Visual Arts

Rambling man

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Rambling man

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Terrence Malick has had an extraordinary career for a Hollywood hermit making art-house films in an industry that finds him commercially irrelevant and artistically erratic at best. Even his consensus-agreed best movies are the kind that alienate many potential Oscar voters — too abstract, too ambiguous, too poetical, too “European” — so the potential prestige involved is of a marginal critical- and cineaste-appealing stripe no sane US producer would hitch his or her wagon to at this point. Yet Malick’s movies cost money — a lot of money — and it doesn’t all come from international companies willing to take a loss if they can take home some modest returns and major cred toward their next artistic investments.

In a way, it should be a source of joy that Malick keeps getting to make large, personal, indulgent, un-commercial movies when almost no one else does. Other mainstream US filmmakers have had their intellectually or artistically ambitious follies (see: 2006’s Southland Tales and The Fountain, or 1980’s Heaven’s Gate), but they’re generally allowed just one. No one else has had the long ride Malick has. He is indeed a poet, a visionary — but has he ever had more than passages of brilliance? Are the actors and producers who treat him with awe as some exotic shaman actually enabling art, or mostly high-flown pretensions toward the same?

To the Wonder does provide some answers to those thorny questions. But they’re not the answers you’ll probably want to hear if you thought 2011’s The Tree of Life was a masterpiece. If, on the other hand, you found it a largely exasperating movie with great sequences, you may be happy to be warned that Wonder is an entirely excruciating movie with pretty photography. For all but the diehards, it could be a deal-breaker — the experience that makes you think you might very possibly never want to see another by this filmmaker again.

The one movie in which Malick’s variably over-the-top compassion, philosophy, idolatry of nature, and generally spellbound-by-beauty instincts were best supported was 1998’s The Thin Red Line, an abrupt return to activity after two decades’ complete absence. No matter that the reeling narrative bore limited resemblance to James Jones’ novel, or that Adrien Brody’s leading role got almost entirely cut out — he wouldn’t be first or last to cry foul at a Malick edit drastically altered from the original screenplay. To the Wonder apparently employed the talents of Jessica Chastain, Michael Sheen, and Rachel Weisz — all of whom ended up on the cutting room floor. To make room for … what? A movie that could have been wholly shot by the second unit, for all its interest in actual character, narrative, insight, and acting.

Instead, we get handsome shots of Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko (or sometimes Affleck and Rachel McAdams) wandering around picturesque settings either beaming beatifically at each other or looking “troubled” because “something is missing,” as one character puts it in a rare moment of actual dialogue. (Generally we get the usual Malick wall-to-wall whispered voiceover musings like “What is this love that loves us?” delivered by all lead actors in different languages for maximum annoyance.)

Just what is missing? Who the hell knows. Apparently it is too vulgar to spell out or even hint at what’s actually going on in these figures’ heads, not when you can instead show them endlessly mooning about as the camera follows them in a lyrical daze. The “plot” goes like this: Neil (Affleck) meets Parisienne Marina (Kurylenko) and her 10-year-old daughter from a failed marriage. They swan about Europe making goo-goo eyes at each other, then mother and child accompany him back to Oklahoma, but it doesn’t work out. Which allows him an interlude to get involved with old flame Jane (McAdams), but that doesn’t work out. Then Olga returns and … just guess. Meanwhile, Javier Bardem turns up as a Catholic priest, playing the Sean Penn Tree of Life role of a peripheral figure that does absolutely nothing but walk around looking bummed.

These people aren’t enigmas, they’re just blanks the actors can’t fill in because the writer-director won’t let them. He wants to express pure emotion, but emotions have contexts, too, much as Malick might like to think that women are all organic instinct. When Sissy Spacek spoke vacant “poetry” and ignored her (murderous) man Martin Sheen’s faults in 1973’s Badlands, it seemed her youthful inexperience was meant to be humorous. But since his career restarted, Malick has suggested dumb ‘n’ ethereal is his feminine ideal. Kurylenko is the apotheosis of that image: she’s part naked sex puppet; part indulged toddler who knows the adults think everything she does is adorable; part twirly-dancing girl at a Dead show; part family dog that only wants to be loved and played with.

Apparently, Malick thinks he’s celebrating femininity, but his appreciation omits the possibility of intelligence. He thinks women are marvelous, instinctual animals, while men bear the burden of emotional and intellectual complexity, even if they can’t articulate it. Could anything be more condescending? (To the Wonder was autobiographically inspired by his own failed marriage to a Frenchwoman; I’d rather see the movie she’d have made about it.)

No doubt some will find all this profound, because they’re primed to and the film certainly acts as though it is. But at some point you have to ask: if the artist can’t express his deep thoughts, just indicate that he’s having them, how do we know he’s a deep thinker at all? 

 

TO THE WONDER opens Fri/12 in Bay Area theaters.

Kink.com beloved in Pope land! Local porn site among top downloaded in Vatican City [UPDATED]

Andrew Lam
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Kink.com beloved in Pope land! Local porn site among top downloaded in Vatican City [UPDATED]

A local anti-BDSM porn activist emailed me tidings of Flash magazine’s Guatanamo-themed Coachella party this morning as proof that “Kink.com’ s influence is spreading, albeit interrupted by the sex-negative Philistines of Coachella.” Leaving aside the well-worth-it debate over the role art and nightlife have in political parody and the fact that torture in fact, existed well before Kink founder Peter Acworth (it wasn’t called the “Kinkquisition,” darling), I would say this is about 8,000 times more convincing proof that Kink.com is winning hearts and minds, should you need proof of such a thing.

According to Torrentfreak (and helpfully elaborated on by Fleshbot) the local BDSM site is responsible for two of the 13 most-pirated downloads in Vatican City. No, not top porn downloads, the most-pirated files, period.

Yes, for while Love Actually came in at #6, a scene featuring Lea Lexis and Krissy Lynn on “lezdom bondage” Kink site Whipped Ass followed close behind at #8, and #13 was occupied by Tiffany Starr and Sheena Shaw on the TS Pussyhunters site. 

We’re putting out the feelers to Kink to see how news of their influence in — and being robbed of revenue by — the world’s most flamboyantly attired country is being recieved by the company, stand by for post updates. 

UPDATE: Acworth has released a statement that implies the Vatican will espace legal action from the website:

While we don’t support theft of content, in this case we’re happy whoever he (or she) is is enjoying our movies. Our mission is to demystify BDSM and celebrate alternate sexuality. This is different from the Catholic Church’s mission which has (traditionally) been to shame anyone who deviates from a sexuality that isn’t procreative. We figure whoever is downloading these movies is feeling a fare amount of shame as it is, so we’ll let this one slide.

Read Acworth’s full statement here, featuring more Kink-Church comparisons like, “what is subspace if not a way to exorcise demons?” 


Promo: Craft Warriors at the Asian Art Museum

Maria Poblet
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Promo: Craft Warriors at the Asian Art Museum

Are you down with DIY? Craft virtuosos will be present to help transform the Asian Art Museum into a workshop for one night. Emiko Oye, Ealish Wilson, Kathryn Kenworth, and Megumi Inoyue all dominate their respective areas (jewelry, sculptural textiles, discarded materials use, and gift wrapping). Choose your team (are you a “textures” person or a “colors” person?) and construct fashionable armor and accessories inspired by the iconic terracotta warriors. Model your handmade haute couture in the photo booth. Don’t want to get your hands dirty? Observe from the sidelines and cheer on your favorite team. Learn the skinny on the Bay Area craft scene with Handful of Salt, Workshop Residence, The Crucible, and SCRAP among others. Music will be spun by Velvet Einstein, the galleries will be open, and so will the bars. May the best crafter win. Find more info here.

Thursday, April 18 from 5-9 pm @ Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF | Just $10

Oakland’s first outdoor sculpture park opens tonight!

Sue Vaughan
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Oakland’s first outdoor sculpture park opens tonight!

Last Tuesday, in the parcel of land off of Telegraph Avenue between 19th and 20th Streets in Oakland, Randy Colosky discussed the orientation of his wooden sculpture, The Pressure to Hold Together That Which Held Things Back Part 2. Three assistants and two arts commissioners weighed in. The word of the hour, it seemed, was “dialogue.” 

“It’s about starting a dialogue,” Steven Huss, the city’s Cultural Arts Manager, said on the phone earlier that day. He reiterated the same on site as he moved a portable chain-link fence aside to enter the Uptown ArtPark, a large-scale temporary sculpture garden that will open to the public tonight during Art Murmur. His favorite part of the park’s construction, he told me, was talking to people who stopped to ask questions.

Huss is experienced in the art of dialogue. Over the past three years, he has witnessed and participated in the many that have transpired between the community, the city, and developers during the planning of the space’s use.

As a part of a redevelopment effort to enliven Oakland’s uptown area, the city bought the parcel in 2005 and began to lay out plans for an apartment complex and Henry J. Kaiser Memorial Park, which now hosts the monument, Remember Them: Champions for Humanity, which honors a wide array of humanitarians such as Frederick Douglass, Elie Wiesel, and Harvey Milk. The piece of land adjacent to Telegraph, known as Parcel 4, was slated to become a parking lot, but members of the community objected.

After an blogging effort, an exhaustive campaign at city council, and a plan that aligned with an initiative to promote public art in Oakland, a proposal began to crystallize in the summer of 2009. In October 2010, after searching for funding, Huss earned a Creative Placemaking grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which the city agreed to match. Other sponsors stepped in, including Burning Man offshoot Black Rock Arts Foundation, which was eager to exhibit work in an urban setting.

On the phone and in the park, though, Huss’s tone flattened as he discussed the years of bureaucratic coordination and lightened as he talked about the art and the space that had almost reached completion. For the time-being, the logistics had been settled and he was relieved and excited that he could look forward to filling the space. In the empty back-alley of the three-sided lot perimeter that comprises the ArtPark, Huss enthusiastically described the potential dance and theater events that could enliven the space. In what he called “immersive theater,” the audience would participate in the production.

Programming will focus on “dialogue, not didacticism,” added Kristen Zaremba, Senior Public Art Manager for Oakland, as Huss went to talk through the fence to a passerby who had shouted a question about how long the project had been underway.

As they talked, Zaremba spoke to a woman who was drilling into the concrete pad at the base of Karen Cusolito’s Dandelion, then pointed out the steel wool tufts that the artist recently added to compose the anther of the giant flower.

The 20-foot tall sculpture, the final in the row along 19th Street, complements the other nine works in the park in the play between the organic and the industrial that adheres to the exhibition’s theme, “repurposed.” In ascending height order from Telegraph back along 19th, the pieces form an oversized garden of welded steel, recycled bicycle parts, and in the case of Colosky’s second piece, Barbican, engineered ceramic honeycomb, a material found in the catalytic combustor of a car. The effect is both whimsical and striking.

When we returned to the plot along Telegraph, Colosky’s piece had assumed its arch-like form that he envisioned. Though a completed version of Pressure had already been exhibited before it came to the Art Park (all except one by Eric Powell were finished work), the artist enjoyed the process of revising the reclaimed redwood retaining wall pieces to fit the circular base. “In remaking things, you get to explore all the possibilities,” he said. He and his assistants agreed that the new configuration worked well, and they bolted it down then cheered. “That ain’t going nowhere,” Colosky proclaimed with a grin.

As the group sat down to lunch, a man on the sidewalk shouted, “Making our city look good! Welcome.”

On Friday, the chain-link fence will depart and the Uptown ArtPark will receive its official welcome in a ceremony that will include speeches by Mayor Jean Quan and city council members, an organized bike ride, and because above all, Huss wants to celebrate the artists of Oakland and the vibrant scene they have created, it will also include conversations with the artists, most of whom will be on site.

At a certain point, though, serious dialogue will end. “Friday will be fun,” Huss said. After years of planning, Parcel 4 will open as a community gathering place. “It’s a party.”

Fri/5, 6:30-8:30pm, free
Telegraph and 19th St., Oakl.
www2.oaklandnet.com

Mayor Lee’s trip to China raises questions of ethics and influence

Sasha Cuttler
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Mayor Lee’s trip to China raises questions of ethics and influence

[UPDATED(x3)] Mayor Ed Lee barely had time to unpack from his recent political junket to Paris before he was off on his current trip to China – both of which were paid for and accompanied by some of his top political supporters and among the city’s most influential power brokers. No wonder Lee doesn’t have time to weigh in on Airbnb’s tax dodge, the condo conversion stalemate, or other important city issues.

Local good government advocate Charles Marsteller learned of the current China trip from Willie Brown’s column in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, whose editors (including Editor Ward Bushee, who we’re still waiting to hear back from about this trip) consider it a “man about town” column immune from conflict-of-interest policies that normally require journalists to disclose who is paying them on the side.

“I’m here with Mayor Ed Lee for my seventh official visit,” Brown cheerfully wrote, although readers were left to wonder just what official business Brown might be conducting with our mayor and his entourage. So, being an expert on political disclosure laws, Marsteller went down to the Ethics Commission to pull the Form SFEC-3.216(d) that state law requires elected officials to file before leaving on trips paid for by outside interests.

But it wasn’t there, so Marsteller filed an official complaint with the commission, telling us, “I did so to impress upon our Elected and other City Officials the need to properly report gifts in a timely way and in the manner as called for by State law and on the forms provided by the SF Ethics Commission.” 

When we contacted mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey, she forwarded us a copy of the form that should have been filed before the trip and told us, “I’m not going to answer the question about why we failed to file the appropriate forms with the Ethics Commission, as we worked closely with the City Attorney’s office to exceed reporting requirements by all appropriate deadlines.” [UPDATE: The time stamp on the form indicated it was filed on May 25, before the trip, even though it wasn’t publicly available at the Ethics Commission office when Marsteller went down to look for it].

The form indicates that Lee’s portion of the trip was paid for by the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, whose influential leader Rose Pak conspired with Brown to get Lee appointed mayor more than two years ago. This is also the same Rose Pak who was admonished by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission for illegally funding another political junket to China in 2009 with Sups. David Chiu and Eric Mar and then-Sup. Carmen Chu, who Lee appointed as Assessor earlier this year.

Those officials were forced to repay the expenses after the FPPC found that Pak, that time acting under the auspices of the Chinese New Year Festival Committee, was not allowed to make gifts exceeding $420 per official that year. “Please be advised that since the Chinese New Year Festival Committee is not an organization that falls under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, no public official may accept gifts of any type from this organization valued in excess of the applicable limit,” FPPC counsel Zachary Norton wrote in an Aug. 22, 2011 enforcement letter to Pak.

In other words, because this committee and “other 501(c)(6) chamber of commerce organization[s]” are in the business of actively lobbying top elected officials for favorable policies, rulings, and projects, they are barred by ethics law from giving them the gifts of big overseas political junkets. As Marsteller noted in his complaint letter, violations are punishable by fines of $5,000 per violation, or if they are “willful violations of the law” – which doing the same thing you were sanctioned for just two years ago certainly might be considered – the criminal penalties are $10,000 per violation or up to a year in jail.

Mayor Lee’s portion of the trip cost the Chamber $11,970, according to the form. But this time, to get around the FPPC restrictions, Pak seems to have passed the hat among various business elites to fund the trip. The mayor’s form shows that 41 people paid up to the current gift limit of $440 “to defray the cost of the mayor’s trip.”

They include Pak, Brown, four people from Kwan Wo Construction, three from American Pacific International Capital, two each from Boyett Construction, Young Electric, and Bel Builders, Harbor View Holdings Director Gorretti Lo Lui, and SF Immigration Rights Commissioner Sonya Molodetskaya – most of whom were also part of the trip’s 43-member delegation.

Among others who tagged along for the trip are Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru (who has a history of political corruption under Mayors Brown and Newsom and no clear business being on a Chinese trade delegation, but who doesn’t love a free trip?!), Kofi Bonner from Lennar Home Builders, Harlan Kelly with the SFPUC, Jay Xu with the Asian Art Museum, the wives of Lee and Bonner, Kandace Bender with San Francisco International Airport, and Mark Chandler with the Mayor’s Office of International Trade and Commerce.

It’s not clear who paid for those other public officials or even what they were doing there. [UPDATE: Department of Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon told us that Nuru paid for the trip himself, but that he’ll be studying China’s instrastructure, from its separated bikesways to greening of public rights-of-way, as well as meeting with Chinese businesses involved in the redevelopment of Hunter’s Point. “He’s been looking at a lot of the infrastructure in China,” Gordon said. “I expect a dozen if not more ideas when he returns.”] Then again, it also wasn’t clear why venture capitalist Ron Conway – Lee’s top campaign fundraiser and possible reason for publicly subsidizing big tech companies, including many that Conway funds – joined and helped sponsor Lee’s recent trip to Paris. This is just how business gets done in San Francisco.

“Willie Brown is the former Mayor of San Francisco,” Falvey told us when we asked why Brown was on the trip and what its purpose was. “The purpose of the trip is to promote San Francisco, its local manufacturing, cultural exchanges, he is signing an MOU and meeting with high level, new Chinese government officials.”

[UPDATE 4/5: Marsteller has withdrawn his complaint from the Ethics Commission alleging the mayor’s form wasn’t filed on time, but he and another citizen have filed separate complaints with the FPPC alleging the trip and its funding mechanism may violate the agency’s 2011 ruling against Pak.]

The hawk and the rat: Hugh Leeman’s artistic ‘social experiments’

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The artist talks about his upcoming exhibit, depictions of the homeless, and art-related capitalism
 
If you’ve walked through the Tenderloin, along Market Street, or around SoMa, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Hugh Leeman’s art. (He’ll be showing new work Thu/4 at SOMArts Gallery as part of the “Dial Collect” show.) Leeman is best known for his drawings of the distinct and arresting faces of Sixth and Market’s homeless, which he used to wheatpaste onto billboards and buildings. His iconic work has been characterized as “street art,” but Leeman views his homeless art project through a more enterprising lens.

The power latent in billboards and marketing campaigns – both to make a statement and to expose vulnerabilities held by the viewer – inspired Leeman to plaster his friends’ faces around town. (Leeman met most of the homeless men he’s depicted by engaging in street-side conversation, usually with the help of a trusty pack of Camel cigarettes.) He aimed to get as many eyes on his work as possible by giving away free posters of his drawings and by allowing people to download posters off his website for free. He also screen printed his drawings onto t-shirts and gave them away to men and women on the street to sell for a 100% profit.


“All along, my thought was, ‘I’m not making street art – I’m making advertisements,'” Leeman says. “It was a social experiment into whether we could use the idea behind selling a product, but do it for the betterment of society as opposed to just for the betterment of a corporation. The high aspiration was that you could connect disparate demographics this way.”

Leeman will be exhibiting a piece as part of Dial Collect – a group show comprised of large-scale interactive installations – at SOMArts Thursday, April 4 through Friday, April 26. Leeman’s exhibit will explore disparate demographics – a concept he has explored during his wheatpasting past – social vulnerability, paranoia, and relationships. Leeman’s best friend Blue, who plays harmonica on the street for cash and lives in an alley near Sixth and Mission, and Leeman’s father, an attorney, will be participating in the interactive exhibit.

Blue and his wife Sam inspired Leeman’s mural concept, which will function as the backdrop of his piece. “Over the past several years, Blue’s been telling me stories about this hawk who lives in the alley,” Leeman says. “The hawk’s been swooping down and eating rats and pigeons out of the alley, and the way Blue always tells the story is like: ‘You know, man, I was just fixing my gear shift then BOOM – the fucking hawk ate a goddamn rat!’”

Leeman’s mural depicts a stern hawk with outstretched talons reaching out to snatch up an anxiety-ridden rat to prey upon. He used white paint to depict the hawk and the rat and painted them against a black background. The hawk represents formality and our society’s flawed concept of strength, whereas the rat represents those who “just put their sail up and go wherever the wind takes them.” Leeman sees himself as both the hawk and the rat at times and considers his father and Blue – two men with whom he has an extremely special yet complex relationship – to represent aspects of the hawk and the rat respectively.

“My father has a more structured, formal process within his being than I have ever had or been capable of. And I think the opposite of him is someone like Blue, who has always ran with the wind. I find myself somewhere in between,” Leeman says.

Leeman’s reflection on his existence as an artist in a capitalistic economy – something he’s been thinking about a lot recently – also ties in with his exhibit. The hawk in him wants to market himself, maintain a style, and gain notoriety, wealth, and fame through his work. As an artist, developing a style – and exposing it, often relentlessly – can be key to success, and Leeman says he’s felt pressure to conform. But his more rat-like sensibilities tell him to be free-spirited in his process; to make whatever he feels like making whenever he feels like making it, regardless of what other people want or expect.

“It all started to become more sport for me than art,” he explains, with regard to becoming established in his homeless, philanthropic art realm. “And the sport was all speaking in quantifiers: ‘what gallery do you show at? Who do you show with? How often are you showing? How much do your pieces sell for?’ But this has nothing to do with the beauty of taking off your fucking clothes and dancing” – one of Leeman’s many metaphors for art and the creative process.

Recently, Leeman has been creating free-form paintings of sea life and skulls and depictions of angelic women via blowtorch and cement. When asked what he’ll do next and where his art is going, Leeman shrugs. “I’m just going to do whatever I feel. I can’t really say what I’ll do in the future. If there is one certainty, it’s that there is no destination. Life is just a constant transition and journey through the gray.”

“Dial Collect“
Opening reception Thurs/4, 6pm, free
Show runs through April 26
SOMArts
934 Brannan, SF
(415) 863-1414
www.somarts.org

Stage listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

The Bereaved Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Previews Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm. Opens Mon/8, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through April 27. Crowded Fire Theater launches its Mainstage season with Thomas Bradshaw’s wicked comedy about “sex, drugs, and the American dream.”

Carnival! Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Previews Wed/3, 7pm; Thu/4-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm (also April 13, 1pm); Sun, 3pm. Through April 21. 42nd Street Moon performs the Tony Award-winning musical.

Show Me Yours: Songs of Innocence and Experience Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $27. Opens Thu/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 27. New Musical Theater of San Francisco performs a new musical revue written by Pen and Piano, the company’s resident group of writers and composers.

BAY AREA

The Arsonists Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $35-60. Previews Fri/5-Sat/6 and April 10, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm; Tue/9, 7pm. Opens April 11, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. Aurora Theatre Company performs Max Frisch’s classic comic parable, translated by Alistair Beaton.

Being Earnest Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Previews Wed/3-Fri/5, 8pm. Opens Sat/6. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 28. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Paul Gordon’s musical take on Oscar Wilde’s comedy.

Love Letters Various Marin County venues; www.porchlight.net. $15-30. April 5-28. Porch Light Theater performs A.R. Gurney’s romantic play at four different Marin venues; check website for addresses and showtimes.

“Pear Slices” Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Previews Thu/4, 8pm. Opens Fri/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. Nine original short plays by members of the Pear Playwrights Guild.

ONGOING

The Bus New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $32-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 28. NCTC performs James Lantz’s tale of two young men whose meeting place for their secret relationship is a church bus.

The Chairs Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $20-45. Thu/4, 7:30pm; Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm (also Sat/6, 2pm); Sun/7, 5pm. In Rob Melrose’s new translation of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs, an elderly couple sit in the austere parlor of their lonely lighthouse, chortling over a spate of private wordplay and reminiscing of sprightlier times, until their initially frantic and disjointed dialogue settles into a smooth flow, well-polished by decades of endearments and gentle bickering. Possibly the last two survivors of a not entirely explained apocalypse, the isolated nonagenarians (magnificently played by David Sinaiko and Tamar Cohn) nevertheless make it known that important guests are expected to arrive at any moment in order to hear a hired orator (Derek Fischer) deliver the Old Man’s “message,” which he has spent a lifetime honing. As the doorbell begins to ring, a jarring squall, and invisible guests and dozens of mismatched chairs begin to crowd their peaceable empire in claustrophobia-inducing numbers, their companionable seclusion is shattered for good. Director Annie Elias manages to coax both gravitas and decorum out of this little-produced, yet influential absurdist relic, imbuing her protagonists with a depth of character that belies their farcical circumstances, while Theodore J.H. Hulsker’s murmuring sound design of crashing waves, angry winds, and the strident doorbell could almost be another character in the play, so thoroughly does it set the tone in ways that Ionesco might not have approved of, but is all the better for. (Gluckstern)

The Couch Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.3girlstheatre.org. $30. Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm. As the centerpiece of its second annual festival of plays in honor of Women’s History Month, 3Girls Theatre, devoted to Bay Area women playwrights, revives Lynne Kaufman’s fitful but enjoyable 1985 dramatic comedy about the inception of the famous sexual and psychiatric triangle between Carl Jung (Peter Ruocco), wife Emma Jung (Courtney Walsh), and his mistress and analysand Toni Wolff (Maggie Mason). In this, her first play, Kaufman (whose most recent play, Acid Test, explores the life of Ram Dass) folds in Carl’s critical 1912 break with mentor Sigmund Freud (Louis Parnell) for an action-packed day Chez Jung. (Also on the scene is the Jung’s precocious daughter Katherine, played by a sure and animated Hattie Rose Allen Bellino). Amy Glazer directs a solid cast who convincingly blends the farcical aspects of the dialogue with its meatier and more dramatic ones, as new ties and power dynamics are sometimes roughly, other times genteelly negotiated. The former is usually the stuff of high comedy, as when Freud goes apoplectic upon learning Jung is not necessarily the disciple and “son” he had thought him to be. And Jung’s (proto-) New Agey leanings only add fuel to the fire: When Carl turns to the I Ching to decide on the best course of action for his career going forward, Freud erupts, “You idiot! You’re playing tiddlywinks with the human race!” But it is ultimately the politics of love and the household that take center stage, with Walsh’s vulnerable yet ever dignified Emma emerging as, if not the greatest psychiatrist, perhaps the greatest strategist of them all. (Avila)

Eurydice Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 14. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Sarah Ruhl’s inventive take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, exploring the story through the heroine’s eyes.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Happy Ones Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $22-62. Opens Wed/3, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2:30pm; no matinee April 20); Sun, 2:30pm; Tue, 7pm. Through April 21. An Orange County appliance store owner finds his life turned upside down in Julie Marie Myatt’s drama at Magic Theatre.

reasons to be pretty San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through May 11. San Francisco Playhouse’s tenth season continues with Neil LaBute’s romantic drama.

The Resurrection of SHE Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $20-30. Thu/4-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 3pm. San Francisco’s inimitable Rhodessa Jones is the beguiling heart of this musically transcendent and visually evocative performance-memoir, co-produced by Brava Theater and Cultural Odyssey. It’s a surefooted meander through a great swath of personal and historical experience led by an African American woman whose decades-long theater career has been the expression and instigation of many female “resurrections.” Backed by a multimedia collage designed by Stephanie Johnson and Pam Peniston, and accompanied onstage by excellent multi-instrumentalists and composers Idris Ackamoor (who also directed the show) and David Molina, Jones begins with a fraught poetical invocation of an African girl child roaming free on the deck of a slave ship. From there she delves into a by turns humorous, harrowing, and inspiring narrative rooted in her own Southern family history and the origins of what she calls her life-saving encounter with theater — one manifestation of which has been her powerful work with incarcerated women in the Medea Project. A recent iteration of the Project, in South Africa’s Naturena prison, forms the narrative anchor of the second act. A formidable performer and expert storyteller, Jones commands attention whether channeling specific characters, speaking impromptu to her audience, or erupting into song (in one a several canny musical numbers). In the process, she makes trivial the show’s few hiccups or loose ends with a sense of communion as impressive as her remarkable life. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through May 18. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Opens Thu/4, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 1. Thrillpeddlers’ sixth annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival presents a restored version of the Cockettes’ 1971 Art Deco-inspired musical extravaganza.

The Voice: One Man’s Journey Into Sex Addition and Recovery Stage Werx Theater, 446 Valencia, SF; thevoice.brownpapertickets.com. $10-18. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. Ticket sales for David Kleinberg’s autobiographical solo show benefit 12-step sex addiction recovery programs and other non-profits.

BAY AREA

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage & Shipwreck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Shipwreck runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 5. Voyage opens Wed/3, 3pm. Runs April 13, 20, 27, and May 4, 3pm. Last year in the Shotgun Players’ production of Voyage, the first part of Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy (also playing in repertory through May 4), we were introduced to a tight circle of Russian thinkers and dreamers, chafing against the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. In the second part, Shipwrecked, we find them older, perhaps wiser, struggling to keep their revolutionary ideals alive while also juggling familial concerns and personal passions. Focused mainly on Alexander Herzen (Patrick Kelley Jones) and family, Shipwrecked travels from Russia to Germany, France, Italy, and the English Channel, buffeted from all directions by the forces of the uprisings and burgeoning political consciousness of the European proletariat. It’s an unwieldy, sprawling world that Stoppard, and history, have built (made somewhat more so by the Shotgun production’s strangely languid pace during even the most dramatic sequences) but it’s worth making the effort to spend time absorbing the singular world views of Russian émigré Herzen, his impulsively passionate wife Natalie (Caitlyn Louchard), the cantankerous, influential critic Vissarion Belinsky (Nick Medina), professional rabble-rouser Michael Bakunin (Joseph Salazar) and up-and-coming writer Ivan Turgenev (Richard Reinholdt) as they desperately seek to carve out both their personal identities and a greater, cohesive Russian one from the imperfect turmoil of Western philosophy. (Gluckstern)

Fallaci Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through April 21. Berkeley Rep performs Pulitzer-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s new play about Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.

The Mountaintop Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $23-75. Wed/3-Thu/4, 11am (also Thu/4, 8pm); Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm. TheatreWorks performs Katori Hall’s play that re-imagines the events on the night before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

The Real Americans Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri/5, 8pm; Sat/6, 5pm. Dan Hoyle shifts his popular show about small-town America to the Marsh’s Berkeley outpost.

The Whipping Man Marin Theatre Center, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also April 20, 2pm; April 11, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through April 21. Marin Theatre Company performs the Bay Area premiere of Matthew Lopez’s Civil War drama.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” Randall Museum, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/7, 11am. $8. The Bubble Lady performs.

“Cabaret Showcase Showdown: Best Pop Cabaret Singer” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; (415) 241-0205. Sun/7, 7pm. $7. With guest judge Dylan Germick and musical arranger Lynden Bair.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sun/7 and April 13, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Fifth Annual Flow Show/San Francisco” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.com. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 7pm. $20 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Contemporary dance and flow arts showcase, incorporating props like hoops and yo-yos.

“A Kind of Sad Love Song” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3:30pm); Sun/7, 3:30pm. Through April 14. $10-20. Bindlestiff Studio presents the world premiere of Jeffrey Lo’s relationship drama, performed in repertory by two separate casts of Pilipino American actors.

“The Madness of the Elephant” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org/arts. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. $15-30. West African dance, music, and theater group Duniya Dance and Drum Company perform an exploration of the reign of Guinea’s first president, Sekou Touré.

“Miss Coco Peru: She’s Got Balls!” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; www.ticketfly.com. Sat/6, 8pm. $28-45. Miss Coco Peru (a.k.a. Clinton Leupp) reminisces about her life in this solo musical comedy.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“The Moth StorySLAM” Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF; www.rickshawstop.com. Mon/8, 7pm. $8-16. Open mic storytelling competition affiliated with KQED’s “The Moth Radio Hour.”

“OCB: Obsessive Compulsive Broadway” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/3, 7pm. $7. Steven Slatten performs a comedy about the highs and lows of working on Broadway, with songs from Rent, Hair, and other shows.

Ophelia Fort Mason Center (starting at the Firehouse), Marina at Laguna, SF; www.carteblanche-sf.com. Thu and Sat-Sun, 8:30pm. Through April 14. $22. Carte Blanche performs a walk-through performance featuring dance, theater, and interactive video.

“Pamtastic’s Comedy Clubhouse Presents: The Mutiny Radio Comedy Showcase” Mutiny Radio, 2781 21st St, SF; www.mutinyradio.org. Fri/5, 8:30pm. $5-20. With Jamie Bell, Vince Mancini, Dustin Hempstead, and more.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“Rotunda Dance Series: San Francisco Ballet School Trainee Program” San Francisco City Hall, Van Ness and Grove, SF; www.dancersgroup.org. Fri/5, noon. Free. The most advanced students at SF Ballet’s school present a free, public performance under City Hall’s rotunda.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“Up in the Air” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.milissapayne.com. Wed/3-Thu/4, 8pm. New dance work inspired by hot air ballooning by the Milissa Payne Project.

BAY AREA

“The Divine Game” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. April 15 and 29, 8pm. $20. First Person Singular and Shotgun Cabaret present this dramatic re-enactment of Nabokov teaching at Cornell in the 1950s.

“I Look Like An Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. Mon/8-Tue/9, 8pm. $20. Heather Gold brings her hit solo comedy (with cookies!) to the East Bay.

Music listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Blue Bear School of Music Band Showcases" Cafe Du Nord. 7:30pm, $12-$20.

Creepers, Meat Market, DJs Primo, Popgang, Tenderlions Elbo Room. 9pm, free.

Fu Manchu, Bloodnstuff, Floating Goat, DJ Rob Metal Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Kopecky Family Band, Eastern Sea, Evan P. Donohue Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $7-$10.

Lectric Was House, Halcyonaire, Duckyousucker Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

"Paganfest" DNA Lounge. 6pm, $30. With Ensiferum, Tyr, Heidevolk, Trollfest, Helsott.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Lindsey Stirling, Vibrant Sound Warfield. 8pm, $27.

Nathan Temby vs JC Rockit Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

Freddie Hughes Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Portland Cello Project Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $25.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Cafe Divine, 1600 Stockton, SF; www.cafedivinesf.com.7-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Country Jam Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Cash IV Gold Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free. With Vinyl Ambassador, DJ Silverback, DJs Green B and Daneekah.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

Martini Lounge John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 7pm. With DJ Mark Divita.

THURSDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blue Soul Revue Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Esben and the Witch, Heliotropes Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10-$13.

Dirtyphonics, Liquid Stranger, Nerd Rage Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Ghostface Killah, Adrian Younge’s Venice Dawn 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 10pm, $20.

Guido vs Nathan Temby Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Dave Moreno and Friends Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

San Cisco, Chaos Chaos, popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $12-$14.

Station and the Monster Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

Swingrowers, Delachaux and the Klown, JsinJ Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Weeks, Human Condition Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Hiromi: The Trio Project SFJazz, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $20-$40.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Pharoah Sanders Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $25; 10pm, $21.

Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Shannon Ceili Band Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Craig Ventresco Cafe Divine, 1600 Stockton, SF; www.cafedivinesf.com. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8. Pleasuremaker spins Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

Ritual Temple. 10pm-3am, $5. Two rooms of dubstep, glitch, and trap music.

Supersonic Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Global beats paired with food from around the world by Tasty. Resident DJs Jaybee, B-Haul, amd Diagnosis.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto, Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bayonics, My Peoples, Sean Tabor, Shawn Megofna or TSMB Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $15.

Billy Cramer and Share the Land, Boars, TV Mike and the Scarecrows Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Double Duchess, Micahtron, Hussyclub Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8.

Ian Franklin and Infinite Frequency Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; www.simplepleasurescoffe.com. 7:30pm, free.

Let’s Spend the Night Together! First Church of the Sacred Silversexual, Hubba Hubba Revue Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13.

Mustache Harbor, Radar Love Bimbo’s. 9pm, $22.

Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk Independent. 9pm, $25.

Papa Grows Funk, Dredgetown, Fillmore Wax Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$25.

Parlotones, Dinner and a Suit, Dangermaker Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $12-$14.

Rue 66, Satin Chaps, Paradise Neck of the Woods, 401 Clement, SF; www.neckofthewoodssf.com. 8pm, $10.

Skin Divers Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Soilwork, Jeff Loomis, Blackguard, Hatchet Slim’s. 8pm, $21-$24.

Nathan Temby, Jason Marion, Chris A. Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

Tontons, Cash for Gold, Bell Tower Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Whiskerman, Decker, Kelly McFarling Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

George Washington High School Choir GWHS Auditorium, 30th Ave. and Anza, SF; gofundme.com/1su7dk. 7pm, $20. Benefit concert for Washington DC performance trip.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz, Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Hiromi: The Trio Project SFJazz, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-$55.

Moonshine Cabaret Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15-$18.

Pharoah Sanders Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $32; 10pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Outbound Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Chucho Valdes and Eddy Navia’s Pena Pachamama Band Pena Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.pachamamacenter.org. 7 and 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Haceteria Slate Bar, 2925 16 St., SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, $5. With Kit Clayton and Earthman.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

Mochipet Inner Mission, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.mochipet.com. 8pm, $15.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Shlohmo 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 10pm, $17.

Strangelove Cat Club. 9:30pm, $3-$7.

Twitch: Nightmare Fortress DNA Lounge. 10pm, $8-$9. With Nightmare Fortress, Pressures, DJs Justin, Omar, and Rachel Aiello.

SATURDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cum Stain, Pile, Fat History Month, Michael Beach Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Cut Loose Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

"Farewell Transmission: A Tribute to the Songs of Jason Molina" Amnesia. 8pm, $12-$25. With Tyson Vogel, Joanna Lioce, Alex Robins, and more.

Grayceon, Owl, Winter Teeth Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Idiot, Blank Spots, Hewhocannotbenamed El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Netsky, Amtrac Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $35.

Angel Olsen, Villages, Kacey Johansing Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

Papa Grows Funk, JeConte Band Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $18-$25.

Petty Theft, Pretending Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Phosphorescent Independent. 9pm, $15.

Polkacide, Fuxedos, Borts Minorts Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

Yes-Go’s, Connies Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Greg Zema, Jason Marion, Nathan Temby Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

Hiromi: The Trio Project SFJazz, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-$65.

Pharoah Sanders Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $32; 10pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Chucho Valdes and Eddy Navia’s Pena Pachamama Band Pena Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.pachamamacenter.org. 7 and 9pm.

Whiskey and Women Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: DJ Tripp’s Birthday Bootie DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$15. With DJ Tripp, David X, and Airsun.

Cockfight Underground SF, 424 Haight, SF; (415) 864-7386. 9pm, $7. Rowdy dance night for gay boys.

DJ Audio1 Public Works. 1am, $20.

Foundation Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, $5-$10. DJs Shortkut, Apollo, Mr. E, Fran Boogie spin Hip-Hop, Dancehall, Funk, Salsa.

Paris to Dakar Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10. With DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald.

SUNDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

William Beckett, Jillette Johnson, Brandon Zahursky Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Jonny Craig, Kurt Travis, Hail the Sun, Seeking Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

Hurry Up Shotgun, Bismarck Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

Necrosin, Infex, Iron Assault, Reckless Flesh, Dizastor, Frailed Sanity DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $7.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Sunbeam Rd., Matthew and the Arrogant Sea, Halsted Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $9.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Hiromi: The Trio Project SFJazz, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $25-$55.

Noertker’s Moxie/Holly Martins Musicians’ Union Hall, 116 Ninth St., SF; www.noertker.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Kally Price Old Blues and Jazz Band Amnesia. 8-11pm, $5.

Reza Rohani and Sara Naini Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $35-$65.

Lavay Smith Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Carolina Lugo and Carole Acuna Pena Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.pachamamacenter.org. 6:15pm.

Cieran Marsden and Friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Rich Mcculley, Golddiggers Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. With DJ Sep, Ludichris, and DJ Tomas.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

E and M, Julia Weldon, Kitten Grenade Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Taddy Porter, Virgin Marys DNA Lounge. 8pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano, Renegade String Band Amnesia. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-$5. With Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Sharon Van Etten Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.apeconcerts.com. 8pm, $59.50.

Cock ESP, Thee Bringdownzz, Rubber O Cement, KROB Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Trevor Garrod, Lech Wierzynski, Jillian Secor, Kiyosha Foster Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, free.

James McCartney (Band), Alyssa Graham Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Sparks Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $35-$40.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Titan Ups Amnesia. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bombshell Betty and Her Burlesqueteers Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Terry Disley’s Mini-Experience Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barry O’Connell Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Stylus John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane.

Takin’ Back Tuesdays Double Dutch, 3192 16th St,SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 10pm. Hip-hop from the 1990s.

On the Cheap listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 3

The Great Debate: Should marijuana be legalized? Commonwealth Club, 595 Market, second floor, SF. www.commonwealthclub.org. 11:30am-1pm, $20. Tonight Kevin Sabet, a drug researcher who has served on the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations, will debate Clint Werner, author of Marijuana Gateway to Health. The two will discuss the potential impact of marijuana on youth, driving laws, mental health, and medical industry.

THURSDAY 4

“The Art of Baseball” George Krevsky Gallery, 77 Geary No. 205, SF. www.georgekrevskygallery.com. Through May 25. Opening reception: 5:30-7:30pm. See America’s favorite pastime depicted by more than 40 artists from across the country in this exhibit at the George Krevsky Gallery’s 16th annual “Art of Baseball” exhibition. Head over tonight for the opening reception and come back May 2 for a night of poetry, literature, music, and short films inspired by the game.

Free rock wall climbing class Lombardi Sports, 1600 Jackson, SF. www.outdooradventureclub.com. 6-7:45pm, free. RSVP required. Take a break from your usual gym routine and give the 25-foot climbing wall at Lombardi Sports a go. The free class is put on by the Outdoor Adventure Club, which provides expert instruction and gear to new and seasoned climbers.

FRIDAY 5

“Hand to Mouth Comedy” The Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF. 10pm, $5–$8. A unique comedy show that asks comedians to write and perform all new material on a specific social, cultural, or political issue. This month’s topic: crime. Local comedians Bucky Sinister, Kevin Munroe, Clare O’Kane, and more will add a humorous spin to a felonious topic. The evening will also include a performance by bluegrass band The Creak and a burlesque routine by Rosey Booticelli.

SF Ballet School Rotunda Dance Series SF City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett, SF. Noon, free. Take a lunch break and peek into City Hall for a free lunchtime performance presented by the San Francisco Ballet trainee program. The event is part of the Rotunda Dance series, put on by the Dancers’ Group, an organization dedicated to helping artists produce work, build audiences, and connect with the community. World Arts West, which has supported and presented world dance artists throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades, also had a hand in the afternoon’s creation.

Guardian Presents: Another World deYoung Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, SF. www.famsf.org. 5-9pm, free. Check out our ode to the peacemaking power of drag, in homage to the “Eye Level in Iraq” photography exhibit on display at the deYoung. Radical queens Lil’ Miss Hot Mess, Phatima and the League of Burnt Children, Miss Rahni, Rheal Tea, Mother Chucka, and more bring their fabulous freaky view of social change to the stage. Plus, a craft table and a panel discussion by the photogs whose work is on display in the museum.

SATURDAY 6

Yellowbike Project’s Upcycle Ball SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. www.sfyellowbike.org. 6pm-midnight, $10 door, presale available online. The second annual Upcycle Ball will rally cyclists from across the Bay Area to support local bicycle culture and nonprofit organizations. The evening will begin with a silent auction and workshops and finish out with a dance social with DJ Jays One.

Eileen Fisher Fashion Tips Macy’s, 170 O’Farrell, SF. www.macys.com/flowershow. As part of Macy’s annual flower show, fashion designer Eileen Fisher will be hosting a fashion show and behind-the-scenes event. Sip on refreshments and enjoy some snacks while you check out what’s in store for fall style.

SUNDAY 7

Fierce Fat Girls book signing Curvy Girl Lingerie, 1535 Meridian, San Jose. www.curvygirlinc.com. 2-4pm, $15. RSVP required. Plus-size lingerie company Curvy Girl celebrates the grand opening of its Willow Glen location with author of Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, and Fashion Virgie Tovar. The author and sex educator will speak with guests while signing copies of her book.

Free hot dog day at Frankenart Mart Gallery Frankenart Mart Gallery, 515 Balboa, SF. www.frankenartmart.com. 1-6pm, free. Art and free food collide today as part of the quirky gallery’s monthly tradition. Check out some sweet interactive art projects currently on display at the 200 square foot gallery and chow down on either a beef or veggie dog.

MONDAY 8

The Shout: Life’s True Stories Grand Lake Coffee House, 440 Grand, Oakl. www.theshoutstorytelling.com. $5-20 donation accepted. The Shout is a monthly event where invited storytellers tell amazing but true 10-minute stories plucked from their daily lives. Audience members have the opportunity to put their name in a hat in hopes of being picked for a six-minute wild-card turn. Head over to the coffeehouse to hear stories about anything from a soft-core pore actress who stared in a sexy version of Don Quixote to a young man’s discovery that he was part of the witness protection program as a child.

TUESDAY 9

Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. When author Caroline Paul and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton lost their kitty Tibia they thought she was gone for good. Five weeks later she came home. The two became curious as to where their cat was spending her days so they turned to technology. Join Paul and MacNaughton as they share their brief stint in the pet detective business.

Film Trivia Pub Quiz The New Parkway, 474 24th St., Oakl. www.thenewparkway.com. 7-9pm, free. Head over to New Parkway for a pub quiz that’s not actually in a pub but a movie theater. Test your knowledge of movie history, famous characters, and classic film titles. Those with the highest cinema IQ will win prizes like free beer and movie passes.

 

CAREERS AND ED: She’s got it

Andrew Lam
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CAREERS AND ED: She’s got it

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN Anti-racist club kids, virulently feminist East Bay rap fans, those who dig spangled Iranian mini-dresses as much as striped referee shirts and A$AP Rocky-inspired sportswear looks, add Browntourage to your late night Tumblr hole.

The 20-something duo behind the site and virtual gallery Konversation, Hawa Arsala and Tonia Beglari, parse trends like pros.

In addition to, and in tandem with, their finger-on-the-pulse culture sites, the two represent up-and-coming Bay artists with PR services, Beglari’s website design skills, and Arsala’s penchant for innovative editorial shoots. Collaboration projects with the hot artists of color like Antwon and Chippy Nonstop? Check. Doodling dates with radical visiting artists, say Australia’s felt tip marker wonder Texta Queen? Check.

Alix Black, Nastia Voynavskya from Hi Fructose magazine, Annie Nguyen, and Pauline Poderoso: “they’re like, Oakland’s muses,” says Arsala

Jaqi Sparro, house, minimal, bass DJ and traditional Chinese medicine healer

“We realized we could use our skills to help the people we actually care about,” says the Afghani American Arsala (Beglari’s family is from Iran), who is holed up with me in a FiDi cubicle showing off the photos of fresh female Bay style icons that I asked her to compile before Women’s History Month fades too far from pop culture consciousness.

Thanks to their vision of a strong, diverse Bay Area art-music-nightlife family, Arsala and Beglari are getting props on feminist media sites. Their idea to spread love for queers, people of color, and other faces underrepresented in mainstream media is in itself is nothing new, but what is fresh is the duo’s media savvy – they’re ready to take their social views into brave new binary code that packages radical artists in a fresh, viral-ready format. They spit tech knowledge, and use the apps that other culture workers will take years to learn.

Heidi Petty, 12FPS creative agency producer, stop-motion filmmaker

 

Oakland rapper Chippy Nonstop

What sparked their fire? Hat tip to the duo’s built-in bullshit meter, very essential when dealing with milieus in which “groupie” is the only recognized role for gorgeous women their age.

“The name Browntourage started as a joke to combat a really oppressive situation,” says Arsala. “A guy asked us to be part of his harem.”

Gross. But Arsala and Beglari’s hardcore eye for trend-spotting and Internet Age professionalism packs more pounds any deadweight. Future, anyone?

Yetunde Olagbaju, avant-garde drag performer, model

CAREERS AND ED: 5 fun classes

Andrew Lam
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CAREERS AND ED: 5 fun classes

culture@sfbg.com

QUILTMAKING

Develop or improve your skills in sewing, patchwork, and quilting at this non-credit class at City College of San Francisco that students are welcome to join at any point in the semester, regardless of skill level. Beginning students will construct a sampler quilt, intermediate or advanced students will work on individually designed projects. Non-credit CCSF classes are tuition-free, but students are expected to bring the required materials, so email the instructor in advance to come prepared.

Saturdays, 9-11:50am, free. City College of San Francisco downtown campus, 88 Fourth St., SF. www.ccsf.edu

MEXICAN FOLK DANCE

Tradition is the name of the game at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art’s folkloric dance class taught by Zenon Barron, founder of Ballet Folklórico of San Francisco. Reflecting Hispanic customs, beliefs, and legends, Barron’s instruction serves up festive new moves with a historical twist.

Saturdays, 2-3:30pm, $10. 2868 Mission, Studio: E, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org

MOSAIC 101

Is there a surface in your house that needs … something, and your Bedazzler gun is triggering untoward 1980s flashbacks? Try a medium that is slightly less time-sensitive. Oakland’s Institute of Mosaic Art has a host of courses in the tiled arts, and this weekend’s primer course is begging to jumpstart your grout-and-ceramic phase. Instructors teach you where to find your supplies in the real world, the basic physical properties of materials involved, and will instruct you in making your very own creation to take home.

Sat/6, 10am-4pm; Sun/7 10am-1pm (three-day option: April 10, 10am-1pm), $165. Institute of Mosaic Art, 3001 Chapman, Oakl. www.instituteofmosaicart.com

HATHA YOGA AT THE ASIAN ART MUSEUM

Grab a mat and bring the whole family to the Asian Art Museum for a free Hatha yoga class. Local yogi, Lorna Reed, will lead today’s practice, which teaches basic poses focusing on balance, flexibility, and strength. Reed adds a special artsy element to today’s class by incorporating positions inspired by sculptures in the museum. Your momma always called you statuesque — prove her right by inhaling deeply in this unique yoga primer.

Sun/7, 2-3pm, free. 200 Larkin, Samsung Hall, SF. www.asianart.org

FRENCH CINEMA SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

What better way to get to know the language of love than with free wine, popcorn, and a film? Designed to help non-French speakers discover the country’s cinema, the Alliance Française of San Francisco offers a weekly film screening followed by discussion. The theme for April is “Women Behind the Lens,” and the April 23 film pick 17 Filles follows a group of 17 high school girls who, after one of their number is impregnated, make a pact to follow suit.

Every Tuesday, 6:45pm, $5. Alliance Française, 1345 Bush, SF. alliance-francaise-sf.weebly.com.

Sabor de Oaxaca

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Sabor de Oaxaca

marke@sfbg.com

WORLD EATS The first thing you probably need to know about the magical Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca is that sensory overload is always on the menu.

Ancient sci-fi Zapotecan ruins, Technicolor one-story colonial buildings, and an endless stream of live music, whirling dance, outspoken political protest, and eye-popping art justify the eponymous capital city’s reputation as one of the most vibrant crucibles of human culture on the planet. (Seriously, there is live music and dancing, from traditional to punk, outdoors in multiple venues until 3am most nights. San Francisco, where you at?)

The soaring mountains of the countryside host innumerable villages, each with their own dazzling take on local customs and artistic expression. The beaches, like renowned global hippie-nudist beauty Zipolite, expand expectations by drawing a saucy mix of laidback locals, hard-partying city folk, and misfit spiritual wanderers from around the world who greet the golden waves with fire-twirling at sunset and impossible-looking naked yoga at dawn. And for any travelers worried that this land of UNESCO World Heritage Sites has been completely sanitized for first-world tourists, there’s plenty of everyday chaotic Mexican street life and colorful off-the-map adventures in which to satisfactorily immerse oneself.

But all that’s not even talking about the food. Any foodie explorer worth her rock salt knows that Oaxaca is the “land of the seven moles” — rich, fragrant sauces, traditionally poured over roasted turkey, made from a range of pulverized ingredients including chili peppers, chocolate, nuts, cloves, dried fruit, and tomatillos. (A great SF introduction to mole can still sometimes be found at the Mission’s La Oaxaqueña, which has unfortunately been seesawing lately between being one of the city’s best restaurants and a bacon-wrapped hot dog stand on random nights.)

But in an area where dozens of indigenous languages are still spoken and villages are separated by vertiginous, day-long hikes through spruce cloud forests dripping with blooming epiphytes and eerie Spanish moss — by all means take a couple days out of your stay for a eco hike with Expediciones Sierra Norte to blow your nature-loving mind — innovation and improvisation is a way of life. Hunky Beau and I hopped down there for a far-too-affordable March getaway, and here’s what we dug our forks into.

 

ON THE STREETS

Mole gets all the press, but the backbone of Oaxacan street cuisine is the piping hot tlayuda, a very large grilled tortilla loaded with with bean sauce, guacamole, fresh and stringy Oaxacan cheese, and a hunk of grilled meat or scoop of zesty tinga de pollo stew that’s either served open-faced like a pizza or folded over like a crepe. The best ones we found in the city were at a pair of carts on Calle las Casas, conveniently located just down the street from the historic La Casa del Mezcal, opened in 1935. Ensconced in the Casa’s low light, you can slow-sip several kinds of maguey-derived liquor among baroquely carved wood fixtures, kitschy paintings of Zapotec warrior gods, and a motley assortment of fascinating locals. The mezcal flows until 3am, and the roughly $2.50 tlayudas even later, so you’re set for a good night out.

Oaxaca’s favorite fast food: the tlayuda. Photo by David Schnur

Or snatch a tlayuda for a perfect cheap dinner, paired with a steamy, meaty bowl of pozole from the carts down the block. (Fun fact: pozole is descended from the stew Zapotecs used to make of leftover human sacrifice parts. Now it’s mostly pork and corn.) Cheap breakfastwise, we were blown away by the scrumptious, hefty $2 morning chorizo- and omelet-filled tacquitos toasted on hot rocks by charming women on Calle García Vigil, near the Mercado 20 de Noviembre main market. Self-serve bakery Pan Bamby across from the huge, ever-bustling central zócalo serves a dizzying array of perfectly flaky empanadas for about 30 cents each, including several rare veggie options like creamed spinach and spiced vegetables. And, as always, the market is the best place to acquaint yourself cheaply with the local cuisine: witness the overflowing seafood cocktails at Mariscos Panchos and delectably overloaded roasted pork soft tacos, five for $3, at Carnitas Patlan.

Fascinating traditional drinks served at outdoor cart Nieves Cholito el Tule in the Plazuela de Carmen Alta include tejate (a crazy-sweet maize and cacao Zapotecan drink with a plasticky foam on top), chilacayote (made from a succulent squash with edible seeds as chewy treats), and syrupy tuna, a.k.a. cactus fruit.

And the mole? I want you to look up fabulously dramatic, yodeling folk singer Geo Meneses right now and imagine her backed by a full orchestra (six tubas!) in the open air of Oaxaca suburb Santa Cruz Xoxocotlan, which hosts enchanting, slightly witchy open-air Tuesday evening “Martes de Brujas” concerts, featuring an array of miracle street tamales from local venodors: chicken marinated in chocolaty mole negro, pork in tangy red mole coloradito or zippy mole verde, wrapped in eucalyptus-like yerba santa leaf. Kind of unbelievable.

 

IN THE SEATS

Mole, of course, also served as an entry into the more experimental cuisine of this tastebud paradise. When you can get a three-course meal for two with a bottle of surprisingly satisfying Mexican wine (Casa Madero of Parras de la Fuente is producing a quality chenin blanc, and Baja’s Cavas Valmar a perky grenache) for around $50, we went and splurged a little.

Intimate and colorful La Olla, near the imposing Santa Domingo church, is where you go for regional authenticity with flair. Wide, thin slices of beef tongue soaked in a mole verde of almonds, raisins, tomatillo, and cilantro; mole negro de fandango, a fantasy-fulfilling 25-ingredient mole negro over roasted chicken; and mole amarillo con pitiona, lively and yellow with corn masa, three kinds of peppers, and lemon verbena vanished from our table in a mad scramble of sauce-sopping tortillas.

La Biznaga is the hip joint, a “very slow regional food” operation named for a portly flowering cactus, its large courtyard decked out in vibrant Cuban hues, with towering chalkboards announcing the fascinating menu and a globe-hopping clientele lapping up pulque cocktails. (Mixing with milky, beer-like pulque, derived from the maguey plant, is super-trendy in Mexico right now, and should hit here any minute.) An appetizer of yerba santa-wrapped bricks of Oaxacan cheese drizzled with citrus liqueur-infused crema came off a lot lighter than it sounds. “El Necio,” a large hunk of flank steak stewed in a mole-like sauce of smoked chili, plums, and mezcal submerged us in flavor world several fathoms deep, while a mushroom and goat cheese-spiked coloradito lifted a fleshy fish fillet to the top of our list.

Jicama taquitos with grasshoppers, corn smut, and quesillo at Casa Oaxaca. Photo by David Schnur

If you’re looking for a true gourmet Oaxacan experience, though, the gorgeous Mission-style Casa Oaxaca, with its upstairs dining patio overlooking the kaleidoscopic downtown street hustle, is where you’ll find some of the most forward-thinking menu items that still pack an authentic local punch. Salsa is mixed and ground to tasted tableside in traditional molcajete mortar. Start with the exquisite, crunchy jicama taquitos filled with fried grasshoppers, cuitlacoche (corn smut), and quesillo cheese. Then, as the candlelight and atmosphere take hold, move on to absurdly tender venison bathed in ethereal mole amarillo and juicy slices of duck breast covered in nutty, deep orange mole almendrado.

Finally, for desert, slip back out into the captivating streets and share the refreshing carrot-apple-pecan ice cream flavor Beso Oaxaqueño, as the hypnotic local marimba music known as son istmeño drifts from the zócalo.

Two men, one spark

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Two men, one spark

emilysavage@sfbg.com

TOFU AND WHISKEY It’s the B-story scene that rules 1983’s Valley Girl. Popped collar-sporting Skip is nervously riding his bike to the suburban home of his preppy high school girlfriend, Suzi — but we the audience know he’s more interested in her young step-mom. (He met the feisty Valley mom when she served him sushi at a house party. Gross me out.) It’s a palpable moment of orgasmic anticipation — with a surprise twist — that bops along perfectly to the soundtrack: “Eaten By the Monster of Love,” by experimental pop duo, Sparks (www.allsparks.com).

“Well, it’s worse than war, it’s worse than death/There ain’t too many left who ain’t been/Eaten by the monster of love(Don’t let it get me),” Sparks vocalist Russell Mael opines with a wide-ranging, Broadway-ready bravado, as his brother Ron Mael tickles a bouncy new wave blast out of his keyboards and synthesizers.

This is just one iteration of Sparks — the flashy new wave version, proudly on display in ’82’s Angst in My Pants LP, two tracks of which were used in that early Nicolas Cage vehicle, Valley Girl. But that’s only a small snippet of the band’s robust timeline, which got a running start in ’71 at UCLA, and continues to this day, with 22 albums and counting.

Sparks has had countless rebirths since the first record was released in ’71, the band then known as Halfnelson. There have been landmark albums like ’74’s electric Kimono My House, with that iconic cover of two powdered and kimono-swathed ladies, along with ’83’s synth-heavy In Outer Space, ’02’s chamber pop Lil’ Beethoven, and most recently, ’09’s The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, a radio musical commissioned by Sveriges Radio Radioteatern, the radio drama department of Sweden’s national radio broadcaster. (More on that later.)

“It seems like the people that stick with Sparks appreciate that the band doesn’t rest on its laurels,” says Russell, a lifelong Angeleno, speaking to me from his home “in the hills above Beverly Hills.”

“I think that’s why we’re really proud of what we’re doing now; it doesn’t sound like a band that’s necessary had 22 albums,” he says. “Someone can come in fresh — a person that’s maybe never heard of Sparks — and if they hear the latest thing, we would be just as happy as we would be for them to have heard the first album.”

Sparks will perform much of its extensive back catalog during its Two Hands, One Mouth (the hands on the keyboard, mouth at the mic) tour’s rare stop in San Francisco next week, April 9 and 10 at the Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF. www.thechapelsf.com. As of press time, only April 10 is sold out.

The brothers Mael have recorded with dozens of other musicians over the decades, and nearly always toured with a live backing band, so the Two Hands, One Mouth trip has been a unique challenge. “It’s kind of the ultimate expression of self-containment for the band,” Russell says. “We just thought that at this point, it might be an interesting challenge to see what would happen if we just played as the two of us, and without computers or backing tracks.”

He adds, as if reading my mind, “It sounds simple, but we also didn’t want it to read as oh, singer-songwriter, that kind of thing where it lulls you to sleep with an acoustic guitar. We wanted it to keep the power that Sparks has had with the recordings and live band.”

The process has been about choosing the appropriate songs from the duo’s rich recording history, and distilling it with just one keyboard, and vocals. So far, the tour’s been well-received in Europe and Japan, with fans commenting on how this format has brought the strong vocals and songwriting to the forefront.

And the Maels work hard to layer those lyrics with humor, depth, and a drop of speculation. “It’s important to us to have something that’s provocative, but in ways that maybe aren’t like, being a punk band with a stance that you know what it is in five minutes. The Sparks stance is a little bit hard to articulate and place. We kind of like that too, that there is an ambiguity to what we’re doing.”

Their most recent project is that The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman piece. The plot of the radio drama is a farcical situation imagining that Ingmar Bergman had been lured to Hollywood and got trapped in the LA film industry in his worst nightmare — a big-budget action film he can’t figure out how to escape. The Swedish radio spot went so well that Sparks was asked to perform it live at the LA Film Festival last year, where they did so with a cast of 14.

The brothers are currently working on turning it into an ongoing theatrical performance — and also a motion picture. They have the Canadian director Guy Madden on board to direct, but still need the financial backing, so they’ll be flying out to the Cannes Film Festival in May to look for funders.

But before Cannes, Sparks will first play the massive sweaty shitshow that is Coachella for the first time. And yes, they will do it as a stripped-down duo — still just Two Hands, One Mouth.

“We know the show works in our own context, so we thought we should be faithful to ourselves and do it there as well, even if it seems incongruous with what you might expect at a big festival,” Russell says. Do I detect a tiny smirk through the phone? Perhaps wishful thinking on my end.

“It’ll be received however it will be received — [but] it will be different from other things there,” he says. “You tend to get blinded by an assault of 160 indie bands doing their indie thing. We’ll be doing whatever we do, whatever you want to call it.”

 

ESBEN AND THE WITCH

With swelling crescendos, emotional lyrics, gothy undertones, and shimmering vocals in tow, UK post-rock trio Esben and the Witch comes across the pond for the first time in two years, on tour with newest record, Wash The Sins Not Only The Face (Matador). Should be a witchy one. With Heliotropes.

Thu/4, 9pm, $13. Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF. www.brickandmortarmusic.com.

 

GLAM.I.ROCK

Lyrically gifted young Oakland rapper Glam.I.Rock — the first half an acronym for “Good Lyrics And Music” — will perform a free in-store during Art Murmur this Friday. If you want to be in on an artist at the tipping point, this would be your chance. The MC has that classic ’90s female-empowerment hip-hop vibe but with some different interests (check the “Who is Glam.I.Rock?” video of her tapping out the Rugrats theme), and a more modern style.

Though like her predecessors, she still very much reps her home-base, performing “Inspire Oakland” at Oakland Digital’s Inspiration Awards last December. Makes sense, she’s the daughter of Nic Nac — the only female member of the Mobb crew — and Dangerous Dame, a member of Too $hort’s Dangerous Crew. Glam.I.Rock’s debut EP, The Feel, recently dropped on Savvie1ent/The Olive Street Agency.

Fri/5, 8pm, free. Oaklandish, 1444 Broadway, Oakl. www.oaklandish.com.

 

Precious Metal

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Precious Metal

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC A lot of elements needed to come together to inspire Metal Mother’s new record, Ionika. You can almost picture the woman behind the sobriquet, crouching in some foggy wooded wonderland, scooping up soil and critters, ancient buried treasures of forgotten societies and precious metals. Before we get into specifics, let’s slip off the mask. Metal Mother is really, mostly, the glossy coating of one delicate Oakland musician: Taara Tati.

In between the release and subsequent tour after her first album, 2011’s Bonfire Diaries, and the making of Ionika, which comes out in a week on April 16, Tati collected experiences that affected her future output. She picked wisdom up from extensive travels, Pagan and Celtic traditions, tales of ancient warrior women, and Sufjan Steven’s ’10 album The Age of Adz (which she listened to while exploring Europe for a month). Add to that Game of Thrones, the city of Oakland, the music of Son Lux, and all of Kate Bush. But the clearest running thread throughout Ionika is fascination with Druids.

“Getting into the whole ancient Celtic cultures thing, it was very matriarchal and tribal,” she says, sitting in her “incredibly cheap” Victorian in downtown Oakland. “It was a really profound lifestyle. The more I discover about that, the more I want to learn about it, to be able to see that history and sort of represent that in a way, or glean some power from that.”

She references the culture’s interest in psychoactive medicines, and Queen Boudica, a Joan of Arc-like figure of a British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the Roman Empire.

“I really came into a full-on obsession last year when I was traveling in Europe. I went on this full journey to all these different ancient sites and sacred sites, and it was empowering for me to be there, and to feel the history of that land, and… my ancestors.”

Her lifelong inspirations, however, seem to have sprung from competing worlds; darkness and light, the electronic and the natural, woman and machine. And all those influences, all those cosmic connections are poured chaotically into Ionika, a densely layered, moody, and deeply spiritual release of 11 solid tracks.

The key track is first single “Prism,” a stunning Grimes-ish (if Grimes were a bit more wild) song with Tati’s many vocal tracks delicately laced throughout twitchy beats and drums. Equally breathy is “Prism”‘s sonic twin “Tactillium.” Some tracks waver questionably — “Windexx’d” kicks off with a harrowing grind and ghostly howl — while others sound as if they were ripped directly from her innards. The epic “Little Ghost” (clocking in at 7 minutes and 29 seconds) begins lightly with Tati’s crisp, otherworldly soprano vocals and a few click-click-clicks of the machines, then builds into an Enya-esque soundscape, with gently pulsating electronic drum hits.

Much of Ionika’s form and sensibility came from David Earl, an Oakland producer and sound engineer whom Tati met through friends. A multi-instrumentalist, Tati would write the songs’ skeletons alone in her Victorian — along with the vocals, and most of the melodies — then bring them to Earl and the two of them would pile on those folded ribbons of sound, with Earl adding crucial rhythms with beats and additional backing tracks.

“It was kind of insane, we had so many crazy, creative whims we went with. We didn’t really delete as much as I thought we were going to delete in the end, you know? We just went for it.”

“He took everything and put it on digital steroids, basically,” she says.

 

MOTHER RISING

Tati was raised “literally in the woods in Northern California,” in tiny Occidental, Calif. (population: 1,115) in Sonoma County, just west of Santa Rosa.

“I was left to entertain myself with the birds and insects and the critters out there. I have a huge love for the elemental part of the world, and also tribal rhythms and acoustic music and basic sounds forms in that way.”

These influences are clear in the earthly, rich melodies and rhythms of Metal Mother. The other half to her whole came when she began exploring rave culture in the ’90s. This is where she discovered electronic music.

It took both of these elements — the lush forest hangouts and the eye-opening rave nights to create the Metal Mother sound and aesthetic.

“It’s not super planned out, but those are just my preferences,” Tati says.

And yet, from the beginning, Tati has been almost entirely in control of her sound and career. While she’s picked up local musicians along the way, in particular to play as her backing band at live shows, and of course, Earl was a huge part of Ionika, she’s been the only constant of Metal Mother.

“I made every creative choice around the album,” she says. “I’m trying to really preserve my own sense of spirituality within putting out an image of myself around my music, to the world, outside of my own personal circle. That’s a huge part of who I am on a daily basis. I love herbs, rituals, and everything witchy, and I don’t want to have to tone that side down.” She laughs, a warm, frequent, occasionally nervous-sounding giggle.

After spending her early 20s in the street performance and renegade guerrilla performance art scene — mostly as part of the North Bay Art and Revolution, and a renegade little troupe called Action Creature Theatre — Tati unexpectedly shifted focus to music. She’d always dabbled in keyboards, but had never taken playing too seriously. And she’d all along been crafting poems and songs of her own. (Her mother was a theater director, which might explain the affinity for all things artistic expression.)

After friends discovered her “funny, quirky little keyboard songs,” they convinced her to play live, which she did and then quickly found her calling. “I’ve just been following all the open doors, that’s kind of how I operate my life. It’s just like, [going] where the doors are opening. And the doors started opening with music, rapidly, so I just went that direction.”

She named her new project Metal Mother, after the elemental fierceness of a mother and also a planet.

“I was just kind of wanting it to be like, maternal and loving and nurturing obviously, because I like to make pretty music and feel euphoric, but also that kind of fierceness because yeah, the world is a crazy place,” she says. “You’ve got to have that strength to endure some of the crude realities we’re faced with.” Those realities seem clearer when she describes looking out her bedroom window, to the poverty she’s faced with daily outside her doorstep, the homeless people huddled across the street, the loud chaos of the city whizzing by.

The name “Metal Mother” itself came from Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, in which he talks of an ancient Chinese myth about the marriage of the Metal Mother and the Wood Prince — and that’s what brought lightness and darkness together, creating the human race.

It took most critics a minute to figure out that Metal Mother was not, in fact, a metal act.

After first album Bonfire Diaries came out in ’11, with its exhilarating single, “Shake,” Metal Mother was hailed as “ambient, sexy,” “beautiful, eerie, unfamiliar.” One review described the album as “tight, ethereal art pop filled with Bjork avant ambiance, Kate Bush drama, and tense Celtic underpinnings.”

Tati was on the cover of Performer Magazine, and featured in the Guardian’s first “On the Rise” batch of up-and-coming musicians last year, in which I wrote she was “some sort of neon, acid-drenched wood nymph.” (It works especially in the context of the video for “Shake,” viewing of which is highly suggested.)

 

THRUSTING FORWARD

Now, with the hardest part of Ionika over, Tati is free to pursue her next big project — Post Primal, a kind of loosely defined record label and collective she’s working to put together. Ionika is the label’s first release, and the only other band so far officially involved is Mortar and Pestle. But Tati has big plans for the near-future, boosted by others acts approaching her to express interest in Post Primal. Though, she admits, they’re still in the process of defining just what it will be.

“The whole goal is really to have a platform for more context for all of us to associate ourselves with. It’s also more of a collective, because I don’t really have a ton of money or anything to put out anybody else’s record, it’s just basically like we’re sharing resources, we’re sharing contacts and exposure.”

She also is hoping to find a warehouse space in Oakland to put on interactive collective showcases, and create a hub, a new music community in the heart of the adopted city she’s clearly still enamored of, more than six years after moving here. “I love Oakland so much. I’ve gone to a lot of other cities and checked out a lot of other scenes, but I always come home like, this is where I need to be, and this is where I want to grow.”

Metal Mother’s record release party takes place next month, May 2 at Public Works (www.publicsf.com) with all female-front acts: Tearist, Uncanny Valley, and Some Ember.

 

Three for the road

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Three for the road

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART Traveling juggernaut Christian Marclay: The Clock touches down at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this week for the latest stop along its endless summer tour of major world museums.

Marclay’s sprawling, oh-shit-inducing video work collages 24 hours worth of clips taken from both obscure and popular films, during each minute of which the correct time is shown on screen. Nominally, the artwork is about the representation of time in film, but it also manages to address some pretty heady concerns, including both the legacy of sweeping Victorian Age attempts to organize every last thing, and also the postmodern, now-seamless interchangeability of simulacrum with reality, making The Clock possibly the perfectly appropriate artwork for the era of Big Data. For the art wonk set, it caps conceptual investigations about indexes and taxonomies that stretch back at least as far as the 1970s, serving as the new-media, zero-degree equivalent of Ad Reinhardt’s all-black paintings. But more than that, it’s something unnervingly similar to Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional map of the world that is the same size as the world, an eerie herald of the age of Orwellian mindfuck as art.

You’re going to see it. Of course you are; it’s the most talked-about work of art since Damien Hirst dropped a preserved shark into a vitrine. But that said, you’re very unlikely to see all of it, unless you do so in May during one of SFMOMA’s scheduled 24-hour viewings.

And if you should give the entire viewing a go, you’ll be participating in what I suspect is the subversive heart of the The Clock, one that makes the entire concept of real time a kind of flimsy absurdism. Actually sitting in the museum in front of a single piece of work for a full day becomes a kind of performance, observing not just the comings and goings on screen, but also in the theater, engaging and disengaging in real life in equal, contesting proportion.

Marclay’s exhibition completes a crescendo at the museum, peaking just before the building closes for expansion, and the exhibits hit the road for various area temporary sites over the next couple years. Together with the current shows dedicated to photographer Garry Winogrand and architect Lebbeus Woods, The Clock is the third in SFMOMA’s trilogy on prolonged, meticulous fascination executed with utmost competence.

And about that Garry Winogrand retrospective, which in its way is even more overwhelming than the Marclay show: the thing you can’t escape while hopping, transfixed, from image to image, is that not only have half of these 300 photographs — many of them stunning — never been shown before, but that it was assembled from a massive archive including some 250,000 images that have never been seen, promising that Winogrand’s posthumous career will stretch on for quite a while.

And good thing, too, since these photographs, while rooted in the mid-late 20th century, are timelessly contemporary. We immediately recognize in them the same mix of unease, willful optimism, and absurdity that mark the post-9/11 world, realizing that disjointedness to be both a continuous thread and defining characteristic of American social fabric.

On the continuum of photographers, Winogrand is somewhere between Weegee’s operatic flair and Walker Evans’ incisive and empathic eye. There are definitely theatrical liberties taken with composition, but at heart Winogrand is a humanist. His particular knack inverts spectacles and intimacies, and his off-kilter shots deliver their actors amid a slippery, complicated search for the American dream.

His famous quote, that “there is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described,” speaks to both the allure and the central lie of his (and indeed all) photography. Although he began his career as a photojournalist, his main contribution was visual poetry over raw documentation. The tone of Winogrand’s later work, during which he focused on taking rather than developing or reviewing his photographs, is shot through with distress and disillusionment, as if the world imploded and dissolved completely somewhere around 1977. That late work, long ignored and incompletely catalogued, is featured here, and feels increasingly familiar and prescient.

On the second floor of the museum, the Lebbeus Woods retrospective offers a tonal break from the intense scrutiny of human interaction exhibited by the Marclay and Winogrand shows, but is no less sweeping or meticulous. Woods was a visionary architect of the possible, and although only one of his large scale projects was ever constructed, his psychologically-charged, intellectually-overloaded vision continues to reverberate throughout architecture and design worlds.

The show of 175 works, including models, drawings, and prints, is framed roughly by the Woods quote, “Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.” In the Woods universe, those rules bend physics and gravity for the sake of a complete reimagining of human-built structures. Part sci-fi, part utopian thought-experiment, the carefully and expertly drafted renderings of Woods’ theoretical architectural systems are as dizzyingly hypnotic as they are confounding to normal, run-of-the mill concepts of what a building is or should be.

 

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK

April 6-June 2

GARRY WINOGRAND

LEBBEUS WOODS, ARCHITECT

Through June 2

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St, SF www.sfmoma.org

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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Is everyone else emotionally and physically exhausted from the Easter/Passover-torrential hailing downpour-April Fool’s Day (who can you trust on the Internet?) mess of the last few days? I certainly am, and I only participated in a few of those spiritual debacles.

No mind, I’m ready to strap on my wellies and/or sunglasses and embark on a week of Esben and the Witch, Mac DeMarco, Babysitter, Glam.I.Rock, Portland Cello Project, Future Twin, and Polkacide with Fuxedos.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Mac DeMarco
“Mac DeMarco has written seven albums and EPs on a guitar that he bought for 30 Canadian dollars. He uses effects pedals that he claims no serious musician would be caught dead with. He’s self released four albums and coined a new genre — “jizz jazz.” Listening to DeMarco’s jangling, blissed-out pop tends to be a pleasant, laid-back experience, more reminiscent of surf pop than jazz. His calming baritone, soft and velvety, sounds like a less depressed Ian Curtis. Compared to his summery sound, DeMarco’s live shows, full of lewd humor, nudity, and scaling stage equipment with wild abandon, provide a sharp contrast. If you are easily shocked or offended, this may not be the show for you.” — Haley Zaremba
With Trails and Ways, Cocktails, Calvin Love
Wed/3, 8pm, $12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bfTTeZOrs4

Portland Cello Project
The Portland, Oreg.-based indie orchestra, which is seven-deep on the cello, by the way, will play selections from the Beck song reader featuring Laura Gibson, along with some Brubeck and Bach, for good measure.
Wed/3, 8pm, $25
Yoshi’s SF
1330 Fillmore, SF
www.yoshis.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8ou0iA_68

Esben and the Witch
With swelling crescendos, emotional lyrics, gothy undertones, and shimmering vocals in tow, UK post-rock trio Esben and the Witch comes across the pond for the first time in two years, on tour with newest record, Wash The Sins Not Only The Face (Matador). Should be a witchy one.
With Heliotropes.
Thu/4, 9pm, $13
Brick and Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF.
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfx0cij2rw

Babysitter
Victoria, BC “grunge-and-roll” / “long-hair scuzz rocker” trio Babysitter has made its way through the tapes-splits-and-EPs scene since forming in 2010. Now signed to Montreal tastemaker label, Psychic Handshake Record, the band released its first proper full-length, Eye, in late ’12. This current tour takes the thrashy punks through house shows and taquerias, as it should.
With Easy Living, Hazels Wart
Thu/4, 7pm, $5
Casa Sanchez
2778 24th, SF
Facebook: Babysitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yqP71Y87_4

Glam.I.Rock
Lyrically gifted young Oakland rapper Glam.I.Rock — the first half an acronym for “Good Lyrics And Music” — will perform a free in-store during Art Murmur this Friday. If you want to be in on an artist at the tipping point, this would be your chance. The MC has that classic ’90s female-empowerment hip-hop vibe but with some different interests (check the “Who is Glam.I.Rock?” video of her tapping out the Rugrats theme), and a more modern style. Though like her predecessors, she still very much reps her home-base, performing “Inspire Oakland” at the city’s Digital’s Inspiration Awards last December. Makes sense, she’s the daughter of Nic Nac — the only female member of the Mobb crew — and and Dangerous Dame, a member of Too $hort’s Dangerous Crew. Glam.I.Rock’s debut EP, The Feel, recently dropped on Savvie1ent/The Olive Street Agency.
Fri/5, 8pm, free.
Oaklandish
1444 Broadway, Oakl.
(510) 251-9500
www.oaklandish.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHVIRAIFBEU

Rock/See: A Concert for the Roxie Theater
In the grand tradition of Live Aid, Farm Aid, and Kidney Now! (that last one might have been fictional), musicians in SF are stepping up to help something they care about: the Mission’s beloved Roxie Theater. The event is to support the Roxie’s campaign to renovate and upgrade its smaller theater, the Little Roxie. As the theater explains , “While many nonprofit arts organizations are joining forces with corporate entities…[we’re] partnering with members of San Francisco’s indie music community.” The Rock/See benefit boasts live performances by favored Bay Area lo-fi/garage rockers Thee Oh Sees, Sonny and the Sunsets, Future Twin, and Assateague. Being that this is for a movie hub, local filmmakers and artists are also getting in on the support: the event includes projections by Barry Jenkins, Jim Granato, and more.
Fri/5, 8:30pm, $25
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
www.roxie.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMEGlZCY1o0

Polkacide and Fuxedos
“Sometimes, sweet serendipity steps up to create a lineup so stunningly perfect you can’t believe it’s true. That pretty much sums up the upcoming Polkacide and Fuxedos co-headlining gig, with the imitable Borts Minorts along for the ride as opening act. Individually, each band is well-worth the price of admission alone. You’ve got your punk rock polka, your post-punk, big band, nihilistic freakout (plus props) — and your avant-garde alien lifeform wields his dangerous dance moves and a bass made from a ski.”  —  Nicole Gluckstern
Sat/6, 9:30pm, $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
(415) 861-1615
www.bottomofthehill.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdrMuOdVPg

Bow down to the robo-proletariat!

Sue Vaughan
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Bow down to the robo-proletariat!

 
Radically refashioning a host of reactionary fashions, La Pocha Nostra Live Art Laboratory puts all borders up for grabs. The international performance art troupe returns to San Francisco Sat/30 for the US premiere of La Pocha Nostra’s latest creation, Corpo Insurrecto 3.0: The Robo-Proletariat.
 
A performance project by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes, and Erica Mott (with LPN associates Brittany Chavez, Rico Martin, Marcos Nájera, Esther Baker Tarpaga, and Allison Wyper), Corpo Insurrecto 3.0: The Robo-Proletariat asks the time-old question: What might you discover at the intersection of “an aging deviant shaman, a Neo-Aztec priest making romantic religious tableaux with a goat, a flamenco drag king, and an Oil Spill Madonna”?


 Audience members are invited to help figure this one out, in corporeal dialogue with the performers, in what LPN calls a “wonderfully clumsy but efficient form of radical democratic practice.” The piece will also be an exactingly strange multidisciplinary exploration of the forms ideology and power take on and through the body. LPN’s exuberant Chicano cyborg/cyberpunk sensibilities brilliantly limn the boundary lines defining the (secretly amorphous) “truths” and “identities” of masscult’s virtual reality show — those hipster beards concealing the voracious colonial maw of capitalist society.
 
In related news: In coming back from Mexico City to home-base San Francisco, LPN’s artistic director — artist/intellectual and border-crosser extraordinaire, Gómez-Peña — returns too from the border town of illness, from whence he is steadily extricating himself and about which he has written powerfully and eloquently here.

Corpo Insurrecto 3.0: The Robo-Proletariat

Sat/30th, 8pm, $15-20

435 23rd St, SF

http://theperformanceartinstitute.org, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/350355

 
 

Can’t stop fashion: Style, as always, at Oakland’s First Friday

Andrew Lam
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We’re stoked on next week’s Oakland First Fridays, where the style is weird, wild, and exactly what you would expect to see any time Bay Area folks, art, and mingling collide. In March, despite the previous month’s tragedy, looks were lively as ever. Attendees and vendors alike seemed to have all received the same memo: throw on some sort of headwear and layer up in as many different patterns as possible.

The fair usually takes over Telegraph Avenue from 17th Street to 27th Street. During last months’ edition, the shooting that occured at the street fair in February had wrought a few changes — the event was considerably smaller, still running along Telegraph Avenue, but only from West Grand Avenue to 27th Street, and about half the usual size. The evening came to a close an hour earlier at 9pm, and public drinking was prohibited. The community paid their respect the shooting victim with altars and peace vigils. 

But fashion pressed on. In a more conventional environment, the excessive use of prints at First Fridays would likely have appeared overdone, but amid street musicians jamming on homemade instruments, ambient street lamp lighting, and a general creative atmosphere, the spirited look fit in just right.

The vendors selling mostly handmade and thrifted goods made an obvious effort to dress in the style of their products. Tua-Lisa Runsten sported a pair of leopard leggings, a tweed jacket, and naturally some gigantic, neutral-toned earrings from her Etsy line. 

We saw blue hair, pink trench coats, and even a dangerously daggery necklace, but the steampunk-inspired style of the “Window Lady”, otherwise known as Janay Rose, topped them all. Rose wore a patchwork skirt, a furry collar, and a festive fascinator while her partner looked equally as dashing in a pair of worn-in overalls and a black bowler hat. 

The bundled up merchants adorned in polka dots, animal prints, and floral anorak jackets proved to us that busier is better. So what sartorial lesson did we take away from this bustling street fair? Go ahead, throw on two pieces that don’t match whatsoever. Mix blue and black. Sport a festive mini skirt with a pair of sequined Ugg boots with for a comfortable nighttime look. Wait no …don’t do that. Please never do that. But this for sure: even in trouble times, fashion braves on. 

Oakland First Fridays

First Fridays, 5-10pm, free

Telegraph between 19th and 27th Sts., Oakl.

www.oaklandfirstfridays.org

Hot sexy events: Nerd boobs, Bill Gates’ condom quest, and the Sheagle = landed

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: Nerd boobs, Bill Gates’ condom quest, and the Sheagle = landed

Hey, dudes who don’t like condoms, has Bill Gates got your back or what? During the same month that the Pope Emeritus reincarnates as a wall of condoms, the tech bajillionaire has donated the change he found in his couch ($100,000) to the Global Health research foundation Bill and wife Melinda founded through their foundation to developing a rubber that feels better on penises.

Yes, we know, yet more money that focuses on male reproductive health. But for those who regularly find themselves in contact with penis-bearers, the promise of never hearing another “but I can’t feeeel it with the condom on,” will be a definite boon to that largest of sexual organs: our brain, which non-scientifically speaking, shrivels up and dies a little from so much whining in bed. (Also, penis bearers? Golf claps for science, but in the meantime you might benefit from not jerking it so damn hard. Try a Fleshlight.)

Chat about the politics of sex research, or forget about politics altogether, at this week’s sexy events:

Sheagle

A night presented by the female-identified kinksters of San Francisco, but open to attendees in the newly (more or less) re-opened space of this beloved leather bar. The monthly party will benefit a different female-identified organization — this month it’s the SF girls of Leather, who rad work you can read about in this Guardian cover story on their cute kink from a few years ago. 

Wed/27, 8pm-2am, free. Eagle, 298 12th St., SF. www.sf-eagle.com

“Bling My Vibe” awards ceremony 

When Good Vibrations contacted me about crafting an project from a vibrator for their March art contest I said: sure. And though every time I’ve been back to see it proudly installed in the Polk Street store’s gallery/education space there’s been a class going on, I have nothing but the utmost faith that the room full of Conehead vibes, vibrators fashioned into magical steeds, and Ninja Turtles vibes (HuffPo has a nice slideshow if you’re curious) is an uplifting experience. Today, the top crafters take home gift certificates so that they can continue to make sweet projects with Good Vibes gear.

Fri/29, 6-8pm, free. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com

Nerd Nite at the Lusty Lady

SF’s only co-op strip club welcomes sci-fi freaks tonight. Lusty dancer Pandora wrote us in an email that the Lusty theme nights are all about costumes: “Well, as much as you can costume and still be naked, which as it turns out is quite a bit. 😉 Sometimes music or activities like naked Twister, naked light saber battle. naked karaoke. Pretty much anything fun, and put naked in front of it.” Check out this video for more on why the peep shows and VIP booths here rock:

Fri/29, 8am-3pm. The Lusty Lady, 1033 Kearny, SF. www.lustylady.com

Spring Breakers 

“Why you acting ‘spicious?” The ATL twins, James Franco Gucci Mane, Vanessa Hudgens, blatant perversion of typical crime movie gender roles — Harmony Korine’s latest cult classic is the sexiest film of 2013 and you should see it before you get secondhand sick of the catchphrases. Which reminds me, “spring break 4eva.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVvn9T6bqls

Various Bay Area theaters

Goodbye Gauley Mountain screening and dinner

Feminist porn pioneer Annie Sprinkle and partner Beth Stephens premiere the couple’s documentary on their ecosexual relationship with the Appalachian mountains and the crusade to stop destructive mining practices. Come early for the pre-screening vegan Appalachian dinner.

Trailer Goodbye Gauley Mtn: An Ecosexual Love Story from Elizabeth Stephens on Vimeo.

Sat/30, dinner 6:30pm, screening 7pm, $10-100. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.sexandculture.org

The fist style

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le.chicken.farmer@yahoo.com

At the beginning of class, the children of the Oakland Kajukenbo Kwoon circle up and take a knee, with their heads bowed and their little fists pressed into the hardwood.

“I am powerful!” one little voice squeaks.

“I am fierce!” shouts the next.

“I am speedy!”

“I am unstoppable!”

It’s so freakin’ cool I don’t know what to do with myself and have to play with my phone just to keep from crying. They are learning something I wish I’d learned at five: how to have a say in things.

“I am somebody!” . . . is my personal favorite.

According to Sifu Kate Hobbs, a fifth-degree black belt and chief instructor of the school, vocalization is an integral part of self-defense. She lists “a voice that comes from deep in the guts” right alongside physical skills, agility, and timing, as factors she hopes will give her students a valuable edge if they are ever attacked.

For her, it’s all about the repetition of techniques and drills.

“I don’t spend any class time talking about what students might do if this or that happens,” she said. “Students are expected to attend regularly, engage fully, practice on their own, and stay for their whole lives.”

Kajukenbo, an American-made martial art, was established in the late 1940s in a violent Honolulu neighborhood by five black belts in five different Eastern disciplines — one of whom also happened to be Hawaii’s welterweight champion. So add a little Western pugilism to the mix.

Through this fist style, stilts the official Kajukenbo motto, one gains long life and happiness. The focus from the start — and Hobbs most definitely carries this torch — was on realism. Street smarts.

“Kajukenbo is beautiful and tough,” Hobbs told me. “It was created so men could kick other men’s asses if they got fronted on.” She described her own two Kajukenbo teachers as tough Irish-American women, and said she has tended — being herself of Irish descent — toward their “practicality and gritty-but-humorous self expression.”

Hobbs, who teaches a “Little Tigers” class for 3-5-year-olds, as well as older kids and adults, quoted Sijo Adriano Emperado, one of the five founders of Kajukenbo, as saying that “a great class was one where blood was shed.”

OK. But also, it’s cute. At least watching kindergartners practice “this fist style” is.

The parents who line the sidelines with me at the St. Columba Church in North Oakland seem sometimes mesmerized, sometimes traumatized, and sometimes proud as punch(es), watching their li’l beloveds stumble and soar through a variety of agility drills, jabs, and kicks.

I can speak for myself. Underlying everything, there is a sense of incredible gratitude, watching the kids I love (and worry about), as if they were my own, learn and practice something fundamentally important: using their five senses, their voice, and their bodies to not only defend themselves, but express what happened afterwards.

Sifu Kate, as they all call Hobbs, has a way with kids, and I feel like I could learn a little Nanny Fu from her, too. Without any perceivable effort, she has their respect and, generally speaking, their attention.

“I think I have a great combination of patience with the wild and unfettered nature of humans, and the timing of the drills and lessons,” she told me.

Watching my charge, Chunk de la Cooter, going through the running drills, forwards, backwards, skipping, grapevining, leaping, twirling — with an athletic grace I hadn’t yet seen in her — of course I couldn’t help imagining her with a soccer ball. And vowed to stay healthy enough to play on her rec league team one day.

When she’s 21, I’ll be 65. But that’s OK. I’m inspired, and she’s in excellent hands.

“Is Kung Fu sports?” I asked her in the car, driving home.

“No,” she said.

Then, after a brief period of reflection, she said: “Yes.”

Then: “We’ll ask Daddy.”

Hobbs, who I also asked, said, “I don’t think martial arts practice is anything like team sports. It is very individual and the competition is personal.

“We partner and we need each other to learn, and we bond,” she said, “but it has a totally different tenor.”

Among the lessons she feels are most important: Commitment, focus, love, self-respect . . . “Connect with the world,” she said. “Be open and curious, not afraid and careful, but large and messy and ugly.”

Oakland Kajukenbo Kwoon

www.oaklandkajukenbokwoon.com

sifukate.hobbs@gmail.com

 

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