Whatever

Scruff trade

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Forty years ago Bruce Nauman made a squat, unpainted block of plaster sculpture titled A Cast of the Space under My Chair. This single work, one of dozens in the Berkeley Art Museum’s absorbing exhibition "A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s," is said to have provided enough inspiration to fuel the career of British artist Rachel Whiteread, who famously cast the interior of a condemned Victorian house. Nauman’s sculpture, here seen as cast exhibition copy, could easily be overlooked. It’s modest in scale and, like much of this show, constructed with the most basic materials. The piece points, as do others, to Nauman’s uncanny and influential ability (Matthew Barney’s use of physical endurance and film are connected to Nauman) to activate negative space, be it a physical zone or the creative void artists face in the studio. As is evidenced here, he exalts, questions, liberates, and gibes the anxiety-ridden act of making art, irrespective of material form. He quite often relies on the one thing always at hand: his body.

The show, curated by BAM’s Constance Lewallen, is limited to works made during five prolific years while Nauman lived in Northern California. There are an impressive number of classics here, including Self-Portrait as a Fountain, a 1966–67 photograph of the artist squirting an arc of water from his mouth, and Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists, a 1966 phlegm-colored, rectangular wall sculpture that subverts the promise of its title (it’s fiberglass, and all the knees are Nauman’s). But the exhibition is less about masterpieces than it is about the spirit of experimentation that’s always been a hallmark of Bay Area art making. In four galleries fitted with drawings, sculpture, photography, film, video, and neon, text, and sound works, the show easily proves its thesis: Nauman established his artistic vocabulary — using whatever means necessary to focus on the physical, playful use of language and that sense of void — while living here. "Rose" also communicates the thrill of seeing the vision, propelled by a sustained, successful run of art production, of an artist who became one of the most important of his generation.

It’s rare to see static and projected works installed together so handsomely, and the spare yet lively exhibition design is a key to the show’s success. Nauman’s promiscuous use of media is in glorious effect throughout. In the first gallery, fiberglass sculptures cast from architecture and forming homely objects sit next to videos that find the artist slowly and sometimes suggestively interacting with a corner of a room or a glowing fluorescent light tube. Nearby, small ceramic works from 1965 depict imploding cups and saucers. Drawings and neon present Nauman’s interest in text and wordplay. Later the exhibition adds Nauman’s quasi-how-to 16mm films, pieces that illustrate his interest in the notion of making. Andy Warhol made dry, deadpan films concurrently, but Nauman’s are more boyishly wry and reveal the artist getting his hands dirty, literally. Challenging the hegemony of minimalism, Nauman channeled the 1960s spirit of political and lifestyle fomentation. His classic studio videos, in which he engaged in repetitive, sometimes strenuous physical acts for the camera (Bouncing in the Corner, No.1 and Stamping in the Studio, both 1968, among them), directly link the artist to his work.

Lewallen’s decision to focus on pieces made in a specific region, one outside the art world mainstream, introduces elements of Bay Area art history and the contested notion of regionalism and place in a contemporary art scene ruled by international biennials and art fairs. Here we see pieces made while Nauman was in the nascent graduate art program at secluded UC Davis, where he studied with William Wiley and Robert Arneson and TA’d for Wayne Thiebaud. That backdrop indirectly surveys the role of graduate schools when they were affordable — and in this case, laid-back and apart from the limelight and marketplace.

Nauman has always seemed to operate as a lone cowboy and has long resided in New Mexico, far from art world centers. He’s notoriously reticent about attending openings, though he surprised everyone by showing up in Berkeley for this one. The exhibit’s catalog pinpoints Nauman’s onetime studio at 144 27th St. in the Mission District, a neighborhood still attractive to artists. But "Rose" doesn’t so much suggest a Bay Area aesthetic as use location as a framing device.

In a 1970 interview Nauman said that his work was initially confused with funk art, a 1950s-born movement that had a strong Bay Area presence in the early work of Bruce Conner and others. "It looked like it in a way," he said, "but really I was just trying to present things in a straightforward way without bothering to shine them and clean them up." Scruffy still works around here, and in that spirit the show generates a frisson of hometown pride that feels anything but sentimental. It’s heartening to see what amazing things emerge from under the radar. *

A ROSE HAS NO TEETH: BRUCE NAUMAN IN THE 1960S

Through April 15

Wed. and Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.–7 p.m., $4–$8 (free first Thurs.)

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

>

It came from San Francisco

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Crazed sea lizard terrorizes Seoul! US military negligence spawns bloodthirsty mutant! Breaking news: beast came from San Francisco!

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s The Host is just a movie, so the red, white, and blue can’t really be blamed for unleashing a monster on his country’s populace. But Bong’s beast came to life in a part of San Francisco steeped in military history. Tucked away in the Presidio, amid old army barracks, tree-lined drives, and cutting-edge nonprofit facilities is the Orphanage, an upstart special effects company aiming to shape the future of film.

The Orphanage already had a number of high-profile projects under its belt when it eagerly took on The Host. It ended up with its defining achievement to date. When New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, writing from last year’s Cannes Film Festival, called Bong’s movie "the best film I’ve seen at this year’s [festival]," it quickly became the subject of rapturous buzz from all corners: erudite cinema journals, mainstream magazines, and blogs. One of the most consistent subjects of praise has been the movie’s creature. The horror site Bloody Disgusting calls its design "the most astounding part of the film … remarkable and incredibly ambitious … a cross between a dinosaur, a tremor, and a giant squid with giant teeth." Another site describes it as "some kind of aqua-lizard thing that looks as real as anything else in the frame." Bong deserves much of this praise, but he couldn’t have gotten it without the Orphanage, which has joined the long line of important F/X names to emerge from the Bay Area.

When George Lucas moved his F/X company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), to Marin in 1980, he made the Bay Area ground zero for film’s technological advances. Pixar and DreamWorks Animation SKG also call the region home, with home bases in Emeryville and Redwood City, respectively. Lucas relocated ILM to the Presidio in 1995, erecting a statue of Yoda to watch over the campus. Though meant to symbolize Lucas’s venerable legacy as an innovator and a maverick, the statue now carries connotations of a different sort: that of an elder accessible only to a select few.

The Orphanage was born of this legacy. Jonathan Rothbart, Stuart Maschwitz, and Scott Stewart — all ILM veterans — founded the company in 1999, landing Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars as their first feature project. The Orphanage has worked on several of the biggest box office successes of the past few years, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Superman Returns, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But its partnership with a director on the fringe of the mainstream, Robert Rodriguez, has been its most enduring. The F/X house has worked on three of his features, most notably the "Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City, and is currently finishing Grindhouse, the filmmaker’s collaboration with Quentin Tarantino.

It’s this sense of partnership that prepared the Orphanage for its collaboration with Bong on The Host. Based on the success of his playfully wry 2003 thriller, Memories of Murder, the director received $10 million to make The Host, a budget quite large by Korean standards but extremely modest by Hollywood’s. Unschooled in CGI but knowing he needed animators, he shopped the film around to a number of companies. "Director Bong didn’t choose the Orphanage because of our creature experience; we didn’t really have a whole lot — almost none at all," Arin Finger, the film’s visual F/X producer, says. "[He] approached houses like ILM and the big giants, but what they were going to charge was way out of his budget" — Bong and his producers spent $3 million on the effects for the film — "so it was a great opportunity for us."

The Host is many things: a comedy-drama about a fractured family brought together by catastrophe, a political critique, a horror movie, a revenge tale. But above all it’s about a monster — and quite a monster. Equally capable of frightening grace and endearing clumsiness, the creature and its parts don’t resemble anything in the animal kingdom so much as everything in the animal kingdom: reptile, amphibian, fish, worm, monkey, and at least one bit of human anatomy. Having just dabbled in small-scale creature work with films such as Hellboy and Jeepers Creepers 2, the Orphanage accepted a daunting task when it agreed to animate Bong’s monster, the main character of his film. "We were kind of looking at this project as one where [we] could really develop a creature department," sequence supervisor Brian Kulig says. "On top of that, the creature is running around in darkness, in broad daylight, it’s on fire, it’s drooling, it’s in the rain, it’s swimming. Everything that could possibly happen to this creature pretty much did."

As Finger, Kulig, and fellow sequence supervisor Michael Spaw discuss their work on The Host, the interview site — a stately room just above the rest of the company’s creative team — gives a snapshot of the Orphanage in action. Its headquarters strongly resembles an older part of the Presidio’s history: an army intelligence bunker. Rows of people sit diligently at their computers, with only a sliver of natural light seeping through the occasional ground-level window. One gets the distinct impression that the company has expanded rapidly in recent years and may soon outgrow its home.

Much of this growth can be attributed to The Host and its creature team, whose mastermind was Kevin Rafferty, the visual F/X supervisor. Rafferty, another ILM veteran who has supervised the effects on numerous Hollywood blockbusters, spent much of The Host‘ s shoot on set with Bong and his crew. This level of on-set presence is rare in the F/X world, according to Finger, Kulig, and Spaw — all three of whom also logged hours in Seoul. Oftentimes, as Spaw put it, the F/X team "is only associated after principal photography is done, and you’re handed plates, and you make everything work. Actually being on set was an invaluable experience." When the trio speak about their time in Korea, they say Bong, the cast, and the crew were eager to collaborate, accessible and gracious in a way unknown in Hollywood, and game for whatever it took to capture a shot.

Having first dreamed up the idea for The Host in high school, Bong had the nature of his beast largely worked out in his head — a vision he articulated to the Orphanage during a two-week visit prior to the shoot. "Director Bong treated the creature like one of his actors. He worked with the animators one-on-one to dial in the expressions and emotions of the character," Finger says, the reference to "Director Bong" a sign of his and his cohorts’ reverence for the filmmaker. Spaw adds, "Director Bong made it clear to us that sure, you have this monster film, a horror film — or however you want to classify this rather interesting piece of cinema — but if you didn’t understand how [the creature] was thinking or how the real physical actors were reutf8g to it, it wouldn’t work."

For the movement of the monster, the Orphanage team used a variety of reference points, including Jurassic Park. But due to the unique nature of Bong’s creature, none was definitive. As Finger says, "You never see a dinosaur swinging by its tail." (The tail is one of the monster’s stronger physical traits, capable of grabbing people and allowing it to latch on to structures and hang in midair.)

Other touchstones in creating the monster — including walruses, crocodiles, and paraplegics — were less predictable. Footage of paraplegics in motion, for example, was useful because Bong and the Orphanage’s creation has just two legs at the very front of its long body. Though incredibly graceful in water, it is challenged on land, where it has a baby’s unpredictable sense of balance. "There is a shot when [it] is first kind of rampaging around in this park area along the Han River, and [it] stumbles and basically does a face-plant and kicks up some dust," Spaw says. "It’s great, really engaging the audience to believe that this thing is not perfect."

To create the CGI version of the monster, the Orphanage relied on a small clay model, or maquette, sculpted by the New Zealand F/X house Weta Digital (King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy), which was constructed using a design that Bong commissioned from artist Chin Wei-chen. Bong had wanted the creature to be completely CGI, but when Rafferty realized there would be significant close-ups involving live actors and the creature, he petitioned for a live puppet as well.

Consequently, the Australian company John Cox Creature Workshop constructed a two-ton model of the beast’s head, a particularly complex piece of art. While the head as a whole resembles a nasty fish, the open mouth is bizarre and unique, as if a vagina had sprouted leathery butterfly wings adorned with spikes. The Orphanage had to adapt its animation to the Cox model, ensuring that the digital monster’s movements and characteristics matched those of the puppet. "We had to cater the animation process, which we normally don’t do — like how the creature’s mouth opens and closes," Kulig says. "The mouth alone had so many intricate parts."

One possible reason for The Host‘s success is that the Orphanage and Bong’s South Korean crew routinely defied convention throughout their collaboration. "It was amazing to watch how Director Bong’s mind worked," Kulig says. "He would react to CGI footage we already had and shoot all these shots that weren’t on the schedule. None of us could figure out what he was doing. But when we showed up the next day and saw the footage edited, it worked beautifully."

Constantly interacting with the Orphanage representatives on set, Bong also recorded daily videos for the SF team in which he critiqued footage projected on a wall behind him. He was adamant that the creature look ungainly and act awkwardly — like, as Kulig puts it, a "fish out of water." Both despite and because of its clumsiness, the creature wreaks considerable havoc on the residents of Seoul and, in particular, a few of the film’s main characters. In some cases the violence proved too great to use actual people. For these shots the Orphanage employed what it calls "digital doubles," or animated versions of the actors. But whenever possible Bong used his cast, who gamely submitted to a variety of miserable scenarios, including being pummeled by cushion-wielding men (stand-ins for the creature) and getting repeatedly dragged through the Han River.

As the South Korean film industry’s cachet has risen worldwide, coproductions with other countries have become more commonplace. The Host, the first major F/X film in Korean history, is also the first to employ a company with strong ties to Hollywood. Finger, Kulig, and Spaw describe an on-set camaraderie in which everyone was both intensely hardworking and jovial. "The opportunity to work with pretty much the most famous Korean actors out there was amazing," Finger says. "On a typical US blockbuster movie, that never happens — the actors are in their trailer and they’re off. We were drinking and singing karaoke with these guys after the shoot, and the director [and crew] as well."

At the center of everything, confident in his vision but eager to use the expertise of others, was Bong. F/X people are used to playing a secondary role as, to paraphrase Spaw, service providers whose job is to make pixels. But on this occasion, the Orphanage’s experience was different. "Every now and then, you have the opportunity to work in service of a great piece of art [that] wouldn’t be the same without your contribution," Spaw says. "That’s why you look to work with someone like Director Bong. Both sides have gotten something truly unique out of the experience." One unique reward: they’ve created the biggest box office hit ever in South Korea. Another: they’ve made a great movie that just might become a classic. *

More on The Host:

Cheryl Eddy’s review

Johnny Ray Huston on director Bong Joon-ho

A talk with Bong Joon-ho

Sour milk

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m still breast-feeding my third baby, and my libido is completely gone. I don’t even think about sex. My ob-gyn seemed to think it’s related to breast-feeding. That was months ago, and I still feel the same. I feel bad for my husband. I know he is starting to take it personally.

Love,

Shut-Down Mom

Dear Mom:

I have to admit I’ve been letting your question sit here in my "good question!" file for months. As a newish mother myself, I can’t easily write about this without taking it a bit personally too. I generally try to avoid getting all me-me-me unless it’s particularly amusing, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

Of course it seems related to breast-feeding. It is deeply and inextricably connected to breast-feeding, a process involving sex- and sexuality-related hormones, intimate touch, and boobs. So really, how could it not affect your sex life? Not to say that postpartum libido issues (I hesitate to call them problems since they are so natural, normal, and expected if generally unwelcome) are purely hormonal. You may be a big bag of hormones, but you’re a specific, unique sack of hormones living a unique and specific life. You have a husband, and you have rather a lot of children. There’s a lot more going on than the mere release or reception of this molecule or that.

I’ve read a ton on this subject, if not before I had these kids, then certainly since. And while most of what you see out there is common sense or nonsense, there are a few bits and bobs you may not have heard. Not everyone knows, for instance, that we all release the milk-making hormone prolactin after orgasm, producing a sensation of satiety. Even fewer people will have heard about the researchers who recently measured prolactin levels in laboratory subjects who masturbated to orgasm or had penis-vagina sex to the same end. The screwers released 400 percent more prolactin than the wankers did, possibly explaining why most people find partnered sex more satisfying than masturbation. Much work remains to be done (what about other kinds of sex with a partner? What about homo sex?), but if we in the Lactation Nation are already walking around with high levels of prolactin, which of course we are, we may already be feeling the sort of satiety that other, less milky people have to have partnered sex in order to achieve. We don’t want sex because we feel like we just had some, and the drive to go get some more is suppressed. That’s one theory, anyway.

Breast-feeding also releases oxytocin, that busy hormone with jobs ranging from stimuutf8g uterine contractions and causing your husband to start snoring so soon after sex to making prairie voles (and perhaps everyone else) bond to a partner and stick around to raise the children together. The oxytocin released at orgasm is responsible for the aaaaahhhh feeling you get as you nestle back into your beloved’s arms. It creates similar warm fuzzies at the mere touch of the right person (good hugs release oxytocin, while unwanted or merely social hugs do not). Oxytocin, of course, is released as your baby nurses, but also by just cuddling with her (or in some cases thinking about her). Again, the sensations of calm, happy, shmoopy-pie satiety, while delightful, are not exactly conducive to going out and gettin’ you some.

Add to all this the fact that your usual sex drivers, estrogen and testosterone, are at an all-time low, and the chemical basis of the "just don’t wanna" that can last as long as you keep up the nursing becomes obvious. Add to that the sleep deprivation, the ambivalent (to put it mildly, also inaccurately) feelings that many of us harbor about the changes our bodies have gone through, and the vaginal dryness, and there ya go. Death of sex. For a while. Do not despair.

Here’s my big secret program, which I hope to make some bucks selling to desperate couples: Do not feel guilty. Guilt kills sex. Do not hide or contrive to fall asleep before or after your husband, and do not lie or make excuses. All of these set up a familiar but deadly teenagerish dynamic where you own the sex but won’t be doling much, if any, out. Meanwhile, your husband is skulking around like a starving mongrel trying get whatever scraps you might drop in an unwary moment. Yuck and ew. You are grown-up partners, and you’re on the same side. Do not forget this.

Face your husband, clear-eyed. Remind him that it’s hormonal. Remind him that it will end. Encourage him to keep offering, since your proposition circuits are down at the moment. And — really important — if it doesn’t sound unappealing, take him up on it sometimes. Just because you didn’t crave it doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. Eventually, you’ll even want it, as long as you don’t have a bunch of stupid fights about it first.

Love,

Andrea

PS A blow job wouldn’t hurt.

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Sorta, maybe an alcoholic

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

To read about Delancey’s finances, click here.

What exactly is Gavin Newsom doing at Delancey Street?

It’s not counseling, we’re told. It’s not rehab. It’s not detox. It’s not a typical course of treatment at the storied $20 million nonprofit. So what is it beyond a reprieve from the otherwise ugly headlines?

Newsom isn’t talking much about his program. But some mental-health professionals are raising serious questions about his regimen.

San Francisco’s chief executive declared several weeks ago in a public announcement to all the city’s department heads that he was seeking a diluted version of rehab at Delancey Street.

That struck more than a few people as odd. Delancey Street doesn’t do part-time or outpatient treatment. It only takes clients who agree to a long-term, full-time residential program geared entirely toward hardcore alcoholics, drug addicts, and criminals.

It’s not, in other words, a place where someone in Newsom’s condition would typically seek help. And it’s not a place designed to alleviate a comparatively minor thirst for white wine.

The news certainly appalled Dee-Dee Stout.

Stout is a City College of San Francisco professor and an adjunct faculty member at San Francisco State University. It’s her job to train city employees working in any major capacity that involves medically treating alcohol and drug abuse, from San Francisco General Hospital to Community Behavioral Health Services to the Adult Probation Department.

Stout, a certified drug and alcohol counselor, told us friends who’d seen the headlines said, " ‘Oh god, Dee-Dee’s going to hit the roof on this one.’ And they were right."

She struggled to figure out how she could broach the subject to one of her classes at City College — but a student beat her to it, quickly pointing out that it was unethical for credentialed treatment specialists to counsel their close friends. The two-year recertification required of caseworkers in the city includes an ethics update, Stout said.

Delancey Street’s executive director, Mimi Silbert, has been Newsom’s friend since he was a child and knows his father well. Silbert, in fact, has openly discussed Newsom’s progress with the press, including the Guardian, while the mayor’s own ear-piercing silence on the matter enables him to appear repentant.

Stout decided to offer the student extra credit if he drafted a letter outlining the concerns of the class, which she had colleagues review before sending it along to the entire Board of Supervisors, the Mayor’s Office, and pretty much every major newspaper in town.

"This relationship is not acceptable under any applicable code of professional ethics," the letter states. Hardly anyone bothered to write back, save for the auto-response letters Stout received from Sophie Maxwell and the Mayor’s Office, plus a letter from Bevan Dufty urging Stout and her students to empathize with Gavin during this difficult time.

Silbert, for her part, told the Guardian that ethics weren’t a concern for her because Newsom wasn’t a full-tilt drunk and hadn’t submitted completely to a detailed treatment plan when he approached her for help.

"The mayor is not a drug addict," Silbert said. "That’s not what he was looking for…. Having stopped drinking, he wanted to take a look at himself. He drank what people would call ‘socially.’ I’ve seen other people when they stopped drinking — even people who didn’t need detox — and there were physical signs of problems. That’s not the shape the mayor was in."

The mayor is attending both group and solo counseling sessions after work each day, a schedule that Silbert told us is still ongoing.

Dannie Lee, a former Delancey Street resident we interviewed, said that during his own stay he attended group therapy three days a week and they were generally no-holds-barred sessions. Lee lived at Delancey Street for three and a half years after spending much of his adult life in California’s prison system. While the program ultimately worked for him, he insists, he’s skeptical that it could benefit anyone who’s trying to attend as an outpatient.

"Maybe it would be great if [Newsom] was actually there as a client or whatever to really sit in a circle and really share his stuff and listen to the group and let the group really attack," said the 49-year-old Lee, who today is one of Stout’s students. "That probably would be fine. But I don’t see that happening…. I think he would really have to tell things I don’t think he wants to tell."

Press accounts have depicted Delancey Street as an abrasive scrub brush for Newsom’s sinful indulgences. "No Nonsense: Toughness Key to Delancey Street, Silbert’s Success," a Chronicle headline announced Feb. 7. Silbert herself told the Guardian, "No one would come near us if they weren’t serious. I’m old, crotchety, and very direct. I have no time to waste."

That may be true — and it’s clear Delancey Street has had some remarkable success in treating people with severe self-destructive impulses.

San Francisco, on the other hand, years ago eschewed the sort of harsh treatment techniques that have made Delancey Street famous.

H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and a one-time clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco, told us that federal mental-health bureaucrats are less inclined today to fund groups that use confrontational methods for treating clients.

Any local nonprofit agency that wants to provide help to substance abusers using city money must comply with San Francisco’s harm reduction policy, which discourages hostile interview techniques and was set in stone by the San Francisco Health Commission seven years ago.

The letter from Stout’s class points out that treatment professionals are moving away from tough-love verbal upbraids such as those employed by the Delancey Street model.

" ‘Attack therapy’ often involves yelling at patients who have, in our view, a medical condition…. While we realize that some patients are helped by strong, confrontational methods, we believe that an evidence-based approach offers more consistent successful results."

Silbert’s techniques may be controversial, but she does move easily among Democratic Party rainmakers and philanthropists. Delancey Street enjoys wide popularity with the likes of Robert Redford, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Washington-based Eisenhower Foundation, and executives at the Gap, Pottery Barn, and Bank of America.

Silbert said the mayor deserves credit for whatever help he chooses to pursue. Other prominent friends of Delancey Street have called her before when they needed to "tune themselves up."

"I would never choose to criticize other people’s approaches, so I’m sorry if people are criticizing ours," she said. "We work hard. We do our best…. I’m glad these people feel they have a definitive answer. I don’t, and I’ve been doing it for 35 years."

If Newsom, as Silbert says, isn’t a serious alcoholic, Delancey Street is a peculiar place for him to seek help.

Most people entering the program have hit rock bottom, a step away from death or lifelong incarceration. They’re one-time prostitutes, drug pushers, robbers, and ruthless bangers. Since the organization was formed in the 1970s, it claims to have transformed the lives of 14,000 people through vocational and education assistance in addition to group counseling.

Very few of those people come in for the sort of casual treatment Newsom is seeking. In fact, Delancey Street typically doesn’t accept anyone who isn’t planning on spending a couple years in residence.

Residents living at the Embarcadero Triangle provide labor for several businesses that buoy the nonprofit financially, from its famous Delancey Street Restaurant to a national moving and trucking service.

Newsom for the most part is refusing to answer questions about his now-public battle with booze.

But Stout suggests that Newsom, by allowing the entirety of his treatment to appear on a marquee, has brought the publicity on himself. "Frankly, I don’t think it’s any of our business if he goes to treatment," Stout said. "I wish he would have just quietly gone and did what he needed to do and said he just had some medical things he needed to take care of, period." *

The Wild, Wild West

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› amanda@sfbg.com

As a production assistant for a visual effects studio, Robert Seeley had a job at the Orphanage that was nuts and bolts for the movie industry — handling paperwork, overseeing schedules, arranging deliveries, and making sure folks were fed, clients were happy, and many of the million little logistics for a film project were coordinated.

His days began with an hour-long commute from Pleasant Hill to the Presidio, where the Orphanage is based. Mornings started around 9, and the typical workday ran about 10 hours. Or it did when he started there, in July 2006.

"There was a snowball effect. It started out as a regular 10-hour workday. It slowly built to 12, then 16," Seeley told the Guardian.

At one point, Seeley charges, he was asked to work a 20-hour shift — and return to work two and a half hours later. When he didn’t come in, he was fired.

Seeley sued, and the case was eventually settled. But along the way, the lawyers for the Orphanage raised a startling argument: since the Presidio is a federal enclave, they said, California labor law, which restricts the length of shifts, doesn’t apply.

"This was a really straightforward, meat and potatoes case," Seeley’s lawyer, Steve Sommers, told the Guardian. "And if he worked across the street, it would have been a slam dunk."

If the legal argument advanced by the studio as a response to Seeley’s lawsuit is right — and some labor experts say it may very well be — then none of the private companies that lease space at the Presidio have to follow any state or local labor laws. That means no California or San Francisco minimum wage, no workplace safety statutes, nothing. And since state law is generally far tougher than federal law, the difference could be profound.

There are hundreds of people working for private companies in the Presidio, which operates under a unique arrangement that allows private, commercial development in a national park.

Federal regulations are almost always weaker than California’s — and not necessarily improving. "Federal laws are evolving backwards for the most part," said Katie Quan, associate chair for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley. "There have been attempts to weaken benefits, Social Security, who can and can’t join unions. Even the new minimum wage that’s been passed — there’s a big question as to whether or not [George W.] Bush will sign it."

While California’s minimum wage is $7.50 and San Francisco’s is $9.14, the federal hourly rate is currently $5.15 — and arguably the only one that applies in the Presidio.

Several employment lawyers contacted by us initially suggested that California’s labor statutes would have to apply in the Presidio, but Chris Cannon, a lawyer familiar with the situation, did not.

"I’ve gotten a lot of people acquitted on a criminal basis applying that same validity," he said of the cases the Orphanage’s lawyers used to back up their argument. "It’s like a little piece of Nevada here in California."

Cannon has litigated several cases in the Presidio, most notably on the controversial issue of where and when dogs can be off leash. "Given the history of the Presidio, I think there’s a very good argument that California laws don’t apply."

It’s easy to extrapolate that nothing that’s been passed in Sacramento or at City Hall would apply to the Presidio, including the recent universal health care plan passed by the Board of Supervisors and the paid sick-leave that voters approved.

The upshot: the author of the bill establishing the Presidio park, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a big favorite of organized labor, may have created a place where private employers can freely flout state and local laws designed to protect workers.

Lieutenant Jeff Wasserman of the US Park Police, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the Presidio, said, "We only have to follow federal laws. However, the US attorney has in the past asked us to adhere to state laws simply because they think it’s the right thing to do."

One of Wasserman’s examples involved a California law that speed limits may only be adjusted based on recommendations from a traffic engineer, which was established to prevent cops from setting speed traps. To Wasserman’s knowledge, California is the only state with this restriction, and it’s been extended to the Presidio. "The US Attorney felt that it was fair that if the surrounding streets followed it, we should too." He added that juvenile arrests in the Presidio have also stood up in local courts because the federal laws are so weak in that regard.

Two dozen companies contacted by us were asked questions regarding employment protocol, and all said they paid San Francisco’s minimum wage or better and insisted they followed both federal and state labor laws. The largest employer in the Presidio, LucasFilm, did not respond to the questions.

Carsten Sorensen, CEO of the Orphanage, said, "We follow the letter of the law. We were told by our attorneys, being in the Presidio, we fall under the federal labor law."

He did say, "Of course we want our employees to be safe and do whatever we can to make sure that happens. There’s no chronic issue of people who are dissatisfied with the working conditions."

But in responding to the lawsuit, his company didn’t even try to defend its practices. Instead, Judith Droz Keyes, a lawyer with the firm Davis Wright Tremaine, argued in a Jan. 24 letter that "California has no jurisdiction either to legislate or enforce its laws within the federal enclave. The fact that the Orphanage is a private company leasing space within the Presidio makes no difference."

The Presidio Trust — the semiprivate agency that manages the park — did not respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear how the outfit treats its own workers. Discrimination based on sexual orientation, for example, is not a part of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws, but it is a part of California’s, and even the Presidio Trust’s own personnel manual mandates it.

To require anything definitive and absolute would take an act of Congress to mandate the Presidio adhere to state or local ordinances. We tried to reach Pelosi’s office to ask about it, but she didn’t return our calls.

In the meantime, Sommers said, "The Presidio Trust could insist that all vendors abide by California state labor laws. Then large employers in the Presidio would have to treat their workers like citizens of California." *

A party pooper’s thoughts on ‘Inland Empire’

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by Jason Shamai

Sitting in the theater the other night, it was with both great relief and great sadness that I realized I felt zero obligation to work out what was going on in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. The movie practically dares you to be stupid enough to try, so I didn’t. At first all I felt was the relief — what a pleasure to let the movie’s New Orleans funeral procession of words, sounds, images, and performances roll along without having to ask the left side of my brain to do anything. By the halfway point, though, I was starting to feel cheated, either by my lack of a certain kind of attention, or whatever was missing from the film that justified that lack, or both.

David Lynch.jpg
Hey Lynch — Shamai has you on notice.

Feeling the spirit

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Yeah, I was a club kid once. It’s a bit of a blur, but somehow somewhere in the ’90s I went from punk and indie to baggy pants and glow sticks in the flick of a switch. I put away my Fall records and picked up endless white-label 12-inches and compilation CDs with titles like Ultimate Techno Explosion. Or something to that effect. Like I said, it’s a blur. I remember the dancing, though — suddenly my punk ass liked to shake! It’s a shame most of my indie friends chose to stay behind, but this was the ’90s. In those days, never the twain shall meet….

It’s now a full decade later, and — finally! — the indie kids are cutting loose without fear of bruising their street cred, thanks to artists such as the Rapture, !!!, and LCD Soundsystem. Turns out rock and dance music don’t have to be mutually exclusive terms. Need further proof? Take Austin’s finest ambassadors of electropunk mania, Ghostland Observatory. The duo — composed of vocalist-guitarist Aaron Behrens and keyboardist-drummer Thomas Ross Turner — whip up a mighty frenzy of swaggering rawk bravado and delirious vocal acrobatics delivered with a come-hither fluster over sweltering beds of booty-bouncing beats. Music for getting hot and bothered, certainly — or maybe songs for unleashing demons. Take your pick.

"We’re two entirely different people," Turner says, chuckling, over the phone from the Texas capital, in explanation of how their quite dissimilar influences have coalesced into the flipped disco of 2005’s delete.delete.i.eat.meat and last year’s Paparazzi Lightning (both Trashy Moped Recordings). "Aaron’s more into the rock showman thing — people like Prince and Freddie Mercury. For me, Daft Punk pretty much are my heroes — they got me into electronic music and club culture. That’s where we’re each coming from."

They might be coming from different places, but their destination is clearly shared, as evidenced on Paparazzi Lightning. Picture an evening of unbridled debauchery — one in which a club night teeters on the brink of collapse — condensed into 35 frantic minutes, and you’re on your way to understanding the Ghostland Observatory vision. Behrens can clearly work a room into whatever mood he sees fit, whether through stomping and yowling with wanton glee on the thundering "All You Rock and Rollers" and "Ghetto Magnet," or the seething taunts of "Move with Your Lover." Meanwhile, Turner effortlessly guides us on the emotional travelogue of a never-ending night, flashing away with the urgency of red-carpet paparazzi as he peppers the album with synth shrieks, squelches, and Daft Punk–worthy rhythms.

Asked about their live shows, Turner gives fair warning: "It’s really nonstop. We just give and give until everybody’s wiped out and goes home." All right, indie rockers and club kids — you heard the man. Better start stocking up on energy drinks. *

GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY

With Honeycut, the Gray Kid, and Landshark

March 3, 9 p.m., $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

>

Spectator pumps

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Most of the sex I’ve had with my girlfriend has been pretty bad, all thanks to my stupid brain. I go back and forth between impotence and premature ejaculation. Initially, I thought it was physical, but it’s become evident that it’s primarily a mental thing. You know how if someone says, "Don’t think about elephants," all you can think about are elephants? This is the same idea. If I’m confident and stay in the moment, everything goes well and lasts more than long enough for us both to be happy. If I think, "What if my boner goes away?" — it usually does. If I stress that the sex is going to be bad and my girlfriend is going to be unsatisfied, I usually come too quickly. I’ve looked into counseling and hypnotherapy, but they’re expensive and I’m broke. Can you offer any advice?

Love,

Mind-Bending Sex, but Not the Good Kind

Dear Kind:

You are such a textbook case of the classic performance dysfunctions (performance anxiety and spectatoring) that I immediately thought of the big-name researchers and writers on the subject. On my way to getting you some links to Helen Singer Kaplan and Masters and Johnson, though, I was distracted by a book called You Can Be Your Own Sex Therapist. I haven’t read it, but I like the title and appreciate the sentiment. (Felled by god-awful neck pain, I eschewed chiropractors, acupuncturists, and conventional doctors and went the DIY route with a foam pillow and a book called Heal Your Own Neck. I also diagnosed my own depression and used to clean my teeth with dental tools I bought at the flea market, so make of this what you will.) I also like and often recommend The New Male Sexuality, by the unfortunately late Bernie Zilbergeld, PhD.

If you could afford to see a sex therapist, chances are the therapist would introduce you to the concept of "sensate focus," the exercises designed to encourage you and your partner to give and receive touch for its own sake, without getting all goal-oriented about erection or orgasm. The therapist would help you identify what is distracting you and coach you through learning to stay present and enjoying what’s actually happening instead of projecting your anxieties into the uncomfortable near future. While working with a therapist is probably ideal, even seeing an intern for a sliding-scale fee can end up costing you some serious bucks. See if there’s such a clinic handy and if you can afford some sessions with an intern (don’t worry, they’re supervised); and if that doesn’t seem feasible, get a book and do it yourself. Your dysfunction is supernormal. It should be superfixable too.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend is 18 and less sexually experienced than I am. I find myself constantly spelling out to him what to do. I can see how this could occasionally be erotic, but we’re both getting frustrated. He doesn’t seem to be learning how to satisfy me very fast. Even worse, I’m taking antidepressants, and one of the side effects is delayed orgasm. Is it fair for me to expect more effort from him? Should I just accept that sex is going to be mediocre for a while?

Love,

Tappy-Foot

Dear Tappy:

Is that an "until I’m off the pills" while or an "until my boyfriend shapes up" while? You didn’t mean a "sex will be mediocre as long as I’m with this guy but I’m going to stick it out until something better comes along" while, did you? I hope you didn’t, but I fear you did.

Sex educators are forever bugging people to communicate more during sex. "Tell him what you want," they urge, "He can’t read your mind!" I say it too, of course, but I also often imagine an outcome much like yours: two essentially unsuited people endlessly nagging each other (or one nagging the other, whichever) to do it a little harder, slower, longer, or better. Helpful suggestions are all very well (vital, actually), but if there’s no spark, you’re not going to ignite one by rubbing two things together until everybody’s exhausted and dispirited.

I don’t mean to say you should give up right now. You should talk to him sometime when he isn’t down there grinding away in whatever dull and vaguely irritating way he’s grinding. And don’t tell him you need to talk to him about how lousy he is in the sack, either. Raise it as a communication issue, and see how that goes. Then you can give up.

I should caution you, however, against making it his problem that you are experiencing some extremely common, but regrettable, side effects of medication. That is not his fault, any more than being so tragically young is his fault. Both will get better with time.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Peeing by design

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› techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION If you think it’s hard to find a decent public bathroom in the city, try finding a bathroom for the gender ambiguous. People who appear androgynous, whether unintentionally or because they’re going for that cool genderqueer look, know that finding a bathroom is an ordeal. It sucks to walk into the women’s room and have the ladies tell you to get out just because you’ve got short hair and like to wear ties. Same goes for short, girly boys who get the hairy eyeball in the men’s room. Sometimes these nasty encounters get violent or lead to indignant bathroom patrons contacting security to get the androgynous interloper out of their binary gender space.

Luckily, this is one social problem that has a technical solution. A genderqueer hacker collective has created one of the best map mashup Web sites I’ve ever seen: Safe2Pee.org. It’s a dynamic, constantly updating map of publicly accessible, gender-neutral bathrooms throughout the United States. Just plug in the name of your city or town, and up pops a Google map with bathrooms marked with those spermy-looking markers that Google favors. Most of these are unisex, single-person bathrooms. But some are just gender free, as site co-developer Bailey puts it.

Visitors at Safe2Pee can plug in the location, gender status, and accessibility of the bathroom on a handy form. Even if the bathroom isn’t gender free but is simply in a nice spot, you can note that it’s gendered but really clean or available to anyone who comes into the place where it’s located.

As somebody who often has to pee while going for walks, I can’t recommend Safe2Pee enough — I can plot my course around the city based on where I can get to nice public bathrooms. And though I rarely get hassled for my gender presentation in bathrooms, I also hate having to declare my gender just because I need to take a piss. I’d rather just use the toilet without having to decide whether I look more like the stick figure in a dress or the stick figure without one.

What’s really great about Safe2Pee, however, is the matter-of-fact way it suggests that technology can help encourage gender tolerance. If merchants realize that having gender-free bathrooms will pull in more paying customers, there will be more incentive for people to build such bathrooms. Having a map of those bathrooms available online makes it far easier for consumers to make choices that nudge merchants in that direction.

Plus, just from a nerd point of view, Safe2Pee is full of yummy Web 2.0 goodness There’s a tag cloud for cities included in the database, in which the names of cities with more categorized bathrooms appear much larger than cities with fewer. You can also search the database by proximity to where you are or for particular types of bathrooms (i.e., ones you can use for free versus ones where you should buy something before asking to pee). Programmable Web, a blog about mashups, gave Safe2Pee a Mashup of the Day Award. And Bailey says the genderqueer hacker collective behind the site is growing. "The collective has morphed, at least geographically speaking," Bailey said via e-mail. "It has grown beyond the Bay Area and now it’s just me here. Others are in Seattle, Portland and Boston."

Not surprisingly, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Boston are also well represented in the bathroom database. But Bailey says the group plans to stick with it and keep expanding. The site coauthor draws a comparison between gender fluidity and geek attention spans when it comes to finishing projects. "When conventional notions of gender and sexuality are always blurred or challenged or in flux, I think perhaps all the fluidity carries over to form a particularly post-modern attention span." Or maybe Bailey is just a new breed of gendernerd, whose attachment to one particular gender identity morphs as often as an attachment to a particular flavor of Linux — or a particular API.

In my old workplace I frequently pasted over the gender markers on the single-room bathrooms — I printed "Carbon-based lifeforms only" on a piece of paper that was just big enough to cover the stick figure in a skirt. Luckily my coworkers enjoyed the joke, and we all made it an unwritten rule that we would use whatever bathroom was available, no matter what our genders. Now I plan to spread the genderfree bathroom meme online by adding good bathrooms to the database. When I can write a sentence like that, I really do feel like I’m living in the future. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who really has to pee right now.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

If the Matier and Ross report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 11 is to believed, then Mayor Gavin Newsom is actually taking his alcohol problem seriously. Mimi Silbert, who runs Delancey Street, told the dynamic duo that Newsom has been showing up every night for three or four hours of intense counseling and therapy. Good for him. If his problem is bad enough that he needs that much help, he’d probably be better off taking some time away from work, but I’m not him, and at least he’s trying.

Or so they say.

Of course, if the whole "treatment" thing is just an attempt to gain sympathy from the public and take the story away from his sordid affair, I suspect Newsom’s visits to Delancey Street will start to taper off fast — in which case a lot of people who have friends and family who truly have struggled with alcoholism will be properly pissed at his honor the mayor.

It’s going to sound like a cliché at this point, but I kinda think it’s true enough to make it our mantra for the fall: Newsom has been doing a rotten job of late, and if his personal problems are to blame for that, then he needs to get the hell out of politics until he’s a lot stabler, and if his personal problems aren’t to blame, then he’s just a weak and lame mayor. Either way, four more years doesn’t work.

Which brings us to the real question that was on everyone’s mind at the Guardian‘s 40th anniversary party last week: who?

Let me throw out some thoughts.

I’ll start with the wild card. There isn’t one. I see nobody hiding in the bushes who can run as a progressive and mount a serious campaign. We’ve got what we see. (Don’t talk to me about Art Agnos; the guy would have to enter a political 12-step, make a lot of amends, and admit all the things he did wrong as mayor last time around, and it ain’t happening.)

So here’s Scenario One: Newsom toughs it out, nothing else awful drops, and he stays in the race. Honestly, very few people are going to challenge him. Not Mark Leno, not Carole Migden, not Dennis Herrera, not Aaron Peskin. They don’t want to look like they’re exploiting Newsom’s personal problems, so they all wait four years.

So the left candidate is Ross Mirkarimi or Matt Gonzalez. If Gonzalez wants it, Mirkarimi steps out of the way. That could set up Matt vs. Gavin, round two, with Gonzalez as the candidate of the left and the Residential Builders Association, leaving people like me (who think land use is supremely important) tearing our hair out. And let’s remember that Jack Davis, the political mastermind, is going to be a player this time, and it won’t be with a loser like Tony Hall.

Scenario Two: Newsom decides, for whatever reason, to withdraw — and it’s a free-for-all. Gonzalez is suddenly not the leading candidate; that’s probably Leno, Herrera, or, on the outside, Kamala Harris. Which leaves the progressives with a sticky choice: stay with Gonzalez or accept someone who on paper (and on the record) is more centrist but will promise a whole lot to get our support and could be the odds-on favorite.

Throw in public financing and ranked-choice voting, and the election’s going to be like nothing there ever was in this town. I can’t wait. *

Chasing my stolen bicycle

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› news@sfbg.com

I stalked across the parking lot of the Mission District’s Best Buy. Like the hordes of people that streamed into the store, I was there to do a little shopping, but it wasn’t for a flat-screen TV or an iPod. I was in the market for a stolen bike.

I bypassed the aisles of buzzing electronics and headed around the back of the store to a trash-strewn alley. It was empty except for a beat-up white van with its side door ajar. I took a nervous breath and knocked on the side.

A blond man in a sweat-stained undershirt threw open the door to reveal what looked like an upended Tour de France chase car: piles of tire rims, gears, and bike frames were scattered everywhere. The powerful stink of unwashed bodies stung my nostrils. A man in a tracksuit slumbered on a seat. The blond man looked sleepy and annoyed but waited for me to speak.

My $600 bike was stolen — the third in five years — from my Mission garage the night before, and it’s here I was told by a bike messenger that I might find it. These guys were rumored to be bike thieves operating in the Mission.

"Hey man, have you seen a black and gray Fuji Touring?" I asked, employing a euphemism.

"No, we don’t steal bikes," the man said, catching my drift. "We collect bikes off the street, repair them, and then sell them. We’re like independent businessmen."

Interesting way of putting it, I thought, as I glanced at the "businessman" slumbering on a van seat. I glanced around the van half expecting to see my Fuji, but it wasn’t there, so I left.

As I trudged home I stewed. I had lost more than $1,000 worth of bikes in San Francisco. Bike theft is a virtual right of passage for most cyclists in the city, and the city’s thieves seem to operate with ninjalike stealth and efficiency. One cyclist told me how a thief stole his locked ride while he picked up a burrito from a taquería. He wasn’t away from the bike for more than five minutes.

The city’s thieves have even won a silver medal for their efforts: in 2006 the lockmaker Kryptonite ranked San Francisco as the nation’s second worst city for bike theft, behind New York.

Gradually, my anger hardened into resolve, or more precisely, a mission. It would be virtually impossible, but I would set out to find my bike. The thought that my life would mirror the plot of a Pee-wee Herman movie was more than a little amusing, but I had a job to do.

In my months-long quest I crisscrossed the city, chasing down Dickensian thieves, exploring the city’s largest open-air market for stolen goods, and finally landing in the surprising place where hundreds of stolen bikes — perhaps yours — end up. Unwittingly, I pedaled right into San Francisco’s underworld.

THE GURUS OF GREASE


Bike theft may seem like petty street crime, but it’s actually a humming illegal industry. Consider this: thieves steal nearly $50 million worth of bikes each year in the United States, far outstripping the take of bank robbers, according to the FBI. And in San Francisco’s rich bicycling culture, thieves have found a gold mine. About 1,000 bikes are reported stolen in the city each year, but the police say the actual number is probably closer to 2,000 or 3,000, since most people don’t file reports.

"It’s rampant," Sgt. Joe McCloskey of the San Francisco Police Department told the Guardian.

I sought out McCloskey, the SFPD’s resident expert on bike theft, and another man, Victor Veysey, to give me a wider view of San Francisco’s world of bike thieves and possibly a lead on where I might find my bike. Several cyclists had recommended Veysey, saying he could provide a "street level" view of bike theft.

Veysey is the Yoda of San Francisco’s bike world. For more than a decade, the 39-year-old has worked on and off as a bike messenger, mechanic, and member of the city’s Bike Advisory Committee. He also ran the Bike Hut, which teaches at-risk youth how to repair bikes. And he’s in a band that plays a tune called "Schwinn Cruiser."

Despite their different perspectives (the city’s police and biking communities are not the best of friends), McCloskey and Veysey painted remarkably similar pictures of San Francisco’s black market for bikes.

In the wide world of illegal activity, bike thievery seems to occupy a criminal sweet spot. It is a relatively painless crime to commit, and city officials do little to stop it. As McCloskey readily admitted, bike theft is not a priority for law enforcement, which he said has its hands full with more serious crimes.

"We make it easy for them," McCloskey said of bike thieves. "The DA doesn’t do tough prosecutions. All the thieves we’ve busted have got probation. They treat it like a petty crime."

Debbie Mesloh, a spokesperson for District Attorney Kamala Harris, said most bike thieves are not prosecuted, but that’s because they are juveniles or they qualify for the city’s pretrial diversion program. The diversion program offers counseling in lieu of prosecution for first-time nonviolent offenders. Bike thieves qualify for it if they steal a bike worth $400 or less. Mesloh said the District Attorney’s Office prosecutes felony bike thefts, but it doesn’t get very many of those cases.

"The DA takes all cases of theft seriously," Mesloh wrote in an e-mail.

As for the police, McCloskey was equally blunt. "You can’t take six people off a murder to investigate a bike theft. [Bike theft investigations] are not an everyday thing. No one is full-time on bike theft. As far as going out on stings and operations, I haven’t heard of one in the last year. Bike theft has gone to the bottom of the list."

McCloskey’s comments were particularly interesting in light of the conversation I had with Veysey, whom I met at the Bike Hut, an off-kilter wood shack near AT&T Park that appears as if it might collapse under the weight of the bicycle parts hanging on its walls. Veysey has a loose blond ponytail and greasy hands. He wields a wrench and apocalyptic environmental rhetoric equally well.

"Bikes are one of the four commodities of the street — cash, drugs, sex, and bikes," Veysey told me. "You can virtually exchange one for another."

Veysey believes bike thefts are helping prop up the local drug market. It sounds far-fetched, but it’s a notion McCloskey and other bike theft experts echoed. The National Bike Registry, a company that runs the nation’s largest database for stolen bikes, says on its Web site, "Within the drug trade, stolen bicycles are so common they can almost be used as currency." Veysey believes the police could actually take a bite out of crime in general by making bike theft a bigger priority in the city.

Perhaps bikes are so ubiquitous in the drug trade because they are so easy to steal. McCloskey and Veysey said thieves often employ bolt cutters to snap cable locks or a certain brand of foreign car jack to defeat some U-locks. The jack slips between the arms of the U-lock and, as it is cranked open, pushes the arms apart until the lock breaks. A bike-lock maker later showed me a video demonstrating the technique. It took a man posing as a thief less than six seconds to do in the U-lock.

As with any other trade, McCloskey and Veysey said there is a hierarchy in the world of San Francisco bike thieves. At the bottom, drug addicts (like the one Veysey believes stole my bike) engage in crimes of opportunity: snatching single bikes. At a more sophisticated level, McCloskey said, a small number of thieves target high-end bikes, which can top $5,000 apiece. In 2005 police busted a bike thief who was specifically targeting Pacific Heights because of its expensive bikes. The thief said he wore natty golf shirts and khaki pants to blend into the neighborhood.

The Internet has revolutionized bike theft, just as it has done for dating, porn, and cat videos. McCloskey said thieves regularly fence bikes on eBay and Craigslist. In August 2004 police busted a thief after a Richmond District man discovered his bike for sale on eBay. Police discovered more than 20 auctions for stolen bikes in the man’s eBay account and an additional 20 stolen bikes in a storage space and at his residence.

When bikes aren’t sold outright, they are stripped, or in street vernacular, chopped, and sold piece by piece or combined with the parts of other bikes, Veysey said. He said people occasionally showed up at the Bike Hut trying to sell him these Frankenstein bikes. But by and large, McCloskey and Veysey said, bike stores are not involved in fencing stolen bikes. However, McCloskey said bikes stolen in the city often are recovered at flea markets around the Bay Area. He believes thieves ship them out of the city to decrease the chance of being caught. The National Bike Registry reports bikes are often moved to other cities or even other states for sale.

The idea of Frankenstein bikes was intriguing, so I told Veysey I was going to look into it. He suggested I make a stop first: Carl’s Jr. near the Civic Center. I was slightly perplexed by his suggestion, but I agreed to check it out.

FAST FOOD, HOT BIKES


"Welcome to the San Francisco Zoo — the human version," said Dalibor Lawrence, a homeless man whose last two teeth acted as goalposts for his flitting tongue. His description of the place was brutally apt: a homeless man banged on one of those green public toilets, shouting obscenities; a woman washed her clothes in a fountain; and several crackheads lounged on a wall with vacant stares.

I was at the corner of Seventh and Market streets. City Hall’s stately gold dome rose a short distance away, but here a whole different San Francisco thrived. Men slowly circulated around the stretch of concrete that abuts UN Plaza. Every so often one would furtively pull out a laptop, a brand new pair of sneakers, or even — improbably enough — bagged collard greens to try to sell to someone hustling by.

Seventh and Market is where the city’s underground economy bubbles to the surface. It’s a Wal-Mart of stolen goods — nearly anything can be bought or, as I would soon find out, stolen to order. McCloskey estimated as many as three in seven bikes stolen in San Francisco end up here. The police periodically conduct stings in the area, but the scene seemed to continue unabated.

I made my way to the front of the Carl’s Jr. that overlooks an entrance to the Civic Center BART station. I didn’t know what to expect or do, so I apprehensively approached three men who were lounging against the side of the restaurant — they clearly weren’t there for lunch. I asked them if they knew where I could get a bike. To my surprise, the man in the center rattled off a menu.

"I’ve got a really nice $5,300 road bike I will sell you for $1,000. I’ve got another for $500 and two Bianchis for $150 each," he said.

I told him the prices he listed seemed too good to be true and asked him if the bikes were stolen. People gave them to him, he explained dubiously, because they owed him money. I asked him about my Fuji, but he said he didn’t have it.

I walked around until I bumped into a woman who called herself Marina. She had a hollow look in her eyes, but I told her my story, and she seemed sympathetic. She sealed a hand-rolled cigarette with a lick, lit it, and made the following proposition: "I have a couple of friends that will steal to order — bicycles, cosmetics, whatever — give me a couple of days, and I will set something up."

I politely declined. McCloskey said steal-to-order rings are a common criminal racket in the city. Police have busted thieves with shopping lists for everything from Victoria’s Secret underwear to the antiallergy drug Claritin. In one case, McCloskey said, police traced a ring smuggling goods to Mexico.

A short time later a man rode through the plaza on a beat-up yellow Schwinn. He tried to sell the 12-speed to another man, so I approached him and asked how much he wanted for it. He told me $20. With a modest amount of bargaining, I got him down to $5 before telling him I wasn’t interested.

Just before I left, two police officers on a beat patrol walked through the plaza. Sales stopped briefly. As soon as the officers passed out of earshot, a man came up to me. "Flashlights," he said, "real cheap."

INSIDE A CHOP SHOP


After striking out at Seventh and Market, I figured it was time to investigate the chop shops Veysey mentioned. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) reports bicycle chop shops operate all over the city. Thieves strip bikes because the parts (unlike the frames) don’t have serial numbers and can’t be traced as stolen once they are removed from a bike. The parts can be sold individually or put on another stolen bike to disguise it, hence the Frankenstein bikes that show up at the Bike Hut.

When Veysey told me about bicycle chop shops, I pictured something from a ’70s cop movie — a warehouse in an industrial district populated with burly men wielding blowtorches. But the trail led me somewhere else entirely: Golden Gate Park.

SFBC officials said they had received reports from a gardener about chop shops in the park. When I called Maggie Cleveland, a Recreation and Park Department employee responsible for cleaning up the park, she said they do exist and would show me what she thought was one if I threw on a pair of gloves, grabbed a trash bag, and joined one of her cleanup crews. I agreed.

Shortly before 8 a.m. on a foggy, chilly morning, the crew and I picked up mechanical grabbers and industrial-size trash bags and then climbed a steep hill near 25th Avenue and Fulton Street on the Richmond District side of the park. We plunged into a large camp in the middle of a hollowed-out grove of acacia bushes.

The camp looked like a sidewalk after an eviction. Books and papers vomited from the mouth of a tent. Rain-soaked junk littered the camp, including a golf bag filled with oars, an algebra textbook, a telescope, and a portable toilet. A hypodermic needle stuck in a stump like a dart and a gaudy brass chandelier swung from a branch. Amid the clutter was one constant: bicycles and their parts.

A half dozen bikes leaned against bushes in various states of repair. There were piles of tires and gears scattered around. The noise of the crew had awoken the residents of the camp. A man and two women sprung up and immediately tried to grab things as the crew stuffed the contents of the camp into trash bags. They grew more and more agitated as two dozen bags were filled.

Cleveland said the group may have been operating a chop shop, but she didn’t have definitive proof, so they were let go with camping citations. I asked one of the campers if their bikes were stolen.

"We find this stuff in the trash. There’s an economy here. We exchange stuff for other stuff," he said.

Cleveland said the camp was typical of what the crews find around the park. One of the most notorious campers goes by the name Bicycle Robert. Cleveland said park officials have found a handful of his camps over the past couple years. One contained more than two dozen bikes, but Robert himself has never turned up.

Occasionally, cyclists will get lucky and find their bikes at a chop shop. Max Chen was eating dinner in North Beach one night when his Xtracycle, a bicycle with an elongated back for supporting saddlebags, was stolen. Chen didn’t hold out much hope of getting it back, but he put up flyers around the neighborhood anyway.

The next day Chen got a call from a friend who said he saw a portion of the distinctive bike behind the Safeway at Potrero and 16th streets. Chen went down to the spot and found a group of guys with an RV, a handful of bicycles, and a pile of bike parts. His bike was there — sort of.

"The frame was in one place, and the pedals were on another bike. Other parts were on other bikes. I pointed to all the stuff that was mine and had them strip it. My frame had already been painted silver," Chen told me.

Not surprisingly, one of the men said he had bought Chen’s bike from someone in the Civic Center. Chen just wanted his bike back, so he forked over $60. The guys handed him a pile of parts in return.

WHERE BIKES GO TO DIE


A few days after the trip to Golden Gate Park, I finally got around to doing what I should have done when my bike was stolen: file a police report. Frankly, I waited because I held out little hope the police would be of any help.

It’s true few people get their bikes back through the police, but that’s in part because most people don’t try. In fact, the police are sitting on a cache of stolen bikes so big that it dwarfs the stock of any bike store in the city.

SFPD Lt. Tom Feney agreed to show it to me, so I trekked out to Hunters Point. The police stolen property room is located in an anonymous-looking warehouse in the Naval Shipyard. Feney ushered me through a metal door to the warehouse and then swept his hand through the air as if pointing out a beautiful panorama.

"There it is," he said.

Behind a 10-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire, row upon row of bikes stretched along the floor of the warehouse. There were children’s bikes with hot pink paint, $2,000 road bikes, and everything in between. In all, the police had about 500 stolen bikes in the warehouse. The bikes are found abandoned on the street, recovered from stings on drug houses, and removed from bike thieves when they are busted. Many of the bikes aren’t stolen — they’ve been confiscated during arrests or are evidence in various cases. The department can’t return the stolen bikes because the owners haven’t reported them stolen. After holding them for 18 months, the police donate the bikes to charity.

I intently scanned up and down the rows looking for my bike. I didn’t see it. My last, best chance for finding it had disappeared. My heart dropped knowing my Fuji Touring was gone. Feney ushered me out the door, and I began the long, slow walk back to the bus stop.

The most frustrating part is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Police and bicycle groups said there are some simple steps city officials could take to cut down on bike theft, but the issue has long slipped through the cracks.

Officer Romeo de la Vega, who works the SFPD’s Fencing Unit, said he proposed a bike registration system a few months ago, but it was shot down by the police brass. De la Vega said he was told there simply weren’t enough officers available to staff the system. Under his plan cyclists would register their bike serial numbers with police. In return the cyclists would get a permanent decal to place on their bikes. De la Vega said this would discourage thieves from stealing bikes since it would be clear they were registered, and it would speed bike returns.

With police officials claiming there are few resources to combat bike theft, it seems logical they might reach out to the community for help. But officials with the SFBC report just the opposite.

"In the past we’ve tried to connect with the police to jointly tackle the problem, but we haven’t had much luck. We don’t even know who is handling bike thefts," Andy Thornley, the SFBC program director, said.

Thornley said the coalition is willing to use its membership to help police identify chop shops and fencing rings around the city. He said the police need to do a better job of going after the larger players in the bike theft world and the District Attorney’s Office needs to take a tougher stance on prosecution.

Ultimately, Thornley said, enforcement is not the key to reducing bike theft. He said the city must make it easier for cyclists to park their bikes safely. The coalition is crafting legislation that would require all commercial buildings to allow cyclists to bring their bikes inside — something many currently prohibit. The coalition would also like to see bike parking lots spring up around the city, with attendants to monitor them.

Supervisor Chris Daly, who is an avid cyclist and has had six bikes stolen, said he is willing to help.

"It’s clear we are not doing very much," Daly said. "I think if there were a push from bicyclists to do a better job, I would certainly work toward making theft more of a priority." *

Chickens No Show at Town Hall Meeting

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By Sarah Phelan
.
Maybe the chickens weren’t into cycling through the rain in soggy costumes. Or they figured that being hemmed in together with them for two hours at the Whitney Young Community Center on a rainy Saturday morning would have had Mayor Newsom falling off the wagon by day’s end.
Whatever the reason for the chickens chickening out, their absence didn’t spare Gavin from folks protesting what he’s not doing for the Bayview, or housing advocates yelling, “We will not be moved!” just before they left the room, or a bunch of ACORN activists decrying his plans to demolish ’ the Alice Griffith Housing Project> .

Newsom didn’t have any answer for why AG residents hadn’t been consulted about this latter plan, which was kinda odd since it was part of his own last-ditch attempt to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco. But he was quick to point out that Board of Supervisors Chair Aaron Peskin and Sup. Sophie Maxwell have already added language to the proposal so current AG residents are guaranteed one-for-one replacement housing at their current low-income levels—housing they’ve also been promised will be built before AG is torn down. (Thanks Aaron and Sophie, and let’s just make sure there’s no last minute bait and switches this time around.)

By the end of the two hours, Gavin had also got beaten up for, among other things, holding the meeting at the top of a hill, referring to the community center as the Whitney Young Child Care center, never visiting the Bayview except for once when he was first elected, and not having translators and sign language interpreters.
Also beaten up was the SF Housing Authority’s Gregg Fortner, who gave out his phone number, only to have an audience members shout, “You never answer! Where ya been?”
And then there was the fact that Newsom introduced Miguel Bustos as his new appointments secretary. (Uh oh)
But no one mentioned the AFFAIR, in part because Gavin’s new flame Jennifer Siebel was very much in tow, and even offered up her chair so seniors and kids could be seated. Still, by the end of the meeting, Gavin must have beenwondering whether Question Time before the Board could have been any worse, and why he’d ever volunteered to give up Saturday mornings to get heckled and pecked, chickens not withstanding.

Chickens No Show at Town Hall Meeting

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0

By Sarah Phelan
.
Maybe the chickens weren’t into cycling through the rain in soggy costumes. Or they figured that being hemmed in together with them for two hours at the Whitney Young Community Center on a rainy Saturday morning would have had Mayor Newsom falling off the wagon by day’s end.
Whatever the reason for the chickens chickening out, their absence didn’t spare Gavin from folks protesting what he’s not doing for the Bayview, or housing advocates yelling, “We will not be moved!” just before they left the room, or a bunch of ACORN activists decrying his plans to demolish ’ the Alice Griffith Housing Project> .

Newsom didn’t have any answer for why AG residents hadn’t been consulted about this latter plan, which was kinda odd since it was part of his own last-ditch attempt to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco. But he was quick to point out that Board of Supervisors Chair Aaron Peskin and Sup. Sophie Maxwell have already added language to the proposal so current AG residents are guaranteed one-for-one replacement housing at their current low-income levels—housing they’ve also been promised will be built before AG is torn down. (Thanks Aaron and Sophie, and let’s just make sure there’s no last minute bait and switches this time around.)

By the end of the two hours, Gavin had also got beaten up for, among other things, holding the meeting at the top of a hill, referring to the community center as the Whitney Young Child Care center, never visiting the Bayview except for once when he was first elected, and not having translators and sign language interpreters.
Also beaten up was the SF Housing Authority’s Gregg Fortner, who gave out his phone number, only to have an audience members shout, “You never answer! Where ya been?”
And then there was the fact that Newsom introduced Miguel Bustos as his new appointments secretary. (Uh oh)
But no one mentioned the AFFAIR, in part because Gavin’s new flame Jennifer Siebel was very much in tow, and even offered up her chair so seniors and kids could be seated. Still, by the end of the meeting, Gavin must have beenwondering whether Question Time before the Board could have been any worse, and why he’d ever volunteered to give up Saturday mornings to get heckled and pecked, chickens not withstanding.

G-string journey

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› culture@sfbg.com

My girlfriend leaned over the table during brunch at the Pork Store recently and stared deep into my eyes. "Baby," she said, "when you’re out there looking at all those boobies today, just remember that they’re fake. And when you’re petting asses and sticking money in G-strings, just remember that those bodies, unlike mine, are going to be saggy and horrible-looking in a few years."

Not exactly our ordinary breakfast conversation, but then again, it was no ordinary morning. I was about to embark on a whirlwind tour of some of the city’s notorious gentlemen’s clubs, and that gloomy Sunday seemed perfect. What better day than the Christian Sabbath to burn some cash on sex, right? I finished my eggs, said a little prayer, and hit the streets to find some heathens — I mean, strippers. I knew exactly where to go.

THE SEEDY START


By the time I got to the corner of Market and Sixth streets, it was raining like hell, and various shady-looking characters were hogging every dry spot in sight. Despite my burning desire for a nip of whiskey, I decided to abandon my preparty bar plans and walk directly into the Market Street Cinema. I passed through the mirrored doors, paid the cover charge, and found a seat at the foot of the catwalk just in time to catch the next act.

I don’t know if the girls or the DJs pick the songs, but the music fit the sad spectacle like a latex glove. As the opening riff of the Smiths’ "How Soon Is Now" filled the club, a young girl stepped out onto the stage. Sexy Susan (or Luscious Lucy or whatever the DJ-MC had decided to call her) strutted down the catwalk in her fuck-me pumps, looked at her scant audience, and made her way to the pole. She swung around it with one leg and rubbed herself up and down before finally climbing to the top, where she hung for a full minute before sliding to the floor with a thump. She then stood up and beelined toward me.

"You look shy," the stripper whispered as she squatted in my face and began tugging at the elastic rim of her panties. From a distance the girl had seemed rather pretty, but up close her jagged teeth, stretched belly, and hollow eyes bespoke a street-style homeliness. She made me uncomfortable, and I knew the only way to shoo her off was to produce an embarrassingly small tip. So I dug down in my wallet and threw a buck by her feet. "Uh, thanks," she said. "Do you, like, want a lap dance or anything?"

"No, I’m OK. But I think that guy might want something," I said. She took my money and walked across the stage toward a scary-looking dude waving a five-dollar bill around in the air.

The young girl finished her set with a clumsy attempt to sync her body movements to Nine Inch Nails’ "Closer." She humped the pole, stumbled down the walk, and finally bent over for a spread-eagle encore. She then picked up her seven- or eight-dollar tip stash and took off. I was blown away. This girl had just showed us the holiest of holies for less than it takes to fill the gas tank on a moped. This was, presumably, her daily routine. Was it worth it? I felt too guilty to ponder the question. As soon as the young stripper was out of sight, I pushed all sympathetic thoughts out of my mind and bolted. Next stop: the Crazy Horse.

HAPPIER HOUR


I didn’t expect much from the Crazy Horse, but it proved to be less depressing than the previous venue by a long shot. Sure, there were weird old men roaming around the lobby. And yes, the girls seemed a little sad. But at least the place was clean. The bouncer gave me a knowing smile, opened the door, and pushed me into a dimly lit room where 30 or 40 businessmen sat watching the show.

This stripper was definitely not a drug addict or a runaway who had recently celebrated the big one-eight. She was fit and healthy, and her dance routine was well rehearsed. She strutted like a cat, slowly removing the only two garments she wore. Soon she was naked and humping the air in front of an old man with glasses and dirty jeans. When she stood up to leave, the man threw down a few bills and waved a wad of cash in the air. It was a signal the stripper knew well. She scooted his donation to the middle of the stage, jumped into his lap, and began gyrating. The pattern repeated as the stripper moved from mark to mark until she was a couple seats down from me. I decided to leave at this point. My wallet had grown significantly lighter since I began this endeavor, and I still had one more cover charge to pay.

DIFFERENT STROKES


By midafternoon I was exhausted and bitter, but I had to press on. I knew my last destination, the Nob Hill Theatre, a seedy gay hideaway, was going to require true grit. After all, naked chicks are nothing new — you see them every time you turn on the tube. But how many times have you seen a bunch of dudes with five-foot dongs petting one another onstage? For me the answer was never. And truth be told, I was a little scared. Still, I tried to be nonchalant as I walked into the theater.

Soon I was in a dark room watching a naked man dance to Bel Biv Devoe. I picked an inconspicuous seat in a shadowy corner, but as soon as the dancer saw me, he stepped off the stage and wandered into my private space. The naked man shook his wiener from side to side as he stared into my eyes. "How’re you doing?" I asked. "I’m good," the naked man said. He stepped closer and closer until his leg was touching mine. "Would you like a lap dance?" he asked. "No, actually, I’m here from the newspaper, writing a story about strip clubs," I blurted. He sensed my apprehension and backed off a little. Then, with a mischievous smile on his face and a growing member in his hand, he said, "That’s OK, honey, I’ll give you one for free." He placed my trembling hands on his ass cheeks and began to sway.

All told, I think I had another man’s penis in my face for about two minutes. When he was finished, he said, "That was just a taste, and you should still tip a little, but if you want more, you gotta pay."

"Thanks for everything," I said, "but I gotta get going." I dug in my wallet for some ones and then looked up in confusion. Where the hell was I supposed to put the money? When he noticed the look on my face, the naked man turned around and put his bum in the air. "Here you go," he said. I hesitated for a moment and then just figured it was protocol. As I went to put the money in the naked man’s ass, he jumped away and said, "Gotcha! You think I let people put dirty-ass bills in there? You must be crazy." I realized at this point that the dancer had been fucking with me the entire time. He stuck his tongue out, winked, and left to go dance for a group of daytime drunks in back.

A QUESTION LINGERS


On my way out the door, I was approached by two other strippers, Craven and Kaci, who had heard I was writing about their club. They laughed and posed and told me stories about stripping days gone by. They liked working at the club, they said. They were happy there.

As I sat smoking and hanging out with them in the doorway, I realized that the whole day had felt pretty gross until now. Something about the straight clubs made me feel sick, but that something was all but absent here. These dudes were actually enjoying themselves. The two straight clubs I had seen seemed to reflect the general population’s attitude toward sex. They were dark, shameful places, hidden in bad neighborhoods, where rules abounded. It seemed that here at the Nob, though, you could pretty much do whatever the hell you wanted. I had an epiphany that night: if I had to choose between hanging out at a gay strip club and a straight one, I would choose the former. Does that mean I’m gay? *

MARKET STREET CINEMA

1077 Market, SF

(415) 255-1005

www.msclive.com

CRAZY HORSE

980 Market, SF

(415) 771-6259

www.crazyhorse-sf.com

NOB HILL THEATRE

729 Bush, SF

(415) 781-9468

www.nobhilltheatre.com

>

San Francisco lovin’

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Valentine’s Day date ideas
V-Day shopping guide
Complete V-Day events listings

› culture@sfbg.com

Oh! What a web of tangled flesh we postbohemian, rapidly gentrifying, pandemic-aware, pre-spray-on-condom and mint-flavored chewable RU-486 San Francitizens weave! Folks still trot out the ol’ misty-eyed cynicisms: romance is dead, sex is boring, love is impossible, "I’m too fat"…. But that doesn’t stop ’em from doing it until their knees ache when they get the winky come-on (or hoping for Mr. or Ms. Right to ease the tax burden). Sure, in the age of the Internetz, sex is now a shopping trip — just log on for huge fake tits (aisle four), smart-mouthed ghettosexuals (aisle six), muffin tops gon’ wild (aisle nine), or guys who inject a gallon of saline into their shaved balls (clean up, aisle five). No need to be a bitch or a ho — you’re already both on the webcam, dude. Don’t forget your password.

But still. Love exists, right? Christina Aguilera tells us so. And love leads to sex. Or to real sex. Or the other way around. Something. And don’t even ask about the whole monogamy thing! Can’t it all be easier? Aren’t we robots yet? No, not yet. For good or ill we live in a magical place where impulse meets emotion in technology’s dark corner and heads upstairs with it to a small room marked "free love" ($29 an hour) — leaving behind a trail of used rubbers, hopefully. Below we delve into the sex-and-romance pros and cons of some especially San Franciscan things. Maybe it’ll help make things a little clearer. Maybe!

BEING A STRAIGHT GIRL


Carrie Bradshaw, Marissa Cooper, and Dr. Meredith Grey have their trumped-up Trumps, Shin-die schlubs, and Doc McDreamys, but what do so many straight, single women get in the Bay bohemia otherwise known as America’s gay mecca? Commitmentphobic Peter Pan–ders, crusty granola cronies who only cruise twentysomethings, workaholic geeks who seldom see the light of day (apart from the blazing orbs of Burning Man), and windburned adventurers with a never-ending thirst to mountain bike, lick that downward dog, and hike the closest REI. Face it: single straight sistahs have the toughest lot in this town. A 2004 San Francisco magazine story estimated that unmarried straight 20- to 44-year-old SF men outnumbered their female counterparts by about 12,000. But I bet most eligible gals feel — nay, know — that the ratio is weighted in the dudes’ favor. It doesn’t help that years of STD- and AIDS-inspired social conservatism seem to have spurred peeps and perps to hook up early and less often — despite our fair city’s freewheeling rep when it comes to sex roles, relationships, and gender politics. San Francisco’s single chicks sometimes find themselves wondering, "Whatever happened to dating? Where did everyone go? Is it my breath?" When one male friend told me his ex’s claim that she’s dating multiple fellahs in various NorCal cities, my bullshit detector started honking. Tell it to all the attractive, smart, independent, and nubile femme singletons I know who are sitting home Saturday nights.

Pros: Never having to worry about getting macked on at guycentric sports events, shows, and construction sites. Women are always free at the Power Exchange. There’s sisterhood in desperation. You can always join a girl gang and accost hapless men walking alone in dark parking lots. That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec.

Cons: Dating. Shooting down poseurs who are into shopping for the pick of the litter. Resigning yourself to your anemic online-dating shopping options. And how depressing is it to go to a sex club by yourself? That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec. (Kimberly Chun)

BEING A STRAIGHT GUY


I worked security at the Endup for four years. As a straight guy, I found myself jealous of my gay compatriots out there on the dance floor, nuts to butts, letting it all hang out. Obviously, gay men have committed, complicated, and drama-filled relationships too. But boys will be boys, and it seemed things were so much simpler and, pardon the pun, more straightforward for gay guys in San Francisco. Less of a mating ritual and more mating. It’s the classic straight guy’s lament: if women acted like dudes, I’d be getting laid right now. Or, as Michael Dean once said in a Bomb song, "The girl that I miss is just me in a dress." Still, after 15 years in San Francisco, I’m starting to see the bonuses of being single, straight, and not so young in a city known worldwide for Rice-a-Roni, sourdough bread, and buffed-out, hunky young gay guys.

Pros: At 35, I may actually be starting to enjoy dating. No one’s lugging around that "my heart was broken, and I can’t go through that again" cross anymore. We’re all adults here, and like the young, restless, and gay, we’ve gotten in touch with our biological needs. Thirtysomething Bay City rollers know they need to get off and they don’t have to meet their soul mate to do it. Sure, the roller coaster of love is one hell of a ride, but sometimes it’s enough to get Indian food, hit a bar with a good jukebox, rent a movie, go home, and fuck.

Cons: People really do get married. Which means the thirtysomething dating pool shrinks and you can end up dating someone younger. This might seem like a pro, until you try to make a pop culture reference on a date and hear crickets chirp. There’s not a lot of eye-to-eye going on when your love interest ejects Mania, by the Vibrators, to put on Green Day. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

BEING A QUEER


Oh, the burden! Straight guys think you get laid more than them. Straight girls think you get laid more than them. Both of them think you like turtlenecks and cologne. It’s horrifying! And history! Here you are over the rainbow, in the fiercely romantic-looking burg all those haters in high school screeched at you to move to, and you’re scrounging for any bit of affection you can find among the forest of online profiles and the coral reef of lopsided haircuts. Plus you’ve got billboards screaming "AIDS!" in your face on every corner. It’s enough to drive a lonely fag to the gym or a dyke to the (one) bar, if that weren’t just as fucked-up a defense mechanism as huddling with your old Smiths EPs and a tankard of Merlot in your cubby. But c’mon, at least you can walk home from your trick’s house….

Pros: Be all you can be! Journey of discovery! There’s a new opportunity around every corner. The hottest FTMs on the face of the planet. Boys aren’t wearing so much product as in 2002. Being the envy of the gay world. Invisible lipstick lesbians. Trash drag. Crystal meth played out (pretty much). Domestic partnership laws (if only …). Gay love is real (ask your serial monogamous friends). Hey, at least it’s not Chelsea!

Cons: Too many to choose from. No need to grow up. Too many bottoms. Ever-present feeling you should get more tattoos — or is that trying too hard? Everyone wants to be your fag hag. Monogamous or "negotiated"? Holier-than-thou activists, hotter-than-thou street life. "What if I’m really straight?" Knowing everyone’s as shy as you but not being able to do anything about it. (Marke B.)

OUR PLAYBOY MAYOR


What a difference a few screaming headlines make. Throw in a Scientology siren, underage cocktail gulpers, and a couple plowed society babes with fiercely straightened fright wigs and outta-hand cheekbones — and ya got yerself a mayor! All we need are some flesh-eating pigs and anesthesia-free surgery to dub this the return of the wild, wild, perhaps very wild, especially when tanked, west — a Deadwood of sorts, if that didn’t imply a kind of flaccid fumbling. Nonetheless, let’s call it the latest in a grand tradition of San Francisco’s romantic and sexual politico-explorers from days of yore — from Harvey Milk to Willie Brown — that we have Mayor Gavin Newsom finally unchained from his legal-eagle Victoria’s Secret model missus and free to allegedly cruise Cow Hollow’s finer drinking establishments after hours, as rumor has long had it. Oh, the list is long and ever growing: encompassing the CSI: Miami starlet and the city mag editor eager to vet her boy’s cover pic alike. Now comes the real test of testosterone: whether Newsom can summon that ironclad Clintonesque charm to weather the latest scandal. My question for the Gavinator: what are you doing for Valentine’s Day?

Pros: The ever-changing cast of hotties at parties and photo ops sure dresses up society pages. No more tacky Harper’s Bazaar fashion spreads. Plenty of heavily gelled, aerodynamic-looking helmet hair. The notion of a Scientologist mayor clears rooms. We can now use that hallowed line, "Is that your Plump Jack — or are you just excited to see me?" Feeling privy to the secret life of frat boys. He’s never boring.

Cons: Kennedy comparisons are starting to grate. Clinton comparisons are starting to chafe. And there’s too much chafing in general. The ever-changing cast of hotties is starting to resemble a sale crowd riding the revolving door at Neiman. Paris Hilton?! And we won’t be shocked to see Britney Spears stumbling out of a mayoral Four Seasons suite next. He’s so predictably not boring that it’s starting to get tiresome. (Kimberly Chun)

OLD HIPPIES


You see them everywhere but mainly on the Muni and at medical marijuana rallies. Some of them look saintly but a little crazed, as if they see a spaceship in your hair. Others resemble your sexy-yet-matronly high school French teacher, smiling indulgently but always ready to rap your knuckles with a day-old baguette if you get your future perfects wrong. Still others seem like they can’t wait to explode with rage at … well, anything, really. All of them are lovable in a historical light. When they’re off their meds — not so much. They’re living monuments to the golden age of free love, and, as medical science advances and rent-control laws stand, they’re not going away anytime soon. (Can young people afford to move here anymore anyway?) They also have a world of sensual knowledge to impart.

Pros: Mother figures, father figures, lusty lovers, spiritual guides — these Baudelairean kickers against the pricks can do it all — and they bake a mean hash brownie to get it all started. Plus: years of experimentation have made them freaky. You may have to crank up the solar defibrillator, but they’re experts in how to "get your motor running."

Cons: Occasional bad-trip flashbacks. Always slightly wary. Strawberry-scented oxygen tanks. Pillow talk = Allen Ginsberg stories. Hairy. Half tantric. Forgot if they put out candles. Ponytail or braid can get caught in teeth. (Marke B.)

BURNING MAN FLINGS


Burning Man is a sexual and emotional cauldron. Liberally mix together a world of sensory delights, a spirit of reckless abandon, beautiful exposed bodies everywhere, sudden sandstorms that send you scurrying into the nearest tent or trailer, countless peak experiences, exposure to a myriad of lifestyles and communities, and 40,000 people with time on their hands, goodwill in their hearts, and lust in their loins, and it’s no surprise that people end up hooking up left and right. This place oozes sexual energy while stripping away our emotional defenses and leaving us exposed to Cupid’s arrows.

Pros: Whatever you want, it’s here, often with no strings attached. When people come back from the playa all blissed-out and saying how it changed their lives, that’s usually not just the drugs talking. People do things they wouldn’t do in the everyday world — and then they do it again and again. And if you follow the sound advice of veteran burners to leave your expectations at home and just be open to the experience, then you’re also in the ideal place to not just get laid but truly find love. Believe it or not, I know of lots of lasting, loving marriages between people who met on the playa.

Cons: All the things that make Burning Man so conducive to sex and romance can also create problems. People get emotionally splayed by the often overwhelming nature of daily life on the playa. They’re vulnerable to everything from small slights that get exaggerated to the predators who invariably exist in any town. Couples get tested. Singles can at times feel lonely and desperate. Everybody has a few hard mornings after. And as a practical matter, dust gets everywhere — and I mean everywhere. (Steven T. Jones)

LUSTY LADIES


The Bay has a long and luxuriously twisted history of female sexual empowerment, full of Brights, Queens, Dodas, Califias, Blanks, Chos, and other sparkling heroines of don’t-do-it-and-die philosophy — some of whom have gone on to become heroes, even. The two major, classic phalanxes of gyno-horno-positivism to have arisen from the mists of all that groundwork are the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations. The Lady, currently a worker-owned stripper co-op, has been baring a broad variety of intelligent, worldly-wise physical types for almost 30 years, and Good Vibrations, a women-centered chain of erotica shops that offer a plethora of workshops and training sessions for both women and men, has helped make vibrators the Tupperware of the new millennium. Despite the ubiquity of silicone enhancements and Girls Gone Wild antics in today’s culture, the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations try to keep it real by focusing on the pleasures inherent in strong, natural femininity. In an era when guys are being forced like never before to question their physical attributes and sexual virility, thanks to size-queen porn and erectile dysfunction spam, the gals — who’ve had to deal with that kind of shit forever — may have a bit of an upper hand, self-image-wise, thanks in part to these two affirming San Francisco institutions. Not that it’s a competition.

Pros: Lusty Lady’s the best place to take your gay friends for a fabulous girls’ night out. Everything I know about labias I learned from Good Vibrations.

Cons: I have to hand-wash all my plates because my dishwasher’s usually full of Good Vibrations dildos. I have to hand-wash all my clothes because I spend all my quarters in the booths at the Lusty Lady. (Marke B.)

PORN AND TECHNOLOGY


Right up the Peninsula from Silicon Valley, we find ourselves in techie heaven. Most of the global advances in online technology burst first and foremost from our fertile area. The bust and boom that locked the Bay in a violent coital grasp in the early ’00s exhausted us, but Web 2.0’s got us all atingle again. This time we’re sure we won’t make the same mistakes. We’ll keep it social, we’ll keep it personal. Most of all, we’ll keep it sexual. Thanks to advances in digital production and online distribution — and our wondrously pervy nature (not to mention our desirable market) — the porn industry in San Francisco has exploded. The city is now home to a majority of the biggest gay porn companies and quite a few straight and fetish ones.

The most barefaced manifestation of the lucrative intersection of porn and technology is the purchase of the ginormous Armory in the Mission by fetish header Kink.com to house its offices, studios, and online operations. (Personally, I can’t wait for them to open a Kink Café in there as well. St. Andrew’s croissandwich, anyone?) This may be a harbinger of things to come. We’re not exactly holding our collective breath for Bang Bus to take over the LucasArts HQ in the Presidio or for the former Candlestick Park to be rechristened Naked Sword Arena — but hey, it could happen. Alas, the fortuitous marriage of porn and technology may be about to hit the skids. Hi-def can reveal a whole lot of ass pimples and nipple lifts — Blu-ray killed the porn star? Then again, it might just provide more employment opportunities for digital touch-up artists. "Hey, man, what’s your new gig?" "I’m rastarizing Busty Fillips’s underarm stretch marks — full-time, plus benefits." Local HMOs are lining up.

The ever-rising tide of digital wonders raises more sensual — and sensitive — boats than porn, however. While no one’s yet perfected the vibrator–cell phone (what ringtone would I put on that? Oh yeah, Beyoncé), rest assured that some little tech elf is working fiendishly away in his or her bright pink laboratory to bring that dream to fruition. Which brings us to the new iPhone. It may not be dildo-ready, exactly — watch that touch screen! — but some of its romantic applications were immediately apparent on its unveiling here in January. What other piece of handheld technology allows a person to be rejected in so many different medias at once? Now when you want to break up with someone, you can call them, text them, and e-mail them all at the same time. Plus, you can share a break-up song on iTunes with them and even throw in a YouTube clip of yourself gently weeping to show how torn up you are inside (clip must be less than 10 minutes in duration and not imitative of copyrighted material). Send a slide show! Skype an e-card! Use PayPal to buy them a "Just Got iDumped" mug on eBay! The possibilities are infinite.

Now if only there were software that could mend a broken heart. Sigh.

Pros: Online hookups? No problem: anywhere, anytime. You don’t have to be physically present to enjoy an entire relationship. Everyone’s a winner: people unable to afford the latest gadget or upgrade get to feel more real. Soon everyone in the city will have a job at Kink.com.

Cons: Much of the Bay population is more interested in staying up all night with a two-liter of Coke, a cold pizza, and a roomful of servers than a warm body. Web 2.0 has brought a horny flood of freshly flush Googlers, Tubers, Diggers, ‘Spacers, and Mac heads on the make to already packed and overpriced Mission bars (watch for those hybrid Tundras parked on the median). You will literally go blind if you jack off to video iPod porn in the bathroom stall at work — that screen’s so small! Soon everyone in San Francisco will have a job at Kink.com. (Marke B.)

Believe the buzz

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Signed to Frenetic Records and publicized by Fanatic Promotion, local boys–made–groovy the Makes Nice are surprisingly mellow. Perhaps they’ve been consorting with a resurrected British freakbeat muse — it’s been "more relaxed than you’d think, given the name and all," vocalist-guitarist Josh Smith writes via e-mail, discussing the group’s deal with Frenetic. The San Francisco label — also home to releases by one of Smith’s previous bands, the Fucking Champs — is proving an ideal base for these kind and raucous rockers. Their debut, Candy Wrapper and 12 Other Songs, is a head rush without the dizziness. Think honey versus synthetic sweeteners, Tartine Bakery’s shimmering morning buns versus Costco’s limp croissants.

Throughout Candy Wrapper there’s a certain calm — call it the clarity that comes with good ole musicianship. Phil Manley of Trans Am expertly engineered the album at Lucky Cat, and he emphasized how the jazzlike rapport among the players helps the ripping guitar solos become play-it-again hooks, while the drum beats groove like funky piano solos. "I always know that your opinions are stale / When you say fresh, I know it’s fucking stale / And it don’t mean nothing at all," the boys harmonize smoothly over staccato syncopation on the title track. On "As Long As I Can" a crowded drumbeat that could throw off lesser percussionists dances in the agile hands of Jack Matthew (also a member of Harold Ray Live in Concert). When I compare the vocals on "Anna Karina" to those of punk groups on Fat Wreck Chords, Smith responds, "They were supposed to have been stolen from Les Fleur de Lys, Powder, SRC, and maybe the Everly Brothers." The members of the Makes Nice don’t have SRC’s fantastic hair, but the Mothballs’ Aaron Burnham plays bass that would stand strong in any decade of rock.

But how to describe the nature of this superfun trio? A mandolin is subtle and effective because of its double strings. So maybe we could label the Makes Nice a double trio, though they would prefer either a ragingly ridiculous moniker or none at all. "If it’s cool, I would prefer to call my songs post-techstep neofreakbeat," Smith jokes. "I’d call Aaron’s songs anachronistic Spartacus watchband croon-wop. I’d consider Jack’s songs to be hybrid vapor-wetware tragicomedy…." Maybe they play un–surf rock for those who don’t like genre surf rock and don’t know how to surf. "I wish we could play surf music," Burnham writes, pretending to brood. "We sorta tried and failed."

I like to blame the vicious surf gangs in Santa Cruz for stymieing my surfing education. But honestly, I was just as happy to bodysurf in safer spots and then — sunned, exhausted, and deliriously happy (remember that time before laptops?) — find a big smooth rock and rest on it, reading comics. Eventually, I added a Walkman to this scene, then a lover. The Makes Nice capture such windswept feelings in the tunes "She Don’t Ever Let Go" and "California Sun."

Talented local artist Hellen Jo (www.helllllen.org — that’s five l’s) designed Candy Wrapper ‘s cover, an eye-grabbing minicomic depicting a terrible car accident. "I met Hellen about five years ago while we were both students at UC Berkeley, and we’ve pretty much been friends and mutual fans ever since," Burnham writes. "We sent her a few songs with lyrics and asked her to choose one to depict with a minicomic for the cover. And she did, exceeding all of our expectations. We emptied out the band piggy bank for her, of course."

Likewise, Candy Wrapper speaks clearly to a graphic-novel generation that sees stories in everything. Along with such similar punky doo-woppers as the Tralala, the Makes Nice are building a bridge recalling the missing link that the original freakbeat bands provided to psych rock in the 1960s. A bridge to what? Duh, to whatever is next. *

MAKES NICE

With the Moore Brothers and Miguel Zelaya

Feb. 14, 9 p.m., $8

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

(415) 647-2888

www.makeoutroom.com

www.myspace.com/themakesnice

>

Space disco disks

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BLACK DEVIL DISCO CLUB, 28 AFTER (LO)


Imagine Klaus Nomi’s more butch and less robotic brother riding the peaks and valleys of a Giorgio Moroder blip roller coaster, and you have a glimpse of the personality of this EP by Bernard Fevre, who sure looks cute in the (circa late ’70s?) photo foldout within its shiny black jewel box. Was all of 28 After recorded 28 years ago, when Fevre was influencing what would become acid house, or was it spruced up recently? Whatever the answer, its six tracks are a treat. "I regret the flower power," the Parisian Fevre claims in the chorus of one song, but he shouldn’t regret the disco in its wake.

SALLY SHAPIRO, DISCO ROMANCE (DISKOKAINE)


Even though it has one of the tag’s two words in its title, I’m not sure this shy singer’s gorgeous album qualifies as space disco. It could just as easily be deemed classic synth pop, with an emphasis on classic — which means something, considering how synthy and poppy it is from start to finish. Fans of St. Etienne and Annie should run out and buy it before they’ve finished reading this sentence. Everyone else should give one listen to writer-producer Johan Agebjörn’s "I Know" and see if it’s possible to resist the song’s charms, which are as immense as Shapiro’s voice is petite. Early contender for album of the year.

SKATEBARD, MIDNITE MAGIC (DIGITALO)


Gotta love the floating toothy black-lipsticked mouths on the high-gloss cover of this album by Annie’s roommate, Baard Lødemel. The title of "Holidays on Ice in Space" shows the Bergen, Norway, producer has a sense of camp humor, while the hovering sound of "Caravan" suggests that he’s Aphex Twin’s glitter ball–loving other half. Another highlight is "Boyvox," on which the vox in question is breathy. A word (via the liner notes) from the man himself: "This record is best experienced on a portable music player, or an evening walk in your nearest forest or park."

VARIOUS ARTISTS, CONFUZED DISCO: A RETROSPECTIVE OF ITALIAN RECORDS (MANTRA-VIBES)


Italo disco is space disco’s illegitimate, polysexual parent. Disc one of this two-disc tribute to a top label largely showcases drag-ready originals such as N.O.I.A.’s "True Love" and Fawzia’s "Please Don’t Be Sad," though Radio Slave makes an excellent, shuddering cameo. The overall peak has to be Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas’s rock-powered remix of Answering Service’s "Call Me Mr. Telephone" on disc two. It adds a new bass line, guitar hook, and keyboard phrasing that rise in tension John Carpenter–style. It also condenses and enhances the best bits from the track’s female vocal, which plays like some modern Italian misunderstanding of "Please Mr. Postman." Viva Italo disco.

SEE ALSO


Metro Area, Kelley Polar Quartet. (Huston)

More than the affair

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EDITORIAL OK: let’s put this all in perspective.

Gavin Newsom did something almost unbelievably, incalculably stupid. He’s in a lot of political and possibly legal trouble.

He has just admitted to having a drinking problem and is going to seek "treatment" — although it’s not clear at all what that means, except that he won’t be entering a residential center.

The heart of the scandal was just an affair — yes, an affair with a subordinate, which is a real problem (and something most of corporate America put an end to 20 years ago) — but nobody’s dead, he hasn’t started a war, the city isn’t about to collapse, and the world will keep turning. It seemed silly to us to call on Newsom to resign over that, just as it was silly for the Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton over an Oval Office blow job.

But there’s a much bigger problem here.

For months, long before this tawdry story made the front pages, it’s been clear that the mayor of San Francisco isn’t focused on the job. For whatever reason (and there may be many), Newsom has been checked out for quite some time now. As we reported in "Mayor Chicken" (1/10/07), he never attends public events that haven’t been carefully scripted. His relations with the Board of Supervisors are damaged beyond repair. He’s offering absolutely nothing in the way of leadership on the murder epidemic, the housing crisis, Muni’s meltdown, or much of anything else. He’s had plenty of time for glamour and glitz, movie stars, rides on the Google corporate jet, and the glitterati at Davos, Switzerland — but not much energy for the gritty reality on the streets of his city.

He is, we noted in our Jan. 10 cover story, "the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites, and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t established in advance."

And whether we like it or not, this latest "lapse in judgment" — and Newsom’s embarrassing failure to deal with it properly — is only going to make things worse.

To be blunt, for a lot of reasons that have little to do with this tabloid sensation, we don’t see how Newsom can effectively run San Francisco for another four years. The mayor’s latest mess isn’t a scandal as much as a symptom of his shaky grip on the frighteningly tricky world of high-stakes politics. He’s acting like a dizzy kid at a rock star party who doesn’t have the maturity to handle what’s coming at him. Even his close allies have warned us that the wheels are coming off his administration. It’s not even clear that he wants to be mayor.

We wish Newsom well in his battle with alcoholism. But for the good of the city (and the causes he claims to care about), he’d be better off announcing he isn’t going to run for reelection now.

That wouldn’t be the end of his political career — plenty of people (John Burton comes to mind) have taken some time off from politics to deal with their personal lives and come back much stronger. It might be the best thing Newsom could do for himself.

Newsom says right now that he’s staying in the race, but he’s clearly wounded; that air of political invulnerability has taken a hit. When a local politician is looking bloodied, the sharks typically start to circle. That hasn’t happened yet; if anything, over the past few days, the highest-profile potential contenders have been pretty quiet about taking Newsom on.

But somebody has to do it. That’s never been clearer.

Running for mayor is serious business, and if there’s going to be a strong candidate challenging Newsom on the issues, the left needs to think about who it ought to be. Who has the experience and skills to take on the campaign? Who can appeal to a wide enough group of voters to win? Who has the sort of record and platform that progressives can support and unite around?

Those discussions need to start soon. But they need to be deliberate and thoughtful. Newsom’s political (and yes, personal) failures have given progressives an opening. There’s a chance to elect a mayor who really represents San Francisco values in deeds as well as words. Let’s take it seriously. *

More than the affair

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OK: Let’s all stop and take a deep breath.

Gavin Newsom did something almost unbelievably, incalculably stupid. He’s in a lot of political and possibly legal trouble. But in the end, it was just an affair – yes, an affair with a subordinate, which is a real problem, but nobody’s dead, he hasn’t started a war, the city isn’t about to collapse and the world will keep turning. It’s silly to talk about Newsom resigning over this, the same was it was silly for the Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton over an Oval Office blow job.

Besides, there’s a much bigger problem here.

————————————————

For months, long before this tawdry story made the front pages, it’s been clear that the mayor of San Francisco wasn’t focused on the job. For whatever reason (and there may be many reasons) Newsom has been checked out for quite some time now. As we reported Jan 10, he never does public events that haven’t been carefully scripted. His relations with the Board of Supervisors are damaged beyond repair. He’s offering absolutely nothing in the way of leadership on the murder epidemic, the housing crisis, Muni’s meltdown, or much of anything else. He’s had plenty of time for glamour and glitz, for movie stars, rides on the Google corporate jet and the glitterati at Davos – but not much energy for the gritty reality on the streets of his city.

He is, we noted in our cover story, “the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t determined in advance.”

And whether we like it or not, this latest “lapse in judgment” – and Newsom’s embarrassing failure to deal with it properly – is only going to make things worse.

To be blunt, for a lot of reasons that have little to do with this week’s tabloid sensation, we don’t see how Gavin Newsom can effectively run San Francisco for another four years. This latest mess isn’t a scandal as much as it’s a symptom of Newsom’s shaky grip on the frighteningly tricky world of high-stakes politics. He’s acting like a dizzy kid at a rock-star party who doesn’t have the maturity to handle what’s coming at him. Even his close allies have warned us that the wheels are coming off his administration. It’s not even clear that he wants to be mayor.

For the good of the city (and the causes he claims to care about) he’d be better off announcing now that he isn’t going to run for re-election.

That wouldn’t be the end of his political career – plenty of people (John Burton comes to mind) have taken some time off from politics to deal with their personal lives, and come back much stronger. It might be the best thing Newsom could do for himself.

——————————————————

If Newsom stays in the race, he will quickly (and for perhaps all the wrong reasons) be seen as deeply politically vulnerable. And when a local politician is looking bloodied, the sharks start to circle. The potential for a feeding frenzy – with half a dozen or more politicians who suddenly see City Hall Room 200 beckoning starting to jockey for support and stab each other in the back – is all too real. That’s a bad way for progressives to proceed.

Running for mayor is serious business, and if there’s going to be a strong candidate challenging Newsom on the issues, the left needs to think about who it ought to be. Who has the experience and skills to take on the campaign? Who can appeal to a wide enough group of voters to win? Who as the sort of record and platform that progressives can support and unite around?

Those discussions need to start soon. But they need to be deliberate and thoughtful. Newsom’s political (and yes, personal) failures have given progressives an opening. There’s a chance to elect a mayor who really represents San Francisco values, in deeds as well as words. Let’s take it seriously.

An actual issue

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t care about the mayor’s sex life. Frankly, I’d rather not think about it. If he had an affair with a good friend’s wife, that’s between them. Makes him look like a jerk, but whatever.

There is, however, a more serious issue here, which is that Ruby Tourk was Newsom’s employee. An at-will employee who could be fired at any time, at the mayor’s call. That’s why the city may well get sued here, and why this is really kind of a problem.

It really was, to quote the mayor, a lapse in judgment for the chief executive of a major city. Big time.

Doin’ the ‘Dance

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Sundance has become a spectator business event, like the weekly box office returns. This year turned out to be a surprise bull market when the same buyers who went in saying there was little of apparent commercial appeal on the program wound up spending tens of millions in an acquisitions frenzy. I didn’t get to see Son of Rambow, an ’80s nostalgia piece about action movie–obsessed kids that earned a cool $8 million distribution deal. But that movie at least sounds like real fun. Predictably, most of the features that scored dealwise were on the safe, earnest, kinda bland side, such as Adrienne Shelly’s posthumously completed Waitress, the Australian dramedy Clubland, and the John Cusack–as–Iraq War widower vehicle Grace Is Gone.

Other big-noise titles expired on arrival, including several exploring (or is that exploiting?) the de rigueur shocking subject of our moment, child abuse. Noses were held around Hounddog (the Dakota Fanning–rape film) and An American Crime (Catherine Keener as a monster foster mom), though child abduction drama Trade won some appreciation. Such controversial flicks were often more exciting in advance hype than onscreen, though conversely several bad-taste movies proved more than edible. Many thumbs went up for vagina dentata black comedy Teeth, and my own at least were hoisted for all-star, Commandments-inspired The Ten (in which Winona Ryder enjoys vigorous pleasuring with a ventriloquist’s dummy), from the good folks of comedy troupe the State. Not to mention (in a different realm entirely) Robinson Devor’s Zoo, an extraordinarily poetic and nonjudgmental documentary-dramatization mix about something you might expect those adjectives couldn’t apply to: the 2005 death of a Seattle man whose colon was perforated by an Arabian stallion’s member.

Zoo was a startling exception to a problem that’s become common among the kind of indie cinema Sundance programs — stuff that, since it’s often funded by HBO or PBS or whatever (or is simply produced with the expectation of a small- rather than big-screen career), tends to look, act, and smell like TV. There’s nothing wrong with that, since good fiction stories can be told and compelling documentaries crafted without the need for great visual panache. Still, the lack of aesthetic excitement, the sheer broadcasty-ness (abetted by so much HD photography) increasingly makes anything that feels like a real film seem refreshing. Examples most often surfaced among more experimental features (yes, they still get programmed at Sundance — you just don’t hear about them), such as Zoo and the ecstatically intimate soccer documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

Sundance proved again this year that it’s the premier showcase for movies starring people who can single-handedly make viewing worthwhile. Parker Posey, Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, and Samantha Morton had two entries each. Steve Buscemi, god bless him, had three (including one he cowrote, directed, and starred in). Plus, there were opportunities to see actors like Ryan Reynolds (The Nines), Queen Latifah (Life Support), and Anna Faris (Smiley Face) get the generous roles you knew they were capable of filling. At times at Sundance the US film world almost seems like a repertory company of versatile, brilliant professionals — one that sometimes lets A-list Hollywood guest stars take part, in which context they tend to flounder (i.e., Lindsay Lohan in the achingly dull Jared Leto is Mark David Chapman drama Chapter 27; first-time director Anthony Hopkins’s embarrassing, surreal egofest, Slipstream). They may not get the big breaks, but the cool kids in class can always make the popular ones look insipid. (Dennis Harvey)

More fallout?

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By Steven T. Jones
Now comes word that Alex Tourk has resigned as the campaign manager for Newsom’s reelection. For “personal reasons.” Yeah right. Does this have something to do with Newsom standing by Ragone, again, just as he did when he let his old chief of staff Steve Kawa resign after a power struggle with Ragone? Or was it something that happened while Newsom was in the Swiss Alps? Or maybe it was actually “personal reasons” associated with some nasty and persistent rumors that have floated through City Hall? Who knows? Whatever it was, we’ll all probably have to find out for ourselves rather than count on Newsom’s people for the straight scoop.

Drama mama

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Relationships can suck sometimes. You know, the drama — the toxic chewing at the meat of a romance on the verge of imploding. Your nerves may feel destroyed after going a dozen rounds in an all-night bender over some questionable glance or wry crack, but love’s hang-ups do make for the best songs.

Take it from Des Ark’s Aimée Argote: she has no qualms about expressing herself and is no stranger to confronting her demons through song. A listen to the melancholic lyrics that escape from the Durham, N.C., native’s raspy voice on her band’s recent split EP with Ben Davis and the Jetts, Battle of the Beards (Lovitt), makes that much evident, in the lyrics of drug addiction, sexual freedom, and most prominently, unsparing heartache.

On the acoustic "The Subtleties of Chores and Unlocked Doors," Argote confesses distressingly, "We can get naked together, take dirty naps, whatever / But so long as we suffer apart from one another / You can hold my hand but you can never hold my heart." Throughout the recording the vocalist’s spirit sounds broken as she tells tales of tortured love, a theme that seems to haunt her but never really shatters her self-esteem.

During a recent phone interview, however, Argote’s cheery voice suggested anything but a bout with the blues. "Music is the way I process things that make me sad, and all of those feelings are so hard to articulate," she said. "I feel really inarticulate as a person in conversation form but much more articulate through music. I see it as an opportunity to explain the things that are making me insane, so they usually come out as bummers."

But not all of Argote’s songs sound as if she’s down on her luck. Though her new songs are hushed ballads augmented with acoustic guitar, piano, and symphonic textures courtesy of University of North Carolina orchestra members, Des Ark’s history stretches beyond that. The project began as a trio in 2001 but by the following year shrunk to a two-piece: Argote and drummer Tim Herzog. The pair’s music was a mix of angular riffs roaring from Marshall cabinets and hard-as-nails drum brio. Argote’s vocals ranged from primal wailing to throat-wrenching howling, and together the duo sound reminiscent of PJ Harvey fronting Unwound. Known for in-your-face live shows, Des Ark ditched the stage for floor performances to ensure an engaging experience for band and crowd.

"It’s weird when an audience feels connected to a band but you feel completely disconnected from the audience," Argote said. "I felt it was important to break down the performer and paying customer boundary because it really bothered me and makes music inaccessible."

Videographer Charles Cardello — who released Des Ark’s sole full-length, Loose Lips Sink Ships (2005) on his label, Bifocal Media — sees the connection. "There are not too many performers out there who can simultaneously scare the shit out of you, turn you on, induce fits of hysterics, confuse your musical sensibilities, and rock you to your foundation," he wrote in an e-mail. Argote "could probably just stand there without a guitar and wail for a few minutes, and you’d get the aforementioned effect."

Unfortunately, Herzog’s time in Des Ark was short-lived, and the band’s dynamic soon changed. In September 2005 the duo played their last show together, right before Herzog departed for Washington, DC, to become a bike messenger. Argote disclosed that though the split was amicable, she was really sad when he left.

"When Tim moved away, it was like ‘Well, there goes the one drummer I wanted to play with,’ " she explained. "There’s a lot of phenomenal drummers, but in terms of the type of music I wanted to play, I thought we made a good pair."

After considering a move to DC herself, Argote decided to remain in Durham because "it’s homegrown and not affected by the labels and popularity contests." She also contemplated whether Des Ark’s erstwhile aggressive sound was compensating for qualities lacking in the music. "I think becoming a quiet musician changed the way I perceived space," the vocalist said. "In our culture that’s a way people tend to become oppressed, and I struggle with it a lot. When you walk into a club with a six-foot-something guy and you’re in a loud band, it’s a lot different than walking into a club when you’re a five-foot girl with a banjo."

Argote views Des Ark’s current sound as a natural progression — the EP’s music possesses a certain repose, but the energy remains. Nonetheless, she said that — although she has a small collection of quiet songs she wants to record for her next album — she’d like to throw a rocker or two in.

"It’s not like I sit at home and write rockers, ’cause I also like writing quiet ones as well," she said. "When I’m at home and all I have is my piece-of-shit, busted-up, acoustic thing, I pretty much write busted, piece-of-shit acoustic songs as opposed to loud ones." *

DES ARK

With the New Trust and Polar Bears

Fri/2, 10 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

>

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