Water Archives — Page 59 of 86 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Sonic Reducer Overage: Of Montreal, Spinnerette, Jessie Evans, and more

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July 23, 2009

By Kimberly Chun

Foggy city, music-clogged city – you offer up so much to do and see. And I’m not even counting that hard-working mama in No Doubt. Have a few more worthy shows that didn’t make it to print.

Dragging an Ox Through Water
The oxy lad is just back from opening for Jackie-O Motherfucker in Europe. With Sic Alps, Linda Hagood, and Tom Greenwood. Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Extra Action Marching Band and Jessie Evans
No intro needed for the brassy Bay gang – which was graced with David Byrne’s presence at its Uptown show (right after the band opened for Byrne at the Greek). Ex-Vanishing lady Jessie Evans materializes, too, with a healthy supply of sax appeal. With Bronze and Something Experience. Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $10. Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., SF. (415) 626-0880.

De La Soul is alive

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July 22, 2009

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CHECK ONE Last night, I played De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1989) for the first time in years. I couldn’t stop laughing.

It was a surprise, even though I always knew that much of De La Soul’s early appeal rested on its humor. Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer spelled “soundsop” backwards; Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur loved yogurt. (He’s pictured eating yogurt in the album’s liner notes.) They complained about style biters who dug “Potholes in My Lawn”; and called their loopy, circuitous jams “Plug Tunin’.” There were references to soap, water, and Luden’s cough drops. In the first of several “game show” skits that bookended the album, Trugoy remarked that his favorite film was the 1976 sex-and-torture spectacle Bloodsucking Freaks. Twenty years later, De La Soul’s private language — or, to be accurate, “DA Inner Sound Y’all (D.A.I.S.Y. Age)” — still sounds fresh and crazily absurd.

Mainstream rock critics, suspicious of all that hippity-hop stuff, welcomed 3 Feet with restrained praise at first: Rolling Stone, in one of its historic blunders, only gave the album three stars while acknowledging it as “one of the most original rap albums ever.” The yellow-and-turquoise-daisies album art and MTV hype obscured De La Soul’s sharply intelligent sendups of go-go (“Do As De La Does”) and rap clichés (“Take It Off,” which parodied the then-ubiquitous “Funky Drummer” loop). Today, irony is so entrenched in the Generation X-Y-and-Zero lexicon that we forget how pleasurable it is when it’s done right.

Unfortunately, the good vibes quickly turned sour. Shortly after the album’s release, De La Soul ended an Arsenio Hall appearance with “Ain’t Hip to Be Labeled a Hippie,” a refrain first voiced on “Me, Myself and I.” The 1991 follow-up De La Soul is Dead offered a smashed flowerpot and tales of how the crew nearly got kicked off LL Cool J’s tour for fighting, just to prove that, hey, they ain’t no punks. Goofy odes to weed-smoking jostled uneasily with cautionary tales of child abuse and murder. The playful spirit of hip-hop’s so-called golden age was gone, another casualty in the oncoming storm of street realism and gangster aesthetics. (Mosi Reeves)

CHECK TWO I’d dug “Plug Tunin'” when I chanced across it on a mixtape from somewhere. This flow — this new style of speak — was shrouded in slang, occulted, and backed by a sound collage that seemed conjured from a basement where a rusty Victrola played the memories of an old man nodding off in his Lay-Z-Boy.

My boys hated that song. I loved it, but I didn’t “get it.” Armed with more fashion-sense than any of us knew what to do with, Marlon looked over at me and said, “You really like these Oklahoma muthafuckas?” Yes I did. Brothers was dope. From Strong Island, and dope. Rakim dope.

One Sunday, I was cleaning up my place to 3 Feet High and Rising and ran across a roach in an ashtray. Sprawled out on the couch watching the sun stream through my dirty windows, I “got” De La Soul. Every word was deciphered. It felt as if I’d learned a new language, or remembered an old one.

Things changed after that.

The 20th anniversary of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising is a cause for celebration. Anyone else feeling vindicated?

Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer, David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, and Vincent “PA Mase” Mason have chronicled the last 20 years through nine studio albums and countless production credits (Camp Lo, Gorillaz and MF DOOM among them). Prince Paul produced them, and in turn their popularity produced Prince Paul. They introduced a sleeping world to the black gale known as Mos Def.

De La is coming back to San Francisco. Witness genius at work. (D. Scot Miller)

DE LA SOUL

With Kenan Bell

Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $29.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

Celluloid Nation

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July 22, 2009

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Unsurprisingly, Israeli films have been a big part of each San Francisco Jewish Film Festival program from the beginning. Yet despite that annual local sampling, occasional theatrical exports, and Oscar’s devotion (seven Israeli features have been nominated for Best Foreign Film so far, including 2008’s highway-robbery loser Waltz with Bashir), the general narrative of how that industry got where it is today has remained hazy. It clears up quite a bit after three and a half hours spent with Raphael Nadjari’s A History of Israeli Cinema, the new two-part documentary screening at SFJFF.

Nadjari’s choice of article is apt — this is a history, not any attempt at creating "the" definitive one, and no doubt seasoned viewers will be left scratching their heads over an omission or eight. (The weirdest being M.I.A. Eytan Fox, of 2002’s Yossi and Jagger, 2004’s Walk on Water, and 2006’s The Bubble.) But the myriad clips and commentators he assembles nonetheless piece together a cogent overview that will have you running to check DVD availabilities (usually in vain, alas).

Early features, before and after nationhood was declared in 1948, mostly sold the "Zionist utopia" that would unite millennia of Jewish diaspora, often using filmic language reminiscent of Soviet propagandist cinema. When audiences no longer needed that basic affirmation, more escapist forms emerged, notably the broad "bourekas" comedies and sentimental dramas depicting struggling ethnic groups (mostly Mizrahi Jews). Alongside these in the 1960s there developed a "New Sensitivity" school indebted to European art film that appealed to the intelligentsia if not the wider public. A gradual shift from collective to individual concerns affected everything from the omnipresent military dramas to dissenting political content, plus depictions of hitherto ignored or stereotyped figures whether Arab, gay, Georgian émigré, or simply female.

SFJFF 2009 continues this history with a sizable range of new Israeli screen work. Home-turf hit Lost Islands is a seriocomic family saga played to the big-hair beat of early ’80s New Wave (come back, Flock of Seagulls!). The excellent Zion and His Brother provides darker domestic strife amidst Haifa’s meanest housing-project streets. Coming highly recommended for a good time is A Matter of Size, which is pretty much The Full Monty (1997) of sumo wrestling. (Dennis Harvey)

A HISTORY OF ISRAELI CINEMA

Aug 1, 11:45 a.m., CineArts

Aug 8, 11:30 a.m., JCCSF

The show must go on!

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July 22, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Furloughs. Layoffs. Cutbacks. These are the dirty words that have been added to the vocabularies of those working in Bay Area theaters ever since, as one person so eloquently phrased it, "the shit hit the fan." It’s hard to pinpoint when it began, but most theater heads agree that by October of last year, the somber headlines regarding the economy began to feel frighteningly real. Theater companies of all sizes have reported reduced ticket sales, lower individual donations, and less foundation and grant giving. On stage, actors are performing to empty chairs.

As a result, individuals like San Jose’s City Lights executive director Lisa Mallette have had to work overtime to keep their businesses afloat. "The economy has shaken up everyone — no one can be complacent anymore," she said. "It’s making everybody think how they can run leaner and meaner."

Being creative on stage isn’t enough anymore. These days the minds behind Bay Area theaters must apply their ingenuity behind the scenes. According to a study released in April by the theater organizations Theatre Bay Area and Theatre Communications Group, more than half the respondents from local nonprofit theaters say they expect cash flow problems by the end of the year.

With these kinds of expectations, many theatre managers have taken on second jobs as theater pruners, snipping extra costs wherever they can. For companies that have always survived on a shoestring, it’s a matter of plucking one leaf at a time. This means staff members use the back side of used paper, drink water from the tap, and save every screw, costume, and prop that can be recycled for the next production.

"It’s been a tough road, but [the theater community] is going to learn good lessons out of this," Mallette said. "The things we’re learning now we will continue to use no matter what the economy is like."

According to Cheshire Isaacs, managing director of Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, one of the biggest challenges has been making up the season’s ticket losses. At its high point, a 1980s version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream became the theater’s biggest financial success in its 13 seasons. At its low point, a show that debuted in mid-November called Tallgrass Gothic resulted in unprecedented loss at the box office.

"My gut feeling is that the economy is making people more selective with what they see," Isaacs said. "They’re going to the must-see shows, and shows that would previously have done well are not getting the audience."

Audience members have outnumbered cast members, Isaacs said, though sometimes not by much. On the lowest evening, he estimated that only a dozen people came to the show, an experience he found "depressing."

"For actors, it’s difficult to play to sparse houses. It’s demoralizing," he said. "It’s a worse experience in a different way for the audience members themselves. It’s hard to be in an audience where you’re one of 15 people."

For a theater where ticket sales account for 90 percent of its income, the loss was a major hit. To offset the damages, the company tightened its belt in other areas. One solution, Isaacs said, was to stop mailing postcards. The decision to go digital saved the company $500. Impact, like most other theaters, has begun relying on free to low-cost technologies like Facebook and Twitter. For one, they are easy and cheap marketing tools. They also provide ways to reach and build a network of younger theatergoers. Even companies that are experiencing growth at this time, such as San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre and Berkeley’s Shotgun Players, are making sure they keep their fingers on the pulse of the trends.

"We’re constantly looking at how we can be ahead of the curve," said Patrick Dooley, Shotgun’s artistic director. "Our audience is much younger, so we damn well better be on those sites. If anyone is supposed to be hitting that shit, we are!"

As much as things are changing backstage, there are also changes onstage. At Z Studio Space, a San Francisco company that develops new theater work, executive director Lisa Steindler admits she passes up on scripts with a cast of 12 or more. She simply can’t afford it. These days, she said, even playwrights realize they must write scripts with two or three actors if they want a play produced. "It’s interesting how the economy is shaping the canon of work that being made," she said. "Ten years from, now we’ll look back and see how artists tailored their work [to the financial situation of this time]."

As theater companies streamline their businesses, some cuts run deeper than others. Many have accepted pay freezes, cut back work hours, and foregone bonuses. At the end of 2008, Tiffany Cothran, managing director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater, did something she had never done: she and the artistic director decided to give up their salaries for three months to avoid ending the year with a deficit.

"We had to do it for the health of the company," Cothran said. "It was hard emotionally, though, because everyone likes to get paid for their work."

Though some say the worst is over, others like Cothran say that they’ve entered a period of uncertainty. Many brace themselves to receive fewer grants in the next year, especially from institutions like Grants for the Arts, which help cover operation costs for many theaters.

On June 3, a letter from the Grants for the Arts told recipients to expect a 20 percent reduction in award money. Although final awards won’t be announced until mid-August, the letter advised companies to be prudent while planning their 2009-10 budget. "Everyone is on pins and needles waiting for the news," Cothran said. "It’s likely that awards will be reduced or that we won’t get anything at all."

At Z Studio Space, Steindler isn’t taking anything for granted. The three white boards that hang by her desk are nearly full with the names of different grants she’ll be applying for in the next few months. "I write grants all year long. The difference this year is that I am just writing a lot more now than I ever did."

She admits this has been a trying time for the industry, though she is not surprised that many of her colleagues are still expecting surpluses at the end of their fiscal year. "We’re artists — we’re a smart group of people," she said. "We’ve just tightened, tightened, tightened. And who knows? Maybe we just caught it in time."

More free stuff: Great street art

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July 15, 2009

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By Michael Krimper

Some of the most innovative street art and inspired graffiti in the world calls San Francisco home. For those adventurous city dwellers whose definition of art is not circumscribed by its state of legality, there are thousands of voices that grace the city’s public spaces. I compiled a five-point list of some of my favorites as a crash course in street art exploration.

Defenestration Building – A massive fire burned out the Hugo Hotel — a four-story tenement on the corner of 6th and Howard streets — in the mid 1980s. The building quietly rotted for nearly a decade until artist Brian Goggin decided to transform the mini-behemoth SRO into a jarring public art installation. We now know the Hugo Hotel as the “defenestration” building. The name derives from a surreal picture of street-ravaged furniture desperately leaping in suspension from the skinny windows and roof. But it also means a gesture of throwing out, a spiritual act of release and possible renewal. The Defenestration building still is one of the city’s most dynamic public artworks, due in large part to its diligent curators, the legendary graffiti crew Inner City Phame (ICP). Over the years ICP has demonstrated an incredible talent for beautifying the Defenestration walls with layer after layer of spell-bounding murals. This past winter, Santa Claus and scantily clad elvish ladies bookended intricate Christmas ornamented names. Last year the crew painted a compelling memorial to the late Barbara Bode Falcon, muse and former wife of the eccentric comic book artist and inspirational source for graffiti styled illustration Vaughn Bode. And they’re probably painting something completely new right now as you’re reading this article.

Bluxome Alley — The art corridor lining the capillaries of Bluxome Alley (located between 5th and 6th off Townsend) just entered a new evolutionary stage during its formal grand opening last Saturday. Now officially baptized “Kommunitas”, the allery (alley gallery) strives towards “spreading the revolution one word at a time,” at least according to the domain site. Besides its activist mission statement, what makes Kommunitas different from your typical allery is a curious metal sign posted on the entrances outlining the guidelines to gain permission to paint. Kommunitas’ property manager, Tardon Feathered tells me in simple terms his reasons for opening the walls to artists. “[I] decided that good art looked better than bad tags, in an alley which we could not shut down the tagging.” In turn, the dusty walls, thick windows, pipelines, poles, air ducts, staircase banisters, and all other industrial furniture suddenly lose their grayness and become canvases for mesmerizing street art.

Mac Dre Memorial — Many a surprising mural abounds in SoMa’s seemingly desolate alley ways. One of the most spectacular is an enormous ICP production on the corner of Langton and Harrison in dedication to the life and work of the late Andre Hicks, better known as Mac Dre. The artists painted a monolithic memorial to pay tribute to the Vallejo-born rapper widely credited with founding the hyphy movement. On the Langton side of the warehouse, grandiose “rest in peace” block letters burst forth in all caps, floating just above a double headed thizz facing Dre. The two heads exhibit the antagonistic elements of fire and water, expressing Hicks’ versatile flow and style, combining fiery braggadocio with outlandishly cool comedy.

Oak Parking Lot — In the current social climate where rapid gentrification sterilizes neighborhoods while corporate minded policy limits artistic innovation, very few downtown spaces still allow graffiti to blossom. Nonetheless, a secluded parking lot on Oak St. just north of Market boasts some of the most vibrant, intricately woven murals in the heart of the city’s daily grind. Illegal productions elegantly grace the walls, blending seamlessly with commissioned pieces (maybe). But even if you can’t appreciate the subtle sophistication of spontaneously erupting tags, the heavily caked over walls still tote some finely crafted murals. Visit the endangered species before its imminent distinction.

Lilac Mural Project — The Lilac Mural Project, a two-block stretch between 24th and 26th Streets, is a fresh addition to staple Mission district alleries (and tourist favorites) Balmy and Clarion. But unlike its moderately bloated neighbors, Lilac possesses a youthful energy in anticipation of its open ended future. The murals gracing the walls oscillate between carefully thought out productions, whimsical tags, hastily spayed throw-ups, and the great possibility of empty space. Most recently, a old school styled memorial of New York graffiti luminary, Iz The Whiz (whose untimely death was caused by a medical condition related to breathing in an excess of aerosol spray), blessed the corridor.

‘Graphic Sexual Horror’

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July 15, 2009

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By Kevin Langson

The prurient pleasure film Graphic Sexual Horror cannot be accused of failing to live up to its title. In fact, it’s safe to say that discussion or protestations (and anyone who’s not catatonic is bound to have something to say) that follow this solid porn-ocumentary will be related to the rather contentious content. This fair-minded glimpse into the pain-glorious performances and behind-the-scenes procedures of the now defunct hardest of the hardcore bondage Web sites is simultaneously titillating and reflective, admiring and critical.

Insex.com founder Brent Scott, in explaining the academic ostracism at Carnegie Mellon that led to his new career as a high priest of porn, says this: "If they don’t let me teach their kids, I’ll corrupt them," which seems an apt encapsulation of his renegade artistic arrogance. This account is assuredly enriched by his candidness and self-criticism. He praises, sometimes adores, his female models and expresses sincere regret when his neglect leads to a malfunctioning water tank that could have inflicted injury. At the same time, however, he is chauvinistically demanding and insensitive to his model’s vulnerabilities. Essentially, he represents the ambivalence of extreme bondage — the murky convergence of liberated consensual sex and exploitation.

Clips of artistically presented live feed performances featuring such intrigues as blue-purple strangulated breasts and hot pepper being applied to genitalia, are intercut with interviews to give a sense of the models’ experiences. For bondage enthusiasts and the morbidly curious, there are visuals to gawk or gasp at throughout, but the tone becomes more conflicted as the film addresses the dilemmas of Insex models, as illustrated by the young woman who whimpers incredulously as her face is slapped. Face-slapping was her one hard limit (defined as activity forbidden by a model), but she struggles to play along because of the shame and lost fortunes a refusal begets.

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR Thurs/16–Fri/17, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, www.ybca.org — Click here for showtimes and more details

Park it on the free way

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July 15, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

FREE ISSUE/SONIC REDUCER Free. To be you and me. From sea to shining sea. As the wind, as the air, as information, as that music you downloaded through Lime Wire. Careful with the mellow, but the last time we checked our sparsely filled-out wallets, we all realized we can use a little free these days.

And considering the grand triad of free open-air shows in San Francisco — one encompassing the underground gatherings at Toxic Beach/Warm Water Cove and Potrero del Sol Park and the well-funded and organized massives like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Stern Grove (Altamont doesn’t count, grandpaw, ’cause the Speedway is outside city limits), Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival’s first free, all-ages, outdoor concert at Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in John McLaren Park is, honestly, looking pretty awesome.

Full disclosure: I’ve been sitting in at MCMF meetings of late and helping out where I can. But even if I was looking in from the outside, I’d be swayed by the event’s Bay-dominated lineup: Kelley Stoltz, Persephone’s Bees, Bart Davenport, the Moore Brothers, and Leopold and His Fiction, as well as the newly added Birds and Batteries and the Aerosols. Los Angeles’ Dead Meadow will rock the green grasses of the park in the headlining slot, Canada-via-SF combo the Rubies hold down the middle, and Spain’s Xoel Lopez, who some have dubbed the Beck of Spain, teams with chumster Bart Davenport for an intimate turn in the spotlight, but otherwise this local-centric show with an emphasis on psychedelia-tinged indie rock (judging from his freewheeling ways, Garcia might approve) could be considered the leafy spot where the underground meets the overground.

"You can go with a bunch of your friends and hang out and drink wine and enjoy the show," as MCMF producer Kymberli Jensen puts it. She organized the show along with Neil Martinson of SMiLE! "Personally that’s something that’s really appealing for me, and it’s accessible — especially in these hard economic times. People need something to lift the spirit."

And it’s remarkable that it gets done at all, during this nu-depression. Back to those MCMF meetings — rambling affairs consisting of a multitude of eager voices, much wine and snackings, and a slew of passionate opinions. Sponsorship of the fest has been hit particularly hard as a result of the economic meltdown, and few Mission District merchants have coin to spare. As a result, Jensen says MCMF has made a "conscious decision to do fund-raising throughout the year. The economic times have hit everybody — and have hit us very hard. We made a commitment to do this park concert, and many times we were asked to scrap it. But we worked six months on this, so we’re going to do the best we can."

As a result, Jensen and Martinson have put up their own cash to make this free show happen — hoping to recoup some of the costs with a raffle and donations. The dream: that one day of free music extends to two or three next year, with an emphasis on emerging performers and accessibility for music- lovers of all ages and income brackets. Because no one, especially Marlo Thomas, wants great music to become the exclusive reserve of elite patrons able to shell out for cardholder or VIP privileges. After all, MCMF isn’t about the money, as Jensen reminds me. "None of us get paid," the second-year producer explains. "We break even, if that. But we see it as an investment in Mission Creek, and also music in San Francisco."

MISSION CREEK MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL FREE CONCERT

Sat/18, 11:30 a.m.–8 p.m., free

Jerry Garcia Amphitheater

John McLaren Park, Mansell and John F Shelley, SF

www.mcmf.org

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FROM FREE TO TWEE

PINK MOUNTAIN

The NorCal/NW avant-indie supergroup of sorts — including John Shiurba, Quasi’s Sam Coomes, Gino Robair, Scott Rosenberg, and Kyle Bruckmann — settles in for a good skronk in honor of its self-titled double-LP/CD on Sickroom. Wed/15, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com. Also Thurs/16, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

CAGE

Buttoned-down Cage is still finding his rage on Depart from Me (Definitive Jux). Fri/17, 9 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

UNAGI

The SF MC-producer grilled Reinventing the Eel (442) completely on computer. With Melina Jones, Orukusaki, Gigio, Linkletterz, Substitute Teachers, and DJ Animal. Sat/18, 10 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART

The new-twee revolution begins with best name to come down the pike since Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits. Tues/21, 7:30 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

Something for nothing

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July 15, 2009

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>>CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS GUIDE ON ONE PAGE

You can’t get much cheaper than free. And at a time when many of us are counting every penny, the Bay Area is full of free stuff. Some of it’s right in front of your face, but most of it takes a little digging to find. This guide should send you in the right direction.

Oh, and by the way: some economists and political thinkers are suggesting that, as the over-financed, money-driven economy of the last century goes into, well, free-fall, the idea of giving things away could be the model for a more sustainable future.

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FREE FOOD

You can eat like a gourmet for the price of a drink

By Virginia Miller

Eating free doesn’t have to begin and end with soup kitchens. Here are some spots where, for the price of a drink — or sometimes for nothing — you can get good food, and sometimes excellent food, for everybody’s favorite magic number of zero.

ADESSO HAPPY HOUR

Adesso is much more than wine bar with an Italian-centric list of wines by the glass. The drinks are (relatively) inexpensive and creative concoctions. But the best part (besides a Foosball table) is food that comes out continuously from the kitchen during weekday happy hours. We’re not talking about your average free bar food here — this is stuff from the regular menu, like excellent house-made charcuterie, cheeses, hefty arancini (fried Italian rice balls), pates, sardine crostini, and all kinds of goodness. Happy hour, indeed.

Mon.–Fri., 5-7pm. 4395 Piedmont, Oakl. 510-601-0305

ALISHA’S HOME COOKIN’ FRIDAYS AT THE RIPTIDE

It’s happy hour and it’s Friday … what could be better? Especially at dive bar extraordinaire the Riptide, all the way out by the ocean in the Sunset District. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (or until the food’s gone), Alisha cooks up down-home goodness that pairs well with the ‘Tide’s PBRs and fireplace (in case — shall we bet on it? — the fog rolls in after a sunny summer day). You get chili con carne, chicken pot pie, and something called "blushin’ bunnies."

4–7 p.m. 3639 Taraval, SF.415-681-8433. www.riptidesf.com

MAYA HAPPY HOUR WITH BOTANAS

The $5 drink specials all night on margaritas, mojitos, and sangria are already a good deal. Add in free all-you-can-eat Mexican snacks and it’s a party. Free stuff includes Mexican bites like guac, quesadillas, taquitos, jicama with ceviche, tamales, and black bean dip. Arriba!

Weekdays, 4–7pm www.mayasf.com

EL RIO’S MONTHLY PANCAKE SATURDAYS

El Rio is one generous bar — the place serves free pancakes from the griddle the third Saturday of the month. Further cool points won by calling it "Rock Softly and Carry a Big Spatula." Breakfast is kindly served at 1 p.m., so after you’ve rolled out of bed and wandered over, ease into wakefulness with soft rock and hot flapjacks. Wear the "funkiest kitchen couture" and you could win their Golden Apron honors. After a meal that costs nothing, it’s easy to feed the tradition with generous tips. There’s also free barbecue at Friday night happy hours until 9 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

3rd Saturdays, 1–3 p.m. 3158 Mission, 415-282-3325. www.elriosf.com

PALIO D’ASTI’S PIZZA

Any two drinks (of the alcoholic kind, $6–$9) and you’re given a generous-sized pizza for two (or one massive eater). Devour the sauceless pizza d’Asti (shaved asparagus, fontina val d’aosta, thyme), a classic Margherita, or a Siciliana (fabulous Berkshire pork fennel sausage, fire roasted peppers, and smoked mozzarella). It’s no trouble drinking cocktails when they’re as playful as rosemary "sweet tea" (bourbon, muddled rosemary, lemon, and a splash of Moscato d’Asti), or a rhubarb margarita with lime and a salt rim.

Mon-Fri, 4–7pm. 640 Sacramento, SF.415-395-9800. www.paliodasti.com

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FREE DRINKS

Sometimes, even the booze is on the house

By Amy Monroe

If you’re curious and thirsty on a Friday, head to Spuntino’s free wine tasting from 4 to 6 p.m. Let the friendly staff pour and explain a flight of wines organized around a different theme each week. Drink free and get educated — imagine that.

1957 Union, 931-0122, www.spuntinosf.com

Cash-strapped social butterflies need only round up a group of friends and bring them to Tropisueno any night of the week to earn free drinks, and lots of them. The host imbibes gratis all evening provided she brings five friends with her to the bar.

75 Yerba Buena Ln., 243-0299, www.tropisueno.com

If you happen to be walking by one of the city’s many Kimpton hotels between 5 and 6 p.m. on a weekday, you might want to wander in and mingle with the guests in the lobby. If you look the part (and nobody asks you to show your room key), you can partake in the hotel chain’s free wine hour. Bonus: many locations pour free Anchor, too.

Nine locations in San Francisco, www.kimptonhotels.com

Like beer, music, and crowds? Then head to tiny Laszlo on the first Friday of the month for GroundSound Happy Hour. Hosts Upper Playground and SonicLiving buy you beer — and good beer at that, Trumer Pils and Shiner Commemorator — from 6 to 7 p.m. while DJs spin for your listening pleasure.

2526 Mission, 401-0810, www.laszlobar.com

upperplayground.com/wordpress/?tag=groundsound-happy-hour

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JOHNNY FUNCHEAP’S FAVORITE WAYS TO ENJOY THE CITY, FREE

By Johnny Funcheap

When you’re broke in San Francisco, sometimes even "cheap" can seem like a four-letter word. So thank God for free. Here are a few ways you can still enjoy the fun of living in San Francisco without cracking open your wallet even once.

GET LECTURED ABOUT YOUR DRINKING

The Mission District bar Elixir hosts a free Thursday night "Cocktail Club" with tastings (whiskeys, vodkas, tequilas … even absinthe) and a guest expert to help guide you through the process of finding new ways to appreciate staying off the wagon. For beer and wine drinkers, most BevMo! locations in the Bay Area have regular free tasting parties with themes like summertime ales and Mexican beers.

Elixir, 3200 16th St. http://www.elixirsf.com

ART GALLERY RECEPTIONS AND WALKS

To help lure in and lubricate casual art fans into being art-buyers, most galleries have regular receptions with free-flowing wine and a tasty platter of things to nibble on while you research art you can’t yet afford. If one reception a night isn’t enough, try sauntering from gallery to gallery during one of several monthly art walks — the most reliable of which clusters around Union Square with regular collective receptions the first Thursday evening of each month.

www.firstthursdayart.com

VOLUNTEERING MADE EASY: ONE BRICK

Unemployed? Got time on your hands? Do something useful with it — and meet new friends in the process. One Brick is a local nonprofit that hosts upwards of 20 different flexible volunteering opportunities each week, ranging from working a short shift beautifying a local park to serving food to the homeless. It’s not just about doing good — One Brick aims to help you make new friends by organizing meet-ups after each event so volunteers can get to know one another in a relaxed setting over a meal or a drink.

www.onebrick.org

GET YOUR GEEK ON: STAR PARTIES

If you’ve ever looked up to the heavens and wondered what the hell was up there, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers might be able to give you some answers. The group gives free lectures the third Wednesday of each month at the Randall Museum. When skies are clear, it hosts free monthly Star Parties at Point Lobos at Lands End with a lecture and a public telescope viewing.

RandallMuseum, 199 Museum Way; Point Lobos, El Camino Del Mar in Lands End;

www.sfaa-astronomy.org

AURAL PLEASURES: MARKET STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL

If the live music at the Stern Grove and Yerba Buena Gardens Festivals make you sad that most weekdays are quiet, the annual People in Plazas festival should help fill in any remaining gaps in your work-week concert schedule. This free July-to-October Market Street music festival puts on more than 145 free lunchtime concerts of all types in 16 different public plazas from the Embarcadero through the Castro.

www.peopleinplazas.org

FRIDAY NIGHT SKATE

Rather than plunking down a big portion of your salary (or unemployment check) on a gym membership (or signing up for a free introductory pass at a different gym each week: a.k.a. "gym slutting"), get sweaty by donning your blades or old-school roller skates and join the Midnight Rollers’ weekly Friday Night Skate. A large group of skaters embark from the Ferry Plaza on a 10-mile dance party/skate tour of the city, which includes plenty of stops for ice cream, Frisbee-throwing, and a chance for slowpokes to catch up.

www.cora.org/friday

TASTE-MAKING

Macy’s Union Square puts on free monthly cooking demonstrations in the Cellar, where top local chefs reveal their secrets for dishing up creative yet healthy meals. Not only do you get to learn skills like how to barbecue like a grill master, expertly pair chocolate and wine, or make a brunch worth waking up early for, you also get to sample the yummy delights the experts have cooked up. It’s like watching your favorite cooking show on the Food Network, but getting to magically reach inside the TV to grab a taste.

www1.macys.com

Johnny Funcheap runs FunCheapSF.com, a free San Francisco-based service that uncovers and shares a hand-picked recommendation list of upwards of 50 cheap, fun, unique Bay Area events each week.

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FIVE FREE THINGS TO DISCOVER IN SF

Urban adventures don’t have to cost money

By Broke-Ass Stuart

Although wasting a day in Dolores Park or purposefully misdirecting tourists might be great way to have some free fun, anything can get redundant after a while. That’s why I put together this list of amazing free things to discover in San Francisco. Whether you’ve been here your whole life or just landed today, you’re bound to find something entertaining on this list.

The Wave Organ at the end of the jetty extending past the Golden Gate Yacht club in the Marina. It’s not bellowing quite like it used to, but the Wave Organ is a perfect particle of San Francisco’s quirkiness. Built by the Exploratorium, the Wave Organ consists of 25 PVC pipes of various lengths jutting through concrete into the bay below. The sounds it makes depend on the height of the tide.

The Seward Street Slides at Seward and Douglass streets in the Castro District. Cardboard: free. Concrete slides: free. Getting bloody scrapes from combo of cardboard and concrete slides: priceless. The two concrete chutes are constructed so that when you get to the top and sit on a piece of cardboard, you slide down. Bring wax paper for even greater velocity.

The Xanadu Gallery at 140 Maiden Lane. If you’re excited about free stuff, chances are you can’t afford anything in this gallery. But looking around is free — and awesome! Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at the same time that he was doodling the Guggenheim, Xanadu Gallery (built as the VC Morris Gift Shop), has a remarkably similar interior to its New York City cousin — seemingly devoid of right angles and full of curving ramps. I’d pay so much money to see Tony Hawk go to town in here.

The Tiled Steps and Grand View Park, 16th Avenue at Moraga. Bring your sweetie and climb the lovely 163 tiled steps. Stop at the top and breathe a bunch. Then climb the next set of stairs to the right, and the ones after that. Now you’re in Grand View Park. Breathe a bunch more while checking out the staggering view. Smooching at the top is optional (but excellent).

The Jejune Institute, 580 California, Suite 1607,. Imagine if Lost took place in San Francisco. But instead of wandering the jungle dodging weird smoke monsters and "the others," you could explore the city in ways you never imagined. The JeJune Institute is kinda like that, only better. I don’t want to ruin anything for you, so all I’m gonna say is go there with a couple free hours, a cell phone, and $1.10 (not technically free but seriously the best $1.10 you’ll ever spend). The Jejune Institute blew my mind so hard that the top of my skull still flaps in the wind.

If you like cheap stuff, check out BrokeAssStuart.com.

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FREE HAIRCUTS

Let the students practice on your head

By Mayka Mei

Has anyone ever said you have a great face for hair modeling? Volunteering as a hair model gives salon trainees a chance to fulfill all their requirements for becoming full-time stylists. True, salons have become more guarded about their freebies, sometimes nixing the programs altogether. But a few freebies are still out there.

A few caveats: you’ll need an open, available schedule. Some salons have casting calls or will screen you for certain characteristics online or over the phone. Decide if you want a cut or color, and exactly what type of styling you have in mind. With specific days devoted to specific lessons, they may not need another graduate specializing in bobs the week you need a cut. Here are two places that still cut hair, absolutely free.

Festoon Salon

Haircuts Mondays at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Coloring second and fifth Mondays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.

1401 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berk.

(888) 35-SALON or (510) 528-5855, www.festoonsalon.com

Visual Image

Hair modeling vacancies available one or two times a month, or once a quarter

5200 Mowry, Suite C, Fremont

(510) 792-5922, www.visualimagesalon.com

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FREE PHONES, MOVIES, AND WI-FI

Why are you still paying for Internet access?

By Annalee Newitz

Information may want to be free, but Internet service providers want to charge you too see it. That doesn’t have to crimp your style; there’s plenty of free Wi-Fi — and ways to get free movies and phone service.

Let’s start with a little disclaimer: When you’re talking about getting things like free Wi-Fi, or free phone service, even "free" comes with a price. You’re going to have to invest in some equipment to get free stuff later. You might also need some training — but that’s available free.

For free classes where you can learn more about how to build some of the technologies I’ll be talking about below, check out the Noisebridge hacker space near 16th and Mission streets (www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge).

Now, here’s the dirt on how you can stop paying for phone service, cable, Internet, and online media.

FREE INTERNET SERVICE

Novice level: If you have a laptop with a Wi-Fi card, you should never have to pay for an Internet connection while you live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are countless cafes that provide free Wi-Fi to their customers. Yelp offers a good, up-to-date list of free Wi-Fi cafes in San Francisco at www.yelp.com/list/free-wireless-cafes-in-sf-san-francisco.

In San Francisco, check for free Wi-Fi provided by commercial vendor Meraki using this map: sf.meraki.com/map. Every branch library in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland offers free Wi-Fi.

Techie level: If you’d like to get free Internet service at home and not have to visit your local cafe all the time, you can build a cheap antenna so that you can see countless networks all around your house. Find out how to build such an antenna using this free online guide at www.en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wifi/Building_an_antenna.

If you are going to be borrowing your neighbors’ Wi-Fi service, please observe this cardinal rule: You are a guest, so use their service sparingly. Checking e-mail is fine, surfing the Web is fine, but downloading giant movie files is extremely uncool.

FREE MOBILE PHONE SERVICE

Novice level: Make all of your phone calls over the Internet using an IP phone. You can either invest in an IP phone and make phone calls using free Wi-Fi cafes and free city networks, or you can get the headset and microphone to plug into your laptop so that you can use Skype or another free Internet voice service.

Techie level: Turn your home phone into an IP phone.

Here are other ideas that some people have tried (and we, of course, don’t recommend that anyone does anything against the law). One of the open secrets about cordless phones is that it is extremely easy to steal phone service using them. Many cordless phones use the DECT chipset, and special laptop cards are available that that allow the users to trick cordless phones system into thinking that the laptop user is one of the cordless phones associated with it. www.dedected.org/trac

FREE CABLE

Novice level: Miro is an online service that allows you to turn your computer into a Tivo-like device that will download the shows you want to watch as soon as they are available via file-sharing programs. Find out more here: www.getmiro.com

Techie level: Turn your computer into a television tuner using Myth TV. www.mythtv.org

FREE MEDIA

Novice level: There are plenty of services online that offer free media, from Hulu.com, which offers a lot of free television and movies, to Archive.org, which has a vast collection of public domain films. Neither Hulu nor Archive.org requires you to download any special software. Or if you’d like something classier, you can download free, public domain classical music at MusOpen! www.musopen.com

Techie level: Use a BitTorrent client to download public domain music and movies that you can save on your computer. CreativeCommons.org lists many artists who offer their music for free. Public Domain Movies offers torrents of movies available to you for free. www.publicdomaintorrents.com

Other options people have tried: Some use a BitTorrent client to download any movie, television, music, software, or books that they like, using a popular Torrent search engine like Isohunt. There are a lot of what you might call grey area legal media at the Pirate Bay. That oufit is located in Sweden, a country that recenty elected representatives of the Pirate Party to serve in the European Parliament.

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FREE POT

You may be broke, but you can still smoke

By Rachel Buhner

It’s not well advertised, but if you’re short on money and need your organic herbal medicine, many of the city’s pot clubs will give it to you, free. Some places ask for proof of income or require membership while some are more loose about it. You won’t get big bags, either — typically the freebie is a gram. But while the American Medical Association and the insurance companies argue in Washington, D.C., about how to keep their fingers on the cash, local medical marijuana dispensaries are actually trying to serve needy patients.

The Green Door offers free marijuana every Thursday from 12 noon to 2 p.m. for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

843 Howard Street. (415) 541-9590. www.greendoorsf.com

The Market Street Cooperative offers free marijuana every Sunday for those who can’t afford it. No proof is required.

1884 Market. (415) 864-6686 www.marketstreetcooperative.com

The Hemp Center offers compassionate donations to all members when available; no proof of income is required. There’s also free Internet access, free bottled water, and free rolling papers.

4811 Geary (415) 386-4367www.thehempcenter.com

Sanctuary offers free medical marijuana, but there’s currently a waiting list and priority if given to terminally ill patients. Proof of income required; open to San Francisco residents only.

669 O’Farrell (415) 885-4420

Harborside Health Centers offers a care package program to low-income patients. Paperwork showing a fixed low income is required; patients can receive a free gram and a half each week. Additionally, members from any income bracket can volunteer at the center performing general activist work (calling local representatives, writing letters, etc.). After one hour of work, patients receive a free gram.

And there’s more: every Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., the center offers members free how-to-grow classes taught by David Gold, author of The Complete Cannabis. Members also get a free lending library for cannabis-related materials as well as free holistic health services such as hypnotherapy, chiropractic, naturopathy, yoga, reiki, traditional Chinese medicine, Western herbalist consultations, and Alexander Technique classes.

1840 Embarcadero, Oakl. (510) 533-0146, www.harborsidehealthcenter.com

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FREE PAINT

Not many colors, but the price is right

Every wonder what happens to all that old paint that good, responsible San Franciscans drop off at the city dump? It gets recycled, in the best possible way. The dump workers sort it by color, pour it into big buckets, and give it away.

You don’t get a wide color selection (off-white is the big choice) but the price is right and it keeps the stuff out of the landfill. Schools and community groups get priority, but San Francisco residents can stop by and pick some up whenever there’s extra.

501 Tunnel Avenue. 330-1400. www.sfrecycling.com/sfdump

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FREE SEX

Clubs, classes, and clinics dedicated to low-cost lovin’

By Molly Freedenberg

As anyone with a broken bed frame or a broken heart knows, even sex you don’t exchange money for is rarely free. But we’ve compiled a list of sex-related events, resources, health centers, and club nights that are easier on the pocketbook than most.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Good Vibrations is always hosting free events, classes, and book signings at its Bay Area stores. This month, check out Paul Krassner reading from his book In Praise of Indecency on July 15 and Kevin Simmonds presenting his new project "Feti(sh)ame," based on interviews with gay men about sexual fetishes, on July 16, both at the Polk Street location, and a reading/signing of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitues Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money (featuring stories by Annie Sprinkle and Tracy Quan, among others) July 30 in Berkeley. www.goodvibes.com

CHAPS

With no cover and nightly drink specials, this SoMa gay bar is the place to ogle hot men on a budget. Ongoing events include Shirts Off Mondays, Trumer Tuesdays (featuring $2 Trumer drafts and specials on Jäger and fernet); the sports-gear and jock-strap-themed Locker Room Wednesdays (with specials on Speakeasy ales, Wild Turkey, and shooters with names like Cock Sucker and Golden Showers); Thursday’s Busted (with whiskey specials and indie, electro, and ’80s remixes); Men in Gear on Saturdays, Cheap Ass Happy Hour every Monday through Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.; and Rubber (hosted by the Rubbermen of SF Bay) every second Friday.

1225 Folsom, SF. (415) 255-2427, www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

CENTER FOR SEX AND CULTURE

This nonprofit organization provides education and resources across the gender spectrum. Though there’s a fee to attend many of the events hosted here, visiting the extensive library/media archive is free. So is checking out "Erotic Embrace of the Corset," an exhibit featuring 50 years of photography of bodies tied up tight, on display through Sept. 10. Call before you visit (the center is run by volunteers and has irregular hours), or try stop by between 1 and 5 p.m. weekdays.

1519 Mission, SF. (415) 255-1155, www.sexandculture.org

FIRST FRIDAY FOLLIES

Burlesque, by its very nature, is meant to be accessible to the masses — which means it should be not only lowbrow, but low cost. This monthly burlesque, music, and comedy revue takes "low" even lower by cutting out the cover charge entirely.

9:30pm. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.myspace.com/firstfridayfollies

FEMINA POTENS

Part art gallery, part performance space, part community center, this nonprofit dedicated to greater visibility for women and transgendered artists has become a favorite of luminaries like Annie Sprinkle, Michelle Tea, and Carol Queen. Many events are low or no cost, and it’s always free to check out the art, including this month’s "Show Me Your Fantasy," featuring Malia Schlaefer’s photographs addressing contemporary female sexuality.

Thurs–Sun, 12–6pm. 2199 Market, SF. (415) 864-1558, www.feminapotens.org

SF JACKS

When you’re poor and bored, nothing perks you up quite like a good session of self-love. But if you’re tired of the solo mission, join other like-minded men for group "therapy" every second and fourth Monday. Though a $7 donation is suggested (insert "donation" pun here), no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Just remember the rules: mandatory nudity, jack-off play only.

7:30–8:30pm. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission, SF. (415) 267-6999, www.sfjacks.com

ST. JAMES INFIRMARY

Run by and for sex workers, this 10-year-old nonprofit provides free STI counseling and testing, rapid HIV testing, transgender healthcare and hormone therapy, self-defense classes, legal advice, and much MUCH more to sex workers and their families.

1372 Mission, SF. (415) 554-8494, stjamesinfirmary.org

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FREE TIPS GRAB BAG

More free stuff we love

You can watch Giants games free through the outfield fence; three-inning limit when there’s a crowd … Thrift stores all say "no dumping," but people leave stuff out in front late at night anyway … Ask someone leaving Muni for their transfer (and always take a transfer, even if you don’t need it, to share) … There’s almost always great free music at street fairs …. You can actually ski free at a lot of resorts if you do the old-fashioned thing and hike up the slopes instead of buying a lift ticket; on busy days nobody notices (obviously, this works best for short-run beginner hills) … There’s some great stuff at freecyle.org, but it’s a Yahoo newsgroup and floods your inbox so you have to keep up with it … The free stuff listings on Craigslist are also good … Casual carpools are a great way to get a free ride across the Bay … The Lyrics Born, Toto La Momposina, Kailash Kher’s Kailasa and the San Francisco Ballet all perform free this summer at Stern Grove, Sundays at 2 p.m., see www.sterngrove.org/2009season … Catch Wicked, Beach Blanket Babylon, Killing My Lobster, and more at the SF Theater Festival free shows; see www.sftheaterfestival.com and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (till Oct. www.ybgf.org) … You can get free movie passes many weeks from the Guardian … Buy a Muni pass before the end of the month, and you can share your old one; it’s good for three days of free rides at the beginning of the month … Almost every used bookstore has a free box; mostly crap, but sometimes some gems …. The Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley offers free introductory sailing sessions on summer Sundays; for the schedule and details check out www.cal-sailing.org. San Francisco Brew Craft offers free beer-brewing classes every Monday night at 6 p.m. 1555 Clement, 751-9338 … You can catch free outdoor movies at Jack London Square in Oakland every other Thurs. night through August (www.jacklondonsquare.com/newscenter/upcomingevents) … Free Shakespeare in the Park performs The Comedy of Errors Sat. and Sun. afternoons in August and September at the Presidio Parade Grounds (schedule at www.sfshakes.org/park/index)

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FREE TRADE

Go ahead, give it away — that’s the way the next economy may work

By Cecile Lepage

The 2003 documentary film The Corporation established that corporations were psychopathic entities, prone to irresponsibility, manipulation, and remorselessness. Now writer Douglas Rushkoff contends that we — the human beings — have started to act like corporations. His new thought-provoking book — Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back (Random House) — retraces how society has internalized the corporate values that disconnect us from one another. The current economic meltdown, he argues, is our chance to overthrow this dysfunctional model. We talked to him about a very different economy — one based on things that are free.

SFBG Your outlook is bleak, but you are still optimistic enough to see a way out. What’s your plan?

Douglas Rushkoff This crisis is an opportunity to start doing things for each other. First we have to be daring enough to enter gift economies, where we exchange favors freely and openly without even keeping track, just assuming that it’s all going to work out. So if someone needs tutoring or help mowing his lawn, you should do it. Eventually we’ll realize how much less money we need to earn to get what we need.

SFBG You acknowledge that accepting favors in exchange for other ones feels messy and confusing to us. Why is that?

DR We’re afraid of being indebted to somebody else. In order to accept something from another person, you also accept your indebtedness and acknowledge your gratitude. Money feels cleaner to us. People prefer hiring a person to babysit for their child rather than accepting a favor from the old lady down the street — because if you accept, what social obligation have you incurred? What if she wants to join you at your next barbecue? What if she now wants to be your friend? So now we all have to work more to get money to buy things that we used to just exchange freely with each other.

SFBG You blame the corporations for convincing us that we are self-interested beings. How did they achieve that?

DR They thought that the mathematician John Nash’s bad game theory applied to real life. A number of experiments tried to show that human beings made decisions like poker players for personal short-term gain and assuming the worst about other people. None of the experiments actually worked: the secretaries they did the experiment on behaved collaboratively and compassionately.

The better scientists, like Dr. Glynn Isaac, an Africanist from Harvard, demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that food-sharing and collaboration are what allowed homo sapiens to survive. Nevertheless, we intentionally built an economy and a scarcity-based currency to promote the self-interest.

People look at the economy we’re living in as a fact of nature. They don’t see it as a set of rules that was put in place by a particular people at a particular time. They look at money the way a doctor looks at the bloodstream. They don’t understand that it’s a social construction and that we can rewrite it.

Flour + Water

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July 15, 2009

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paulr@sfbg.com

In an era when the naming of restaurants resembles the naming of Japanese cars — the ideal being a single, elegant, mysterious word like "Incanto" or "Lexus" — it seems rather daring to give a new place such a defiantly plain, yet weirdly complex, name as Flour + Water. One suspects that the idea is to suggest simplicity and forthrightness, but a certain austerity is also implied — not to mention the ubiquitous ness of flour in this country. We eat way too much flour, too much of it white and refined. It silts up our insides. I do like the "+" for its distinctiveness.

As it happens, pizza crust consists largely of flour and water, and one of the bigger deals at Flour + Water (which opened by a pair of Davids, White and Steele, late in the spring on the ground floor of a big Victorian building in the innermost heart of the Mission District) is pizza. The pies are made in the Neapolitan style, which means a thin crust and a very hot oven. This style of pizza has become very, very popular in San Francisco in the past few years — a winsome development for those of us who suffered through a long Dark Age of foam-rubber crusts. Are Flour + Water’s crusts up to the high standard set by Pizzeria Delfina, Gialina, Pizzetta 211, and Piccino? That, Horatio, is the question.

The duet of flour and water also figures in pasta, but the routine here can be more complex, since if you replace the water with egg, you end up with noodles. Flour + Water’s — excellent — pastas are hand-rolled, just from semolina flour (the slightly yellowish stuff produced from durum wheat) and water, I would guess. The name we give to this combination, macaroni, faintly suggests that it came from a box on a supermarket shelf, but in fact Flour + Water’s pastas are not only brilliantly sauced but produced in unusual shapes with evocative names — "maltagliati," for instance, or "rags," a type of pasta made from leftover scraps. One evening I saw a plate of this arriving at the festive table next to ours, and it did look like a tiny pile of old clothes waiting to be stuffed into a Goodwill bag.

My own plate of pasta, already dispatched, had consisted of agnolotti ($16), a swarm of little ravioli-like pockets filled with seasoned minced pork and bathed in a sauce of butter, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. (Our well-schooled server said that the name meant "clouds," but I might have misunderstood her; "agnolotti" is also said to refer to the shape of priests’ hats.) The pasta itself had the slight, not-unpleasant toughness I associate with fresh macaroni; fresh noodle pasta is a bit more pliant and luxurious. It’s like the difference between wool and cashmere.

Given the apparent pedigree of the pizza operation (chef Thomas McNaughton’s kitchen has its own pizzaiolo, Jon Darsky), I was struck by the condition of the crust under a margherita pie ($12 for a decent-sized one). I am all for blistering, and the restaurant’s Web site boasts of an ultra-hot oven, but there is a difference between blistering and charring. Blistering good, charring bad. Charring makes an un-pretty spectacle and leaves an off taste — we are talking about burnt flour, after all — while research suggests that it’s bad for you. By the time we were done with the pie, the serving tray was littered with twisted little lumps of charcoal, like burned-out tanks on a miniature battlefield. The toppings were fine and included fior di latte (a mozzarella cheese made from cow’s rather than water-buffalo milk). The half-wilted basil leaves clearly had spent some time in the oven.

In a small irony, some of the restaurant’s best dishes have nothing to do with pizza, pasta, or flour. A trio of plump marinated sardines ($9) wore bikinis of roasted-pepper slivers — they looked like a chorus line in some musical about a beach — while a simple side dish of chickpeas ($5) turned out to feature fresh chickpeas. These have a wonderful spring-green color and a bit more juiciness than the reconstituted, beige kind. F+W’s lot was also enlivened by a fine dice of pancetta, carrot, and onion (a meaty twist on mirepoix) and broth, which we daintily sipped after the chickpeas were gone.

Best of all, Flour + Water’s brief dessert list includes an authentic star: a block of olive-oil-scented cornmeal cake ($8) topped with a globe of olive-oil ice cream — a dense, smooth reminder that olives are fruit — and flanked by split strawberries tossed with shreds of candied fennel. Fennel is a root, not a fruit, and candied or not, its looks are unprepossessing (like a frosted-glass lightbulb that’s shattered), but its licorice flavor takes well to sweetening and to a union with sweet-tart, ripe strawberries. Enchanting!

FLOUR + WATER

Dinner: 5:30 p.m.–midnight

2401 Harrison, SF

(415) 826-7000

www.flourandwater.com

Beer and wine

Pleasant noise

AE/MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Graphic Sexual Horror

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July 14, 2009

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REVIEW The prurient pleasure piece Graphic Sexual Horror cannot be accused of failing to live up to its title. In fact, it’s safe to say that discussion or protestations (and anyone who’s not catatonic is bound to have something to say) that follow this solid porn-ocumentary will be related to the rather contentious content. This fair-minded glimpse into the pain-glorious performances and behind-the-scenes procedures of the now defunct hardest of the hardcore bondage Web sites is simultaneously titilutf8g and reflective, admiring and critical.

Insex.com founder Brent Scott, in explaining the academic ostracism at Carnegie Mellon that led to his new career as a high priest of porn, says this: "If they don’t let me teach their kids, I’ll corrupt them," which seems an apt encapsulation of his renegade artistic arrogance. This account is assuredly enriched by his candidness and self-criticism. He praises, sometimes adores, his female models and expresses sincere regret when his neglect leads to a malfunctioning water tank that could have inflicted injury. At the same time, however, he is chauvinistically demanding and insensitive to his model’s vulnerabilities. Essentially, he represents the ambivalence of extreme bondage — the murky convergence of liberated consensual sex and exploitation.

Clips of artistically presented live feed performances featuring such intrigues as blue-purple strangulated breasts and hot pepper being applied to genitalia, are intercut with interviews to give a sense of the models’ experiences. For bondage enthusiasts and the morbidly curious, there are visuals to gawk or gasp at throughout, but the tone becomes more conflicted as the film addresses the dilemmas of Insex models, as illustrated by the young woman who whimpers incredulously as her face is slapped. Face-slapping was her one hard limit (defined as activity forbidden by a model), but she struggles to play along because of the shame and lost fortunes a refusal begets.

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR Thurs/16–Fri/17, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Remembering “Creature from the Black Lagoon” star Ben Chapman

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July 10, 2009

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By Sean McCourt

Courtesy of Ben Chapman

Having roared and clawed its way into the hearts of film fans around the world when it was first released in 1954, the Universal monster classic Creature from the Black Lagoon has endured for generation after generation, seeming to grow in popularity with every passing year. Filmed in glorious black and white, the tale of the ancient half-man, half-fish — better known as the Gillman — cleverly uses the unique aspects of the colorless medium to effectively create a creepy atmosphere, particularly with the manipulation of shadows and lighting. Believable cast interaction, a monstrous musical score, and above all a great story make Creature a picture to remember — and it’s clear from the multitude of collectibles, video releases, actor appearances, and screening events that faithful fans have done just that.

The iconic and intricately designed Gillman suit was brought to life in the scenes above water by the late Ben Chapman, who gave the character a sympathetic feel through his body language and natural motions — a feat that no modern CG effect could hope to recreate. Chapman, who passed away last year at the age of 79, visited San Francisco in October of 2006 for a special event at the Castro Theatre celebrating Creature, meeting fans and sharing memories with the audience. I had a chance to speak with him then.

“One of the things that made [the film] successful — and it shows — is that we were all very happy. It was a great crew, great people. I would get up in the morning and I couldn’t wait to get to the studio,” he said.

The deep end

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July 8, 2009

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Lucrecia Martel’s three mischievous films scramble normal narrative hierarchies, privileging sensation to exposition, desire to explanation, and intuition to realism. Thunder-clapped fairy tales of unknowing, they have an adolescent’s sensitivity to the strangeness of the adult world. Outside of Tsai Ming-liang, it’s difficult to think of another working director with such a productive obsession with water. Martel is attracted to locations where her characters can sink, like pools and beds, and she arranges her multiplanar compositions so that these figures appear as floating heads and torsos.

The apprehensive tilt of Martel’s stories is left undefined, just on the cusp of horror, but the director’s formal coordination of sound and image is anything but imprecise. Her humid aesthetic popped out fully formed in the opening minutes of 2001’s La Ciénaga ("The Swamp"), in which the sloshing reds of blood and wine, a padded sound design, and viscous handheld camera movements conduct an atrophying bourgeois scene with the heavy-lidded amplitude of a Caravaggio. The Holy Girl (2004) further demonstrated Martel’s skill at playing for senses other than reason. Her new work, The Headless Woman, is her most expressly psychological yet, and thus entails a newly concentrated application of her unusual narration style — a kind of intimate, hooded third person in which neurosis and desire register as phenomenology.

The woman of the title (which doesn’t translate literally) is another of Martel’s dislodged bourgeoisie women. Driving home from a gabby gathering, she runs over something while absentmindedly reaching for her cell phone; after this, her mind absents her. Perhaps amnesiac, but at the least traumatized, Veronica (Maria Onetto) reenters her everyday life in a fog. Her weak smiles and mute replies will irritate some viewers, especially those who reflexively despise the withholding ambiguity of Antonioni films like 1964’s Red Desert (Martel’s characters, like Antonioni’s, often put on sunglasses at odd moments, as if to shield their wanting souls). What’s remarkable about The Headless Woman in comparison to so many art house pretenders, however, is that Martel is able to maintain this high level of uncertainty without letting the story go slack. As much as Veronica seems to drift, the film’s carefully calibrated ruptures make it so she cannot keep the world at bay.

HOLY GIRLS AND HEADLESS WOMEN: THE FILMS OF LUCRECIA MARTEL

July 14–15 and 23, 7:30 p.m. (Martel in person July 14–15), $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

The Tallest Man on Earth

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June 30, 2009

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PREVIEW In strictly literal terms, the Tallest Man on Earth’s Kristian Mattson is not the tallest man on the globe. He is probably the Best Bob Dylanesque Tall Dude on Earth, and also perhaps the Tallest New Swedish Musical Talent on Earth, but I suppose those monikers wouldn’t have quite the same ring. Along with no-nonsense yet playful songwriting chops, one of the things I find most fetching about his debut album Shallow Grave (Gravitation, 2008) is its direct zest. Mattson fingerpicks melodies with sprinter’s speed but never loses a nimble grace. The Tallest Man on Earth toured the U.S. with the equally austere Bon Iver recently, but I have to say I prefer Mattsson’s energetic acoustic spirit to the comparative mope of Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon. Shallow Grave‘s gloomy title is a bit misleading — on one of its signature tunes, "I Won’t Be Found," the underground dwelling is a quite lively mole hole.

The keening nasality of Mattson’s vocals are his most overt link to the Dylan tradition. His songs traverse comparatively narrow territory though, bypassing societal commentary for explorations of emotion and more intimate human relationships. In lesser hands, such intent yields forgettable schmaltz — or worse yet, the kind of music you want to forget and can’t. But Mattson avoids sentimentality and vagary through earthy imagery and a vital energy that avoids easy softness. The sonic equivalent of a splash of ice-cold water on one’s face in the morning, his songs are a bracing alternative to the melancholy brooding of his countryman José Gonzalez. The Tallest Man on Earth is also a contender for the Handsomest Tall Man with a Ceiling-Scraping Pompadour on Earth, a factor that can’t possibly hurt him as a live draw.

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH With Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel. Thurs/2, 8 p.m., $12–$24. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421. www.independentsf.com

“Bernd & Hilla Becher: A Survey – 1972-2006”

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June 30, 2009

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REVIEW The problem, or perhaps the benefit, of a survey of photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher in an environment like the Fraenkel Gallery is the institutional quality the space projects onto the work. Although a sense of sterility is key to the Bechers’ photography, and while it can be contended that the 49 Geary Street site only accentuates the Bechers’ attempt at objectivity, such a setting also brings the success of the work in the marketplace to the fore, rather than providing a hermetic environment in which to operate.

This conundrum is interesting in light of the deadpan documentation of the water towers, grain elevators and blast furnaces that are the subject of the Bechers’ black-and-white photographs and, seemingly, the Fraenkel show. Arranged in grids for side-by-side comparison, each industrial structure is consistently the same size within its frame. As a result, there is a sense of impartiality, which prompts a discourse between the documented structures and, more broadly, between each photograph. The Bechers’ appear to be simultaneously operating within a system and outside a system. They implement something akin to a turn-of-the-century scientific classificatory technique in which the camera is used to document a subject’s unique features, but they also aestheticize the subject.

Bit the neutral stance of the Bechers’ photographs eschews Blossfeldt-like modeling. Instead, it appears to take cues from the Bauhausian model — one in which the built environment was celebrated, along with the camera, as archetypically modern. Yet while both styles of photography might be influences (perhaps especially so because of the couple’s respective academic training), the Bechers’ photography consistently removes clear reference points. Because of this, the stance of the gallery in which the work is exhibited becomes more apparent. Despite its prime examples from — and comprehensive look at — the German couple’s work, this survey situates their photography within a historical context rather than accentuating its conceptual relevance.

BERND & HILLA BECHER: A SURVEY — 1972-2006 Through Fri/3. Tues–Fri, 10:30–5:30 a.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary, SF. (415) 981-2661. www.fraenkelgallery.com

Selling the park

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June 24, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Considering that it exists just a short hop from the industrial grind of Third Street, Candlestick Point State Recreation Area is a surprisingly wild and peaceful 150-acre bayshore park.

On a recent afternoon, a man practiced his golf swings, a group fished off a pier, and a lizard darted across a trail and into a clump of wildflowers, all apparently unaware of the storm gathering around the future of this waterfront habitat.

State Sen. Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 792 would give the State Lands Commission and State Parks Department the authority to negotiate an exchange of 42 acres in the park for patches of land on the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, allowing Lennar Corp. to build condos in the state park and reducing Bayview’s only major open space by 25 percent.

Leno claims that SB 792 "will help realize one of the few remaining opportunities for large-scale affordable housing, parks, open space, and economic development in San Francisco by authorizing a key public-private land exchange necessary for the development of Hunters Point/Candlestick Park."

"A lot of this property is dirt, and much of it is used by the 49ers for parking. It’s not high quality park land," Leno told the Guardian.

In addition to adding some amendments suggested by the Sierra Club, Leno said state and federal agencies must approve the deal, which would also require a full environmental impact report. "There will be no environmental shortcutting," Leno said.

But environmental advocates are outraged that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his chief economic advisor, Michael Cohen, are trying to get state legislators to facilitate an unpopular land swap that allows an out-of-state developer to build thousands of condos on state tidelands in exchange for strips and pockets of the toxic shipyard (see "Eliminating dissent," 6/17).

"When Michael Cohen asked us to endorse what they were calling a conceptual framework, he called it a rush to the starting line and promised us a full and robust discussion of the actual proposal," Kristine Enea, who works for the India Basin Neighborhood Association, said of last year’s Proposition G. "We’re not trying to stop the development, but we want a discussion. And we’re raising questions that otherwise won’t be raised until after the environmental impact report is completed."

In April, Newsom wrote to Sen. Fran Pavley, who chairs the state’s Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water, claiming that plans for the shipyard and Candlestick Point had already been endorsed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and overwhelmingly approved by voters in June 2008.

"By utilizing a true public-private partnership, this [SB 792] will cause tens of millions of dollars of public open space investment to state park lands and public trust lands, at no cost to the state or the city’s general fund, providing a significant benefit to the state as well as to the citizens of San Francisco," Newsom wrote.

As part of the land swap, Lennar would pay fair market value for much of the parkland, with estimates of about $40 million that would go to the state for managing the remaining acreage. Lennar proposes to build 7,850 housing units on Candlestick Point, and it’s unclear how many of those will go into what is now a state park.

Critics say Newsom is trying to use Prop. G like a hammer to force through legislation that wouldn’t pass locally and would destroy the park’s current functions and wildlife habitat, forever changing life in Bayview Hunters Point, due to the scale and socioeconomic and environmental impacts of Lennar’s proposed redevelopment.

Created by the legislature in 1977, CPSRA is the state’s first urban park. It offers panoramic views of the wind-whipped bay, San Bruno Mountain, and Yosemite Slough, the only unbridged waterway in the city’s southeast sector. And while it’s not typically crowded, the park is well-used by residents, who like to hike and jog, walk their dogs, and windsurf adjacent to Monster Park stadium.

Saul Bloom — whose nonprofit group, Arc Ecology, angered Cohen and Newsom in February when it published "Alternatives for Study," a draft report that identified deficiencies in Lennar’s current proposal — admits that a section of the park is a weed-filled lot that 49ers fans use for parking on game days.

"But the leasing for parking contributes $800,000 toward park maintenance annually," Bloom told the Guardian, noting that this is a vital source of funding in tough times.

He also noted that the California State Parks Foundation recently raised $12 million to restore Yosemite Slough and the California Solid Waste Management Board (whose members include former Sen. Carole Migden, whom Leno defeated last year) recently completed a $1 million rehabilitation of a former construction debris field on the state park property.

But neither this nor the state Budget Conference Committee’s recent decision to institute a $15 surcharge on vehicle license fees of noncommercial vehicles as a dedicated funding source to keep California’s state parks open will save CPSRA from being hobbled if SB 792 is approved in its current state.

"Surely other land can be used for building condos. Affordable housing and condo residents need open space too," said Peter Barstow, founding director of Nature in the City, noting that the 42-acre parcel of contested land represents 25 percent of the park, but only 5 percent of the 770 acres the developer has at its disposal to build 10,500 units of proposed housing.

"Any loss in acreage would seriously diminish the ability of the park to serve the city’s needs, especially with 10,500 new units proposed for the Lennar development," Barstow said.

He said some "logical swapping" is possible. "But they are doing some numbers game, in which they are counting a huge amount of parkland that is already there."

"We should be thinking how to connect these ecologically isolated islands," Barstow said, who sees this debate as an opportunity to link CPSRA to wildlife corridors in McClaren Park and Bayview Hill. "The development should be in the interest of the people, critters, wildlife and plants in the Bayview, not in those of someone in an office thousands of miles away."

He also scoffed at proponents’ arguments that the density of the development means that it is smart urban growth. "Just because a development is dense is not an argument to build it on a park."

Cohen recently told the Guardian that the 77 acres of the 49ers stadium and all the paid parking inside its facility will be filled with "mainly retail and entertainment," while the 42 acres of state park would be used to build condos.

Meredith Thomas of the Neighborhood Parks Council noted that her group "fully supports the revitalization and redevelopment of the Candlestick Point/Shipyard area … But when folks voted for Prop. G in June 2008, nowhere did the measure say that by voting for it, you are agreeing to sell parkland."

"We are always concerned when municipal land that is being used as a park is put up for sale," Thomas said. "While it’s a state park, it really functions as a neighborhood park for those who use it. I think what happens when we plan for large developments is that we don’t do enough to plan for parks with the density increase that’s coming."

The Sierra Club has been leading the charge against the bill. "We lose 40 acres but gain a bathroom," Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s local representative jokingly told the Guardian. "Now that’s a good deal!"

Observing that the organization’s position is "no net loss of acreage, no loss of biodiversity, no loss of wildlife corridors," Feinstein said, "There are a ton of alternatives to this plan and no reason to destroy 25 percent of the park or build a bridge and a road over Yosemite Slough."

With Arc’s studies showing that the bridge, which will cost $100 million to construct, only shaves two minutes off travel time, Feinstein added: "This is a road to nowhere. It’ll cost $50 million a minute."

He also said that allowing a company to buy state parkland "sets a terrible precedent… Then every state park is at risk from developers as the state’s budget woes grow. I hope Sen. Mark Leno sees this."

"No one would ever think put housing on Crissy Field," Feinstein continued. "But in the Bayview, the attitude is, why not? That whole mentality has made the area into an environmental justice community. Even when it’s given something, it comes in a costly way to the community, but a cheap way for the developers."

Bar Bambino

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June 23, 2009

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paulr@sfbg.com

Heresy is the true spice of life, and it was with this thought in mind that I sat one evening in Bar Bambino, a two-year-old wine bar in a most unlikely location — a heretical location? — and had a beer. The beer was a Moretti but also dark, a La Rossa. I’d never before seen Italian dark beer, either here or in Italy, and, truth be told, I didn’t know the Italians even brewed dark beer. The party of the second part, a beer skeptic, reached across the table to take a sip from the large, shapely goblet.

"Mmmm! That’s good!" was the verdict. "Chocolately."

The verdict, really, was unanimous and extended to Bar Bambino in its entirety. The restaurant sits on one of the bleaker stretches of 16th Street as it passes through the Mission District, and its narrow poker face is easy to miss. Once inside, though, you will feel as if you’ve stepped into an enchanted cave that includes a communal table (in the front window), a bar, a second communal table deeper in that can also be set aside for large parties, and, in the rear, a heated garden for a semi-al fresco experience.

Years ago, in the mid-1990s, we spent the better part of a Florentine afternoon lounging in a place called Cibrèo. Princess Di was said to be a habituée, and we could see why. Like Bar Bambino, it was off the beaten track and discreetly handsome, a place to sit and have a glass or two of wine and order a succession of plates of various sizes. It was my first in-country experience of polpette, the wonderful baby Italian meatballs that are typically served in a spicy tomato sauce.

Although Bar Bambino doesn’t look anything like Cibrèo (which sprawled like somebody drunk on a sofa), it does have a similar aura of relaxed but sustained festivity. It also has baby meatballs ($15); they come in a nice stack, with a potent tomato sauce and some shreds of chard, and they are very satisfying. Among other things, the polpette tell us that the kitchen takes its Italian cooking very seriously; the food is a lot like Delfina’s in this respect, though perhaps a bit more playful. You can get Italian-style "tater tots" ($5), nicely crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside, just like the ones you used to eat on a stick at the state fair.

The white-bean-and-tuna salad is an Italian classic. Here ($9.50) it’s made with slow-cooked spagna beans, which looked a lot like cannellini to me and tasted as if they’d been simmered in broth. The only other players were chunks of tuna, slivers of red onion, and a healthy splash of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO, to the acronym-involved). The dish was very tasty but drab-looking at best, like uncooked brains. In Bar Bambino’s defense, I will say that I’ve had similarly dreary-looking versions in Italy — which is odd, since Italian culture manages to bring small flourishes of visual style to practically everything.

A plate of bruschetta ($11.50) topped Sicilian-style with stewed lamb leg, crumbled egg, parsley, and poor-man’s cheese, gets my vote as best bruschetta in the world. I’ve never had bad bruschetta, and I’ve had plenty of good ones, but this one, with its shards of profoundly tender meat, was unforgettable.

Among the pastas, the trofie ($13.50), sauced with cream and crumblings of mild sausage, attracted our attention. The pasta itself turned out to resemble hand-rolled cigarettes, vaguely tubular and tapered at the ends. It’s a Ligurian pasta and is notable for consisting only of flour and water — no egg. Its little rills and ridges caught the sauce nicely. This is the kind of simple Italian dish that leaves you wondering, How do they manage to do so much with so little? A dash of this, a touch of that, and a miracle.

Italian culinary miracle-working does not always extend to the dessert cart, but at Bar Bambino the charm lasts all the way to the end of the menu card (although there is no dessert cart). On the traditional side, we have the old Sicilian favorite, cannoli ($7), a trio of delicate pistachio pastry flutes filled with goat-milk cheese, ricotta, honey — the pistachio flavor dominates — and on the more playful end we find zepote di banana ($8), beignet-like banana fritters topped with melted Nutella sauce, which you pour out yourself from a little pitcher.

Will those around you be watching to see if you spill? Possibly. Bar Bambino’s snugness invites a certain degree of social espionage. On the other hand, the sophisticated look, including a long wall consisting of narrow wood planks and the wonderful chandelier made of wine bottles hanging over the front communal table, might help insulate you from over-overt scrutiny, which can help you enjoy your heresy, whatever it might be. *

BAR BAMBINO

Tues.–Thurs., 11 a.m.–11 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–midnight; Sun., 5–10 p.m.

2931 16th St., SF

(415) 701-8466

www.barbambino.com

Wine and beer

AE/DS/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Is there hope?

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June 17, 2009

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steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY They agree global warming is happening, that it’s caused by the overuse of carbon-based fuels, that its impact on the planet and its myriad life forms will be devastating, and that Congress is failing to properly address the crisis. But the environmentalist and the oil executive disagreed about the most important issue: whether there’s any hope of saving the planet from the worst impacts of climate change.

Chevron CEO David O’Reilly and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope squared off June 10 at the Hotel Nikko ballroom in San Francisco for a truly historic Commonwealth Club event titled "Drilling for Common Ground." And they did find some, including agreeing publicly to jointly lobby Congress for an energy policy that more quickly phases out coal, the worst of the fossil fuels.

But the more telling exchanges between these two giants highlighted a fundamental disagreement: can we do something about this, or are we simply fucked? And by fucked, I mean doomed to simply accept official predictions of rising seas creating a billion refugees by 2050, the extinction of a million plant and animal species, severe water shortages in California and many other regions, and an unpredictably unstable new world ravaged by severe weather and exotic diseases.

To avoid much of that (but not all — it’s already too late for that), Pope said the scientific community consensus is that we need to stop all coal burning by 2030 (unless emissions can be sequestered, which isn’t technologically possible yet) and reduce our consumption of oil and other carbon-based fuels by 90 percent by the year 2050. "You can’t meet the targets any other way," Pope said.

And he thinks that meeting those targets is not only possible, but it would help the U.S. economy. "The rapid changes in the telecommunications field were good for the economy, and a similar change in the energy field would be good for the economy," Pope said. "We have lots of options if we start moving like it’s a crisis."

But O’Reilly doesn’t think that’s possible. "Even with the best of intentions, we’re only going to get part of the way there," O’Reilly said, quickly adding, "I think we’ll be lucky if we can get 20 to 25 percent by 2050."

At a press conference after the forum, I asked the two men about the implications of only reducing our fossil fuel consumption by 20 percent. Pope cited impacts ranging from "Florida will be a lot smaller" to severe water rationing in San Francisco. "It’s not an acceptable risk to take," he said. O’Reilly didn’t disagree, but he avoided specifics, saying, "I do fear that we have to plan for some adaptations."

It was a remarkable admission, one that most media coverage buried far beneath angles focusing on the common ground they found. But if the oil industry isn’t willing to diligently address the crisis — or worse, if it hinders political efforts to do so, as it has done for decades — does it really matter that it acknowledge the problem?

That core conflict created the sharpest exchange of the forum. "This is the 21st century. We can move much faster than we ever have before," Pope said.

"Well, if you can get the government to move faster, good luck," O’Reilly replied.

"It would help if you would get out of the way," Pope retorted.

Indeed, it is aggressive lobbying by Chevron and its industry trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, that created the energy situation that O’Reilly now finds so intractable. But Pope said he’s happy to work with O’Reilly on policies that support their areas of agreement, which even includes instituting a carbon tax.

Their clash didn’t just focus on global warming; it also focused on the oil industry’s wanton exploitation of people and ecosystems around the world, from propping up despotic regimes and sponsoring human rights abuses in oil-rich countries to leaving toxic messes in Ecuador and elsewhere.

Pope called for the oil industry to set aside 10 percent of its profits to create a global trust fund for dealing with its impacts and for international operating and cleanup standards that would prevent oil companies from exploiting weak or corrupt governments. "Chevron has to come to the table with the global community." Pope said.

O’Reilly never responded directly to the suggestion.

Stop PG&E’s alarming ballot measure

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June 16, 2009

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EDITORIAL One of the greatest threats to public power in a generation is quietly working its way toward the California ballot.

As Rebecca Bowe reports on page 12, a proposed initiative that would require two-thirds of the voters to approve any sort of public electricity measure, including community choice aggregation (CCA), has been submitted to the state attorney general’s office. And Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s fingerprints are all over it.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that this measure is designed to derail successful CCA efforts in places like Marin County and San Francisco, where the supervisors are moving forward to set up the equivalent of a buyer’s co-op for electricity. A San Francisco CCA would offer lower costs and much greener power — and would give the city far more control over its energy future.

The measure could also hamper the efforts of existing public power agencies to expand their territories or offer service to new customers.

The state Legislature approved a bill back in 2002 allowing California cities to replace private utility service with CCAs — and the bill included language barring PG&E and the other giant electricity companies in the state from spending money to undermine CCA efforts. In other words, it’s illegal for PG&E to use its immense resources and lobbying clout to try to block San Francisco’s efforts.

And PG&E has spent tens of millions of dollars in San Francisco, Davis, and elsewhere trying to block public-power programs.

So now the utility is going to the state ballot, where a campaign with enough money on an issue that’s sufficiently complicated can often pass. The law firm that filed the initiative papers, Neilsen Merksama (a political powerhouse that represents, among others, PG&E) won’t divulge much about the funding sources — except to say that the filing fee came from … PG&E. So there’s little doubt the measure will have the funds it needs to gather more than 600,000 signatures and mount a campaign of lies and disinformation.

That’s why supporters of CCAs and public power need to rally, now, to start planning to defeat this thing.

Mustering a two-thirds majority at the ballot for almost anything is difficult. Even in liberal San Francisco, bond measures requiring a two-thirds vote often pass only narrowly — and that’s if there’s no opposition. Even the most popular sorts of measures — say, for funding schools or libraries — can go down to defeat if anyone mounts serious opposition.

And PG&E, with its unlimited resources, would have the ability to kill the current CCA plans — or anything in the future that threatens the company’s illegal monopoly.

The two-thirds majority requirement is undemocratic and has paralyzed state government. Two-thirds mandates for new tax measures have made it almost impossible for cities and counties in this state to raise new revenue, even in desperate times like these.

The San Francisco supervisors need to immediately pass a resolution opposing the measure. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have told us they oppose it, and they should see if there’s any way the Legislature can add language to the CCA bill to bar regulated utilities from spending money to undermine public power statewide. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission should be talking to public power agencies all over the state and helping organize the opposition. If the measure makes it onto the ballot, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and every other municipal utility agency in the state will need to raise money — millions — and marshal forces against it.

This is a very serious threat, and the time to start defusing it is now. *

P.S.: Mayor Newsom has nominated Anson Moran, the former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, for a seat on the commission. This is a terrible idea. Moran had a notoriously anti-public power record when he was running the agency. In fact, in 1994, he tried to stop the city from bidding on the lucrative contract to supply electricity to the Presidio, saying that going up against PG&E would be "too political." And although he later said he would be willing to bid on the contract, he privately urged then-Mayor Frank Jordan to veto then-Sup. Angela Alioto’s measure pushing for public power at the Presidio. With all the battles over CCA and public power, the last thing the city needs is a PG&E call-up vote on the PUC. The Rules Committee hears the nomination June 18, and should vote to reject him.

India Jones

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June 10, 2009

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Small may be beautiful, but so is big — especially if it is spelled "Bolshoi," Russian for big. The Moscow company’s current production, La Bayadère, a tale of love and revenge, is set in an India whose Orientalism will make politically correct viewers shudder but that called up paroxysms of delight from the balletomanes who packed the Bolshoi Ballet’s recent performances at Zellerbach Hall.

As a huge unwieldy spectacle, this Bayadère is a hoot and a wonder. Some of it — the flailing fakirs; the high-leaping "Indians" — could have come straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Everything is huge, from the extensions and leaps to the speed and elevations. The excess is impressive and fun to watch, although the show does drag.

In the wedding scene, divertissements spilled over each other: a fan dance, a children’s dance, a parrot dance, the water jug "Manu" (a sprightly Chinara Alizade), and a "Golden Idol" (Ivan Vasiliev) who sits in the air like Buddha. The packed stage left little room for the royal couple’s pas de deux except to dance in parallel — which they do. For the finale, the bride (Maria Alexandrva) topped off a pyramid of adoring bodies.

This Bayadère is probably the only ballet in which two ballerinas try to kill each other by launching themselves as missiles in grand jeté. The duel between the strong-willed Gamzatti (Alexandrova) and Nikiya (Svetlana Zakharova) injected a much-welcome sense of drama. The man they fight over is Solor (Nikolay Tsiskaridze), an Indian noble. Tsiskaridze is a little self-involved but a spectacular dancer in terms of speed, elevation, and ballon.

With beautiful comportment, Alexandrova’s nuanced Gamzatti evolves from young girl to a revengeful wife. With her arms interwined and her liquid torso, Zakharova’s Nikiya looked like a fragile flame. But there is steel in that spine and those feet. But Bayadère‘s heart beats in the 32 women in tutus who make their way down a ramp in long arabesques. Zellerbach’s stage was too shallow to carry it off, and the overlapping lines didn’t coalesce. But when, as if by magic, they melted into a block of shimmering white, it was heart-stopping.

Review: “A Snow Mobile for George” at the Burning Fuse Film Festival

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June 5, 2009

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By Laura Swanbeck

Confounded after Bush (the “George” in question here) allows manufacturers to reintroduce a discontinued snowmobile engine that pollutes 100 times more than a car, director Todd Darling set out across America looking for answers. With Sindy, his snowmobile in tow, he documents the devastating impact of deregulation on the environment, including wildlife endangerment in California, water depletion in Wyoming, and asbestos contamination in post-9/11 New York City. Refreshingly unpretentious and even-keeled, Darling interviews everyday ranchers, fishermen, and firemen, listening to opponents and proponents of Bush’s policies alike. He truly hits his stride by exposing Federal conflicts of interest and illuminating the political power play behind-the scenes. In the end, the film finally answers its original query, but asks other lingering questions like, “Does less regulation really mean more freedom… and at what price?” Sure, Snow Mobile’s humor can be a bit hokey, but the sentiment is spot-on.

A Snow Mobile for George screens Sun/7-Mon/8, 6 p.m. as part of the Burning Fuse Film Festival, which runs today and Sun/7-Mon/8 at the Roxie .

Suck some heads at the SF Crawfish Boil & Ho-down

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June 3, 2009

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By Victoria Nguyen

Flickr photo by Janice Myint

In a little more than 72 hours, San Francisco’s Crissy Field will be the site of a mass massacre when 45,000 live crawfish meet their death in heavily spiced pots of boiling water.

It’s going to be chaotic. It’s going to be messy. It’s going to be absolutely friggin’ delicious.

This Saturday, a little bit of the Bayou Country comes to the Bay Area at the 6th Annual San Francisco Crawfish Boil & Ho-Down. According to event coordinators, this year’s turnout promises to be their largest to date, with expected attendance doubling from last year’s. The Crawfish Boil, which runs from 11am-7 p.m. at the western end of Crissy Field, will feature a live jazz band with approximately 3,000 pounds of spicy Louisiana crawfish and all you can drink beer.

The event began modestly in 2003, when two guys from Mobile, Alabama hosted a crawfish boil for a group of 25 in Golden Gate Park. Five years later, that group became 500. This year, they’re capping off the event at 1,000 folks.

“The great thing is we never started this with the intention of what it has turned into,” said Jonathan Wiggins, one of the co-founders of the event. “I think this crawfish boil event has the potential to be another big festival here in San Francisco.”

Film: The disturbed harmony of “Revanche”

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June 3, 2009

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By Erik Morse

Revanche was a 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee.

In the brief overture to Revanche, Austrian director Götz Spielmann includes an orchestra of chirping crickets and the mellifluous hum of a lawnmower laboring through viridescent patches of Viennese countryside. A plump housewife Susanne (Ursula Strauss), possibly with child, stares silently at this painterly expanse of beauty from the comfort of her modern kitchen. Somewhere nearby a limpid brook babbles quietly, its stunning combination of color and repose rivaling those placid marshes of Giverny. A large rock suddenly falls through the glassy surface of the pond, shattering the bucolic idyll and sending a discordant wave of water toward its banks. Something or someone has disturbed the harmony of this peaceful retreat and the resulting ripple might well threaten everyone in its path.

A distant memory

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June 3, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW I was cautious when I got the galley for Attica Locke’s first novel Black Water Rising (Harper, 448 pages, $25.99). I’d been intrigued before by beguiling plots of intrigue and suspense, only to find myself in the middle of a tepid affair with no way out except for closing the damn thing and chalking it up to yet another life lesson. All the warning signs were there.

The book’s protagonist, Jay Porter, is an attorney operating out of a Houston strip mall in 1981. His only client is a shady prostitute, who may or may not pay him. His wife, Bernie, is pregnant and he’s barely making ends meet to feed them, much less the baby who’s on the way. Though not happy with his mediocre existence, he’s content enough with his lot to be strong-willed and determined to make it.

Jay has a terrible secret, of course, that threatens to tear the world he has meticulously built asunder. And one fateful night, something happens that sets the unraveling in motion. He saves a mysterious woman’s life and places himself in the middle of a plot rife with sex, backroom deals, and dirty cash that will determine his fate and that of Houston, Texas, and eventually, the world!

"Easy, big fella. Easy," I told myself. "You’ve been hurt before." I saw the signs, as much as any reader would. I saw a Grisham story. I saw a Leonard tale. I knew I was being seduced, but I couldn’t put the book down. The first chapters hooked me like classic mid-list pulp — a phenomenon I miss like pay phones — and it took a minute to realize what Attica Locke was doing.

It wouldn’t be a spoiler to tell Jay Porter’s secret. He did time for running guns during the Black Power movement. This was during the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO program, when black dissidents’ phones were tapped, dossiers were amassed, and organizations were infiltrated. Jay Porter the strip mall lawyer has a legitimate cause to be paranoid. This kind of justified paranoia plagues many of the resisters who managed to survive the bloodbaths of the 1960s and 1970s social movements. Lensed through Porter’s claustrophobia, grandiosity, and self-deprecation, demons lurk in every dark corner. As the plot unfolds, the first thing that disappears from view is a tangible reality, one free from dark fantasy and delusion. Jay Porter may be nuts. Then again, maybe not.

Locke, a veteran screenwriter, has an almost supernatural understanding of pacing. This aids her well in storytelling, but even more so in figuring out where to work her magic. Her early 1980s Houston is a city on the verge of Texas-sized change. Porter is asked by his preacher father-in-law to work with the dockworkers union that meets in his church. The black dockworkers are being paid less than the white workers who do the same job. A split in the union along race lines is imminent. A battle between the warring workers breaks out after a young man is beaten. A greater impetus is revealed: the arrival of containers. These containers, it is threatened, will be used on barge, train, and truck, nearly rendering dockworkers obsolete. Jay Porter is asked to speak to the mayor — a "friend" from his revolutionary past — on behalf of the workers. Simultaneously he tries to uncover the identity of the mysterious woman he saved.

This is the one drawback in an otherwise stellar debut. Jay Porter has too much going on. So much that suspension of belief is pulled to the breaking point. So much that many characters who are vital to the plot get unbelievably overlooked. When the Porters’ home is burglarized, for example, Jay leaves his pregnant wife in the house to pursue a lead on one of his cases. When a tough offers Porter money to not pursue another lead, he does it anyway — out of, what, morbid curiosity? The mayor of Houston and many of the other characters are so full, rich, and singular that it is baffling and frustrating when someone as essential as Bernie becomes a bit player in Jay’s solipsistic pursuit. Is Jay Porter crazy, or just an asshole?

Black Water Rising reads like a hard-boiled thriller, but the real trick resides in Locke’s ability to personalize an overlooked part of American history and show how far-reaching, how entrenched, it is in today’s social, political, and cultural fabric. From running the voodoo down on the Weather Underground to using 1980s Houston as a backdrop, he wraps a People’s History of America in a digestible, entertaining package. There are whiffs of Chinatown and White Butterfly, sure, but Locke’s attention to the details between the action makes the novel, and turns every reader into an oracle.

As Jay solves this book’s mysteries, we see pre-Dubya America getting dubbed. We see the sprawl that is yet to be. We see the unions breaking, the factories shutting down, the diners, bars, and cafes closing. We see the Black Water Rising. I may not want to see too much more of Jay Porter, but I better see more of Attica Locke.

Let there be lunch

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June 3, 2009

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paulr@sfbg.com

In the restaurant pageant, places that don’t serve dinner are at risk of being seen as a ragtag contingent. Dinner is glory, while breakfast and lunch, if not preceded by the adjective "power" — relic of a pre-bust past — are routine. There are time constraints and concerns about drink, not to mention daylight, which, while delightful, can be inhibiting. People are free to dance the night away, but not the noon hour.

One response to this predicament is to be very good-looking — like, say, Stable Café, which opened about a year ago in a building that, in the 1870s, actually housed the mayoral stables, back in the days when mayors had stables of horses instead of (or in addition to) floozies. The structure has a Wild West, stagecoach-stop look and has been painted black — shades of that sex club on Castro Street in the early 1990s. Inside, though, all is spare, sunlit grace, with ice water pourable from a pewter ewer and a lovely gated courtyard, set with tables and patio umbrellas, on the north side of the building. The quiet style and attention to detail aren’t surprising, considering that there’s an architecture firm, Malcom Davis Architecture, on the building’s second floor, and that Davis and his partner, Brian Lackey, own the property and are its redesigners.

Lackey runs the food operation, which serves both the café and a catering concern called Mission Creek Kitchen. The former’s menu naturally emphasizes soups, salads, sandwiches, and panini — the last being Italian-style sandwiches pressed in a waffle-iron-like device and served hot. This method is especially effective when cheese is involved, since cheese melts and melted cheese holds things together while adding a gooey voluptuousness that is its own reward. Turkey sandwiches, for instance, can be dry, but Stable’s turkey and cheddar panino ($6.75) was enlivened by plenty of melted white cheddar. A vegetarian edition ($6.75) of tomato, pesto, and mozzarella cheese, was like a reimagined slice of pizza margherita. The bread used for the panini is plain french bread, not fancy but pillow-fresh within a tender-crisp crust.

Panini come with a sizable heap of mésclun, tossed with some carrot ribbons and a cherry tomato or two and glossed with a simple vinaigrette. If that doesn’t offer enough counterpoint, then perhaps a small bowl ($3.50) of the day’s soup, which might be a coarse purée of tomato and roasted red bell pepper — a strange combination for late spring, but let’s let it go because, even in the presence of out-of-season soup, Stable is as attractive a place to look at and sit in, or next to, in this part of the Mission since the days of the original Citizen Cake a decade ago. If you’ve missed a haven of sunny serenity since that operation packed up and moved to the Civic Center, then Stable Café might well strike you as paradise regained.

Just off Union Square, in the Chancellor Hotel, we find another handsome, daytime-only spot called Luques. We find it after some searching, since the dining room is well-concealed behind the hotel lobby. Furtiveness does offer its joys, but a restaurant that people have trouble finding is in danger of becoming a restaurant that people stop looking for. Yet those who manage to suss out Luques will find themselves in a comfortably appointed, skylit dining room that, in its remove from the street bustle just a few steps away, can seem almost like a private or VIP facility.

Chef Darren Lacy offers a mainstream California menu with gentle Southern flourishes. You can get po’boy sliders, for instance, or a Creole-style croque monsieur ($10) — the classic ham-and-cheese sandwich, made here with tasso instead of ham. (Tasso is an cold-smoked relative of prosciutto, with pork shoulder used in place of leg.) For a bit of added luxury, the bread is brioche, although that cake-like quality is somewhat obscured by a downpour of béchamel sauce. On the side: a mixed green salad for the ascetic or, for the rest of us, delicately golden, crisp fries.

I particularly liked Lacy’s cream of mushroom soup ($3.50 for a cup), which was thick with strips of shiitake mushrooms and creamy, although not too creamy, thanks to an expert blending of cream and stock. No Creole influence here (unless the cream counts), or on the California chicken sandwich ($9.25), a friendly get-together of boneless grilled chicken breast, avocado, tomato slices, jack cheese, bacon, and aioli on sourdough. Still, it did what a good lunch is supposed to do: satisfy without encumbering, so that when you leave the secret chamber you’re still as fleet of foot and clear of mind as you rejoin the daily pageant.

STABLE CAFÉ

Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–3 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

2128 Folsom, SF

(415) 552-1199

www.stablecafe.com

No alcohol

AE/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

LUQUES RESTAURANT & BAR

Daily, 7 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

433 Powell, SF

(415) 248-2475

www.luquesrestaurant.com

Full bar

AE/DS/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible