, it must have been Flournoy’s passionate, punchy performance on “Under the Gun,” coupled with a bitchin’ guitar solo, that captured Carrie Brownstein’s heart and won her NPR challenge to write and record a song in one weekend. That’s all gravy, though, considering that the exercise succeeded in busting Flournoy out of a lousy case of writer’s block after the breakup of his underrated Broken West. With Film School, Gregory and the Hawk, Melted Toys. Thurs./24, 8 p.m., 21+, Cafe Du Nord. (Chun)

 

SHANNON AND THE CLAMS

Hey freak, you know you’re one of us. The wait has been long, but the time is coming soon for Shannon and the Clams to release Sleep Talk on 1-2-3-4-Go! Records. Get ready to be blown away by Shannon Shaw’s voice, one of the great untamed forces-of-nature of rock ‘n’ roll, and my vote for the best pure sound you can hear at this year’s fest. With Jake Mann and the Upper Hand, Wet Illustrated. Fri./25, 5 p.m., 21+, Benders Bar. (Huston)

 

NICK ZINNER’S 1001 IMAGES

While most noted as the guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Zinner is making a name for himself as a talented photographer. (He has four books of images to his name, including his latest, Please Take Me Off The Guest List.) In this exhibition of 1,001 photographs, the Bard College-educated, four-time Grammy nominee captures intimate moments of his world travels as a member of an iconic art rock and garage pop trio. Fri./25, 5 p.m., 21+, Public Works. (Versosa)

YOUNG PRISMS

Thick, super-gooey reverb-smothered toast, crunchy and burnt and totally delicious. Young Prisms is a group of five San Francisco residents who roast gritty shoegaze tracks straight over the fire while living together in a house that apparently feels like an “extended camping trip.” You can’t take small bites of Young Prisms — this sound is meant for inhaling. With Big Lights, Seventeen Evergreen, DJ Britt Govea. Fri./25, 8 p.m., 21+, Independent. (Schadewald)

 

TAMARYN, THE SOFT MOON

Noise Pop broods with this bill, which presents an opportunity to hear the widescreen songs from Tamaryn’s The Waves (my fave: “Dawning) in live form, and find out how they’ll translate to Cafe Du Nord’s close-quarters basement setting. Luis Vasquez is a busy guy — in addition to his band the Soft Moon, he also plays with the Lumerians, who’ll be putting out an album this spring. With the Black Ryder, Wax Idols. Fri./25, 8 p.m., 21+, Cafe Du Nord. (Huston)

 

BATTLEHOOCH, EXRAY’S, DOWNER PARTY, NOBUNNY

Whether playing impromptu shows on street corners or headlining Noise Pop at Bottom of the Hill, Battlehooch is a San Francisco five-piece with a brilliant manic-depressive sound that flips from indie pop to experimental noise rock. Joining Battlehooch are: Exray’s, an SF duo whose song “Hesitation” was handpicked for use in the blockbuster Social Network; pop-punk trio The Downer Party, which dazzles audiences with its songs of teenage angst; and Nobunny, a psychobilly-meets-garage rock force of nature. Fri./25, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill. (Verzosa)

 

HUNX AND HIS PUNX

Hunx masters songs of love and death — whether they be teen-death love anthems or odes to his late father — on the upcoming Too Young to Be in Love, with tremendous help from Punkette Shannon Shaw of Shannon and the Clams. (He’s also just recorded some “straight”-ahead classic rock-pop solo songs that will make it less possible for dunderheads to pigeonhole him as a gay comic novelty.) I’d tell you exactly what’s rad — as in truly radical — about the interplay between Hunx’s and Shaw’s voice, but I’m going to wait until the album comes out. Why don’t you find for yourself? With Best Coast, Wavves, Royal Baths. Sat./26, 8 p.m., Regency Ballroom. (Huston)

 

NO AGE

Yes, age — maturity has been good to the L.A. duo. Beyond the walls of grinding distortion lies Everything in Between (Sub Pop, 2010), and such raging jewels as “Fever Dreaming,” a hell-bent, hardcore-fed hurl through sheet-metal noise and bemused but anthemic Joey Ramone-style vocals. Somehow the twosome has reclaimed the epic poetry in art punk, scratching through the ethereal rubble of “Skinned” and the mournful crunch and glimmer of “Positive Amputation.” With Grass Widow, Rank/Xerox, Crazy Band. Sat./26, 8:30 p.m., Rickshaw Stop. (Chun)

Crazy like a Mission homeboy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Crazy like a Mission homeboy

caitlin@sfbg.com

LIT Benjamin Bac Sierra, San Francisco City College English composition and literature professor and author of Barrio Bushido, an ode to Mission District vato locos, picks me up in his cherry red-and-black 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo low rider. As an academic who started selling weed in the Army Street projects when he was 10, Bac Sierra is well aware that he has an attention-getting car. As it turns out, it nicely represents his world view.

“I’m not supposed to be driving a Monte Carlo. I’m not supposed to be talking to you like this,” he tells me, his conversation inflected with casual swear words and a rhythm like that of an evangelist preacher, or maybe just a man who feels what comes out of his mouth. “A lot of people go into education and think they have to choose: am I going to be square or am I going to be how I used to be? But you can be intellectual and homeboy-homegirl at the same time.”

Barrio Bushido, Bac Sierra’s first novel, follows the story of three young men who ricochet from romance to brutal gang beatings, PCP leños, larceny, and neglect. Lobo, Santo, and Toro’s world has made them wild gangsters. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has compared Bac Sierra’s prose to that other chronicler of the underground man in uncertain times, Dostoyevsky. Although it hardly glorifies the protagonists, an honor and a beautiful-crazy logic to their deeds does emerge. Bac Sierra holds that the impulsiveness, that locura, needn’t be forgotten when someone leaves the street hustling lifestyle.

“I want to make a line between being a homeboy and the negativity. Craziness is a power — you can’t learn that in a book,” he reflects. We drive by his brother’s old house on Treat and 21st streets — Bac Sierra hears that a PayPal executive lives there now. After Bac Sierra’s father died, his brother, charismatic and clever, brought him up — until his brother wound up in jail and died young.

When Bac Sierra was 17, years after he had dropped out high school and begun dealing angel dust, he had a choice. He could continue his lifestyle, possibly ending up dead or in jail, or “retreat” into the Marines, which represented an honorable discharge, as it were, from the barrio.

Bac Sierra’s experience in the Marines followed the same lines as Toro’s, his headstrong and loyal Barrio Bushido character — to a point. Both of them cleaned up and were promoted to squad leader because of their sheer “craziness.” And both saw serious front line action during the Gulf War. Bac Sierra manned a machine gun as part of the first wave of Marines to land in Kuwait City in 1991. He also began writing in the military, letters home that he would revise “maybe 10 times — I wanted to be heard.” Although he doesn’t specifically recommend military service to young people, he recognizes the value of the discipline learned in the armed forces. “A lot of homeboys don’t do shit,” he says flatly.

After serving, he retained his strong ties to the Mission and his family there. Before his brother died, he was the one who motivated Bac Sierra to get his college degree, not to stop at his master’s in creative writing from UC Berkeley, but to continue on to law school. “Hood logic,” Bac Sierra calls it, the idea that a degree in a concrete field was far better than one writing. Although he hated every day of law school, he can now appreciate the experience and the knowledge it brought him.

He pulls the Monte Carlo over to speak with an older man on the corner across the street from his brother’s old house. “Yo escribí un libro, señor, en honor de mi hermano,” he calls out the window, inviting the man to his upcoming book release party at Mission Cultural Center. Many of his friends from the old neighborhood (he now lives in Richmond, where he is raising two of his four children, Margarita, nine, and Benny, six) are Barrio Bushido‘s biggest supporters. I ask him if it makes him sad, how much the neighborhood has changed since when he grew up. “This is the world. Economics knows no friends.”

I recognize the last line from Barrio Bushido. Its characters speak with an urgent poetry, moving through scenes influenced by Dostoyevsky and Miguel Ángel Asturias, with Gabriel Garcia Márquez-like magical realism. Bac Sierra wants the book to be taught in schools and has set a goal of having it adopted into 50 class sections by next semester.

Other things he hopes for: first, that readers be taken on a journey. “It doesn’t have to be stuffy. I want them to be amazed with the language.” Second, he wants the book to show that life is full of choices. “Start living here in this world,” as he puts it.

His last hope is for a “homeboy resurgence” in the Mission, the neighborhood that was once the center of Latino culture in Northern California. Thursday’s party at the Mission Cultural Center is a start. Bac Sierra is planning a low-rider show, Aztec dancers, a reading, and live music for the event — the positive parts of homeboy culture, like Bac Sierra himself. “I’m fucking straight homeboy,” he says. “I am very efficient. I am always inventing things.” 

BARRIO BUSHIDO BOOK PARTY

Thurs/17 7 p.m., free

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

2868 Mission, SF

(415) 643-5001

www.missionculturalcenter.org

Our Weekly Picks: February 16-22

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 16

MUSIC

Dum Dum Girls

Dee Dee, bandleader of Dum Dum Girls, a 1960s pop-meets-early punk, all-girl four piece, is no dummy. Named not for the lollipops, but after the Vaselines’ album Dum-Dum and the Iggy Pop song “Dum Dum Boys,” DDG was initially a solo project on Dee Dee’s DIY record label, Zoo Music. To take her music beyond her bedroom, she called on the help of her friends: Jules (guitar and vocals), Bambi (bass), and Sandy (drums and vocals). DDR’s most recent album, Sub Pop release I Will Be, features Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Crocodiles’ Brandon Welchez, and Los Angeles musician Andrew Miller. (Jen Verzosa)

With Minks and Dirty Beaches

9 p.m., $12

Bottom Of The Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

THURSDAY 17

EVENT

The Tribes of Burning Man

Either you are or you aren’t: I’m an aren’t. As in, not a Burning Man person. But that won’t stop me from trumpeting the release of The Tribes of Burning Man, the end result of six years of work by Steven T. Jones, known around the Guardian as Steve the City Editor and on Burning Man’s playa as “Scribe.” Chances are you’ve seen Jones’ Burning Man coverage in the Guardian’s pages over the years; his new book examines the history and philosophy of the annual event, as well as the ways that Burning Man has become a year-round lifestyle for some and a (counter-) cultural touchstone for hundreds of thousands of desert-goers. The Tribes launch party features readings by Jones and appearances by Burning Man leader Larry Harvey, circus performers Fou Fou Ha, beat boxer Kid Beyond, and other colorful characters from the book. (Cheryl Eddy)

7 p.m., $5 ($20 with book)

Project One

251 Rhode Island, SF

www.p1sf.com

 

MUSIC

3 Inches of Blood

Though it has endured many lineup changes, 3 Inches of Blood is always instantly recognizable, thanks to the falsetto assault of vocalist Cam Pipes (his real name). Drawing on power metal and thrash but hewing closely to the classic sounds of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Pipes and his Vancouver-based band have plied their rock the world over. Fire Up the Blades (2007) experimented with polished, immaculate production, with Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison producing, but 2009 release Here Waits Thy Doom stripped away the gloss, returning the band to its raw, urgent roots. Now that it’s coming to town, you won’t have to wait for your doom any longer. (Ben Richardson)

With Eluveitie, Holy Grail, System Divide

7:30 p.m., $20

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

FILM

“Around the World in 33 Films: The Jeonju Digital Project”

The still-young Jeonju International Film Festival is exceptional for privileging film culture over film markets. To take one significant example of this emphasis, for each edition the festival commissions three half-hour digital films by major auteurs. It’s almost impossible to imagine an American festival apportioning funds in this internationalist, art-first manner. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screens all 33 Jeonju commissions from 2000-10 over the next two weeks. It’s an ambitious — and, one imagines, costly — program, so make it count. This first show features an especially strong class of 2010 (James Benning, Denis Côté, and Matías Piñeiro), with works by the new century’s preeminent film artists (Pedro Costa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhangke, etc.) waiting in the wings. (Max Goldberg)

Feb 17–27 (2010 program: tonight, 7:30 p.m.), $8

YBCA Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

 

FRIDAY 18

MUSIC

Chromeo

At first listen, Chromeo’s music would seem to run the risk of being a little tough to take seriously — if only it wasn’t so damn well-executed. Instead, the Montreal-based electro-funk duo creates perfectly retro-minded jams that skimp refuse to scrimp on creative songcraft or purely visceral dance floor diversion. The fantastic talk box solos don’t hurt either. Taking its cues from classic era funk, Hall and Oates-style blue-eyed soul, and modern synthpop, Chromeo’s 2010 album Business Casual has led to a slew of strong reviews, festival appearances, and a top 10 slot on Billboard’s dance/electronic chart. (Landon Moblad)

With MNDR and the Suzan

8 p.m., $25

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 548-3010

www.thefoxoakland.com

 

MUSIC

Bart B More

How old is Bart B More? In videos from his recent Asian tour, he’s got the pallid complexion that my friends did in high school. Maybe a result of the DJ lifestyle, spending too much time in clubs around 2 a.m. (or being Danish). The rest of Bart B’s existence, from what I can tell, consists of lifting weights and looking at Lamborghinis. Ah, to be an international beat maker, an up-and-comer who’s reputedly worth checking out. Anyway, Blasthaus resident Nisus has proven himself a reliable dance floor driver, delivering a binaural set at the Treasure Island Music Festival and excellently setting up the Twelves earlier this month. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Nisus and Tron Jeremy

9 p.m., $12.50

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

Mark Growden

Back from another long stretch of touring and recording, wandering minstrel Mark Growden lands at the Brava Theatre with a brand new album Lose Me in the Sand and a posse of old-school Tucson troubadours as the backing band. Less sweepingly-thematic than 2010’s Saint Judas, the new album combines oddments of philosophy, romance, humor, and reminiscence, covering familiar tunes in startlingly unfamiliar ways, plus a handful of originals including a breakneck-paced courting song “Settle in a Little While” and a sepia-toned hometown lament “Killing Time.” Growden’s long-time collaborator and Porto Franco labelmate Seth Ford Young opens and also releases his eponymous debut album. (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Seth Ford Young

Fri/18–Sat/19, 8 p.m., $20–$50

Brava Theatre

2781 24th St., SF

(415) 641-7657

www.brava.org

 

PERFORMANCE

Move Thru Me

“I’m with the band” may sound smoother than “I’m with the dance company,” although either could be stated by the performers of Move Thru Me, a collaboration of Christine Cali’s Cali & Co Dance and Matthew Langlois’ the Welcome Matt band. A hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll and modern dance, the performance responds to the pursuit of a creative life and ongoing artistic practice. Prior to joining forces, Cali and Langlois each worked as independent artists for more than 15 years. The work includes a soundtrack of original music as well as online dance videos. As with any good concert tour — T-shirts! (Julie Potter)

Fri/18–Sat/19, 8 p.m. (also Sun/20, 5 p.m.), $10–$20

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 826-4441

www.dancemission.com

 

SATURDAY 19

EVENT

“From Produce to Production: New Traditions in Bay Area Food Culture”

Bay Area Now (BAN6), a triennial celebrating local artists from diverse disciplines, begins with a series of Bay Area-centric conversations about food, environmentalism, futurism, community activism, radical identities, and technology. The first roundtable discussion addresses new practices for growing, preparing and shopping for food, during which YBCA Executive Director Ken Foster will speak with food luminaries Bryant Terry, eco-chef and activist from Oakland and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen; Novella Carpenter, journalist, farmer and author of Farm City; and Leif Hedendal, a self-educated chef at San Francisco’s Greens and Oakland’s Citron restaurants, whose Bay Area culinary events combine art and food. (Potter)

1 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 987-2787

www.ybca.org

 

EVENT

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Planning on consuming a little New Year’s nosh during this weekend’s bunny-fueled festivities? Then you might be interested to know that the Japanese — not Chinese — invented the fortune cookie; Chinese takeout cartons can be found everywhere but China; and chop suey may or may not be an elaborate American hoax. I see all you smartphone nerds plinking “chop suey” into snopes.com right now, but save yourselves the trouble: New York Times reporter and author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles Jennifer 8. Lee is here to unravel the history of Chinese cookery — and just in time for the Chinese New Year. The book is also seasoned with a healthy smattering of SF history to spice things up. (Emily Appelbaum)

2:30–4 p.m., free

San Francisco Public Library

Chinatown Branch

1135 Powell, SF

(415) 557-4400

www.sfpl.org

 

SUNDAY 20

EVENT

“San Francisco Mixtape Society presents Guilty Pleasures”

Listening to Ke$ha on repeat? Excited about Britney Spears’ upcoming release, Femme Fatale? Love to share music? Then the San Francisco Mixtape Society has you covered. It presents “Guilty Pleasures,” a night of music mixtape exchanges. Assemble a mixtape according to the theme in any format — cassette, CD, or USB — and leave with a fellow attendee’s mixtape; they’ll be exchanged throughout the evening via a raffle. Those who come armed with tunes will receive a free drink — and all the joy guilty pleasures can provide. (Verzosa)

4–6 p.m., free

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

(415) 647-2888

www.sfmixtapesociety.com

 

MONDAY 21

EVENT

“The Cleveland Confidential Book Tour”

As the guitarist for Rocket from the Tombs and the Dead Boys, Cheetah Chrome helped write the sonic blueprint for punk rock — and now he’s written an autobiography, Cheetah Chrome: A Dead Boy’s Tale From The Front Lines of Punk Rock, which chronicles his explosive life and his role in one of the most infamous movements in modern pop culture. Joining him for “The Cleveland Confidential Book Tour” are Mike Hudson from the Pagans and Bob Pfeifer from Human Switchboard; don’t miss your chance to hear the story straight from the mouths of a triumvirate of punks’ founding fathers. (Sean McCourt)

Tonight, 6 p.m., $10

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com.

Tues/22, 7 p.m., free

Moe’s Books

2476 Telegraph, Berk.

(510) 849-2087

www.moesbooks.com

Feb. 23, 7 p.m., free

Gallery Fifty24

218 Fillmore, SF

www.noisepop.com

 

TUESDAY 22

MUSIC

Odd Future

The Internet has birthed yet another rap group with disturbing lyrics (see also: Die Antwoord), but this time there’s no doubt regarding the collective’s genuine intentions. Members of Los Angeles hip-hop skate crew Odd Future Wolfgang Kill Them All (OFWKTA) range in age from 16 to 23 and wax philosophical about typical teenage concerns, from school and love to murder and bondage. Sometimes the music comes off like a hip-hop parallel to horror metal, but ultimately Odd Future is less about fetishizing violence than it is about offering an unfettered forum for the group’s personalities. Though their ages imply novelty, listening to the sharp, dense flow of Earl Sweatshirt or the lo-fi contorted funk of Tyler the Creator confirms there can be no doubt that these kids are headed for big, big things. (Peter Galvin)

9 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

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

Don’t trip

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Don’t trip

New Rkelly album out Dec 14th that I will soon be immensely non-ironically enjoying
2:48 PM  Dec10th via web

sometimes listening to KMEL all day feels like an insane psychological experiment
4:15 PM Dec 9th via web

Damn…Aretha Franklin is dying? 🙁
3:02 AM Dec 9th via Echofon

nothing is worse than a one man beatbox loop station band unless he is breakdancing or juggling or doing graffiti at the same time
11:31 PM Dec 5th via web

reggie watts- the quirky comedian who incorporates beat box loop station songs into his act. I will regret that youtube search for life.
11:16 PM Dec 5th via web

Just informed someone who didn’t know that dio was dead. Heavy moment
7:36 PM Dec 3rd via Echofon

I wonder what kind of pussy the guys in Trans-siberian orchestra get?
11:10 PM Dec 1st via web

2nd bubba sparxx record is so good.
Sunday, Nov 28, 2010 10:51:05 PM via web

Your house is my nitrous den. I leave my gear there RT @ALEXISPENNEY just saw the cannister and balloons that @swiftumz left in our pantry
2:04 PM Nov 25th via Echofon

K-Ci and JoJo have a reality show!!
2:24 PM Nov 25th via web

everyones “beatles on itunes” jokes fucking suck
2:24 PM Nov 17th via web

wow…singer from blur and FLEA are working on an album of AFRICAN music with Tony Allen…THIS IS NOT A JOKE
1:01 PM Nov 17th via web

“I like any bar I can lay down in”
11:14 PM Nov 12th via Echofon

Been thinking about the west Memphis three a lot lately- about how much I don’t care.
11:12 PM Nov 12th via Echofon

trey songz “bottoms up”is like the best shit out right now.
1:32 PM Nov 12th via web

wow just saw the most racist mcrib commercial ever
5:49 PM Nov 11th via web

leaving hateful comments on local bands youtube pages
12:36 AM Nov 11th via web

I’d like a time lapse film of the healthy, fresh organic food I buy at the beginning of the week slowly wilting in my fridge.
11:55 PM Nov 10th via web

Jackée and Rodney Dangerfields duet of “Great balls of fire” is the definitive version of that song.
5:41 PM Nov 6th via Echofon

@HunxandhisPunx watching ladybugZ 🙂
4:49 PM Nov 6th via Echofon

almost every outkast song gets exponentially shittier each time you hear it.
5:14 PM Nov 15th via web

Die Antwoord is like the worst phenomenon
12:51 PM Nov 5th via web

Big Momma’s House 3 better be in 3D
5:48 PM Oct 27th via web

I hope Eddie Rabbitt wasn’t a stage name because that’s a bad one
1:51 AM Oct 24th via Echofon

I love a rainy night (RIP Eddie Rabbit)
1:50 AM Oct  24th via Echofon

just told drake to shut up and angrily turned off the radio.
1:56 PM Oct 21st via web

they need to invent more dimensions so movies can have more sequels
5:17 PM Oct 11th via web

really happy the Usher/Tre Songz tour is called the “OMG tour”. Gonna be bummed when this era is over.
12:29 PM Oct 7th via web

Always excited to meet someone with an “Anticon” hoody cuz I can tell them all about actual good music to listen to. Especially rap
9:18 PM Oct 1st via Echofon

Last night while complaining about Marley children, I was informed that marc bolans son performs t Rex covers under the name “Rolan Bolan”
3:53  PM Sept 28th via Echofon

wearing a different michael jackson shirt than yesterday.
3:15 PM Sept 15th via web

true story: when I saw pantera in high school I threw an employees hat I took from taco bell onstage and dimebag wore it for the whole show!
2:09 AM Sept 14th via web

making more hits with superproducer @mylesusa today!
6:57 PM Sept 11th via the web

I do really love how earth wind and fire never abandoned the kalimba.
5:23 AM Sept 4th via web

spent 21$ at 7-11 now playing guitar in the mirror as things are heating up
4:52 AM Sept 4th via Echofon

Congratulations to Cee Lo for writing a song worse than “crazy”, no fuck YOU cee lo.
6:51 PM Sept 3 via Echofon

the playlist entitled “me” on my itunes is morphing into a super good album
12:06 AM Sept 2 via web

BART tickets are the best DIY floss
2:35 AM August 13th via Echofon

So stoked on my team of super producers @mylesusa @commasounds @staylucid @swiftumz
10:47 PM Aug 11th via Echofon

@HarlemWhateverr put on the Go-betweens and call it a day. Duh
12:03 PM July 30th via Echofon in reply to HarlemWhateverr

The Hannah Montana movie on second viewing blurs the lines of reality way more than inception or the matrix.
2:12 AM July 19th via Echofon

She also described someone she thought was cute as “thom yorke-like”…double doozy
7:41 PM July 13th via Echofon

Not talking to this lady anymore who isn’t excited about Weird Als upcoming show at the Warfield. #dealbreaker
7:40 PM July 13 via Echofon

lyric from the new prince song: “from the heart of minnesota, here comes the purple yoda” #notjoking
10:58 AM July 12th via web

Starting mixtape at 3am…no Jim Nabors
3:09 AM July 9th via Echofon

Jim Nabors record thrown out of my 4th story window #jimnabors
3:07AM July 7th via Echofon

Listening to Jim Nabors record #timeforbed
3:06 AM July 7th via Echofon

i’m wearing swim trunks and an oversize ICP shirt right now
10:19 PM July 6th via web

“someone spilled a beer in the doritos?” actual quote
2:29 AM July 3rd via Echofon

my iPhone recognizes “chillwave” as a word
11:05 July 1 via Echofon

I wish someone would just organize a flash mob of people punching themselves in the face
11:16 PM Jun 25th via web

Hmmm I wonder how that new sushi place that just opened across the street from the JAIL is…
4:15 PM Jun 25th via Echofon

listening to GAS at work, makes my whole day like an episode of twin peaks
3:01 PM Jun 25th via web

JAH- please make it rain on everyone trying to see Pavement tonight. =D
1:16 PM Jun 25th via web

Toni tone Tony “house of music” LP hasn’t left my record player for a week. A seriously great album.
1:11 AM Jun 24th via Echofon

Whoa macy gray is on TV…always wondered what happened to him
12:52 AM Jun 24th via Echofon

@truepanther sorry dean-nice try, but i’m already signed
3:13 AM Jun 19th via web in reply to truepanther

inhaling insane amounts of sour diesel and listening to durutti column right now #lifeisgood
2:58 AM Jun 19th via web

I should go to bed but I can’t stop listening to mercyful fate #worshipsatan
1:07 AM Jun 17th via web

ouch! curtis mayfield just made me shed a little tear right here at my desk
2:47 PM Jun 11th via web

maybe betty white could join RUNDMC as the DJ???
5:55 PM Jun 3rd via web

is anything stupider than graffiti? Maybe beatboxing?
1:04 PM May 25th via web

Every time I clean my room I find a hit of E
7:07 PM May 18th via Echofon

Listening to Alice Coltrane “universal consciousness” and I have not one shitty thing to say about it. #positivity #universalconsciousness
6:53 PM May 18th via web

this improvisation battle between brian setzer and the country bears fiddle player is intense
11:59 PM May 17th via web

i’ve already given country bears a four star rating on netflix based on the first three minutes.
11:18 PM May 17th via web

holy shit this live action country bears movie is fucking horrifying!!!
11:17 PM May 17th via web

Every time wyclef says “one time” on killing me softly a small part of me dies #shutupandlettheladysing
11:35 AM May 5 via Echofon

I reckon cypress hills bongo player is among the best i’ve ever seen #\:=D
10 PM April 20th via Echofon

These children just handed us a lit joint as big as my index finger
8:55 PM April 20th via Echofon

A new teenage fanclub album and big mommas house 3 in the same year? regained my will to live.
1:15 Pm April 20th via Echofon

I wish the voice in my head was Lee Hazelwoods or Harry Nillsons, maybe then I’d listen to my conscience.
3:41 Pm April 16th via web

Fuck you bjork, you’re the dave matthews band of weird chicks
5:50 PM Mar 31st via Echofon

Bob Marley’s kids are whiter than Michael Jackson’s kids
10:24 PM Mar 17th via Echofon

The oscars r so backwards…that lady is going to win for ‘the hurt locker’ when she should have won for ‘point break’
11:08 PM Mar 4 via Echofon

“do you like noise music?” “no I like that song on the new cat food commercial”
4:44 PM Mar 4 via Echofon

Kinda wish yoko would stop talking about peace and stuff and just brag to the crowd about how great it felt to be filthy rich
10:40 PM Feb 23rd via Echofon

I’m excited to see yoko Ono tomorrow because deerhoof is opening and I want to hate on them
6:20 PM Feb 22nd via Echofon

seriously “on the beach” is like the last thing i’d want to listen to on the beach
12:43 PM Jan 29th via web

Just got asked my favorite question when I’m carrying a guitar in public. “Do you play music?”
3:29 PM Jan 23rd via Echofon

KMEL just had a mini Aaliyah marathon. Not complaining.
4:53 PM Jan 14th via web

I’m confident that I can play guitar better than the following people – Bono, mick jagger, eddie vedder, and the guy from puddle of mudd
12:59 Am Jan 8th via web

“puddle of mudd” performing on tv. shit like this amazes me.
12:57 AM Jan 8th via web

I’m serious when I say the lady who plays the cello for the go betweens can outshred anyone
4:36 PM Jan 6th via Echofon

swiftumz’ album Don’t Trip is coming out on Holy Mountain in spring 2011

Dirty business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Dirty business

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The owner of a certified minority-owned business in San Francisco is suing the city, charging that his telecommunications company went belly up after city officials falsely accused him of participating in a fraudulent kickback scheme within the city’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

The case and depositions of high-ranking officials offer a rare window into the inner workings of city government at a time when corruption was rife within DBI and regulations governing city contracting were considerably less strict. They also provide a glimpse at how city business was sometimes conducted under the administration of Mayor Willie Brown, a powerful figure who has resurfaced recently in San Francisco politics.

In addition, the case alleges inappropriate behavior by current Mayor Ed Lee when he was the city’s purchasing director. One of the depositions includes allegations that Lee, at Brown’s direction, approved a city contractor who was utterly unqualified and was later accused of being part of a criminal scam.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit — James Brady, CEO of Cobra Solutions — closed up shop years ago and moved to Sacramento with his wife and business partner, Debra. But he’s been locked in an ongoing legal battle against powerful forces in City Hall since 2003, when he claims the city stopped issuing payments to his company, terminated its contract, and declined to award it a new contract on suspicions of bribery.

“They want to make us look like we’re Bonnie and Clyde,” Brady told the Guardian. “We’ve never done a thing.”

Nancy Fineman, an attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing the city in the case, said the corruption allegations against Cobra still stand and she emphasized, “The city attorney was not involved in doing anything wrong.”

In a complaint filed Jan. 7, attorney G. Whitney Leigh — law partner of former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez — alleges that a host of city officials are responsible for precipitating Brady’s financial ruin.

According to Leigh’s version of events, Cobra was dragged into an overzealous campaign to hold someone accountable after a contractor the city alleged was corrupt vanished, leaving a number of subcontractors unpaid and the city “with egg on its face.”

Leigh subpoenaed Ed Harrington, former city controller and current head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda; former officials from the Office of Contract Administration, and others to testify out of court during discovery. Leigh describes the case as “a Shakespearean tragedy combined with a cartoon combined with a soap opera.”

For City Attorney Dennis Herrera, it might be more like a zombie flick. The city attorney is gaining momentum in his campaign for mayor and has taken an early lead in fundraising against his opponents. The Cobra Solutions saga might be one that he — and other top city officials — would rather forget.

 

CONFLICTS AND CRACKDOWNS

Appeals in the case have reached all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Herrera had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified his office from suing Cobra. Beginning in September 2000, before he was elected city attorney, Herrera provided legal representation to Cobra while working with a private firm called Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Due to the disqualification, Herrera could not discuss specifics in the case. But he did offer us a general comment. “I’ve made it very clear that me and my office are going to have zero tolerance for corruption and individuals who would violate the public trust,” he said. “This case, I think, represents that philosophy.”

When Herrera was campaigning for city attorney in the November 2001 race, he ran on a platform of cracking down on fraud and corruption. The DBI case began as a triumphant delivery of that campaign promise.

In 2003, following a yearlong investigation by a Public Integrity Task Force that Herrera had convened, a corrupt DBI official named Marcus Armstrong got busted by the feds. He’d allegedly falsified the qualifications on his resume and set up shell companies to funnel money out of city coffers for his own personal gain. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges brought by the U.S. Attorney, and spent time in prison for cheating the city out of about $500,000.

Herrera brought a civil suit against Armstrong and a DBI contractor, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), which allegedly partnered with Armstrong in a kickback scheme. Questions surrounded GCSI from the start. It only gained certification as a city contractor after being rejected multiple times by city staff as unqualified. Deborah Vincent-James, who directed the city’s Committee on Information Technology (COIT) at the time and has since died, testified in a 2008 deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent” and got the contract only because of ties to Mayor Brown.

Herrera hit a stumbling block when he amended the complaint to name Cobra Solutions and its management company, TeleCon Ltd., as another city contractor in on Armstrong’s kickback scheme. (Debra Brady was president of TeleCon, which predated Cobra. Although the Bradys insist the two entities were separate, Herrera named TeleCon in the suit as an alter ego of Cobra.)

Cobra struck back, claiming the City Attorney’s Office wasn’t entitled to file suit against the company because Herrera’s old firm had represented Brady. Herrera told us the whole thing came about “because of the 18 minutes that I billed to work for Cobra.”

Herrera’s office initially denied any conflict of interest. “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office,” according to a statement issued by the City Attorney’s Office.

But the Supreme Court disagreed in a 2006 ruling. “The possibility that the City Attorney’s former client might be prosecuted for civil fraud by the City Attorney’s office may test public faith in the integrity of the judicial system,” the ruling stated, “raising the specter of perceptions that the former client will be treated more leniently because of its connections, or more harshly because of leaked confidences.”

 

COBRA’S CASH

The city’s lawsuit alleged that Cobra paid Armstrong about $240,000 in bribes in exchange for $2.4 million worth of business with DBI from April 1999 through 2000. The allegation was based on checks Cobra sent to Monarch Enterprises, which the city said was an Armstrong front. The investigation found that GCSI paid Armstrong about 10 percent of the contract amount in a similar fashion.

“Armstrong used these and all other funds received from Cobra for his personal benefit and gain,” the suit claimed. The complaint also charges, “Cobra … knew that Monarch enterprises was wholly owned and controlled by Armstrong, and that any payment made by Cobra was in fact a payment to Armstrong.”

But Cobra’s suit claims an FBI investigation into Cobra’s involvement found no wrongdoing. Additionally, “We turned all of our records over to the U.S. Attorney,” Leigh noted, and that didn’t lead to a criminal prosecution.

Brady calls the corruption allegation “a big lie,” and says his company’s name has been wrongfully sullied. He says Armstrong led him to believe Monarch Enterprises was an Internet company performing training, support, and computer security upgrades as a subcontractor. The bills came in, and Cobra believed it was responsible for paying for the service, Brady said. “We mailed the checks, and never thought about it.”

Before the trouble started, Cobra Solutions was in a growth phase, having gone from four employees to 35 in just a few years. James and Debra Brady moved from Colorado to San Francisco in the late 1980s with nothing. James Brady worked as a manager in several SROs, became a member of the Tenderloin Merchant’s Association and helped establish a credit union serving low-income residents.

The couple established TeleCon Ltd. and started out as city subcontractors providing voicemail services. At first, they had very limited resources. “Prior to being able to afford an office, Debra frequently used the telephones in the women’s lounge at Nordstrom to conduct business,” according to her bio.

Cobra was established after Vincent-James urged the Bradys to submit a bid for an upcoming contract. The city had opened up a Request for Proposals (RFP) for vendors who wanted to be admitted to the Computer Store, an entity created to speed up municipal orders for technical services.

Before then, it could take six months for the city to purchase so much as a desktop computer. A Human Rights Commission vetting process, designed to ensure that city contractors adhered to environmental and social justice criteria, caused long delays. Then-City Purchaser Ed Lee created the Computer Store to solve this logistical challenge. Vendors who applied for membership were vetted in the RFP (minority-owned businesses were given preference), admitted as certified contractors, and granted preference by city departments in need of IT services.

Cobra’s first departmental contract through the Computer Store was a $1.3 million agreement to provide technical services for DBI, working with Armstrong. Things got off to a rough start.

“We could never find the guy, he would never be at work, and when we did see him, he was complaining,” Brady recounted. According to Cobra’s complaint, “it ran into a series of disputes with DBI and Armstrong over the scope of work and particular payment issues,” and Cobra was eventually awarded a settlement reflecting services it provided after Armstrong changed the scope of the work.

Brady says he sought city help in dealing with Armstrong. According to Cobra’s complaint, he appealed for assistance to COIT, which oversaw the Computer Store. Cobra’s relationship with Armstrong soon soured, and the DBI deal dissolved.

According to the description of Vincent-James, “The relationship between James Brady … and Marcus got worse … Marcus got another company involved because James Brady would not do what Marcus wanted to do.”

The other company was GCSI.

 

NEW PHASE

Things got better for the Bradys before they got worse. Cobra became one of the city’s largest technology services providers, netting $14.5 million in contracts with various city agencies by 2003. They relocated to a nicer, more spacious office in the Financial District.

A partnership with IBM granted them access to higher credit limits than ever. The couple had a home custom-built in El Sobrante. When GCSI vanished without a trace, Vincent-James called on Cobra to hire some of the GCSI subcontractors who had gotten burned in the process, according to a deposition from former city purchaser Judith Blackwell.

By 2003, the Public Integrity Task Force’s DBI investigation was in full swing, but Brady didn’t know it. He says he started experiencing problems getting paid, yet couldn’t get an explanation from city agencies.

According to Cobra’s complaint, “The city intentionally frustrated payments to Cobra and TeleCon because investigators hastily and incorrectly concluded that the companies had conspired with Armstrong in a GCSI-type scheme to defraud the city.”

Fineman, the city’s attorney, said she strongly disagrees with “the idea that we just stopped and left them in the lurch,” emphasizing that there had been a whole separate legal proceeding arising out of the fact that “Cobra was not paying its subcontractors,” in violation of its contract.

The city defended its decision to delay Cobra’s payments by pointing to the GCSI scandal, which had left city agencies high and dry. “By the time the City discovered GCSI’s fraud and stopped making payments to GCSI, GCSI had already received millions of dollars in city payments that were not then passed on to the subcontractors,” a letter from the City Attorney’s Office to Brady’s attorneys explained. “Once the city started investigating the payments to GCSI that Marcus Armstrong authorized, GCSI’s assets, officers and staff disappeared. … The city has an obligation to its taxpayers to prevent the GCSI scenario from unfolding with regard to Cobra / TeleCon.”

Brady insists that because Cobra couldn’t get paid, it couldn’t pay its subcontractors, or its creditors, either — and the financial holdup triggered a cascade of losses. “I’ve got IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, and American Express breathing down on me like a dragon,” he said. “Everybody wants to get paid. We owed folks after we couldn’t collect our receivables.”

The bills were piling up. “We were sinking fast,” said Debra Brady, “so we sold our house in El Sobrante.”

Brady said he was stunned to learn that Cobra had been named in Herrera’s suit.

“I have 37 employees, and I had to go in and tell them. I was all choked up and the phone was ringing, and it was my attorney on the line telling me that the FBI was coming. I could not believe that after everything we had achieved in the last three years, my former attorney was filing a lawsuit against me.”

 

CLEARING THEIR NAMES

After filing the complaint against Cobra, the City Attorney’s Office called on the company to submit to an audit — but Cobra refused on the basis that Herrera’s firm had represented it in the past. “The City Attorney’s assumption of the role of auditor seems calculated to exacerbate and expand the existing conflict of interest,” Cobra attorney Ethan Balogh wrote in an April 2003 letter. “This problem could easily be solved by allowing an agency other than the City Attorney to conduct the audit.”

In a lengthy back-and-forth, Herrera’s office responded: “You have never explained why your client, having been caught sending over $240,000 in cash to a San Francisco IT manager who authorized over $2.4 million in payments to Cobra/TeleCon during the period of time which he received those payments, has elected not to immediately … open its books and records to the city. Instead … you have raised a host of constantly-shifting objections and arguments as to why the city’s demand was inappropriate.”

Cobra’s lawsuit charges that the City Attorney’s Office never informed the Controller’s Office that Cobra would have allowed an audit by another party. At the same time, it charges, city attorneys weren’t allowing Cobra to communicate with the controller directly, due to the legal dispute.

“The question of who would do the audit and whether or not the City Attorney was doing the audit was not something that I was aware of or certainly had not agreed to,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said during her deposition.

Meanwhile, Cobra had received the highest Human Rights Commission score of any bidder for a renewal on the Computer Store contract, an HRC document shows. Brady received a letter stating that his company would be awarded a new Computer Store contract — but shortly after, he got a second letter reversing that award.

Judith Blackwell, who oversaw city purchasing under Brown’s administration, explained why during her deposition with Leigh. After Cobra’s bid evaluation, Blackwell testified, her office moved to award the contract — but the controller intervened, saying Cobra shouldn’t be awarded a new contract because of the Armstrong scandal. Blackwell wasn’t willing to throw Cobra out, however.

“I learned from watching politics that I cannot afford to bend the rules,” Blackwell testified. “If I step outside the precise boundaries in any way, or if any African American administrator does, they are probably not going to be interpreted in the same way as if anyone else did it. Based on the … procurement code, there is no way that I could, as the purchasing director, just throw them out.”

Blackwell testified that Zmuda requested that she sign paperwork denying Cobra the contract, and Blackwell received a warning when she refused. “She told me that I needed to remember that when [Mayor Brown] was gone that they, the Controller’s Office, and [Chief of Staff Steve Kawa] — I knew that is what she was implying — were in charge,” Blackwell said. Once Mayor Gavin Newsom replaced Brown, Blackwell was let go. She now lives in New York City.

Blackwell testified that losing her job came as a surprise, since she’d worked on Newsom’s campaign and expected to keep her position. “I had asked him something about why it happened and he said … he knew nothing about it and people were acting without, you know, basically not at his direction,” Blackwell testified. “I said, well, Mayor Newsom, you are in charge. And his response was, oh, I wish that were so.” 

 

ED LEE APPROVED UNQUALIFIED CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

GCSI — a company accused of defrauding the city after improperly being given a city contract by Ed Lee, allegedly at the urging of then-Mayor Willie Brown — is long gone.

“I don’t think they’re around,” Nancy Fineman, an attorney representing the city, told the Guardian. “We’ve just been focused on Cobra and TeleCon.”

The story of how GCSI came to be a city contractor may be the most fascinating part of this case, one that could have repercussions today, even though it happened in the late-1990s.

Like Cobra Solutions, GCSI was a contractor with the city’s Computer Store — gaining admission after being repeatedly rejected by city staff, according to a 2008 deposition with former COIT director Deborah Vincent-James, who has died.

Vincent-James testified that GCSI didn’t meet the minimum qualifications and recounted how, during an interview with city officials about the bid, a member of the City Attorney’s Office noticed a wire peeking out from the suit of a GCSI representative who had been surreptitiously taping the meeting.

“San Francisco was not aware of GCSI’s wrongful conduct, financial problems, or legal difficulties at the time it hired GCSI to work on the DBI projects,” a city lawsuit claimed. Nor had the city realized that, “GCSI’s president and owner had been arrested and imprisoned by a federal judge for contempt of court and for disbursing funds in an effort to avoid …efforts to collect its loan.”

GCSI principal Robert Fowler resided in both Washington, D.C., and California, was believed to be a citizen of Sweden, and was also the director and owner of a bank located on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, according to Herrera’s complaint.

“From day one, I knew that they were not qualified,” Vincent-James’ deposition transcript reads. She went on to say that the official city process for evaluating contractors was “totally bypassed.” Nonetheless, “We had to admit them to the Computer Store.”

“Who told you, you had to admit them to the Computer Store?” attorney Whitney Leigh asked.

“The director of purchasing,” states Vincent-James’ deposition transcript. “Ed Lee.”

She went on to testify that Lee had been acting under the direction of Mayor Brown. According to her deposition, “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.” She also testified, “Principals of GCSI hired an attorney who had been in the State Legislature with Mayor Brown and … GCSI had felt that because we were asking intrusive questions during the oral interview, such as ‘Why do you have that wire hanging out of your coat?’ … They felt that biased the committee toward … not hiring them.”

Neither Brown nor Mayor Lee’s office responded to requests for comment.

GCSI is still a codefendant in the complaint, but the principals of the defunct company seem to be off the hook. A 2008 story from the Anchorage Daily News noted that Fowler had emerged as the head of a natural gas company in Alaska. The Bradys, meanwhile, are getting ready for another court date in March. “We keep going to court,” Debra Brady said. “I’m kind of like, when is the end coming?”

Deconstructing Cinderella, deconstructing La Llorona

Andrew Lam
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They say you shouldn’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Ana Teresa Fernandez, the featured artist in Galería de la Raza’s upcoming video exhibition “La Llarona Unfabled,” (opening Sat/12) has obliged in regards to that feminist foil, Cinderella. For her video installation, Fernandez spent hours standing wearing a melting pair of “glass slippers” made of ice on a dirty West Oakland street. The experience, she feels, left her more than qualified to criticize the social constructs embodied by fairy tale’s scullery maid-cum-princess.

Originally conceived by Galería’s executive director Carolina Ponce de León, “La Llorona Unfabled” will include work from four other artists: Monica Enriquez-Enriquez, Geraldine Lozano, Rosario Sotelo, and Tanya Vlach. The five will respond to issues of gender, class, identity, and migration in an effort to re-craft cultural narratives into feminist and Latina perspectives.

Which is not to say the exhibition won’t speak to all women. “It isn’t about brown, white, rich, poor,” Fernandez affirms. “It is about the self, learning to find your true voice and talents and making that voice the thing which sustains you in life.”

In her art, Fernandez uses lessons from her own life to challenge feminine mythologies — from the Mexican folktale of La Llorona, the weeping woman, to the story of Cinderella –  to “show little girls that they can be the protagonists of their own stories,” she says. Born in Tampico, Mexico, Fernandez was recruited by San Francisco Art Institute with a full scholarship – an opportunity that she met with amazement, and which enabled her to do the art she loves for a living. But Fernandez didn’t have a Prince Charming to make her dreams come true, or a fairy godmother for that matter. For that, she had to rely on talent, hard work and a passion for subverting the macho norms of classic art.

Growing up, the artist experienced very clear ideas about where women belonged. Her mother, a runner, was chastised for wearing short-shorts and sneaking out of the house to race with men. Ana, also an athlete, broke four national swimming records by the time she was eight. “They had to train me with the boys,” she recalls. Now 29, the artist has traveled the world but still feels that by supporting herself through painting, she is swimming against the current.  

Like many children in Mexico, Fernandez grew up hearing the story of La Llorona, the colonial-era fable of a beautiful peasant girl who is abandoned by her noble (read: white) husband.  She drowns her two children, and then herself in the river and is condemned to forever wander its banks, wailing for her lost sons. To Fernandez, the story was a clear message that a woman need to rescued by a man or else face a life of desperation. “What’s that game?” she asks, snapping her fingers. “Old Maid. If you’re not chosen, you’re nobody.” 

Even as the child of educated parents from a big city, Fernandez feels she has to fight the story’s notions of class and race, isolation and empowerment. “There is something to be said about changing the incredible enlaid guilt of how you must act or what you must do as a woman where I grew up – which sounds so incredibly old-fashioned.” 

Inspired by the “strong, elegant women” of her childhood, Fernandez’s paintings – the body of her artistic work up til now – balance the sensuality of the female body with the constrictions that work and fashion place upon it. In “Siren’s Shadow,” a woman swims in a cocktail dress and heels, literally dragged down by those conventional symbols of femininity. In the “La Llorona”  show, these same themes are explored through video and performance art, with water taking on additional meaning as a symbol of La Llorona, weeping endlessly into the river.

“Siren’s Shadow” by Ana Teresa Fernandez 

With the added dimension of time that video brings to Fernandez’s work, its dismantling of the ideals of femininity encoded in myth and art is shown more dynamically. As she stands over sewage in her ice shoes cast from the exaggerated stilettos worn by exotic dancers, waiting for her prince to come, Fernandez’s “glass slippers” and the mythology they imply literally melt away. 

Fernandez is reluctant to align herself with the tradition of Chicana painters working in San Francisco. Her paintings are a far cry from the bold, primary colors of Mujeres Muralistas, the Mission’s famous group of female street artists who lit up Balmy Alley. While she says the Mission feels like her “home away from home,” with its pockets of Mexican culture, Fernandez admits that her work relates more to the European masters and is “much more influenced by male painters.”

Which seems a little incongruous, given her subject material, but Fernandez argues that the virtuosic style of her painting is in itself a subversion, given that the role of the virtuoso painter wasn’t always available to women. Many female artists, especially Latina artists, committed “rebellious acts” against virtuosic tradition in order to get noticed, creating Kahlo-like fantasy worlds rather than create art in the patriarchal classical vein. 

By contrast, Fernandez’s figures, richly constructed out of layers of oil on canvas, glow with heat and realism. “Michelangelo and Botticelli and Brunelleschi were all men that fascinated me,” she says. 

In fact, to someone not paying attention, the muscled, sculptural bodies in Fernandez’s work may not seem so different from the sexualized objects they are meant to replace. But “hyper-sensuality is not the same as sexuality – it oozes, rather than blurts out,” she explains. “It’s quieter, it lingers longer. That’s what I try to play with.” 

She hopes to balance the tradition by adding a female voice without compromising the work’s aesthetic qualities. “In painting women have always been interpreted by men.” As in her life, in her art Fernandez chooses not to retreat into the realm assigned to her by men. She would rather beat them at their own game.

 

 

“La Llorona Unfabled: Stories to (Re)Tell to Little Girls”

Artist Talk Sat/12, 2-4 p.m., free

Opening Reception Sat/12, 7:30 p.m., free

Through April 16

La Galería de la Raza

2857 24th St., SF

(415) 826-8009

www.galeriadelaraza.org

 

 

Sound and environment: Moving beyond tropical bass with Chief Boima

John Elberling
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Sound and environment: Moving beyond tropical bass with Chief Boima

A couple weeks ago I shot a long-winded email to former Bay Area DJ and producer Chief Boima. I had just finished speaking to Dun Dun of the Los Rakas crew for what eventually became this article, and he mentioned an upcoming EP with former Bay Area DJ and producer Boima. Now, if you don’t know about Boima, you need to get acquainted with the Banana Clipz digital funk on Ghetto Bassquake (for free download, too). It’s a joint instrumental album between Boima and Oro 11 of Bersa Discos that merges electronic architectonics with rhythms, melodies, and sound bits from the African diaspora.
Enough of that, though — Boima withstood my long-windedness, and after a couple exchanges, he did all the explaining.

SFBG Dun said that you do with instrumentals what Los Rakas does with lyrics. Do you see similarities in your respective styles? Your backgrounds and influences?
Chief Boima Well, when I first came across Los Rakas I had just come back from Panama, and I was on this high from hearing all the big carnaval tunes and the mix of sounds that reflected my musical and cultural background, but in a Spanish-speaking world. I grew up on the stuff that a lot of Panamanians grew up on, zouk, dancehall, soca, etc. So I was at the SF Carnaval and I heard Panamanian reggae but with this Bay Area flavor to it. (Check my initial reaction here, and I had been posting stuff like this.) I identified with what they were doing immediately.
Also, my father is from Sierra Leone, and I grew up with West African cultural influences, so I try to incorporate that musically into my electronic and hip-hop beats. I feel like Los Rakas do the same thing with Panama, and what Dun said is a great compliment.

SFBG Dun also mentioned a future EP coming up. What’s your process working with Los Rakas? What are some of your thoughts on this upcoming EP?
CB Well I linked up with Rico and Dun after not seeing them for maybe a year. I had given Rico some instrumentals and I never had gotten the chance to record on them. At that point I had a little studio set up in my spot in Oakland, so I invited them down to work on stuff. I think it was a real natural collaboration because we knocked out a lot of different stuff in like 6 months. They would come over and just freestyle or write. A lot of songs came out through different processes. Like one song they gave me an acapella and I constructed a beat around it. Other songs, I played them the beat and they’d just start writing to it, and we’d record. This would all happen after work and on weekends, so it was cool because the sessions were real compact but productive. I’m real excited about the EP. I think the material is strong and unique, so I can’t wait to see the reception.

SFBG “Tropical” or “tropical bass” seems to be the new term which has emerged to cover the range of new electronic music informed by both American and Afro-Latin styles of music, and their many convergences and hybrids. Do you see yourself as part of this tropical movement? Would you trace its form or define it differently?
CB I get the name tropical bass, but I see it akin to a label like world music that’s just kind of vague. I think the styles that are included under the genre are diverse musically, but they share similarities in the production process that is informed by increased access to technology and information across the world. It’s also really related to urban environments, like hip-hop and house were in their beginning stages. So I see all this music as a kind of continuum of hip-hop and electronic music from Detroit and Chicago. I see myself as part of that production process, more than a musical genre.
The genres I enjoy and work with are informed by their local environments and have names like hip-hop, dancehall, coupe decale, house, soca, and kuduro. They come out of specific regions, and their environments inform the music. A lot of the most popular rhythms are related to Africa and its diaspora, people who are generally scattered around the tropics. So that’s why people use tropical, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself or anyone else that way. It doesn’t really work anymore when you get [sounds like] Balani in Mali, or UK Funky, which are not tropical [in setting], but are still informed by the same aesthetics and production processes.

SFBG Do you try to digitize or transfer Afro-Latin/Caribbean folk sounds, genres, or ideas into electronic form?
CB Yes, but I don’t explicitly set that as a goal. I add in all my influences, which are informed by growing up in the Midwest and spending time on the West Coast as much as “folk” music. I was into hip-hop and electronic music growing up, and my older relatives would get down to music that was recorded by live instruments. I love those older tunes, they make me nostalgic, and make me feel connected to my culture, so I wanted to bring the feelings that I have when I hear them to a contemporary club space.

SFBG Our sense of place is now more amorphous than it was maybe thirty years ago. The Internet has in many ways uprooted us, and with regards to music, given us access to all sorts of folk genres, sonic forms of indigenous culture, traditional sounds and instruments, beforehand only accessible perhaps by being there or coming into contact with someone who was indeed there. To what extent do you think the open source availability of the Internet influences the way you channel folk forms of music and older sonic traditions in your production? In what way does place or region (whether the Bay, Cuba, NY, or online places, even the temperate range of tropical) inform your music?
CB I think the Internet has facilitated interactions and dialogue, but you can’t overlook things like increased immigration and traveling. A New York Times article recently said that New York is as diverse as it’s ever been. It claims that NY has more people born in other countries living there than ever before. The whole United States is changing. Europe is changing. The feedback loop to global centers of production in the “South” is super influential. International travel is becoming cheaper, so it’s easier to see the whole world. I think we’re going to reach an energy crisis in the near future where all that will be curbed a little, and the Internet will keep those interactions going, but we’re really living at the apex of an empire, just like the Romans, and the Ottomans, and the Greeks were super diverse civilizations informed by cultures from all over the world. So the Internet is just our current means of achieving those interactions. It takes the place of the role that sailors and desert caravans and conquerors had before. It’s just faster, and totalizing across the globe.
I travel a lot, and I have a diverse cultural background with multiple influences. That puts me in a certain position of influence because of my experience, but someone who has never traveled can have the same influences because I post about it on the Internet. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a new thing. Cotton and sugar comes from India. Potatoes come from Peru. Coffee comes from Ethiopia. These are things that are fundamental to our cultural identity today, but we don’t necessarily think about them as coming from other places. I feel like these things seep into everyday life, and they become a part of wherever they end up whether NY, London, Rio, Kampala, etc. But when they get to those places I think they change. In other words, environment’s influence is fundamental and if you listen hard you can tell the difference.

Don’t nobody give a damn: day 3

Mary Magee
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Unemployed construction workers protested outside UC Mission Bay’s Hospital building for the third day straight—but by early afternoon seemed to have got some clarification from UC officials over upcoming job opportunties at the site.


At issue is the tension between UCSF’s stated desire to be a good neighbor and put local residents to work, and the reality that while unemployment remains high throughout the construction industry, the communities immediately neighboring UC’s Mission Bay campus have been hard hit.


.“I want them to set up a system where we have a referral mechanism that includes CityBuild, and for UC to discontinue using DPR’s subcontractor Cambridge and other consultants,” James Richards, President of Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU), said shortly before he met with UC officials. “Because if you don’t have a community-based organization helping UC make good on its commitment to be a good neighbor, then you are going to see stuff like UC’s voluntary local hire system. The idea that you can have a voluntary system without someone like ABU, which organizes folks from the community, is why this system is going to fail. And it’s why we only see token folks on the site. Because if you don’t work with the community, you won’t get the community to work. Really it’s an easy proposition: you have unemployed union workers at the gate. So put them to work.”

Just then Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office when Gavin Newsom occupied Room 200, stopped by to chat with Richards and the ABU crew. 
Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors, told the Guardian that he works as consultant for DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at Mission Bay. Fortune recently ranked DPR number 22 in its list of Top 100 companies to work for in the U. S.


Jones noted that his work with DPR had nothing to do with ABU’s local hire protest. “I’m only involved because I have worked with all these folks in the past and know all the players,” Jones said. “So, I’m helping these folks. At the end of the day, DPR’s concerns and mine are the same: I want to facilitate a process that maximizes opportunities for local folks.”

“These are all great people,” Jones continued. “I’ve worked for them for 15 years.”

Asked what the city can do to get the state-owned UC to hire more folks from economically disadvantaged communities on a project that isn’t financed by city funds, Jones said, “I agree that there is little leverage that the city has, given the constraints of the contract, so people need to be creative.”

Jones said he was not aware that Dr.Arelious Walker and the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative has issued a flier stating that they were gathering lists of names to be submitted to UC for jobs, amove that angered ABU members since they have been protesting for jobs at the site for over a year


“I was not aware of this group but there are a multitude of organizations trying to do good work,” Jones said. “And frankly this [multitude] was one of the things that led to the end of the lead agency methodology, because it caused so much division in the community. I hope we build a really strong coalition in the community that leverages its strengths.”

Jones gave UCSF credit for trying to move the local hire process forward
“I’m glad that they accepted the initial recommendation to do whatever they can to mirror the city’s local hire legislation,” he said. “Because although it’s voluntary, if it’s part of your culture and you embrace it, it’ll get done. And these are the people who have been out here for a year.”

Last December, the Board approved local hire legislation for city-funded projects. Mayor Gavin Newsom did not sign the legislation, which met stiff opposition from the building trades, and it’s fallen to Mayor Ed Lee to mplement this new law, which does not apply to state agencies,but had led to a parallel dialogue with UC.


“Much like any policy, implementation is the biggest challenge,” Jones observed. And until we do some inventory of which organizations, contractors, individuals and groups can do each piece of the work, it’s going to be a struggle. What I’m praying for is that local hire legislation allows us to get a bigger table. What I’m interested in doing is creating a pipeline of qualified workers, so that whenever something like this happens, I don’t have to hear the excuse that folks aren’t ready to work.”

Then Richards took off for a meeting with UC Vice Chancellor Barbara French that lasted two hours during which time rumors started circulated that Mayor Ed Lee had called French to try and help move the conversation along, as ABU members continued their protest and shared stories with reporters of how they came to be standing on a picket line in Mission Bay.

One worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he was frustrated by UCSF’s plea for workers to remain patient because jobs are coming soon. “We’ve been out here for one and a half years, so since before they did their demolition, and they have been playing games with us,” he said. “ Folks with ABU were promised jobs. But then they didn’t get anything. That’s what UC does. They try to pacify you and tell you stories, then the money gets taken out of the community, and another year goes by. So, if anybody says, why aren’t you more patient, the answer is that the whole area has been built with only a handful of people from our community. Especially now, when no one has jobs, and everybody wants to work here. We are not going into other communities and trying to steal their jobs. We just want to work here. But we could be protesting every day, until this whole stuff has been built. It’s a city within a city. Just look around you. We was patient. And all this stuff has been built and we got no jobs.”

Michelle Carrington, 58, a flagger and an operating engineer from the Bayview, said Dwayne Jones helped her graduate from Young Community Developers. “He got me in tears, he dropped me in the mud at 5 in the morning and made me do push ups, but I fought and kept on and graduated at the top of my class out of three women and 15 men,” she said. “But now we got people going behind the gate, folks who used to work for Dwayne Jones, like Dr. Arelious Walker, who are trying to say that they are the ones who have got the sign-up list for jobs here. But you ain’t been here marching, or down at City Hall fighting for local hire. And I saw Rodney Hampton Jr. on the number 54 bus, and I let him have it. I said, what’s this I heard about you and Walker? And he said he went to UCSF and tried to get a bid but was told ABU had it. So the only way to get in was for him and Marcellus Prentice to go to God’s house.  But Walker’s not out here. Meanwhile, we see folks coming from Hayward, Sacramento and Vallejo and working on this yard. Why is it such a hard decision to try and put us to work? It’s easy. Just take 5 or 10 of us, put us to work, and we will go away. Work smarter, not harder.

Laborer Sharon Brewer, who was born and raised in the Bayview and has been out of work for two years. She helped her granddaughter, Akira Armstrong, hold a protest sign and talked about losing her apartment because she lost her job.
“I had to move back in with my daughter because nobody lets you live for free,” she said. “I used to work for UCSF as a patient coordinator for physical therapy but I got laid off. Now I have to dummy down my resume to try and get a job making $8 an hour selling coffee and donuts .”

Jesse Holford said he had reached the fourth level of his apprenticeship as a Carpenter.
‘There are eight levels between an apprentice and a journeyman,” he said.

Jason Young and Alonzo McClanahan said they were unemployed laborers from  Bayview Hunters Point resident. Robert English, a carpenter journeyman from the Bayview, had been out of work 6 months. Tina Howards, a carpenter’s apprentice from the Bayview with four kids,  had been out of work for a year. And Keith Williams, a carpenter from the Bayview, had been out of work for nine months.


Fred Green, who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five kids, said protesters were trying to remain as peaceful as possible.


“But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths. I got five kids and they all go hungry.”

Bayview resident Carlos Rodriguez has three kids and has been out of work for two years.
“They called me to work before Christmas but never hired me, “ he said.


Bayview resident Truenetta Webb has two kids and has been out of work for four months.
‘Some guys called me and took my information, but there’s been no work,” she said.

Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, worked in January on Lennar’s shipyard development for 17 days.


“Two weeks ago, UC said they were going to hire four folks on ABU’s list, but they didn’t,” he said. “We don’t want it to get ugly out here. All we want to do is feed our families.”

Moor said he believes Mayor Ed Lee will ensure local hire is implemented on city-funded projects. “Ed don’t want no problem, we know him personally, we used to work for him when he was at DPW (the city’s Department of Public Works),” he said. “He’s a decent guy, as long as you keep the pressure on him.”

Moor speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the UC Mission Bay hospital project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars.“Here at the front gates, we are visible, but we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.

Ed Albert, a retired painter and a Bayview resident for 57 years, said he was protesting for folks in his community.
“I grew up in the Bayview, I’m a servant of the Bayview,” he said. “I went from paperboy to contractor. I was a painter for Redevelopment and the San Francisco Housing Authority. But I don’t want a job. Who’d hire a 67-year-old guy with one eye? But I want to see my people get a job.”

James Amerson, a laborer with Local 261, said he worked on the Transbay Terminal in July, then got transferred to Pier 17.
“But when that was over, they didn’t bring me back to the Transbay, so I’ve been out of work since the end of December,” Amerson said. “They sent me to the Transbay as a flagger, and I rode by the other day, and saw they had an apprentice operator doing flagging.”


“When we are not working, we always come back to James [Richards]’s church at Double Rock,” he continued. “We meet at 9 a.m., Monday through Thursday. James is sick with diabetes. But he ain’t asking for anything. He’s here for the people, coming out here, buying food every day. We feed everybody. Yesterday he was feeding the police officers.”

Finally, Richards emerged from his meeting with UC officials. After he crossed 16th Street slowly, Richards was encouraged take a swig of orange juice from the back of ABU’s flatbed truck before giving folks an update.


“When DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know,” Richards finally said. “There’s enough work for everybody. There’s hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that ten carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that, right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it. Laborers, there are going to be no others going first. You guys are going first. So, I suppose next week, more laborers should be going, then more carpenters.”

Asked if ABU was going to continue its protest, Richards ‘said he thought folks needed to regroup.


“I think we got enough to not have to come out here tomorrow again. So, we’ll come back to church on Monday and let everyone know what happened. Then we’ll make a decision about what we are going to do. If the majority says, fuck this man, make ‘em hire 10 or 20 more folks, then that’s what we’ll do. But for now, we gotta regroup.”

Reached by phone, as ABU members prepared to pack up for the day, Cindy Lima, executive director of UC Mission Bay Hospitals Project, said she felt UC’s meeting with Richards was positive


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. So, we are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process. So, maybe we need to have more dialogue about when jobs will become available. And we have made a commitment to talk more.”










Derailment

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Derailment

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS The last thing I did before I left San Francisco, I promised Earl Butter that this time I would not kiss any gangsters on the train. I didn’t say anything about self-proclaimed hillbillies who burp a lot and don’t have front teeth — or luggage — so you wonder if they just escaped from prison or are only on parole.

This one, he flirted with me all the way from Emeryville to Chicago. That’s a long way to not kiss someone!

He was going on to Detroit and had less of a layover than me, but helped nevertheless with my luggage, which was considerable. He wanted to help more, but when he went outside to smoke, I stuffed my stuff in a locker, stepped out into the Windy City, and promptly got my nails done. Which was one of the best decisions I ever made.

One of the worst was early next morning when I stepped off the train into a frozen shit town not unlike, or far from, the frozen shit town where I was born. Did you hear me scream? Henceforth, when East Coast people in California say that they miss the seasons, I will put lettuce in their ears and flick them on the forehead.

Probably, to the residents of Erie, Penn., this snow was a non-event. But to an overtired, underdressed California girl without boots, it was the Big One, blizzardwise. To his credit, the snot-nosed station master did ask, before locking me out of the station, if I needed a ride.

“My friend is coming,” I said.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” he said. “Where are you going?”

“New York.”

He laughed at my apparent joke, pointed to where the Post Office was, in case I needed it, and left. In retrospect, I would have licked that booger off his upper lip for a ride to New York. Instead, I stood in the blowing snow and freezing cold, stomping my feet and, yeah, screaming, until the Post Office opened. Then I stood in there.

Probably I should have stayed on the train. I could have stayed on the train. It was going very close to where I wanted to get, but I’d thought I would keep my old ex-bandmate and good friend Rube Roy company on his way there and eat in diners for a day, instead of dining cars.

Rube Roy was two hours late and partially blind in one eye, but did buy me breakfast. On our way out of town we found a diner called Somebody’s “Dinor,” where, over eggs and potatoes and sausage and coffee and such, we talked about the old times, and the new times, and even some of the upcoming times.

There is so much time. So much time to think, in a car spinning around and around on a snowy interstate highway in Pennsylvania, bouncing between guardrails like a complicated bank shot off the cue of someone named Chuck or Lefty.

One of the things I thought about, boom, spin, was how I didn’t think I was going to die, but you never know, bang, spin. I never did like merry-go-rounds, or whirligigs, but the bumper cars I guess were all right. Now, I get motion sickness facing backward on BART. I didn’t think we were going to die, but when our car came to rest finally, facing traffic in the passing lane, I don’t know. I wondered.

Before I go, I would like to spell Papi’s name right, at least once, in the paper. They didn’t exact any promises from me, but Papi, Papa, and Coach did want one last dinner together before I left. So I said, “Brothers! Korean barbecue!”

And, like magic, that was where we went. For meat and meat for me and Papa, and some other kinds of things for the vegetarians. Ah, you know, it was all pretty good and everything, but not as probably good as the last time I went. Does it matter?

Not here.

“Rube Roy?” I said, as a semitruck whizzed by in the right lane. “Can I drive now?”

He flashed his headlights at the next one and said, “No.”

I write to you from New York City. Hi. Next time, I promise you, dear reader, dear gangsters, dear hillbilly, I will stay on the train. 

BROTHERS RESTAURANT

Daily 11 a.m.–midnight

4128 Geary, SF

(415) 387-7991

AE/D/MC/V

Beer and wine

Huge demand as Burning Man tickets go on sale

Sasha Cuttler
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Huge demand as Burning Man tickets go on sale

Burning Man 2011 got off to a big start yesterday as tickets went on sale, demonstrating that the 25-year-old event is more popular than ever. The demand for tickets at 10 a.m. was so strong that it crashed the servers for almost two hours, overcoming efforts to beef up a ticketing system that has functioned pretty well the last two years after being a frustrating hassle in previous years.

“People were happy with [the event] last year or they wouldn’t have pounded the servers trying to get a ticket,” Marian Goodell, the event’s communications director, told us. “The ticketing system had been tested pretty extensively, but the sudden demand for service was high that the ticket vendor had ever heard of before.”

More than 20,000 people snapped up tickets in the first 24 hours, outpacing last year and selling out the 9,000 tickets each at the first two tiers of $210 and $240. Goodell said that as many as 40,000 users appeared to be trying to log on yesterday, with many apparently not willing to endure a wait time of about six hours in some cases. Once the current tier of $280 tickets is gone, the price will be $320 until the event.

Last year, the population of Black Rock City – the temporary city that Burning Man attendees build in rural Nevada every August – peaked at more than 51,000 people on Friday night. Goodell wouldn’t make a prediction about this year’s population, noting that spring ticket sales are hard to predict, but she noted that many of the event’s marquee artists, such as Peter Hudson and Sean Orlando, are planning ambitious projects for this year that are already generating excitement.

“We’re very excited about this year,” she said.

For more on Burning Man and its myriad subcultures, you can find my past Guardian articles on the culture here or look for my upcoming book, The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture, being released next month by CCC Publishing.

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