Whatever

Leftovers

-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS To a lover, love is bigger than anything, including reality, including practicality, reason, distance, sense, and in many cases, cornbread. So when a lover speaks to a lover of "the reality of," you know, "the situation" … you might understand or even agree, but afterward you will need to put a sweater on.

Reality checks, like hip checks, send you. What can you do but regain your skates and glide along?

What I meant to say about Brick Pig’s barbecue is: yum. Well, like a lotta barbecue, it’s inconsistent. Both times the brisket was great. But the pork ribs wavered from bone to bone. One would be tough and dry, another just fine, and anothernother fantastic.

Same with the beans: first time, great. Second time overly mustarded and therefore not so great.

What was consistent was the sauce. Get hot, you’ll be fine, and it’s excellent. And the brisket. And the place, which is small and perfectly atmospheric, with faux brick wallpaper and a couple of small tables for eater-inners.

How I found it was, well, I already knew about it for a while, because I would always see it after I’d just stopped at Flint’s for barbecue on my way to band practice. And I would always make a mental note, driving by, to check out Brick Pig next time. But I’m not known for my mentality, where barbecue is concerned. It’s more like an animal thing, so, so long as Flint’s entered my field of vision first …

Well, I don’t live in the North Bay anymore. I live in Oakland, meaning I have to drive up Shattuck to get to Flint’s, meaning I now see Brick Pig first. Still, when my new neighbor Lennie asked me where to get barbecue, I said, out of habit, "Flint’s." And then I went to work, which in this case was cooking dinner for the kids downstairs.

Lennie peaked her head in a little later and said, "We’re going to Brick Pig’s. Want us to bring you anything?"

I wasn’t hurt they weren’t taking my advice. I was hurt because I was on duty and would not be able to join them. "No thanks," I said, stirring whatever was cooking. "But if you have any leftovers … "

You don’t have to know me long to know me. She finished my thought, or rather, perfected it. "We’ll save you some," she said.

And she called while the kids were in the bathtub. They’d saved me some. I would only have to run across the street and back, but if anybody drowned or anything on my watch, I knew I would never be able to enjoy barbecue ever again. I decided to play it safe. I said I’d come by once the kids were sleeping.

So story time was hard. I kept losing the thread, and mixing metaphors. My point-of-view character accidentally died, very near the beginning, and then, because I’d stopped talking, perplexed, the kids took over. Once they start telling the stories, forget it. You may as well put on a pot of coffee and light them each a cigarette. They’re that talented.

Meaning my first taste of Brick Pig barbecue was cold and crusty by the time I got to it, but still: I licked the plastic clean. For my second taste, I took the childerns with me, and Lennie took hers, and that equals four childerns. Ma and Pa Brick House were happy to see everyone, at first, and broke out games and puzzles for the little ‘uns while they put our to-go order together.

Kids aren’t known for tranquility. They’re cute, as a rule, but peace is not their strong suit.

By the time we left, of course, Ma Brick House was singing a different tune. The lyrics were, "You know, you can call your order in, next time."

That was the time of the over-mustarded beans and pork-related inconsistency problems. As testament to the resilience and/or forgetfulness of adults, the next time I went, which was just a couple weeks later, first stop back from Berlin, Ma House remembered me and asked where my kids were. She said I shoulda brought them in with me.

I said, "I don’t have kids."

BRICK PIG’S HOUSE

Tue.–Sat.: noon–8 p.m.

5973 Shattuck, Oakl.

(510) 923-1789

No alcohol

MC,V,D,AE

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Paving the way for privatization

-
0

news@sfbg.com

City officials are considering shutting down the municipal asphalt plant — the source of material for repaving roads and fixing potholes — in order to facilitate construction of a private plant on the waterfront that the city would agree to help finance and support over the long term.

While the privatization plan is being billed by project proponents as a way to save money during tough financial times, it raises questions about whether relying on the private sector for this essential material could hurt the city’s ability to make emergency repairs and ultimately end up costing taxpayers even more.

For the cash-strapped Port of San Francisco, which will make millions of dollars leasing land for the new facility, this is unquestionably a good deal. But for the rest of the city, which is losing a potentially valuable public resource it has operated since 1909 when the first municipal plant opened, the answer is a bit less clear.

Douglas Legg, manager of finance and budget at the Department of Public Works (DPW), argues that the municipal plant is not cost-effective and that the city would pay less if it contracts with an outside vendor. In a 2006 study, Legg found that the city’s cost to produce a ton of asphalt was $75 while private plants offered it for $67.

"It’s true that E.B.I. Aggregates and Graniterock are a little cheaper because they have a market advantage: they own their own gravel quarries," admits Ben Santana, who has managed the municipal plant in the Bayview for the last 21 years. But he still thinks his facility plays an important role. "Otherwise they would have gotten rid of us long ago. We can mobilize in a few hours and city trucks don’t have to wait in line with other clients."

In the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the municipal plant proved to be a valuable asset. "The plant wasn’t damaged. We sent our crews to take care of cracks and voids that had suddenly opened up," Santana recalls. "So the city didn’t have to go south to get material, or pay to get the private plants to open."

Indeed, in 2006, DPW held off the proposed shutdown in order to maintain its access to asphalt in emergencies. Officials worried about being dependant on plants outside city limits, especially since E.B.I. in Brisbane was slated to cease operations in the upcoming years, which would have left Graniterock potentially enjoying a monopoly that could result in price increases.

Although the agency recognizes that it has to have an asphalt plant inside city limits to function well, it is losing the political will to maintain its own. So when port officials approached DPW with their plan to attract a private asphalt operator, the threat to close down the municipal plant resurfaced.

The port has issued a request for proposal (RFP) for an asphalt-batching plant to be built on Pier 94. The selected bidder would be bound to negotiate a long-term contract with the city guaranteeing it would supply asphalt at a price tied to the Northern California asphalt price index.

The port and DPW assume the potential market for asphalt in the city will be large enough to draw private operators. But that belief seems to contradict the rationale behind the decision to close the municipal plant in the first place, which was that it couldn’t produce volumes large enough to bring the price per ton down.

"The demand from the street resurfacing program was nowhere near as high as we thought it would be," Legg says. In 2004, DPW installed two silos on the site to store hot asphalt and increase production. DPW was hoping to generate additional revenue for the department by selling asphalt to private contractors and other agencies. But two years later, Legg concluded in his report that the plant not only failed to turn a profit, it was facing a $100,000 shortfall to repay its investment.

Demand might be picking up, though: city officials expressed their intention to make up for years of neglect in the upkeep of San Francisco streets by introducing a $368 million safe street and road repair bond measure for the November ballot. The plan would boost the number of blocks to be resurfaced from 100 to 400 for the next 10 years, something that might make the city-owned plant more cost-effective. But Legg skeptically points out that the plant still requires replacement of some key components.

"Last year we had a $60 million capital budget for all capital improvement needs in the city from the general fund sources. This year, we’ve got $22 million," Legg says. "They’re scarce dollars. I can’t speak for what the Board [of Supervisors] will chose to do, but it’s challenging to get capital money."

Legg also noted the city plant’s "frequent breakdowns" and limited capacity to store raw materials, criticism countered by Santana. "The plant was modernized in 1993. Sure, some equipment does date to 1953, and I’ve been pushing to replace them for years. But it’s nothing the city can’t afford. Yes, it does sometimes go down. That’s part of operating a plant. But we’ve never run out of material because I always make sure to have some on ground or en route."

Brad Benson, project manager at the Port of San Francisco, discounts the recent limited asphalt consumption in the city, noting major development proposals in the city’s future. "Think about shipyard development, Treasure Island development, Caltrain, parking lots," Benson says. "If there’s not the demand, there won’t be bids. No one is going to invest $3 [million] to $10 million, whatever it costs to build an asphalt plant, if they don’t perceive a market."

But what might also hook prospective bidders is the provision, stated in the RFP, that the "risk capital to construct the facility (may be offset by city financing)." Benson explains that "this concept was introduced here in the midst of the financial crisis when people were having trouble finding sources of capital. The city may have access to some lower cost sources of debt."

Benson said he doesn’t know if city financing would be needed. "Obviously, the port prefers bidders that come in with their own sources of financing. That has been the model to build the neighboring concrete plants. The only reason to consider it is if the city combines lower-cost financing and could get lower cost asphalt in return. Then it might be worth doing."

It’s an interesting paradox: the city wouldn’t have funds to upgrade its plant, but would be ready to chip in to outsource?

But there are other issues driving the proposal. Karen Pierce, a Bayview- Hunters Point community activist who sits on the port’s Southern Waterfront Advisory Committee, told us she would "like to see the municipal plant move away from where people live. There needs to be a buffer area. A newer plant on port property would be further away, and we would have the opportunity to make sure it uses technologies that reduce the amount of pollution."

The municipal asphalt plant, which has never received complaints for pollution, currently incorporates 15 percent of recycled asphalt in its production. The RFP requests its potential tenant raise this amount up to 45 percent.

The proposed lot is also three times bigger than the existing one on Jerrold Avenue and has the advantage of being located near a maritime terminal where sand and gravel, the aggregates mixed with tar to produce asphalt, are imported. Also, there are two concrete batching plants and a construction material recycling center in the vicinity.

"Co-locating businesses that share each other’s products and reducing long-haul truck trips are the kernels of a broader idea for an ecoindustrial park that the port is developing in this area of the waterfront," Benson says.

If the asphalt plant project falls through, the port does have a backup plan: it is considering leasing the site to yet another concrete plant. Bids on both proposals are due in September, after which the Board of Supervisors will consider whether to close the city’s plant.

We walk with a zombie

-
0

PHENOM In our heads, in our heads: zombies, zombies, zombies.

Don’t blame me for taking a bite out of your brain and inserting an annoying tune in its place — once again, not long after the last onslaught of undead trends, our culture is totally zombie mad.

The phrase "zombie bank" is multiplying at a disturbing rate within economic circles. In music, the group Zombi — hailing from the zombie capitol Pittsburgh — is reviving the analogue electronics of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead while the British act Zomby brings dubstep to postapocalyptic dance floors. A comedy of manners possessed by ultraviolent urges, Seth Grahame-Smith’s "unmentionable" Jane Austen update Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 320 pages, $12.95) has set up camp on the trade paperback New York Times best sellers list, with S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament — currently being movie-ized by Diablo Cody — on its trail. On a smaller scale, Yusaka Hanakuma’s manga Tokyo Zombie (Last Gasp, 164 pages, $9.95) has caught a zombie plane over to the United States.

Most of all, posthumous Michael Jackson mania is bringing the corpse choreography of the 1983 video for "Thriller" to life, as the media and masses fluctuate between the worst facets of grave-robbing and best facets of revival and death celebration. A Friday, July 3 party in Seattle that aimed to top the 3,370-participant world record for largest "zombie walk" included a mass dance performance to the song.

When journalist Lev Grossman first noted the shift in bloodlust from vampirism to zombiedom in a Time trend piece this April, he ticked off some of these activities but steered clear of visual art. Zombies are around in galleries and museums, too. In Los Angeles last month, Peres Projects presented Bruce LaBruce’s "Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project" in which stills from a forthcoming movie by the director of last year’s Otto; or, Up with Dead People were blown up, framed, and hung on the space’s blood-spattered white cube walls. Here in San Francisco, Michael Rosenthal Gallery is hosting a variety of zombified works by another Canadian artist, Jillian Mcdonald.

Active revisions of cinema are central to Mcdonald, whose past projects find her staring down, mimicking and making out with male screen icons such as Billy Bob Thornton. "Monstrosities" makes room for vampires, but hunger for flesh is dominant over thirst for blood. The five-minute video Zombie Apocalypse brings the zombie back to the beach, its eerily effective primary haunting ground in Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1943 Val Lewton production I Walked with a Zombie — which, incidentally, is being remade, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre now explicitly cited as its source material. In 2006’s Horror Make-up, Mcdonald plays with the image of a woman putting on makeup in public by using her compact to turn herself into a zombie while raiding the New York subway. "Monstrosities" also includes zombie wall portraits that aren’t exactly static. Through lenticular photography, Mcdonald taps into the zombie within an acquaintance, a creature that often appears more animated than its "living" counterpart.

"Monstrosities" and much of Mcdonald’s current work mines horror as a source of catharsis. The tactic is most overt in 2007’s The Scream, where her screams scare off a variety of slasher killers and monstrous adversaries. Art world attempts at tapping into filmic horror can be dreadful in the sterile and blah sense (see Cindy Sherman’s 1997’s Office Killer — or better, don’t see it). But when Mcdonald bites zombies, she gives them love bites, borne out of and energized by genuine appreciation. (Johnny Ray Huston)

JILLIAN MCDONALD: MONSTROSITIES

Through July 22

Michael Rosenthal Gallery

365 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-1010

www.jillianmcdonald.net

www.rostenthalgallery.com

———-

Brain appetit: Fine reading and viewing for the discriminating zombie lover

Twilight (haven’t read it) and True Blood (haven’t seen it) are grabbing all the headlines, including a fawning New York Times story entitled "A Trend with Teeth." But fuck this newfangled passion for vampires. (Apologies to Let the Right One In: you are awesome, despite the massive English subtitle fail on your DVD.) Go back to the graveyard, sexy supernatural critters. There’s a far more terrifying and fiendishly disgusting army of coffin-rockers afoot these days. And though they’ll happily drink your blood, they’ll also help themselves to the rest of your delicious mortal flesh.

Granted, zombie movies are almost as old as cinema itself. Glenn Kay’s recent Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (Chicago Review Press, 352 pages, $25.95), which features a forward by Stuart Gordon, director of 1985’s Re-Animator, is a pretty good jumping-off point for the uninitiated — and a steal for anyone who’s shy about paying $280 on eBay for Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci (FAB Press). Generously illustrated chapters — with a full-color photo section in the book’s center — cover the genre’s history, starting with 1932’s White Zombie (fun fact: star Bela Lugosi earned $500-ish dollars for playing the sinister plantation owner improbably named "Murder.") There are spotlights on the turbulent 1960s (the era that spawned 1968’s immortal Night of the Living Dead), the insane 1970s (with an index of "the weirdest/funniest/most disturbing things" seen in zombie films, including my own personal fave: the underwater shark vs. zombie battle in 1979’s Zombie), Italy’s reign of terror in the 1980s (the decade that also brought us, lest we forget, "Thriller"), and the rise of video game zombies in the 1990s. Sprinkled throughout are interviews with horror luminaries like makeup master Tom Savini.

Zombie Movies‘ biggest chapter is devoted to the new millennium, with shout-outs to Asian entries like Versus (2000), cult hits like 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, and mainstream moneymakers — 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake brought in $59 million. Less successful (in my book, if not apparent George Romero fanatic Kay’s) was 2007’s Diary of the Dead, the least-enjoyable entry in Romero’s esteemed zombie series. Blame it on an annoying cast, and an even more annoying reliance on the hot-for-five-minutes "self-filming" technique. Aside from producing a Crazies remake (nooo!), Romero’s next project is titled simply … of the Dead, release date unknown, zombie subject matter an absolute certainty.

Still, ammo enough for walking-dead fans sick of all this fang-banging comes in two forms: the hilarious trailer for Zombieland (due in October), featuring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg as slayers of the undead, and the eagerly-anticipated arrival of Dead Snow. Currently available as an On-Demand selection for Comcast customers (in crappy dubbed form), this Norwegian import — a comedy with plenty of satisfying gore — opens July 17 at the Roxie (in presumably superior, subtitled form). Nazi zombies, y’all. Get some! (Cheryl Eddy)

———-

Zombie playlist: Music to eat flesh by

For whatever reason, America is possessed by a another wave of fascination with the living dead. Is increased anxiety about a devastated economy manifesting as comic book fantasy? Or do we just think zombies are kinda neat? Either way, like so many (or few) survivors barricaded inside an abandoned country home, we’re captivated by the brainless hordes. In the mood for some mood music? Here’s a brief celebration of zombiedom in the world of rock. It ain’t authoritative — no self-respecting zombie respects authority.

MISFITS

"Braineaters"

(from Walk Among Us, Slash, 1982)

Yes, Walk Among Us also features "Night of the Living Dead" and "Astro Zombies," but neither of those tracks captures the profound ennui of existence as a walking corpse. Democratically sung from a zombie’s perspective, "Braineaters" laments a repetitive diet of brains. (Why can’t a zombie have some tasty guts instead?) The Misfits actually made a primitive music video for "Braineaters" that shows the band engaged in what has to be the most disgusting food fight ever filmed. If you’ve ever wanted to see a young Glenn Danzig covered in what appear to be cow brains, have I got a YouTube link for you!

ANNIHILATION TIME

"Fast Forward to the Gore"

(from II, Six Weeks, 2005)

One of the standout tracks from II, "Fast Forward to the Gore" makes excellent use of singer Jimmy Rose’s frantic vocal delivery. Rose’s raw lyrics, belted out over the hardcore guitar assault of Graham Clise and Jamie Sanitate, celebrate the subtle artistry at play when zombie meets chainsaw. In the event of an actual zombie apocalypse, this song should serve as nostalgic reminder of simpler times, when zombies were merely a source of entertainment that didn’t leave the TV screen.

THE ZOMBIES

Entire discography

Self-explanatory.

DEATH

"Zombie Ritual"

(from Scream Bloody Gore, Combat, 1987)

The second track on the seminal Scream Bloody Gore, "Zombie Ritual" helped establish the nascent death metal scene’s predictable love affair with the titular braindead hellspawn. Chuck Schuldiner’s lyrics — as awesomely repulsive as anything the genre has to offer — deal with some sort of zombie creation ceremony, though the only discernable part is the Dylanesque chorus ("Zombie ritual!" screamed four times in succession). While Death’s later albums saw Schuldiner grow by leaps and bounds as a songwriter, "Zombie Ritual" remained a live staple up until the band’s final days. (Tony Papanikolas)

Aicha

-
0

paulr@sfbg.com

The tagine is something of a unicorn in the kingdom of food. Many people will recognize the word as referring to a stew of Moroccan or other north African provenance, but it also refers to the pot in which the stew is cooked. And, though you may be an inveterate Moroccan-restaurant-goer, chances are you’ve never seen the tagine pot in its full glory. What typically reaches the table is just the lower half of the tagine — a kind of serving platter, probably of glazed ceramic, possibly hand-painted.

But the spectacular part of the tagine is the conical top, which looks like a space capsule or a hat from Beach Blanket Babylon. The top is aesthetically striking, but it also is a mechanism for moisture retention; like a still, it captures condensation and routes it back to the dish whence it came. The top has a knob at its peak that resists heat and so enables the cook to lift it up and see what’s going on in there.

I wish the removal of tagine tops would become a standard tableside flourish at Moroccan restaurants, the way lighting saganaki on fire is at Greek places. Tagine de-topping isn’t standard practice at Aicha, at least not yet, but I did thrill to the spectacle, deep in the open kitchen, of a bare-handed chef pulling off the top of a hand-painted ceramic tagine to inspect its contents. The tagine top looked very much like the one I have at home, and perhaps the tagine dish itself was the one that would soon be brought to me. More on this important matter anon.

Aicha opened late in the spring in a storefront space on Polk Street, in that transitional zone between the Civic Center and Russian Hill. The restaurant will definitely be seen as an upgrade to this emulsification-resistant neighborhood. Although it’s small, it’s handsomely appointed — a crisp, clean spareness with striking copper accents, and, of course, beautifully authentic tagines.

Authenticity is a central theme at Aicha. The restaurant will do its best "to preserve the authenticity of the cuisine," according to a statement on the Web site. This is never an easy undertaking in California, land of bravura salad-tossing, but so far the place is off to an impressive start. The food is modestly priced and not elaborate or precious, but it does offer an intensity of flavor many kitchens charging two or three times as much might envy.

There is great delight to be found not only among the appetizers, which cost between $3 and $6, but even in the more modest side dishes ($3 each) like the simple-sounding white beans. These are of the smaller, navy-bean size; are expertly cooked al dente (i.e. neither hard nor mushy); and are presented in a creamy, well-seasoned sauce whose glints of redness hint at the presence of paprika or some other extroverted but not bitingly hot red pepper. We do not eat enough beans and legumes in this country, perhaps because we associate them with poverty and the old country (whatever that country that might be), but maybe we would eat more if they were this good.

For just a dollar or three more, you can find yourself feasting on comparably gratifying appetizers. Blanched carrots ($4), are peeled, quartered, and tossed with chermoula, the distinctive north African spice paste that usually includes garlic, preserved lemon, and cumin, along with other herbs and spices. Like beans, carrots (one of the notably health-protecting orange foods) are neglected in our culinary culture and are often relegated to lowly duty in mirepoix or soup stock. But if you served these at a party, you would run out in five minutes.

Possibly even tastier, though not quite as finger-friendly, is taktouka ($4), a plateful of grilled red bell pepper squiggles tossed with some tomato, olive oil, and what the menu cryptically calls "spices." Cumin was in there, certainly, but grilled peppers have such a distinctive and alluring flavor that they don’t really need much else.

Somewhat less impressive — yet at the top of the appetizer price scale — was an artichoke salad ($6) consisting of pickled artichoke hearts, peppery green olives, crumblings of feta, and lots of immaculate romaine leaves. Lots. The romaine was too much with us and diluted the potency of other players.

It was thought that the b’stilla ($6), a pizzetta-sized round of phyllo stuffed with pistachio chicken and dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon, was a little too cinnamony. (Frasier‘s Dr. Niles Crane, complaining about a Café Nervosa cappuccino: "Can you believe the incompetence of that man? I very clearly asked for a whisper of cinnamon, and he’s given me a full-throated shout!") But a lamb tagine ($9) — tender shanks on the bone, surrounded by little green hills of peas and artichoke hearts — was all a heart could desire, even if the plate arrived topless.

AICHA

Daily, 11:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m.

1303 Polk, SF

(415) 345-9947

www.aichasf.com

Credit cards pending; call ahead and bring cash

Hard surfaces mean noise

Wheelchair accessible

Craigslist goes Stag

-
12

By Juliette Tang

staglist0609.jpg

Let’s face it: Craigslist’s new “Adult Services” listing is pretty much just like the old Erotic Services one, but with a new name, a higher price tag, more inconvenience, and no more nude photos. But there’s a new Web site coming to town that might change the face of online soliciting for good: Stagslist.

Unlike Craigslist, Stagslist publicly accepts its role in facilitating online sex work. Stagslist exists solely as an online listing of erotic and adult services and gigs, with the difference being no monitoring, no charge, and no personal verification. For some sex workers, the lack of verification on Stagslist (Craigslist currently requires a phone number, a credit card charge of $10, plus a working Craigslist account) will be liberating. Stagslist offers greater privacy and a forum to post whatever you want, because they won’t screen or modify your ads. And for other sex workers content with Craigslist’s verification system, who feel that it offers a barrier of protection between them and the outside world, Craigslist’s Adult Services listing will still be an option. The arrival of a new erotic listing in town with the openness and viability of Stagslist will level the playing field so that Craigslist hopefully won’t be the main provider of an online adult services forum in San Francisco. And it gives sex workers the option of choosing which platform best suits their specific needs.

Stagslist goes live on July 9, 2009, at noon. While right now, there’s nothing on the site, I’m interested to see what Thursday will bring.

Full press release after the jump.

Zine it like you mean it

-
0

johnny@sfbg.com

INTERVIEW Nestled in the corner of the old New College building, true seekers will find Goteblüd. Matt Wobensmith’s zine emporium keeps the building’s dedication to countercultural self-publishing alive. As characterful as it is small, Goteblüd places shelves of photocopied DIY writings amid a brown shag paneling motif that wittily references the cat-scratch antics found within Ed Luce’s comic Wuvable Oaf, the store’s main link to contemporary publications. Currently the space also hosts "Yes I Am, But Who Am I Really?," a showcase of queer zine and queer punk memorabilia: zines, photos, and letters (including a pissy postcard from Henry Rollins) create a terrific one-of-a-kind wallpaper, while t-shirts for bands hang from the ceiling, as if asking to be filled by new rebellious bodies. After scoping out the show, I recently asked Wobensmith about Goteblüd’s origins, its contents, and its future plans.

SFBG How did Goteblüd come about?

MATT WOBENSMITH I’ve been collecting zines since I was a teen. In the past few years, I’ve heard people say things like "I just threw out four boxes of zines," and I say to myself: That is wrong! Why do people think old zines are worthless? They’re priceless. So I began to take zines off peoples’ hands, and started putting them in storage boxes. After a while, this pastime became more of an obsession as I tried to fill gaps in the collections by actively buying from people. When I found the space, I knew it was time to launch a vintage zine store.

SFBG A book titled Queer Zines (Printed Matter, 180 pages, $25) was recently published. As someone who played a major role in an important period of the queer zine and queer punk movements, what did you think of it?

MW I was active in the queer punk and then homohop music scenes for a while, but that’s kind of history. It’s through this weird zine collecting thing that I find myself faced with my past again.

I saw the Queer Zines book that accompanied the show Printed Matter did in New York City last year. It was inspiring and also satisfying that this era of self-publishing was finally getting more exposure. I don’t know who I’d be without some of those zines!

At the same time, I felt that the queercore phenomenon was different from the larger queer zine genre. It’s focused around music and music culture, had lots of young people, and was connected to a radical subculture loosely based on punk rock. The name of the show is paraphrased from a Team Dresch song: "Yes I Am, But Who Am I Really?" It’s a slight dig at Melissa Etheridge, but ultimately sums up the struggle for identity and purpose and survival.

Also, it’s a scene where women played an enormous role in shaping the dialog and aesthetics. The influence of the riot grrrl movement was not insignificant, either. Some people attribute queer zines to things like Straight to Hell or [William S.] Burroughs, but these zines are far more likely to have been inspired by radical music figures: Black Flag, Throbbing Gristle, the Shaggs, Yoko Ono, female rockers, as well as good old 1980s hardcore. In many ways, queercore was an alternative to an alternative. And it had a soundtrack.

SFBG Looking back at the materials in the current show, what surprises you — what do you see anew now, years later, or wish was more present in current society or social currents?

MW What I really value in old zines is this incredible sense of urgency. There’s some insane, obsessive person trying to reach out and find like-minded people, so they make a zine. It’s a search for kindred souls, and an almost desperate bid for creative and intellectual validation. It can be fun, but is ultimately quite serious. It has a lot of integrity. I love that spirit and dedication.

That same feeling is totally lacking in today’s culture. The Internet has released much of the pent-up need to connect, to find information, to really put effort into communication. Today’s pop culture is also highly self-aware and navel-gazing, and people seem more obsessed with mundane actions of others — via tweets, social networking, whatever — than creating original ideas and taking risks. Old zines have original ideas and risks in spades.

SFBG What kinds of zines will people find in Goteblüd?

MW We try to carry a wide assortment of popular and unknown zines; the more DIY, the better. Though we do have some indie glossies, we carry tons of underground music, pop culture, art, skateboarding, graffiti, lowrider, comic, and experimental zines from the past four decades. We try to focus on older stuff because it’s harder to find and it gets people excited. We are always buying and trading too. I love when people challenge me to find a certain zine for them, and I have it!

SFBG One section of Goteblüd is devoted to Ed Luce’s Wuvable Oaf comics and paraphernalia. What do you like about Wuvable Oaf, and what plans do you have in connection with the comic?

MW Ed’s work, in one word, is fun. It’s also really smart and has no small amount of sharp observations on human behaviors and interactions. It’s a "post-bear" comic, but we hate the b-word. It’s set in a city that looks suspiciously like San Francisco and we all write the stories together. We try to juxtapose big and small, human and animal, and we love to show people in awkward situations. It’s not ironic; it’s loving and earnest.

The comic fits into the store — oddly — as it is an encapsulation of so many different sensibilities. Ed’s constantly referencing his icons of fashion, bad horror movies, and music — particularly Morrissey. I think it’s like a gayer Love and Rockets but that doesn’t begin to do it justice. Our next issue will spotlight our house cartoon band, Ejaculoid, and we’ll be releasing a limited edition record of their music — which is "disco grindcore."

GOTEBLÜD is at 766 Valencia in SF and is open weekends only from noon–5 p.m.

Summer Slaughter Tour

-
0

PREVIEW Summer metal tours, notably Ozzfest, operate like feudal hierarchies. As night descends and the stages get bigger, lesser known vassals doing fealty in the parking lot give way to the landed headbanger aristocracy, who in turn cede the stage to some anointed monarch of metal.

In recent years, package deals like Summer Slaughter have taken a more republican approach, recruiting bands of middling stature to represent a vast array of black-hoodied constituents. Though the ticket buyer is not snared by the ermine-furred eminence of a Maiden or a Priest, a large number of quality upstarts can cast a wide net. Throw in three or four majority whips with reliable fanbases and good reputations, and you’ve got yourself a Congress of carnage.

Suffocation is the biggest name on the bill, and the veteran New York City death metal band will cater to the "never-too-brutal" crowd with its bludgeoning low-end assaults, including cuts off a new full-length, Blood Oath (Nuclear Blast). Death-heads will also be there for cult German tech outfit Necrophagist, whose impossible chops and mind-bending arrangements justifies its headlining spot.

D.C. thrashers Darkest Hour is embarking on its first U.S. run without departed lead guitarist Kris Norris, and will be eager to show its many detractors the fighting fitness of a new lineup and a new, Norris-less album, The Eternal Return (Victory Records). Folk-inflected Finnish battlers Ensiferum round out the tour’s Big Four, promising the best in war-kilts and anthemic, epic barrages. Whatever your particular poison, slaughter is imminent.

SUMMER SLAUGHTER TOUR With Winds of Plague, Dying Fetus, Born of Osiris, Origin, Beneath the Massacre, After the Burial, Decrepit Birth, Blackguard. Wed/1, 2:30 p.m. $30. Regency Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. (415) 673-5716. www.regencycentersf.com/grand

Bending toward oblivion

-
0

culture@sfbg.com

Gay liberation changed Martin Duberman’s life. In the 1960s, Duberman taught history at Princeton, hardly a bastion of radical thought. Yet he found himself invigorated by nascent counterculture movements and became a champion of the left, penning essays in The New York Times and serving as faculty advisor to the Princeton chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. At the same time, Duberman spent years in intensive psychotherapy in desperate attempts to "cure" his homosexuality. Soon after the emergence of the gay liberation movement, however, he rejected this homophobic vision and embraced a gay identity. His work also became queerer.

Over the years, he has written more than 20 books — biographies, plays, memoirs, history texts, and a novel — on a wide range of topics ranging from antislavery activism to the civil rights movement and Stonewall. His new book, Waiting to Land: A (Mostly) Political Memoir, 1985-2008 (The New Press 352 pages, $26.95), is a combination of diary entries and recollections from the Reagan years to the present. This latest work serves as a window into Duberman’s activist and scholarly careers, as well as his critiques of the mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian movement.

SFBG We’re approaching the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the symbolic event of early gay liberation, and I’m wondering if you think there’s any of this liberationist spirit left in the gay movement.

Martin Duberman Well, I guess it depends on how you define liberationist. In the early days, gay liberationists were aware of a great many other ills in the society besides their own. Their own were real, and they were well aware of that. But there was a lot wrong, they felt, with the system, and their central goal was to challenge many of the established institutions and values. Today most LGBT people seem to think of themselves — certainly they tell the mainstream — as "just folks," except for this little matter of a separate sexual orientation. That they’re patriotic Americans and they want the same things that everybody else wants, etc.

SFBG In Waiting to Land, you cover this assimilationist turn in the gay movement. You talk about the March on Washington in 1993 where gays in the military became the dominant issue. You also talk about Stonewall 25, which happened one year later in New York City, where one of the biggest fundraising events was held onboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, and where corporate sponsorship arguably overwhelmed any celebration of resistance, history, or culture. Has anything changed in the last 15 years?

MD The early ’70s were still fueled by the countercultural movement of the ’60s, and the early gay movement built on the insights and the demands of, say, the feminist movement or the antiwar movement. I mean there was so much going on in the ’60s, and together it all amounted to a challenge to the so-called experts. There was an across-the-board challenging of many traditional views, so finally that began to seep down, or up — whatever it is — to us. That’s the whole trouble, I think, with the assimilationist turn. It denies our own gay past and our culture and our politics. I mean, they’re willing to throw all that away in order to make stronger the claim that we’re just folks.

SFBG And do you feel like mainstream gay people have become more heterosexualized? I mean in that particular way of embracing long-term committed partnership, monogamy, or now even marriage, as the only type of love or intimacy that’s valid?

MD Yeah. Once again, the banner of lifetime monogamous pair-bonding has been raised. Now some of that is the result of AIDS, in which people were scared to death, so they settled down into so-called permanent relationships. Not everybody. But many more than had done so in the ’70s.

SFBG When you talk about AIDS in Waiting to Land, it punctures the style of your writing. You’ll be writing something that’s more ruminative, and then you’ll have three or four sentences about a friend who died or a series of friends who died, and then you go back into your thoughts about something outside of that.

MD I think that’s right. It’s why I put that subtitle in. I say "mostly political," because when it came to the death of friends, I did talk about my personal feelings, and my sadness, whereas most of the time in Waiting to Land I’m talking about external events or public policies.

SFBG You yourself have played a role as both an insider and outsider in a variety of realms. In Waiting to Land, you deliver scathing critiques of the rigid hierarchies and competitive structures of academia. You talk about the homophobia of the straight left, and you talk about the limited agenda of the gay mainstream. You talk about the exclusiveness of establishment theatre and mainstream media. Yet you’ve also worked inside all these structures. So I’m wondering how these institutions have formed your politics and how you’ve helped to form or transform these institutions.

MD [W.E.B.] Du Bois, the great African American leader, once said something — I think he called it double vision. He said that although he had had a superb education and was accepted by mainstream whites, nonetheless he felt he was a spy in the culture, a spy who was bringing the news about the mainstream back to his own people. And on one level, I have had a very easy time passing — I went to very good schools, I was on the tennis team in high school, etc. Nobody, I think, or very few people, guessed that I was in fact homosexual, and I did my best to play along with that. I was very career-oriented, I was very competitive — I always wanted to be first in my class, win the best prize for an essay, and that’s where most of my energy went throughout my 20s. But then once the counterculture began, I sort of leapt on it. I was immediately sympathetic, and I wrote lots of essays during the ’60s in which I was very strongly on the side of the New Left. And then it took a while longer after that before I realized that of course the same applies to being gay.

SFBG In terms of your role as both insider and outsider, do you feel that that’s helped you to develop stronger critiques of all those institutions, whether on the straight left, in the gay mainstream, or in establishment theater and media?

MD I think so, because I knew the inner workings of many of these mainstream institutions, and so I was able to see the falsity of many of the attitudes, especially toward people who are not middle-class whites. White men, I should say.

SFBG I think one thing you’ve tried very deliberately throughout your career, whether as a writer, an academic, or an activist, is to build movement ties across lines of class, race, gender, and age. In the new book, you talk about trying to bring an awareness of queer and feminist issues into the straight left, and an awareness of race and class into the gay mainstream — and feeling mostly like you’ve failed.

MD I think it’s because the mainstream left is no more receptive — they all claim that, "well of course we believe you people should have your rights, and of course we’re tolerant of your lifestyle." But when it comes right down to it, you cannot get them to hang around long enough to listen to the ways in which queer values and perspectives might inform their own lives. They don’t believe that for a second. And that hasn’t changed at all. At least, if it has changed, I haven’t seen it.

SFBG And what about in terms of the other side of the equation? With the dominant agendas of the big gay institutions centering on marriage, military service, ordination into the priesthood, adoption, and unquestioning gentrification and consumerism, do you think that those particular emphases prevent a deeper analysis of structural issues of racism and classism?

MD Well, of course they do. Mainstream America is still further behind the gay movement in dealing with any of those issues. So when you’re bending your energy to turning into the mainstream, you’re simultaneously burying your awareness of the class and racial and economic divisions that continue to characterize our country.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) is the author, most recently, of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights) and the editor of an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull).

‘Manhattan’ 2.0?

-
0

Every once in a while Woody Allen breaks new ground, uncovering a different side of the incomparably prolific filmmaker. Just as often, he doesn’t. Whatever Works isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but it’s funny — in fact, it’s one of the funniest and warmest of his recent films. It just goes to show that even when he’s not the "new and improved" Woody Allen, he’s still Woody Allen. And that’s nothing to sniff at.

Allen doesn’t star in Whatever Works, but he might as well. Larry David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a crueler, more cynical version of Allen’s nebbishy persona. At first his condescension and misanthropy are a bit disconcerting: is this how Woody’s felt about us all along — that we’re idiots and he’s the only one who really gets it? But, like most Allen protagonists, Boris is a lot more relatable and less unpleasant once we get to know him. It helps that he’s forced to take in simple Southern belle Melody St. Ann Celestine, a runaway who somehow falls in love with her host. No matter how bad a hypochondriac curmudgeon you are, marrying a much younger woman is bound to lift your spirits.

As with his other films, the strength of Whatever Works is in the variety of talented actors Allen has assemble. Aside from Larry doing Woody — about as close to the real thing as you can get — Evan Rachel Wood is charming as Melody. Her performance, equal parts sexual and naïve, recalls Mira Sorvino’s Linda in Mighty Aphrodite (1995). And Patricia Clarkson, who stole her scenes in Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008), continues to wow as Melody’s mother.

In the end, Allen fans will embrace the film. Allen haters — well, they’re probably not about to start liking him now. There may be a formula at play here, but in the all-too-appropriate words of the movie’s title, "whatever works." Frankly, it’s comforting to know Allen can still put out a lighthearted comedy after recent serious detours. Hey, funny is funny. Woody is Woody.

WHATEVER WORKS opens Fri/26 in Bay Area theaters.

Bar Bambino

-
0

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

Editor’s Notes

-
0

marke@sfbg.com

So, OK, I just got engaged. Gay engaged. Engayged.

So weird.

First, this may be the worst time ever to plan on jumping the lavender chuppah knot or whatever. As far as legality goes, California’s up in the air until maybe the November 2010 elections and perhaps for a long time after that. Then there’s the whole federal kerfuffle to go through. And Iowa might be tempting right now — but gurl, I don’t have enough something blues for three ceremonies. Iowa, then Cali, and then federal — sheesh! Two is enough! At least when we were illegal, we only had to plan for one polka band. Miss you, "commitment ceremony."

Then there are the political equivocations. Plus or minus a few episodes of America’s Next Top Model, I’ve considered myself near the front lines of radical queer resistance ever since my friends started dying of AIDS when I was 17. I’m all for ethical non-monogamy, get queasy at the thought of official state-sanctioned relationships, and definitely believe that marriage, with all its financial benefits, discriminates against people who haven’t fallen in love. Or turns them into liars for money. Or makes them scream a lot during Sex and the City reruns.

Hunky Beau and I aren’t really after the cash and perks, anyway. Hospital visitation rights and insurance discounts would be cool (and are available locally already), and who knows if we’ll have kids who’ll require federal protection. But I’m pretty sure we’ll never need the legal right to “enlarge accommodation estimates for foreign dignitary missions” only available to married couples now. And as far as political statements go, there are a lot more things in my personal life that I’d like to see being used to help change the world for the better. Housing homeless queer kids and seniors and restoring the recent awful AIDS services cuts seems much more necessary right now as well. But this is the fight our community’s in — and whether it’s because I was raised that way by two incredibly supportive parents, or because I get a real rash when my government says I can’t do something other people can, or because within every loud-mouthed queen lives a hopelessly traditional romantic, I’ve got a dog in it. Not a chihuahua, mind you. More like golden retriever. Totally butch.

As some of our writers eloquently point out in this issue, same-sex marriage may be a boondoggle, sapping our community’s strength to confront real issues of poverty and inequality. It’s certainly not for everyone. But in a truly dark time in my life, when I thought the whole world was falling apart, I suddenly fell in deeply in love with someone almost annoyingly perfect for me in every way. To my continued astonishment, he seems to feel that way about me as well. We’ve been together a long time now and marriage seems, to us, the logical next step for whatever reason. It just feels right. Love is a crazy, crazy thing, full of diversity, surprise, and wonder. Isn’t that what Pride’s all about?

Dave Cummings: the oldest American in porn

-
3

By Juliette Tang

davecum0609a.jpg

69-year-old Dave Cummings, the oldest active porn star in America, has filmed over 500 movies and performed over 1,200 sex scenes in his 15-year career in the adult entertainment industry. He swears he doesn’t use Viagra, and when he’s not filming hardcore sex scenes in movies like Screw My Wife Please 32: And Make Her Sweat Like A Pig, Dave works as an educator and speaker, offering online classes on getting into the porn industry. Dave will be giving a seminar at the Cybernet Expo (1500 Van Ness) on June 27 called “Producing and Directing Adult Videos with Dave Cummings,” and spoke with the SFBG about sex, life, and his career in ‘old man porn’.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: First of all, congratulations on being 69! You are at arguably the most apropos numerical age for doing pornography and not many porn stars stay in the game long enough to get there.

DC: Thanks! I love my present life and age, and wouldn’t alter my past or present life at all!

SFBG: Nice name by the way! It can’t be your real name, right?

DC: No, it’s a stage name. Almost everyone in the porn industry uses a stage name.

SFBG: When did the idea of doing porn first occur to you?

DC: It happened as part of my swinging experience, specifically while Playboy Television was including me in a segment they were filming about swinging; that led me to a husband-wife team that filmed amateur porn, and my very first day as a crew member I was forced into doing a “stunt” money shot for the actor who was unable to do it that day. Subsequently, I performed in a few amateur movies, and then decided to try becoming a porn actor. I liked the fun of having sex with hot girls, AND getting paid for it. It was Heaven!

SFBG: What’s the market like for the kind of pornography you make?

DC: Aside from the present financial challenges foisted upon us by rampart piracy and copyright infringement, the market for my porn is unlimited. Although I’m a “niche”, people of both genders and of all ages seem to patronize my movies. The fantasy is that if an old, wrinkled, overweight, bald guy like Dave Cummings can have sex with such beautiful young actresses, then viewers can more easily envision that they themselves could indeed also have sex with the woman if they ever had an opportunity to meet her.

SFBG: Describe the sort of fan base you have.

DC: Mostly men looking for women to masturbate to while fantasizing that they are actually the one in the sex scene (not Dave Cummings!); couples looking for movies that show respect and caring for women; gays who appreciate older males (although I am heterosexual, I fully support their right to enjoy whatever sexual preference they want with other consenting adults); women who want to assert their right to get turned on sexually; and, women into the “daddy thing”.

SFBG: A lot of your titles have words like “Daddy” in them. “It’s a Daddy Thing,” “Sugar Daddy,” and “Dirty Dave’s Sugar Daddy”. You also have sex with much younger women in some of your movies, like “Barely Legal”. Your website talks about “teens getting drilled by Dave Cummings”. Yet the people you have sex with are, obviously, of legal age, and basically you’re just playing out a fantasy for viewers of an older man sleeping with younger women.

Hello sailor

-
0

By Matt Sussman


a&eletters@sfbg.com

Revolution seems to be on the minds and in the hearts of many in LGBT folk these days. The desire for change is palpable at the marriage equality marches that have now become regular occurrences, even if one isn’t marching under the banner of marriage equality. Indeed, the large and sustained outpouring of grassroots activism that has sprung up since Proposition 8 "passed" last November has been hailed, however ill-fitting the comparison, as "Stonewall 2.0."

Stonewall is undoubtedly a milestone — and its resonance with our current historical moment is underscored by the fact that Frameline 33’s closing night happens to fall on the 40th anniversary of the New York City riots. But Stonewall is not our only example of queers taking power into their own hands (San Francisco’s own Compton Cafeteria Riots of 1966, in which transgender people fought for their right to occupy public space, immediately comes to mind.) Nor are the social justice movements and underground film culture of the Stonewall era — both subjects touched on in a swathe of ’60s and ’70s-related films at this year’s festival — our only historical models for envisioning and enacting change. There are other histories, other battles, and other scenes to explore.

Local filmmaker Cary Cronenwett’s Maggots and Men — a stunning black and white historical fantasia on the possibilities, pleasures, and perils of revolution — proposes such another scene. Set in a mythologized postrevolutionary Russia but based on actual historical events, Maggots marshals early Soviet cinema, the gutter erotics of Jean Genet, and what at times seems like a transgender cast of thousands to build its case for the necessity of queer utopias. "I made a school boy movie, Phineas Slipped [under the name Kerioakie, in Frameline 26], so the next logical step was to make a sailor movie," says Cronenwett, explaining the germ for his film over the phone. "I wanted to make a film that created another world."

Maggots dramatizes the events of 1921, when the sailors of the seaport town of Kronstadt (whose failed 1905 revolution would be immortalized by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925’s Battleship Potemkin) drafted a resolution that supported the factory workers on strike in St. Petersburg. Deeming the sailors’ declaration of solidarity and demands for food and greater autonomy as "counter-revolutionary," the Bolshevik government launched a propaganda campaign against them, eventually sending the Red Army to take their island stronghold by force. The Bolsheviks eventually won the two-week long battle, in which both sides suffered heavy losses, killing or exiling the remaining sailors.

Told through the fictionalized letters of sailor Stepan Petrichenko (played by dreamboat Stormy Henry Knight, aptly described by Cronenwett as "the transgender Matt Dillon") to his sister and the performances of agitprop theater group Blue Blouse, Maggots repurposes the aesthetics of socialist realism to both pay tribute to the Kronstadt sailors’ quashed communal experiment and to use that same history as a means to engage with contemporary transgender lives and radical politics. "I’m wrapping together my different fantasies," explains Cronenwett. "There’s the sexual, kinda homoerotic utopia and then there’s this sort of communal utopia, where you have a society based on mutual respect."

If Maggots were a poem, it would undoubtedly take the form of an idyll. The sailors engage in a bucolic routine of communal farming and exercise, angelically sleeping in hammocks, carousing with the local ladies, and occasionally engaging in some alcohol-fueled sex with their fellow mates. Flo McGarrell’s gorgeous production design and composer Jascha Ephraim’s accordion-rich original score certainly contribute to the film’s reverie-like passages, but much of what is beautiful about the film is due in no small part to the handsome chiaroscuro visages of the film’s primarily trans-masculine actors. Cronenwett is as quick to cite Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950) and James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus (1968) as he is Eisenstein, as influences — and it shows.

But Cronenwett has other things, aside from "dirty sailor beefcake," on the brain. As he points out in a follow-up e-mail to our conversation, the trans actors in Maggots don’t just rewire the long history of the sailor as subject of homoerotic image-making in terms of gender, but also reframe the homosocial world of Krondstadt in terms of anarchist politics. "It’s not just cute butts that turn me on — it’s also ideas, and people’s politics. Not politics, like chatting about Obama or whatever, but people that are into creative ways of living and aren’t into non-consensual domination."

These politics were put into practice, as much by necessity as design, over the course of the four years it took to make the film. Shooting sporadically in rural Vermont (a frozen Lake Champlain uncannily summons the wintertime Baltic captured in photos of the Red Army’s 1921 advance); San Francisco backyards and gallery spaces; and Battery Boutelle in the Presidio and Battery Mendell in Marin, Cronenwett describes making Maggots as a "highly collaborative" process that involved the talents of friends, DIY artists, political organizers, nonprofessional actors, and anyone else who could be tapped via word-of-mouth (the film also received financial support from the Frameline Film and Video Completion Fund). At times, the filming even started to take on the communal can-do atmosphere of Kronstadt itself. "People slept on the floor and took cooking shifts, and helped make costumes," remembers Cronenwett of the Vermont shoot.

As much as Maggots is a homoerotic pastoral, the film doesn’t shy away from exploring the difficult, sometimes painful, realities attendant to any act of self-determination. As its very title — itself a reference to the rotting meat that sparks the sailors’ mutiny in the first act of Potemkim — suggests, the consequences of our actions can fester within us. "The sailors are still lugging around the violence from the revolution with them," writes Cronenewett. "Even in the salad days the violence is there just under the surface."

This violence takes on a different cast in the context of transitioning genders, something which the actors’ own mixed gender expressions continually underscore. "Transitioning is, hopefully, a liberating, positive experience. But it can also have some elements of violence associated with it. That can be a literal kind of violence — like chopping off body parts — or can be something more ethereal, like squashing aspects of ourselves to fit into either gender category."

The film is careful, though, not to hold up the sailors’ bloody defeat as a cautionary example of revolutionary hubris, just as it stylistically evokes Russian cinema of the ’20s and ’30s while avoiding that period’s penchant for egregious hero worship (flirting with martyrdom can be a slippery slope when engaging with the Soviet realism). In a sense, Maggots‘ restaging of history captures the full allegorical meaning of "utopia" — a social ideal that doesn’t exist and yet, nonetheless, remains an ideal. But, as Maggots also proves, film gives us the means to envision such ideals. At a time when our "revolutionary" moment seems blinded by tunnel vision — and has largely become defined by terms we never dictated — Maggots‘ kino eye reminds us that our past and our present are full of radical possibilities. *

MAGGOTS AND MEN

Sun/21, 1:30 p.m., Castro


The 33rd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs June 18–28 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. Tickets (most shows $8–$10) are available at www.frameline.org.

A bailout for the middle class

-
0

OPINION I don’t need to remind you that our economy is in trouble. The current banking crisis has demonstrated to all of us just how fragile and susceptible to manipulation our current system is. President Obama has spent billions of dollars and untold hours trying to bail out our failing banks and financial institutions. Whatever your opinions about his efforts, I think we can all agree we should also be helping out American workers — the real engine of the economy. The Employee Free Choice Act, currently being debated in Congress, offers needed help.

In 1979, 23 percent of the American workforce earned the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $20 an hour. This level of pay, about $41,000 per year, is generally considered the minimum necessary for a family of four to live something like a middle-class lifestyle. I wish I could say that progress marched on, that every year after 1979 the percentage of workers earning the minimum to support a middle-class family grew. In fact, the opposite happened — today only 18 percent of American workers earn enough to support a family of four.

What happened to the other end of the spectrum during that time? In 1978, American CEOs earned 35 times what the average worker earned. Over the next 10 years, this ratio grew, so that in 1989 the average CEO was earning 71 times what the average worker was earning. By 2007, the ratio had grown to an unbelievable 275.

The causes of this imbalance are many, but one is declining labor union membership. In 1983, 17.7 million workers were members of unions, accounting for 20.1 percent of America’s workers. In 2008, only 16.1 million workers were unionized, accounting for 12.4 percent of our nation’s workforce. These numbers are critically important because union membership makes a large difference in the well-being of America’s workers. In 2008, the average union worker earned $886 a week, while the average nonunion worker was paid only $691.

With all the effort we’re putting in to a bailout of the banks, we need to be discussing a bailout of the middle class. We don’t have to wait for the Treasury Department to come up with the plan — it’s sitting there in Congress and is called the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would give workers a fair, direct route to forming a union without illegal interference from corporations.

Unfortunately, the middle-class bailout is stuck in Congress. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the other shills for mega-corporations have turned up the pressure and succeeded in preventing the Employee Free Choice Act from moving forward in the Senate. Our own Sen. Feinstein recently said she wouldn’t vote for the bill because of the economic downturn, even though she cosponsored the legislation last year.

With the current state of our economy, we need a middle-class bailout — and we need it soon. Feinstein has the ability to make that happen. She should deliver the one bailout we all really need. *

Debra Walker is a San Francisco artist and progressive activist.

FOR THE RECORD


The caption for last week’s dine review should have referred to Fly, not Terzo.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

In the midst of all that is bleak in the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco, I am having fun specuutf8g about what will happen when Gavin Newsom is no longer mayor.

It’s a fascinating exercise — and trust me, I am by no means the only person engaging in it.

The broad outline is that the race to replace Newsom at this point bears no relation to the dynamic that brought him into office. Back in 2003, the race was the progressives against downtown; Tom Ammiano, Matt Gonzalez, and Angela Alioto were competing for the progressive vote, and Newsom was downtown’s darling, running on a platform of taking welfare money away from homeless people. The Newsom-Gonzalez runoff was about as clear and stark a choice over political vision as the city could ask for.

Six years later, I can count four people who are getting ready to run, and none is much like either Newsom or Gonzalez.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is sometimes with the progressives and sometimes with the mayor, told me last week that he’s definitely running. He’s part of the board’s moderate wing, but isn’t the downtown call-up vote that Newsom was and clearly isn’t counting on the big-business world for most of his support. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has made no secret of his political ambitions and is putting himself in the limelight with high-profile statements about Proposition 13 and taxing the Catholic Church. He sounds pretty liberal these days, although his chief political consultant is Newsom (and PG&E) operative Eric Jaye.

Just about everyone in local politics assumes City Attorney Dennis Herrera will be in the mix. He’s had the advantage of not having to take stands on local measures and candidates (as the city attorney, he’s not allowed to endorse), and while some progressives see him as the most appealing choice, he’s not Ammiano or Gonzalez. And then there’s state Sen. Leland Yee, who is utterly unpredictable, sometimes great on the issues and sometimes awful — and is almost certainly going to run.

And right now, other than Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who might or might not run and isn’t putting together any kind of a pre-campaign operation, there’s no obvious progressive candidate in the race. If Mirkarimi’s serious, he needs to be moving.

But wait: There’s more.

Assume for a moment — and whatever you may think about the guy, it’s not a crazy assumption — that Gavin Newsom is the next governor of California. (How? He beats Jerry Brown in the primary by running future vs. past, then beats any Republican, who will be saddled with the Schwarzenegger mess. He isn’t remotely ready for the job, but that’s politics.)

Gov. Newsom would be sworn in Jan. 4, 2011. David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors, would be acting mayor — until he convenes the board and somebody gets six votes to finish Newsom’s term. That decision could be made by the current supes, who hold office until Jan. 8, 2011, if they can meet and decide in four days, or by the new supes — and we don’t know who they will be.

The person appointed doesn’t have to be a supervisor. Could be anyone. Could be Chiu. Could be Mirkarimi. Could be Dufty. Could be …. Aaron Peskin. Just takes six votes. And then that person could run as the incumbent.

Don’t go thinking any of this is just idle chatter. There are political consultants all over town having the same discussions, today. *

The zone

-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I believe it’s called "garbage time." Can’t speak for soccer, but in American football it’s when the team in the lead runs the ball up the middle, again and again. The game is decided. It’s just a matter of letting the clock wind down.

That’s where we were at. In this case, my team, the good guys, had a big lead. The other team, the bad guys, had just scored but it was way too little, way too late, and we were going to win the championship. In 40 years of playing team sports, three different ones, three cities on two coasts and a cornfield, in two pretty different bodies, it would be my first championship. Well, second. My first since I was 11.

I’m 46. Just to give you some idea how great everyone else on my team is. To win it all, with me on your side, takes 35 years!

My team is an old team, the oldest in our league. We don’t have a lot of subs, none for the women, and it was our third game of the day. The other team had played three games too. You have to, in a tournament, if you keep winning. So everyone on the field was in a similar boat. Outcome decided. Garbage time. Tick. Tick.

I thought: if ever I was going to score a goal, now would be the time, while everyone else was sleeping. And as our goalie returned the ball to midfield, I sneaked myself from my usual position (fullback), right up there too, along the left sideline. I leaned in a slightly droolish way that let our forwards know exactly what I was thinking.

One tapped the ball to the other, and there was my pass, the pass, the one you wait for all your life, perfect and perfectly unexpected by everyone on the field but me. Nobody was there. The ball rolled like a lullaby on a green sea before me. Nobody, nothing, between me and it, and the net. Even the goalie seemed gone, as I hoofed and huffed and entered into "the zone." You know that zone where athletes go, where they are the ball, where the roar of the crowd, the elements, everything else just peels away and you can pretty much do whatever in the world you want?

This wasn’t that zone. It was a different, dreamier one, where everything peels away, including the ball and the goal. I realized in that moment what an intensely, insanely sociable creature I have become. I felt lonely. Actually lonely. Where was everyone? It just seemed all wrong all of a sudden.

What I did … I stopped running and stood there, and the ball just dribbled slowly away from me and over the end line. Then I turned to face my incredulous teammates and the whistle blew. Game over. Winners!

I didn’t know, though.

I touched hands with the other team and said, "Good game, good game," and they said so too. I posed for the team picture. I took off my uniform and put on my jeans and my new championship T-shirt. I checked my cell phone to see if President Obama was trying to call or anything. (He wasn’t.) And then I got in my car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Brewing Company, because that’s where the team was going to meet for pitchers of not-cold-enough beer and overdone, overpriced hamburgers.

It was three in the afternoon, and I had just played three soccer games on basically a bowl of oatmeal and some cherries. So you can imagine my hunger. Are you imagining? The reverberating weirdness of that breakaway loneliness moment, with all its psychological and philosophical implications — on an empty stomach!

And the guitar duo out on the patio, where we sat, played "Amy," and "Sweet Caroline," and worse.

Boasts the menu: "The Marin County Health Dept. is of the opinion that any meat cooked below medium-well (157 degrees) is undercooked. We proudly prepare your burger to any temperature you request."

"Rare," I said. (Are you still imagining my hunger? My excitement?)

It was one of the deadest burgers I ever ate. It was over well-done, gray, not a drop of moisture to it, save ketchup. Yet I was too insanely hungry, or nice, or sociable, to send it back.

Where would I be without this column?

MARIN BREWING COMPANY

Sun.–Thu. 11:30 a.m.–midnight;

Fri.–Sat. 11:30 a.m.–1 a.m.

1809 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur

(415) 461-4677

Beer & wine

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Tears of a thug

-
0

a&eletters@sfbg.com

The first time I interviewed Shaheed Akbar, a.k.a. the Jacka — in December of 2007, during a midnight session for Tear Gas (Artist Records/SMC), due June 16 — he was rolling purple and green weeds plus two types of hash into a Sharpie-sized blunt. I felt like Paul Bowles interviewing Bob Marley. Having known him three years, I can assure you that even in the Bay’s smoky atmosphere, Jacka blazes like a forest fire.

I dwell on this because it’s one facet of the Tear Gas concept, beyond the title’s literal meaning. The perpetual cloud enveloping Jacka is as much a part of his persona as his mobbed out tales of street life, based on experience. Like many artists, the MC enlists his favorite plant in the service of music.

"Weed helps you concentrate on certain things," Jacka observes, during a follow-up interview last month. "Nothing that contains too much multitasking. But if you don’t rap, try writing one; it’s hard as fuck. Weed gets you outside your normal realm so you coming up with crazy shit."

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?


Yet, considering his consumption, Jacka barely raps about weed, or at least no more than most rappers; he has other things on his mind. When I e-mail Paul Wall, one of several big-name features on Tear Gas, to ask why he wanted to work with Jacka, he emphasizes the authenticity of his collaborator’s verses.

"He speaks from experience when he rhymes," Wall writes. "Like he’s rapping from a hustler’s perspective for other hustlers."

The experience Wall cites consists of details which, in the aggregate, might make for improbable fiction. Jacka’s rise to local notoriety at age 18 as a member of C-Bo’s Mob Figaz — whose eponymous debut (Git Paid, 1999) moved something like 140,000 units — is fairly well documented. But the story begins much earlier. Born of 14-year-old parents, young Jacka saw his mother get addicted to crack, and his father go to prison for a decade only to be murdered shortly after release. The result was an impoverished childhood in various hoods in Oakland, Richmond, and finally Pittsburg, where the Mob Figaz began.

"As a kid, everywhere I lived was in the projects," he says. "A nigga’s whole thing is to get out of there." Such ambition led Jacka to start dealing crack as early as age 11.

"Say you’re in school," Jacka continues. "Moms ain’t working. Pops ain’t around. The other kids at school have everything you don’t, as far as clothes and packing they own lunch. All that matters when you’re a kid. You go to junior high and you eating free lunch, people are like, ‘What kind of nigga is you?’ So when you’re from the hood and can hustle, that’s definitely helping your self-esteem. You pulling out wads of cash and motherfuckers who used to laugh at you ain’t got shit. That made me feel hella good."

"Things I had to do to survive is one thing," he says. "But how I feel about it now is another."

BLUNT (OR DEEP) EMOTION


Jacka’s willingness to probe psychological wounds reveals another implication of Tear Gas. Paradoxically or not, in a genre where emotions are usually limited to elation and anger, a large part of Jacka’s appeal is his emphasis on the melancholy ambivalence of street life. It’s subtle, of course, sprinkled into stories of coke-dealing and cap-busting. But contrary to his assertion on the Traxamillion-produced "Girls," an infectious thug-pop remake of the 1986 Beastie Boys classic, Jacka doesn’t just "knock hoes and live it up."

"You can only shoot the breeze so much; you gotta drop a jewel on people," says Jacka, citing 2Pac, to whom he pays homage in "Hope Is for Real." "He had to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing because he had to reach me, the niggas in the hood, but look what you learn from him. So I have to study and get wiser to even make a song."

To be sure, Tear Gas isn’t a sociological treatise; like the blues, it voices the despair of a culture rather than proposing solutions. But such articulation is exactly what makes the music of both Pac and Jacka so powerful.

"Listen to Marvin Gaye," Jacka continues. "I guarantee he’s going to grab your soul. He knows something and could put it together with the music. And what he talked about was the struggle, the pain. I try to make shit that’ll stick to your soul. Like the music my parents used to listen to."

Besides his social consciousness, Jacka’s success rests squarely on quality. Last year, his single "All Over Me" — included on Tear Gas — hit No. 7 on KMEL’s playlist and No. 15 on Billboard’s "Bubbling Under" singles chart. Yet he refused to rush his album to capitalize on this exposure. Instead, he released 11 side projects. Two of them debuted on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart: Drought Season (Bern One), a collaboration with rapper Berner, at No. 55, and The Street Album (Artist Records), a "mixtape album" with KMEL DJ Big Von, at No. 91.

"Motherfuckers like shit that make them think," Jacka says, when asked about his appeal. They also like real albums and, taken as whole, Tear Gas is among the best rap discs in recent history, major or indie. Despite its array of producers and perhaps a few too many guests, Jacka has fashioned a tight, coherent album where every track is vital — an extreme rarity in contemporary hip hop. With its minor-key, exotic flute and harp textures, the new single "Glamorous Lifestyle," also produced by Traxamillion and featuring André Nickatina, epitomizes the overall feel.

"It’s not an easy process unless you really listen to music, and follow all kinds of genres," says Jacka. "Some people just listen to rap, but other music helps you grow as an artist."

THE VOICE


Being a rapper, Jacka’s voice is ultimately his most important asset, an instantly recognizable, rounded, mellow drawl — even when he raps fast — that is never raspy, despite the steady diet of blunts. His melodic, half-sung delivery, moreover, perfectly fits his vocal texture and mournful themes.

"My style really comes from the struggle," he says. "I’m not trying to make you like what I’m saying — I’m trying to get into your soul." This spiritual goal reflects what he credits as his primary influence: chanting the Koran. Surprising or not, given his gangsta themes, smoking, and even drinking, Jacka is a devout Sunni Muslim. It’s the result of a spiritual quest he began at age 9, when he joined the Nation of Islam.

"They showed me how to be black, because I really didn’t know," he explains. "I just knew we were in America, we used to be slaves, but I didn’t know why it was so tough for us. They made me read books that taught me to be proud of who I am. They can be a little strict sometimes, but they have to be; there was so much taken away from us."

When Jacka began intensively reading the Koran, however, he began to question some of the Nation’s teachings. "I realized that what it said in the Koran is what I should do," he says. "Not that plus something else."

The development of Jacka’s faith toward more orthodox Islam accelerated circa 2000. The Mob Figaz’ momentum slowed when C-Bo went to prison and Jacka caught a robbery case that landed him in county jail for a year.

"In jail, I was reading the Koran and realized the Sunni Muslim way is for me," Jacka remembers. "It’s the way I can pray directly to God." Following his release, Jacka took his shahada, declaring his formal adherence to Islam. But as rap money dried up in the Bay during its leanest years (2000-04), he returned to crime at a whole new level, even while beginning his solo career with The Jacka (Akbr Records, 2001).

"When I started working on my album, things changed for me — I really got into the streets," Jacka says. Rap celebrity gave him connections he otherwise would have lacked. "Whatever rap niggas was talking about, we were living," he says with some pride, although he feels he’ll one day have to answer to Allah for his misdeeds. Details of his criminal past are necessarily vague, though if you consider that fellow Mob Figa Husalah was arrested for transporting "over five kilos" of cocaine, a case culminating in his 2006 sentence to 53 months in federal prison, you get the picture.

"The streets are dried up for me," says Jacka. "Once the feds knock your boy, you can’t fuck around for the rest of your life. I’m hot. So I stay with the music now."

"I didn’t take the business as seriously as I should have," he admits. "So I had to start from ground zero." Fortunately, by the time Jacka’s second "official" solo album The Jack Artist (Artist Records, 2005) was ready to drop, the Bay began to heat up again. Even in the heyday of hyphy, the conspicuously non-hyphy Jack Artist sold some 20,000 copies, or "more than all those niggas put together," in the words of the man behind it. Yet despite this success, Tear Gas sounds little like its predecessor. Instead, it reflects Jacka’s artistic growth now that he’s settled down to music full time.

"I wouldn’t trade this for those times again — never," Jacka says, when asked to weigh yesterday and today. "This is something legit we’re doing that’s real. My dream as a child was to do this."

www.myspace.com/thejackamobfigaz

If you’re nasty

-
0

U.K. HORROR Once outrage settles over the current Parliamentary expense-account scandals, our former colonialist landlords will no doubt return to their concerns about "broken Britain," as the perceived general decline of moral rectitude in the United Kingdom is termed these days. Call ’em hoodies, chavs, yobs, or Neds, U.K. youth are seen as waaay out of control — albeit in ways that would seldom elicit more than a perfunctory shrug of disgust here — and their loutish, negligent, unemployed, or dole-collecting parents merit equal time in the sense-slappin’ machine.

Real or exaggerated, this trend of antisocial behaviors has inevitably crept into the entertainment realm, horror movies included. While the two Brit features (Blood River and 2008’s The Dead Outside) in this year’s Another Hole in the Head Festival only marginally deal with the phenomenon, three recent stateside DVD releases by first-time feature writer-directors find "Whatever happened to family values?!" terror placed front and center.

Not long ago especially gory or sadistic genre flicks were branded "video nasties," heavily cut or banned outright from distribution in Britain. That those days are gone, however, is made vividly clear by Steven Sheil’s Mum and Dad (2008). When Polish immigrant Lena (Olga Fedori) misses the last bus to central London, aggressively friendly fellow Heathrow cleaning staffer Birdie (Ainsley Howard) and her shy brother Elbie (Toby Alexander) invite her to spend the night at their nearby home.

Unfortunately Lena soon discovers she’s a permanent guest, kept on a very tight leash by "Mum" (Dido Miles) and "Dad" (Perry Benson). Covering familiar terrain, with particular debt to 1991’s The People Under the Stairs, Mum sports its own distinctive musk of grotesquerie, with an all-time-sickest Yuletide celebration providing craftsy homemakers with one hell of a Christmas wall-ornament idea.

Meanwhile, in rural Ireland, the least united part of the "kingdom," Plague Town (2008) again proves you really don’t want to miss that last transit run. Here, a dysfunctional American tourist family discovers one extra-large brood of horribly functional kiddies during an overnight stranding they’re unlikely to survive. Director David Gregory cut his teeth making DVD-extra tributes to Tobe Hooper, Jess Franco, Jim Van Bebber, and the "video nasty" era itself. His mentors would be proud.

More realistic, upsetting, and directly addressing "broken Britain" fears is James Watkins’ Eden Lake (2008). Another vacation-gone-horribly-wrong tale, it played one unnoticed week at the Lumiere last year. Yuppie couple Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender’s weekend Buckinghamshire idyll runs afoul of some ill-mannered local tweens, who unfortunately are led by a full-blown junior psychopath. After its routine setup this develops into a genuinely grueling spin on Deliverance (1972), Lord of the Flies (1954), and whatnot, with an ending that can be nitpicked for plausibility but that nonetheless leaves a real chill.

Round one

-
0

sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors’ narrowly thwarted attempt to reject the Municipal Transportation Agency’s 2009-10 budget was the first in a wave of anticipated showdowns between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the progressives this summer as budget season gets underway.

The mayor appeared to win this particular showdown when the board voted 6-5 not to reject the MTA deal May 27, although the skirmish helped progressives voice their concerns over Newsom’s budget priorities. It also gave board President David Chiu the opportunity to conduct a masterful interrogation of MTA executive director Nat Ford that set the stage for Sup. John Avalos to try to place a charter amendment on the November ballot that would make MTA more accountable and accessible.

That said, the final MTA deal — which closes a $129 million deficit on the backs of Muni riders (through service cuts and fare hikes) rather than motorists (MTA governs all parking revenue) by a ratio of about 4-1 — seems to be inconsistent with San Francisco’s official "transit-first" policy.

Chiu was the first to suggest rejecting the deal when it became clear that the Mayor’s Office has been using the MTA as a backdoor ATM, authorizing $66 million in work orders for things like salaries for Newsom’s environmental aides and compensating the police department for vaguely defined security services.

The practice made a mockery of Prop. A., which voters approved in 2007 to increase funding to Muni by $26 million annually. But since then, work orders from unrelated city departments, including the police and Newsom’s 311 call center, had increased by $32 million.

"If people have to pay more for less, they will stop taking Muni," Chiu said at the May 6 Budget Committee hearing on the MTA budget.

Sup. David Campos also took issue with the work orders and service cuts. "Whatever money riders of Muni pay into the system should be used for public transportation," Campos said.

In the end, Chiu got the agency to trim $10 million from its budget, restore $8.6 million in proposed Muni service cuts, and delay the increases that seniors, youth, and the disabled will pay for fast passes. In exchange the board voted 6-5 May 12 to drop its MTA’s budget challenge, allowing fares to increase to $2 and for services to be reduced. Sups. Campos, Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and Eric Mar dissented.

"We needed to work this out so we can move forward on the myriad issues before us," Chiu said.

But led by Avalos, who chairs the board’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee, the progressives revived the issue the next day. "Given our grave economic crisis, we owe it to seniors, youth, and other low-income Muni riders to come up with a better budget, one that ensures Muni accessibility and accountability," Avalos said.

Instead of increasing fares and cutting services, Avalos suggested that the MTA extend meter hours to evenings and Sundays. For a moment, it looked as if the progressives would be able to muster the seven votes needed to reject the deal. Ultimately Chiu, Sophie Maxwell, and the other MTA budget opponents stuck to the deal, which was reapproved May 27.

But the episode underscores why Avalos wants to reform the composition of the MTA board. Currently the mayor appoints all seven members. The only thing the supervisors can do is confirm or reject his nominations.

The mayor also appoints MTA’s executive director. Under Newsom, Ford was hired to the post for $316,000 annually, making him the city’s highest paid employee and someone who feels accountable to the mayor. "In all the cities, the mayor takes the heat for the transit system," Ford told the Guardian when challenged on his agency’s seeming lack of independence.

But under Avalos’ amendment, the mayor and the Board of Supervisors would each nominate three board commissioners while voters would elect the seventh. "The new MTA board composition will create greater checks and balances and also ensure that the MTA director is not solely accountable to one person, but to a board that is more representative of the city and county of San Francisco," Avalos said.

MTA now faces an additional $10 to $16 million deficit, thanks to union negotiations and fears that the state will raid city property tax and gas tax coffers. But as part of his budget deal with Chiu, Ford promised that the agency would study extending parking meter enforcement hours to close the gap.

Confirming that the agency dropped a $9 million a year proposal to extend meter hours citywide after receiving input from merchants, Ford said that "we’ll clearly have to revisit parking. We’ll be looking at how to administer extended meter hours, and how that impacts churches if we do it Sundays. But we are sitting here with a structural deficit that’s been going on for decades. We need to figure out the revenue streams we need to enhance the system."

Campos thought that a progressive Board of Supervisors should have gotten a better MTA budget. "As Sup. John Avalos and I pointed out, there’s almost nothing different between this budget and what was presented last week," Campos said. "I think it’s an illustration of how it is not enough to have power. You have to be willing to use it."

But Chiu defended his deal as a necessary way out of the board conflict with Newsom’s office. "Nat Ford has committed publicly and privately that he will propose meter hour change. And MTA Board President Tom Nolan has committed that he will ensure that car owners pick up more of the burden, and that if the budget gets worse, the additional problems won’t be balanced on the backs of Muni riders, which was not something we heard last week," Chiu said.

Avalos was less sanguine: "It was a clear moment for the Board of Supervisors to support transit-first and the city’s most vulnerable residents."

But he felt that concerns about the deal, and the realization that Newsom is an increasingly absent mayor, will help voters see the need for MTA reform.

"There wasn’t a single MTA commissioner or director accessible or accountable to the greater part of San Francisco. But they were responsive to Room 200, the Mayor’s Office," Avalos said. "Clearly, we need greater checks and balances."

Mirkarimi observed how, when faced with a crisis, people make practical decisions. "What gets lost when we are in crisis mode is our larger objective," he said. "We are a transit-first city that has strong climate change legislation, and Mayor Gavin Newsom is constantly campaigning on green issues. So it’s counterintuitive for us to broker an MTA budget on the backs of Muni riders and not understand that this deal could diminish that ridership."

But MTA spokesperson Judson True believes that what got lost in the discussion is that, as a result of Proposition A, the agency adopted a two-year budget that slapped drivers with increased rates and fees in 2008 while Muni riders and services were mostly spared.

Things changed, True said, when the economy tanked in 2008 and the MTA was left facing an unprecedented deficit. "At that point we reopened the budget and put everything on the table," True said.

Either way, Chiu has been urging supervisors to move on and focus on the next big thing: the mayor’s budget. "There’s a half-billion dollar hole in this budget," Chiu said last week. "It’ll make this debate look like child’s play."

Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

Bull feathers

-
0

superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO I recently found myself in Navajo Nation, munching on frybread at Kate’s diner in Tuba City with Hunky Beau after rocking out to, I shit you not, tech-navajo on the local FM station in the rental. I looked fantastic. We’d just witnessed a fierce two-spirit working the sandwich counter at the Bashas’ supermarket down the street. She/he looked fantastic. Back here in the city, on the nightlife scene, things weren’t so fantastic — another big underground party got busted, Pink Saturday ran into permit snafus, and neighborhood complaints mooted even more regular shindigs. And has anyone else noticed the skyrocketing price of a drink in this town? I’m not saying you need a buzz to bust out (alcohol sales are banned on the rez, so I’m grateful for the option), but dropping a Hamilton for a weak well screwdriver certainly has me rethinking my hollow leg. Still, as immortal shamans ABBA sang, "I can fly like an eagle, I can learn to spread my wings". Spread ’em, children, toss your hair, and let’s keep flying high.

ROLLER DISCO!

The only party in the city where I’m never alone falling on my luscious ass returns — skate rental provided, balance and expertise optional. I can’t lie, I have a total blast at this gig, even if the tunes are fun-yet-familiar and there’s always that one amazingly cute girl whose backspins and pirouettes make me bite my knuckles and wish I were a lot gayer. Like, Brian Boitano gayer.

Thu/4, 9 p.m., $5. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

"25 YEARS OF HOUSE MUSIC"

Dates and times, dates and times — why quibble? Most approaches to the evolution of house are more organic than any "x" on a calendar. But if a quarter-century celebration, complete with art exhibition, of the underground global movement that foretold the Internet’s interconnectivity is a big enough excuse to get Chicago genius Jesse Saunders behind the decks at Club Six, I’m way down.

Fri/5, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $15. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

ZOMBIE BEACH PARTY

"Guaranteed to put the laughter in slaughter" is a tagline that’ll get me every time. And so will any appearance by the Living Dead Girlz, those jaw-dropping undead dancer with a taste for semi-clothed flesh. They’ll be waving, not drowning, from the stage at this tongueless-in-cheek beach blanket bingo bacchanal, along with Sparkly Devil, Honey Lawless, and a mass grave of others. Plus: an undead beachwear costume contest. Paging Annette Funicello …

Fri/5, 9 p.m.– late, $10 street clothes/$7 surfer zombies. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

BIG IDEA: RITUAL AND REDEMPTION

Oh, crap. Is it really Pride month again? Time to haul that sequined rainbow thong from out the mothballs and try to get married or whatever. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is going homo-humongous for its latest, starlet-studded Big Idea party — rounding up the city’s fiercest alternaqueers with its golden lasso, including fab drag disasters Anna Conda and Monistat, DJ Dirty Knees, Pansy Division, Honey Soundsystem, Ex-Boyfriends, and the ever-present, never-sleeping Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Fellini-inspired spectacle also promises free tattoos, after-hours dancing, a taco truck, and "Project Nunway," heh. Best of all, the whole shebang is free — and not sponsored by Miller Lite, Altoids, 2Xist, Olivia Cruises, or Tylenol PM.

Sat/6, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., free. YBCA, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org

WIGHNOMY BROTHERS

Monthly throwdown Kontrol at EndUp breeds absolutely bonkers dancefloor results that are far less fussy than its minimal techno focus, meticulous taste in talent, and somewhat daunting prevalence of miniscule eyewear would suggest. For the party’s fourth anniversary, it’s bringing in Germany’s superstar Wighnomy Brothers, two proudly unkempt vodka-swillers whose Seth Rogen-like public image belies a sizzling bromance with the more lovable, devil-may-care side of dance. The tipsy pair of teddy bears with a penchant for unpronounceable titles (recent release: Metawuffmischfelge) refused to visit the U.S. during that whole Bush thing. Laudable, but we could have used their balls-to-the-wall wig-outs to help us through such foulest ick. Good thing we’ve still got problems!

Sat/6, 10 p.m.–6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

It takes two

-
0

a&eletters@sfbg.com

Whether one thinks of them as a dreamy drone duo who happen to be married or a married couple who happens to make dreamy drone music, Windy & Carl endure. Their first release, the Instrumentals EP (Burnt Hair), dates back to 1994; while most American guitars were tuned down for grunge’s payday, Windy & Carl waxed celestial.

Spacey drones are now in fashion, but Windy & Carl’s influence remains relatively unsung, in spite of their being one of the Kranky label’s flagship acts. Perhaps it’s the duo’s Michigan roots, since ambient music fans are often swayed by Eurocentric cravings. Whatever the case, their prodigious oeuvre now swells with several earthily-titled monolithic albums (1995’s Portal on Ba Da Bing; 1997’s Antarctica on Darla; 1998’s Depths and 2001’s Consciousness on Kranky) and enough compilation appearances and singles to supply a triple-CD set (2002’s Introspection on Blue Flea).

I first plunged in with Depths, though it took me the better part of a year to make it through its viscous 70 minutes in one sitting. Windy & Carl’s music is like a mood ring: its timbre is responsive to emotional currents, some of them hidden. More often than not, dark thoughts surface after 30 or 40 minutes. This makes me suspect that many of those critics who fling adjectives like "blissful" and "glittering" at their records have only dipped their toes in the maelstrom. At the very least, these seem overly simplistic adjectives for music that tilts towards tumult as it limns stillness.

There is a common misconception that ambient music is intrinsically passive or inert: this, in fact, is only true of bad ambient music, of which there is plenty (unsurprisingly, it often accompanies tactless interior design). Windy & Carl, like the kosmische innovators before them, realign one’s sense of space rather than simply flattering it. This process occurs at the periphery of consciousness — trying to put it to words tests the limits of music writing. It’s clear, however, that much of the Michigan duo’s mastery comes down to a well-honed understanding of texture and scale. In a typical jam, the gigantic crest of a thousand distortion pedals curls around the intimate pluck of a lonely guitar in an arresting, Rothko-like frieze. Time is adjourned; foreground and background drift by one another in the fog.

The durational aspect of Windy & Carl’s music has two aspects: lost in the length of any one given piece, we also feel ourselves afloat on the broader body of work, a 16-year drone. This superimposed condition, with every conversation dissolving into all other conversations, should be familiar to anyone who has been inside a long-term relationship. Ambient music implies a porous self, and thus has interesting applications for a couple. Watching A Woman Under the Influence (1974) a few weeks ago, I was struck by the way John Cassavetes draws us into Nick (Peter Falk) and Mabel Longhetti’s (Gena Rowlands) nonverbal communication: the nonsense utterances, whispers, and cries. Something similar happens in Windy & Carl’s echo chamber of tone, feedback and voice.

For all the songs about love, how many actually document its dormant time and space? John and Yoko, Nelson Angelo and Joyce, and Mimi and Richard Fariña’s works spring to mind. Windy & Carl’s latest, Songs for the Broken Hearted (Kranky, 2008), belongs in any such pantheon. Their albums have always been "home recordings," but Dedications to Flea (Brainwashed Recordings, 2005), the duo’s disc-long contemplation of their dog’s death, marked a new degree of intimacy. Field recordings of Flea on a walk and Windy’s explanatory linear notes thickened the mise-en-scène of private loss, making for an album occupying the unknown zone between home movie and séance.

The last few years seem to have been a dark time for the couple (under her full name Windy Weber, Windy released a solo album for Blue Flea last year called, no joke, I Hate People). But one doesn’t require the details of estrangement to immerse into its recesses of fear and forgiveness. There’s more of Windy’s Nico-ish purr than before, and the lyrics are newly decipherable ("You already know so much of what I keep /From the rest of the world /But you did not shy away from me"). The album’s sequencing is distinct too, fluttering between vast passages of oblivion and brief statements of bare, shorn beauty. Whether the broken-hearted of the album’s title refers to Windy & Carl themselves or an imagined listener, Songs for finds fierce beauty in the hide-and-seek of cohabitation.

WINDY & CARL

With Jonas Reinhardt and Nudge

Wed/27, 8 p.m., $10

The Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF
(415)861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com

Crack “Relapse”

-
0

a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Symptoms: until last year there were few signs of life from Eminem, the hip-hop artist. Last sighted taking a bow on the cover of his last, toned-down, more PC, and ultimately underwhelming studio 2004 album, Encore, the rapper disappeared from the scene, as rumors festered about retirement and later, after he dropped out of the 2005 Anger Management Tour, substance abuse. Out of rehab and back to music-making — with hip-hop once again his favorite high, as he put it in a recent interview, Shady’s Relapse (Aftermath/Goliath/Interscope/Shady/Web) is now in our hands.

Diagnosis: listening to Em lead with his anger a decade after the release of The Slim Shady LP (Aftermath/Interscope), we’re back to the kind of music and lyrics the man was born to make and sling — impossible to ignore when blasting, and incapable of being reduced to wallpaper. Relapse isn’t perfect. The weakest track is the first single, "We Made You," with its easy, adolescent, cartoonish video and relatively violence-free lyrics. One too many numbers obsessively retreads similar women-hating, gore-mongering themes on this 22-tracker, which includes the hidden Dre collabos "Old Time’s Sake" and "Crack a Bottle" with 50 Cent. But even at its most repetitive (i.e., the skits devoted to nay-saying music biz types), Relapse writhes with life and smarts, conceptually of one piece from its narrative-like programming to its pill-mosaic cover portrait and medicine bottle top-like "Push, Down & Turn" packaging.

Em’s faux Jamaican/Scottish toaster patois may irk, much like his habit of subbing rap’s omnipresent "bitch" for "lesbian," but it’s tough to deny the vitality — and vitriol — rushing off Relapse‘s first three songs, as the rapper frontloads the disc with his strongest material. Tracks like the opener "3 a.m." and its serial-killer imagery (check the steal of Silence of the Lamb‘s imminently swipe-able "It puts the lotion in the basket" monologue and then the YouTube remixes) make it clear from the start that nasty alter ego Slim Shady has lapsed back into view. As he faces a 3 a.m. darkest hour of the soul stocked with a Fangoria-style rogue’s crew of references to Jason, Freddy, Dahmer, et al., rage continues to feed his rap.

Such gruesome reveries make Marshall Mathers’ acknowledged sleeping pill addiction totally understandable — whatever quiets the mind, dude. And though I usually suggest meditation and yoga as alternatives to self-medication, I’m loath to wreck such chaotic, thrill-kill fantasies as "Hello" and "Medicine Ball." "Bagpipes from Baghdad" and the more insinuating, handclap-riddled "Same Song and Dance" call out the perceived sins of rumored exes Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Mariah Carey — a trash-culture harem that makes one suspect that Shady’s rehab stays involved a lot of tabloid browsing for dates. Attraction is always linked to repulsion, hinted at in the openly weary title of the latter.

Blame the mother — Eminem does, while fully aware that the world is familiar with that corrosive, at times litigious relationship, judging from the beginning of second track, "My Mom": "My mom, my mom, I know you’re probably tired about hearing ’bout my mom." His still-heated fury at her legacy of bad parenting and Valium addiction streams through his flow, this time specifically linked to his own pill predilection. "Wait a minute this isn’t dinner this is paint thinner /’You ate it yesterday I ain’t hear no complaints did I? Now here’s a plate full of pain killers,’" he spits, before ending with, "Alright ma you win, I don’t feel like arguin’ /I’ll do it, pop it gobble it and start wobblin’ /stumble hobble tumble slip trip till I fall in bed with a bottle of meds and a Heath Ledger bobblehead." Ledger’s damaged Joker would appreciate those last, tongue-tying, onomatopoetic lines, pointing to Em’s revived brilliance even amid the Shadiest, sketched-out turmoil.

Or blame the stepfather. Was Eminem raped by his stepfather as a child? And if so, have pop listeners ever been informed of sexual abuse this graphically via song? "Insane" might be the most horrifically explicit, yet — a credit to Eminem’s powers as a bold entertainer — bleakly humorous and compulsively listenable tune about child molestation to date. Here, as with so many of his lyrics, the victim becomes conflated with the victimizer, as the rapper hints at the generational transfer of abuse: "I want you to feel me like my stepfather felt me /Fuck a little puppy kick the puppy while he’s yelping /Shady what the fuck you saying I don’t know help me," he rages, flipping between characters before settling on a primal scene too painful to be relegated to fiction, speaking as a boy to a step-Pater Monstrous. "I only get naked when the babysitter tells me /She showed me a movie like Nightmare on Elm Street / but it was X and they called it ‘Pubic Hair on Chelsea’/’Well this one’s called ‘Ass Rape’ and we’re shooting the jail scene.’" Don’t go there? Impossible. If rehab released fresh, brave streams of anger and pain in Eminem, no wonder Relapse 2 is hot on this horror flick of an album’s heels.

Big Business

-
0

PREVIEW Here’s a page right out of any rabid metalhead’s book of wildest, mind-blowingest dreams: What if the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Tyr descended from the stormy heavens and formed a power trio? What would it sound like? What earthly buildings would crumble to the ground? What souls would be raised from their shadowy graves? What chaos would ensue?

To answer that first question: what if? What’s more metal than thunder, lightning, magic, and Valhalla? Those dudes invented it. They started their band approximately 1,300 years ago, before you or guitars existed. Second, they would sound like Los Angeles bone-crushers Big Business, whose giant leaden riffs, primordial Cro-Magnon rhythms, and thunderous hollow vocals pretty much sound like a band Thor might have dreamt up after an all-nighter spent smiting Viking tribes with lightning bolts and joyriding in his goat-drawn chariot with a ravishing blonde goddess.

The guys in Big Business, cut from the same pitch-black cloth as any fearsome Nordic god, are fast approaching their own place in the pantheon of mortal metal royalty. Their sludgy, doom-soaked sound is forged by ex-Murder City Devils drummer Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren, formerly of Karp. And if their musical resumes weren’t already steeped in metal street cred, Willis and Warren joined the Melvins to record (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac, 2006) and Nude with Boots (Ipecac, 2008). The Biz added guitarist Toshi Kasai to its lineup in 2007, just after its sophomore album Here Come the Waterworks (Hydra Head) won it a hailstorm of critical success and a spot touring with Tool.

Now Big Business’s third album has arrived. While retaining the group’s visceral low-end attack, Mind the Drift (Hydra Head) adds more of Kasai’s quick-fire guitar work to the murk — it gives the album an atmospheric discord that swings like a wrecking ball. The Biz gets almost prog-metal when it adds vocal harmonies (wait, now they sing, too?!) and an organ solo to the dirge of "Ayes Have It." Bottom of the Hill, look out. Will King Buzzo join them on stage? Whatever happens, Big Business won’t be taking prisoners.

BIG BUSINESS With Tweak Bird. Wed/27, 10 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St, SF (415) 621-4455

Adam’s the real winner

-
1

By Tim Redmond

Now that everyone with any sense knows Adam Lambert was screwed and the wrong guy won American Idol, let me suggest why Kris Allen might be the real loser here and Lambert shouldn’t feel so bad.

First of all, we all know why Allen won. As Kevin Lynch writes in the Examiner:

Kris is practically a poster boy for heterosexual, white-bread Christianity, while Adam is an in-your-face Jewish gay man.

Kris is Ken-doll cute (my seven-year-old daughter adores him) and safe and a goodam youth minister or something. Truth is, he’s as boring as dozens of other musicians and has nothing special to offer.

Besides, he’s stuck for at least the next year with the American Idol franchise. He’s kind of like Miss America — he can’t do anything wild or fun or unusual (I’m sure that’s in the contract). Simon Fuller holds a tight grip on his franchise, and a fair chunk of the money that Allen makes over the next year will go back to 19 Entertainment and the Idol operation.

Lambert can do whatever the fuck he wants at this point. He’ll be making a lot more money, having a lot more fun and walking away with all the marbles. He’ll even get laid whenever he wants, without the fear of God and Simon Fuller.

Congrats, Adam — you’re the real winner here.

1...565758...81Page 57 of 81

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org