The Bay’s press has been salivating ever since July 26, whenLa Cocina‘s Street Food Festivalhosted a passel of media types at Fort Mason Center with tables upon tables of the snacks that we’ll all get to freak out over at the festival on Sat/18. Read on for some of our favorite snacks that we’re having a hard time holding off on until Saturday.
Bonus! If mornings aren’t your deal, you’ve got options this year. On Fri/17, you can jet down to the Alemany Farmer’s Market for the fest’s Night Market. 25 vendors will be selling sub-$10 treats, including American Masala Farm’s Suvir Saran serving up Indian food, Ryar Farr from 4505 Meats, and Tijuana’s Javier Plasencia of Mision 19. Plus, craft beer and cocktails.
Go early on Saturday. Lines for vendors, which range from La Cocina participants who have hardly sold commercially before to some of SF’s hautest eateries, tend to be pretty long by lunch time, and this is one fest that does not award the fashionably late. You’ll also be able to pick up a paper copy in the Guardian on newsstands today. Here’s some treats you’ll wanna queue up for as soon as you fall out of bed, veggie-friendly all. We dare you to do all five — tweet their photos to @sfbg if you do and we’ll figure out some kind of reward for gluttonous you.
Something about corn, cheese, and mayo soup sounds vaguely unsettling, but take it from an avowed mayonaise h8r, these are cups of pleasure and you want at least one. La Cocina graduate Isabel Caudillo makes them, bringing this Mexico City recipe straight to SF bellies. Perfect if Saturday gets chilly (please no.)
Chiefo Chukwudebe makes these West African firm cakes made of pureed black eyed peas, topped with tomatoes, onions, peppers, and carmelized onions. The deliciously chewy version that was being sampled at Fort Mason was topped with flakes of corned beef, but vegetarian versions were available.
The plucky Tiffany and Sylvee Esquivel of this rad catering outfit didn’t give their Street Food Fest offering quite as catchy a moniker as some of their repetoire (“vegans are better lovers” lasagna comes to mind), but no matter — this Asian-inspired nuggets are the kind of stoner snack you normally only dream of. Noodles inside egg rolls? *Eyes roll back into head, Homer Simpson-scruff sprouts instantly* Much props to these ladies for the hundreds of free vegan cookies they baked for the Dyke March this year, by the way.
One quibble about these devilish, gooey, troublesome-in-a-good-way dessert snacks — is that spear in the center really necessary? After all, the first time you crunch into one the thing is going to require two hands so that it doesn’t fall off the wooden skewer onto the — NOOOOOOOOO! — ground. That’s not what you want, so this is your official reminder to pay attention to sugar bomb of satiation. Clairesquares is the brainchild of Ireland’s Claire Keene, who re-interprets traditional recipes into decadent desserts that have popped up all over town in the last few years.
I went on the record last year over how much I love these things. Nothing combines a love of pastels and a love of getting drunk more than Rosa Rodriguez’s mouthfuls of booze and condensed milk flower. They are magic, and you can find them at the Street Food Festival bars, waiting for you cheefully when you’re done eating the fest’s more nutritious options.
Street Food Festival Night Market
Fri/17 6-9pm, $25 entry
Alemany Farmer’s Market (free shuttle leaves from 25th St. and Mission, SF)
100 Alemany, SF
Street Food Festival
Sat/18 11am-7pm, free entry
Mission District (Folsom from 20th to 26th St., 21st and 25th Sts. from Treat to Shotwell, Cesar Chavez Elementary School parking lot, Parque de los Ninos Unidos and Jose Coronada Playgrounds), SF
Listings compiled by Caitlin Donohue. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
WEDNESDAY 15
Smack Dab open mic Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF. www.magnetsf.org. 8pm, open mic sign-up starts at 7:30pm, free. Magnet, the Castro’s neighborhood health clinic hosts this open mic for all ages and genders. Lewis DeSimone, author of Chemistry and The Heart’s History, will be the night’s featured reader but everyone is welcome to bring in up to five minutes of shareable words.
Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com. 6-8pm, $10. The San Francisco debut of LA’s sexy comic showdown, this installation of CEFF brings 10 comics to the stage to share their fan fic-themed smut. Some even take audience suggestions in their creative process, so bring your dirty minds.
THURSDAY 16
Ruben Martinez The Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF. (415) 863-8688, www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The Western plains of the United States that once were home to Native American tribes and later, roaming cowboys, are now the scene of an entirely different wild frontier. Post-colonial author Martinez reads from his time spent researching Marfa, Texas; the banks of the Rio Grande; and the Tohono O’odham reservation in his research for Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New “New West.”
“Discover the Birds of Honduras” Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berk. (510) 843-2222, www.northbrae.org. 7-9pm, free. The Golden Gate Audubon Society sponsors this talk by Robert Gallardo, who has opened butterfly farms and spent 12 years as a bird guide. Today, Gallardo presents some of the 750 bird species of Honduras, home to nearly 10 percent of the planet’s winged species.
Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion in America Accordion Apocalypse, 255 10th St., SF. www.accordionapocalypse.com. 7pm, free. Author Marion Jackson penned this look at our country’s relationship with the squeezebox. Should you be inspired to tickle the ivories yourself, you can buy an accordion of your own from the lecture’s gracious hosts.
San Jorocho Festival Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., SF. (415) 641-7657, www.brava.org. 8pm, $6-$35. Brava’s celebration of the Veracruz region of Mexico kicks off tonight with filmmaker Marcos Villalobos presenting his documentary on three Son Jorocho musicians. Son Siglos looks at the cross-border translation of culture – particularly pertinent to this Northern Cali look at Mexican tradition.
SATURDAY18
Street Food Festival Folsom between 20th and 26th Sts. and some other streets, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. Some of SF’s hautest eateries and best food entrepreneurs take to the Mission streets for this foodie heaven: hundreds of dishes for $8 and under from across the world, not to mention bars selling artisan cocktails and more.
Balboa Park grand re-opening San Jose and Sgt. Young Drive, SF. www.tpl.org. 11am-2pm, free. The Balboa Park playground has a fresh new look, and the whole neighborhood’s invited to come out and give it a swing. The Trust for Public Land and SF Rec and Parks will be hosting and providing snacks, music, and activities.
Haute Pool Show Chambers at Hotel Phoenix, 601 Eddy, SF. www.hautepoolshow.eventbrite.com. 1-8pm, $5-$15. Shop local fashion by the pool at the city’s rock ‘n’ roll pool while DJs like Omar from Popscene and Brandon Arnovick from Rondo Brothers spin. 30 independent clothesmakers will be participating – the perfect stop-off if you’re looking for weekend threads.
Tell Your Tattoo Story video shoot Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. (415) 671-0507, www.sfiaf.org. 6:30pm, free. RSVP necessary. The new play Placas (part of the SF International Arts Festival this fall) centers around street gangs and the implications of tattoo removal – but that doesn’t mean that those involved in the production are anti-ink. Sign up to show off your tats and explain their provenance. Footage will be shown as a companion piece when the play debuts.
Alamo Square Flea Market South side of Alamo Square Park, SF. www.alamosquare.org. 9am-3pm, free. Sidestep the Full House-house-seeking tour buses and search for your own vision of superlative San Francisco – the 29th year of this neighborhood-sponsored flea market will feature clothes, housewares, dogs for adoption from Rocket Dog Rescue, and much more.
Pedalfest Jack London Square, Broadway and 1st St., Oakl. www.pedalfestjacklondon.com. 11am-8pm, free. Bikes for days! Art bikes, acrobatic bikes, stunt bikes, foldable bikes, kids bikes, food for bikes – okay, maybe just food for riders, who will also enjoy live music and cavorting with their two-wheeled community. The East Bay Bike Coalition also sponsored last year’s Pedalfest, which attracted over 18,000 attendees.
SUNDAY 19
SF Mime Troupe Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Fourth St., SF. www.sfmt.org. 2pm, free. Check out the Bay’s historic radical theater troupe in the rolling hills of downtown’s greenest field. This year’s production is called The Last Election. Shall we reflect on a world without political monkeying about? At least electoral shenanigans birthed a spectacular community theater troupe.
Indie Mart Wisconsin between 16th and 17th Sts., SF. www.indie-mart.com. Noon-7pm, free. Because you know somebody that deserves an August handmade gifty, this regularly-occurring craft fair is coming to Potrero Hill with 100 of the city’s finest makers. Thee Parkside is included in the festivities, so grab some tots and a Bloody before you shop – pricetags will go down way easier.
I met New Orleans bounce artist Nicky Da B in a Mardi Gras beer bust at a Nola leather bar. His manager Rusty Lazer (check out my interview with from the same trip) introduced us, shortly before the two ventured to the DJ booth upstairs where people started shedding clothes fast on the dancefloor.
And not (just!) for your run of the mill nightlife encounters that can be found at Eagles across the country — they were doing fast, sweaty DJ and the hella diverse crowd was losing it, including the leathermen who were down to give the scene a try, or at least continue their standard bar-time activities while a bunch of twenty-somethings flung themselves around them. Asses were popping so fast you didn’t know their owners’ hip sockets were going to be okay, it was that kind of party. Come to think of it, New Orleans tends to be that kind of party.
Seven months later, Nicky is riding high on the ace “Express Yourself” bounce track he put together with Diplo. He’s toured the country and beyond. He played the Sydney Opera House, for chrissakes. He’s also part of a queer hip-hop renaissance best epitomized by Frank Ocean’s coming-out, fellow Nola bounce queen Big Freedia, a whole mess of New York artists who are gaining ground, and locally by the glitter-gunned duo Double Duchess and female emcee Micah Tron.
But bounce artists are special, Nicky says. “We’re like the hypemen of hip-hop, kinda sorta,” he told me last week during a sweet little phone interview.
He’s making his SF debut Thu/16 at Public Works, finally. The Future Perfect and Stay Gold crews have the honor of welcoming the cardigan-ed wonder to town, where he told me he plans to ride a cable car. “We have street cars in New Orleans but I haven’t been on anyone else’s yet,” he said. He’s great. And really soft-spoken for a guy who has no trouble directing crowds in real grimy (in a good way) dancing at his live shows, where he rapid-fires bend-over instructions on top of driving bounce beats.
Nicky’s earliest memory of bounce was from back when a small thing in New Orleans, listening to sissy bounce progenitor Katy Red and Vockah Redu. And dancing. He says he was dancing, even then, all the time. “That’s a rule,” he said. “You have to know how to dance in New Orleans or you get whacked. If you walk up to anybody and they’re originally from New Orleans and they grew up in New Orleans they know how to dance.” He started performing when he graduated from high school.
Now he’s making it happen, currently working on the “Express Yourself”/”Hot Potato Style” (his new single, see great video above) follow-up, a mixtape tenatively called Legend in the Making that he says will incorporate other genres — more hip-hop, more house, more techno.
And if you didn’t start machine-gunning your hips to bounce at age eight like Nicky, he wants you to know there’s no call to get shy. “If you’re having fun doing it, then you’re doing it right,” he told me. “There’s more advanced moves that some people can’t just get, but they’ll get over time. There’s no right or wrong way.”
I am used to vegetarian restaurants and churches being cults, but this is something new. I’m loathe to spoil the surprise for you, nonetheless: the International Art Museum of America on Sixth Street and Market? 90 percent full of works by the stunning gentleman-living Buddha pictured. Also, it is free on first Thursdays!
Perhaps you have walked by the place before. Surely, you would have noticed the superlative tree-house-in-moat out front.
Upon entering the museum, one is escorted through a Rainforest Cafe-like entry room, only to double-back past two large wooden Chinese dragons flanking the entrance to a room that holds only a glass case with a large piece of coral. It is called “Sea Palace Monarch,” says the corresponding metal plaque. You will soon find that these plaques are a highlight of the International Art Museum.
Says plaque:
Presumably, your first feeling was that of surprise. Does such large coral exist in the world? If it is not a genuine coral, then why do its luster, texture, and appearance look so real and natural? From the bottom of your heart, you would happily accept it as genuine coral because it is so truly beautiful, so aesthetically pleasing. How beautiful your living room would be if it contained this sculpture.
It is not real coral. But this truly beautiful, aesthetically pleasing piece of ceramic was created by our man Dorje Chang Buddha the III, who it turns out made roughly 90 percent of all the art you are about to see. Dorje does coral ceramics, massive wax drippings, traditional-looking Japanese drawings of lion prides and pandas, Van Gogh-like sunflowers, psychedelic spacescapes, and even builds his own gingko bilboa-esque frames that often as not house large holograms of cave interiors. He also creates jade-inspired tiling, which is available for purchase in the gift shop.
Hell yeah that frame is holding a hologram.
Dorje’s yellow period.
It’s not all Dorje — there are occasional works by Flemish masters and oil paintings of sailboats. This is because Dorje is humble. Says the IAMA website, the museum’s board of directors initially only wanted the living Buddha’s works but:
His Holiness the Buddha adamantly disagreed, expressing His opinion that the International Art Museum of America is a site for masters of art worldwide to showcase their artistic accomplishments and should embrace diversity in orde to provide the public with broader aesthetic enjoyment. the Board of Directors yielded to this suggestion of His Holiness the Buddha.
Examples of such holy phenomena include the following. Both humans and non-humans have prostrated to H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III and have listened to His Holiness’s discourses on the dharma. Sentient beings, non-sentient things, birds, aquatic animals, land animals, flowers, grass, trees, tiles, and stones have all expressed respect for His Holiness’s dharma discourses either verbally or through physical actions. His Holiness taught a disciple how to transmit dharma on His behalf. When the person who was transmitted dharma by that disciple passed away, that person’s body emitted light. Thunder rumbled in the sky in reaction to the voice of His Holiness.
Researching Dorje is likely to through you into a k-hole of reincarnation debate and superlative 1990s web design. Tell me this isn’t the best website ever. Wish-fulfilling jewel mirrors, a digital prayer wheel that “sends out this peaceful prayer of compassion to all directions and to all beings, purifying the area.” That’s worth a perma-tab on your Google Chrome. Now compare to the museum’s site. What happened there, Board of Directors?
Still, new favorite museum. It has a treehouse, holograms, and I wasn’t abducted despite the fact that there was maybe one other visitor there on the first Thursday I was waved in from the sidewalk. The other visitor was a guy who talked loudly on his cell phone about how he was “just checking out some museum man, they like said it was free so I was like cool.”
CAREERS AND ED News that another coffee shop has opened in Mid-Market may not send happy vibes thrumming down your spinal cord, but that’s because you haven’t gotten a chance to hang out in Trailhead (1100 Market, SF), the community-oriented pop-up cafe that houses Holy Stitch. It’s a bright spot amid the Twitter-fueled frenzy, if you’re into the creativity of young people, or even just really beautiful clothes.
And yes, the coffee in this tiny space at Seventh and Market Streets is good. It’s from farm : table, the Tenderloin eatery that took the limited-seating-locavore model and skipped happily away with it. At Trailhead, f : t partners with the keep-it-real Luggage Store Gallery that has ensured that art entrepreneurship stays local, diverse, and relevant in this neighborhood for years. Trailhead is one component of A Temporary Offering, a planned six-month endeavor in the old Renoir Hotel that also includes a pop-up restaurant and bar.
But fluffy cappuccino foam and deep brown cuppas may not be the images that linger with you after an afternoon here.
Most probably, you’ll remember the smiley Holy Stitch Denim Social Club high-schoolers and young people wedged into the plate-glass triangle that makes up the corner of the space. They are usually there running an industrial sewing machine, surrounded by hand-bleached denim jackets with dashiki fabric patches, embroidery, studs, hand-affixed edging. Some take pictures, some just hang and chat with Holy Stitch founder Julian Dash — but they all seem to belong in the space. Which, as part of San Francisco’s most rapidly-changing neighborhoods where there are more tech worker new arrivals than local young people, is an accomplishment unto itself.
Julian Dash (in necklaces) and crew in front of Trailhead, the Luggage Store cafe-gallery that Holy Stitch has become part of. Photo by Waylon Choy
Dash may not fit your idea of a Mid-Market entrepreneur, though he does sell the wildly colorful designs made by himself and Holy Stitch interns in this space.
“The thing about clothing,” Dash says, hanging out in front of Trailhead on a planter box-seat designed by Hyphae Design Lab, which also built the cafe shelves that display seedlings for sale from the Tenderloin National Forest. “It’s a way of expressing yourself, but also a way of connecting people. I felt like [when I learned to sew] it was the beginning of my purpose.”
His involvement in the Luggage Store began when he entered the gallery to tag up its stairwell. Co-artistic director Laurie Lazer caught him, but instead of kicking him out had two questions for the dreadlocked graffiti artist: did he like math? Did he like kids? The answer was yes to both, and soon enough Dash was tutoring Lazer’s son Yarrow.
“We are all about the DIY mentality,” says Lazer’s partner and co-director Darryl Smith. “Julian is an artist who really embodies that.” Lazer and Smith were impressed with Dash’s creativity and motivational skills, and soon enough were inviting him to exhibit at the Luggage Store, in group shows and then an exhibit of his own during the month-and-a-half public arts festival Streetopia. Dash occupied a Mid-Market storefront, teaching kids to sew in front of passers-by.
That work moved to Trailhead last month. Some youth come to Dash from local arts high schools, which formally recognize his internship program. Some wander in when they see the bright spools of fabric, the massive sewing machine, and sign themselves up. Some stay with Dash months, some years. Not everyone winds up becoming tailors, but they do get lessons in self-starting.
“I was trying to sew but I ended up messing up one of his machines,” says Chris Vargas, who did a Holy Stitch internship through Metropolitan Arts and Technology High School this spring. “He asked what I wanted to do, and I told him music.” The teenager got to work learning how to use Dash’s mixing equipment, and is now releasing an LP for which he rapped and made beats.
Which is fine. “We’re talking about a human brand internship,” clarifies Dash, whose impassioned way of talking and motivational powers led to the nickname Pastor — the inspiration for Holy Stitch’s moniker. Sounds like Holy Stitch can hang just fine at its new address, even if it’s only ensured a spot for the next few months.
CAREERS AND ED Be not dazzled by the big show across the pond into forgetting your studies! Regardless of how assured and gosh-darn perfect the Olympians may seem, few of us will ever find our dream job by cutting another tenth of a second off our 100-meter dash, or adding another five pounds onto our barbell (egads! Didn’t you people check that Korean weightlifter’s horrific elbow dislocation last week? Low weight, high reps out there, please.) But there are ample ways to improve your lot in life, by attending a class or two or enrolling at one of our fine educational institutions. We’ve compiled some amazing options within your grasp here. Grasp… poor, poor Sa Jae-hyouk.
EXTRACURRICULARS
INTRODUCTION TO ACCORDION
Saturdays at the Accordion Apocalypse repair shop offer a shot in SoMa at learning to tickle the ivories on sweet, sweet squeezebox. For only $20, staff teach accordion-playing hopefuls about the inner workings of the instrument. It’s said you’ll even emerge from your day of instruction knowing how to wheeze an entire song. Lessons happen once a week and hey, how convenient! If you really take to the accordion, fine specimens are available for purchase mere feet from your classroom.
You don’t have to be a stoner to be upset about the way the federal government has been shutting down our cannabis dispensaries and raiding marijuana trade schools here in the Bay Area. And you don’t have to be a stoner to not know, like, what the hell to do about it. Enter patient advocacy group Americans For Safe Access, who is teaching you how to stand up for medical marijuana with its free Camp WakeUpObama program. Earn online merit badges for calling your elected officials, making protest art projects — even coordinating pot-themed street theater with the help of ASA’s exhaustive website’s educational resources.
Maybe you don’t want to go back to college, but you are down to take a college class. It happens, and San Francisco State’s extended learning department gets it. Register for an Open University course for this kind of real class, real life confluence. For example, its Studio Sculpture course. It’s a rare opportunity to get a in-depth studio sculpting experience without all the boring prerequisites. That doesn’t mean you won’t get ample lessons in theoretical background. You didn’t think your trip back to college will be all clay and play, did you?
Tuesdays and Thursdays Aug. 27-Dec. 17, 9:10-11:55am. $960. SFSU Fine Arts Building, 1600 Holloway, SF. www.sfsu.edu
WE BE SUSHI WORKSHOP
Sharpen your hamachi-making skills at this City College of San Francisco two-session course on the best in raw fish prep. We Be Sushi owner Andy Tonozuka opened his first sushi shop in 1987, so he should be able to impart all you need to know, from rolls to sashimi. Best of all: the lessons take place in Tonozuka’s classic Mission District eatery. You can’t get more San Francisco sushi-authentic than that — and we’ll bet you your class fee covers at least a free sample or two.
Sundays, Sept. 26-Oct. 6, 10am-1pm. $65-80. We Be Sushi, 538 Valencia, SF. www.ccsf.edu
SURVIVAL TOOL MAKING
From camp-happy urbanites to professional explorers, Bay Area citizens can take their wilderness savvy to the next level with Adventure Out, one of NorCal’s ultimate resources on all things wild. With the organization’s flintknapping and stone tools course, students will be introduced and trained in stone technology, which sound like an oxymoron, but actually entails exacting processes like spalling, percussion, and pressure flaking. Apocalypse now!
A concentration within the school’s counseling psychology degree, this is one of the nation’s only master’s in drama therapy. The program is intended for those who’d like to make their living implementing Erik Erikson’s psychological prescription to “play it out.” Courses focus on broadening self-understanding and activating dormant aspects of the human psyche.
California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission, SF. (415) 575-1600, www.ciis.edu
BROADCAST JOURNALISM
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. After all, if our media sources aren’t covering the news to your liking, it may be high time you became a newscaster. This program teaches students the appropriate research, writing, and reporting skills for careers in media forms including radio, television, cable, syndicated, Internet, and satellite news organizations.
Community College of San Francisco, 50 Phelan, SF. (415) 239-3285, www.ccsf.edu
PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
For every consumer consuming, there must be an industry creating. San Francisco State keeps this basic fact of capitalism on the books by offering a degree that is as much kooky inventor as it is savvy economist. Process, people, and product provide the basis for this bachelor’s degree in industrial design with a concentration in product design and development. Students will learn product design through researching technology, material, aesthetics, and the nuances of that ever-present invisible hand.
San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, SF. (415) 338-1111, www.sfsu.edu
DIETETICS
Body-conscious, food-obsessed Californians can thank their stars that some of the state’s brightest students are equally as nutrition-oriented, and driven to make moves in the world of healthy eating. UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resource undergraduate degree in dietetics focuses on disease prevention through understanding metabolic regulation, genetics, and the biological and chemical sciences of nutritional studies. Graduates from the program are generally expected to gun for a future in food production, clinical settings, or community and governmental leadership.
Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
WEDNESDAY 8
“Original Yoga: Rediscovering Traditional Practices of Hatha Yoga” Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 649-1320, www.pegasusbookstore.com. 7:30pm, free. Yoga scholar and Piedmont Yoga Studio director Richard Rosen delves into the history of yoga to find out if we’ve strayed from the meditation form’s original intent. Today, he shares his new book’s findings. Deepen your practice by attending his talk.
Beats for Lunch Monarch, 101Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com. Noon-2pm, free. Take a break from your desk with this free lunchtime dance party, featuring a spin sesh from the intrepid DJs of Motown on Monday. But I’m hungry you say? No excuses! Free Ike’s Place sandwiches will be on hand, as well as fruit to nosh on. And booze, obvs. Dance girl, dance.
“Microblast” works by Kelly Ording and Jet Martinez Project One gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF. www.p1st.com. Through Sept 29. Opening reception: 7pm, free. The First Couple of San Francisco art finally are holding a joint show, in which they’ll be showcasing the intensely detailed, colorfully fantastic paintings that they’re known for. Martinez is Facebook’s first resident artist, but his impact can be felt far from your newsfeed.
THURSDAY 9
Occupy the Bay film screening Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar, Berk. www.bfuu.org. 7pm, $5-10 suggested donation. Relive the century’s most compelling social movement so far at this screening of a rough cut of John Riley’s documentary on Occupy Oakland, and the intense police brutality that turned the country’s focus on the Bay for a few hot months.
“Out of Order” Creativity Explored, 3245 16th St., SF. www.creativityexplored.org. Opening reception: 7-9pm, free. The latest group show from the city’s hub for developmentally-disabled artists focus on the ways we regiment our thoughts. The 20-plus exhibiting artists organize their output with shapes, repetition, and various kinds of personal coding.
Why There Are Words Studio 333, 333 Caledonia, Saus. www.whytherearewords.com. 7-9pm, $5. Check out this year’s reader’s choice winner for Best Literary Night in our 2012 Best of the Bay issue.
SATURDAY11
American Trips one-year anniversary Z Space, 450 Florida, SF. www.zspace.org. 5-10pm, free. If you haven’t checked out the frenzy that is Berlin-style ping pong, now is your chance. You’ve already missed a year of the Mission’s wacky pong-outs. Be to be fair, you did wait for the party that is sure to be one of the series’ bests – tonight, DJ Primo takes on soundtrack duties with a “time warp” set spanning 1950s soul, and progressing all the way up to rave rhythms from the now-now. Plus free PBR from 5-6pm.
SUNDAY 12
Pistahan Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Fourth St., SF. www.pistahan.net. Sat/11 parade 11am. Festival also Sat/11. Those unfamiliar with balut, or fertilized duck embryo, might be surprised to know that this year’s (19th annual) Pistahan Festival features an eating contest fixating on the questionable Filipino street snack. But this weekend-long fest is just that exuberant about bringing the culture of the Phillipines to the heart of the city. Saturday morning boasts a downtown parade, and the entire weekend will have kids activities, ice cream tastings, a boxing tournament, gorgeous artwork, and much more.
Pizza, bikes, music: A Ruota Libera Una Pizza Napoletana, 210 11th St., SF. www.unapizza.com. 1-7pm, $10. In heaven, pizza magicians will bake artisan pies while locally-crafted bikes and accessories wheely around the oven. Heaven is a place on Earth: SoMa’s Una Pizza Napoletana will be serving up its best slices, Soulcraft Bicycles and other NorCal bike companies will be showcasing their wares, and there’s even a live performance by skate legend-musical genius Tommy Guerrero, all for less than the regular price of one of Una Pizza’s pies.
MONDAY 13
Al-Stravaganza: A burlesque tribute to Weird Al Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. www.hubbahubbarevue.com. 9pm, $5. We hope to see tons of bushy mustaches, Jew ‘fros, atrocious punning, and not much else by the end of numbers at this celebration of everyone’s favorite musical parodist. Hubba Hubba’s glittering lineup featuring Honey Lawless, Pearl E. Gates, and Lady Satan ask you to eat it, just eat it.
TUESDAY 14
“I Am America: Black Genealogy Through the Eye of an Artist” Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice, Oakl. Exhibit opens today, through Sept. 11. Opening reception: Aug. 16, 6:30-8:30pm. Visit a retelling of history at this traveling exhibit, which examines the falsities involved in mainstream portrayal of African Americans after the Civil War. Genealogists tracked down marriage certificates, land deeds, and other historical documents for “I Am America,” which black artists repurposed to make statements about the history of racial identity in post-bellum United States.
HERBWISE News coverage of the Olympics have successfully converted the world’s premier sporting event into a gossip fest befitting a British royal family divorce, and talk of record-setting Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ pot smoking have ignited the cannabis blogosphere. But not so fast: Phelps hasn’t owned up to smoking weed since 2009, when he was spotted ripping a bong during an extended break from training. He told CNN in an interview that aired just last week that the feeling of having the photo published was “the lowest of the low.” Perhaps the cannabis world should look elsewhere for celebrity endorsement…
THERE’S ALWAYS SNOOP
“Kids were walking around light-headed. The animals and everything.” Oakland radio DJ cum-MTV News executive producer Sway had the pleasure of introducing Snoop Dogg’s latest reincarnation at a recent press conference (still available online if this abbreviated sum-up doesn’t cut it for you.) But before he introduced Snoop Lion, he wanted us to know Dogg had smoked out Sway’s guest house on a recent visit — so badly, in fact that it took weeks to air out. Think of the children!
Snoop is. He just recorded Reincarnated, a roots album with Diplo. The first single “La La La” already available to buy. The rapper said the project is for his fans that can’t stomach his career’s gangsterisms. “I can’t just keep taking them to a dead end street and dropping them off,” he said. “I got to teach them how to fish, how to plant, how to grow.” Oh, and he’s bored. ” I’m a wise man in this music industry,” he said. Onto the next genre, where he at least has to hustle.
“I’ve always said I was Bob Marley reincarnated,” the Lion mused. The rebirth apparently took place on visit to a Jamaican temple. A priest informed Snoop “you are Brahimi, you are the light, you are the lion.” Said Snoop, “from that moment on, it was like I began to understand why I was there.” Helpfully, Vice cameras were on hand for the meeting, for Snoop getting dreadlocks, and for the creation of the album. A documentary named Reincarnated will be debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, but surely the intrepids of Vice Media will be happy to bring it your way after that.
When Sway asked him straight up if he’d be converting to Rastafarianism, Snoop said that being a rasta was more about lifestyle than religion. “It’s the way you live, it’s the way you do what you do. I felt like I’ve always been Rastafari. I just didn’t have my third eye open. But it’s wide open right now.”
What his tri-eye see? Will Snoop Lion shake his mane at cannabis Prohibition in the United States? What would Bob Marley do?
WWBMD?
Tuff Gong would certainly not have been stoked had he been in the Bay on July 31, when SF dispensaries Vapor Room and HopeNet shut their doors for the last time after receiving prohibitory letters from US Attorney Melinda Haag. The next day, activists took to the streets in a mock funeral for medical cannabis, touting “Cannabis is Medicine: Let the States Decide” signs, a coffin, and a paper mache version of Haag to the US Federal Building, where she has an office.
BOOK BEAT
New release exploring the complications involved in ending Prohibition: Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 288pp, $16.95), co-authored by Oakland’s Beau Kilmer. Kilmer is the co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center, and appears to be recommending a cautious approach to making pot legal — a prospect being voted on in three states in the fall election.
Perhaps you caught our cover story this week on crossover porn star James Deen. In it, I talk about how Deen has managed to bridge all kinds of genres in adult entertainment: BDSM furry porn to mainstream smut couplings to Brett Easton Ellis movies. Everything for everyone, non? Well not exactly — until mid-September, when Doc Johnson releases a new line of Deen-themed sex toys, including a nine-inch dildo molded directly from his member. We chatted with the company’s chief operating officer about what exactly that entailed.
The full line-up of Deenware
It all seems pretty straightforward — realistic dick vibrator, an “anal trainer” kit featuring two sizes of butt plugs and lube, cock rings, and a suction-mountable dildo. But the James Deen Signature Pump? After seeing his movies, I doubt the actor has a signature penis pump. Just saying. We spoke to Doc Johnson’s COO to find out how they choose whose dicks get molded, and what the reach of a celebrity dildo is, anyway. Find the gear in your local adult store this fall.
San Francisco Bay Guardian: Why James Deen’s penis? Who makes the decision about which celebrity gets immortalized?
Chad Braverman: We strive to partner with the best and James Deen is just that. He is everything we look for in a partnership: extremely popular, loves what he does, loves what we do, and wants to create great product. We make that decision internally based on factors like fan base, and the performer’s reputation, as well as their interest.
SFBG:How does the fitting/molding process take place for the lifelike dildos?
CB: James deen put his cock in a tube, we filled that tube with our proprietary casting formula. After it hardened, we pulled it out and then once it is confirmed a good molding, we use a harder casting material to fill the cavity left behind and that is our “cast master.” From there, it is a lot of hard work and a very detail oriented approach that makes the product as amazing and realistic as it is.
Time for dick molding.
We decided to manufacture and release James Deen’s nine-inch cock in two materials, each with their own unique benefits: our premium grade platinum silicone, which is the best silicone on the market and is completely hypoallergenic, nonporous, and body-safe — this silicone cock is firm and includes a three-speed powerful yet removable mega bullet that is waterproof and delivers intense vibrations throughout the cock. The other version is made of our fifth generation Realistic(R) which is the most lifelike material you can get, it truly captures every detail and feels truly like a real cock — this PVC material is also body-safe, as well as non-phthalate and features antibacterial Sil-A-Gel formula.
SFBG: What has been your most successful celebrity model to date? How many copies did that sell?
CB: This is hard to answer – we’ve had a beyond-successful partnership with Vivid for 25-plus years that basically created this market. No one was doing realistic casting before us. Jenna Jameson, Sasha Grey, and Belladonna have all been mind-blowing successes. It’s a great indicator of the success of these lines and the longevity of these stars that we still sell their products today — the demand is there and the products satisfy the customers. Exact numbers, I cannot say. However, we are very fortunate that we only want to work with the best, and it seems that the best only want to work with us.
At this point, I am not one for making babies. Perhaps this has to do with the unpleasantness of cervix dialation, or maybe it’s the salary of an alternative journalist. At any rate, this week I had an email correspondence with a Fremont man that is very much one for making babies. 15 of them, in fact. But he is not one for having sex. He’s a virgin, with a strong and understandably conflicted relationship with Jesus. He loves to help gay couples have kiddos (check out his website!) On Sun/5, this Trent Arsenault will be profiled on TLC’s new TV show look at unique sexualities, Strange Sex, along with a woman who is able to orgasm sans physical stimulation, which sounds amazing. Trent, what’s up with you?
San Francisco Bay Guardian:So why be a sperm donor?
Trent Arsenault: I’m donorsexual. I knew this was my identity as young as 10 years old. It’s kind of like asking someone why they were born straight or gay, I don’t really know why.
SFBG: How’d you get started? At what point did you decide that this is what you want to dedicate yourself to?
TA: Growing up in a religious family, it was instilled in me to be a servant to others. I started out doing the normal volunteer things (soup kitchens, missionary trips, building playgrounds). The church that I grew up in didn’t believe that infertile couples should have children (other than adoption). I thought it was wrong to discriminate. So as a teenager I parted with the church’s ideas and hung up the hat on religion, but held onto the basic teachings. I knew there was something about my sexuality that was different, and when I moved to the Bay Area I had been searching for a way to use it to help others when I found out there were childless couples searching for sperm donors. I vowed to begin helping the very group that my church descrimated against, which was gays and lesbians. So the first 10 babies that I was the donor for were lesbian couples in the Bay Area. After my family back in Missouri found out, they haven’t talked to me to this day because they say I am a servant to sinners. The Bay Area couples who I donate to have become my new family.
SFBG: What is involved in maintaining your top sperm donor conditioning?
TA: Above all, sticking to your beliefs and making sacrifices for others. For example, when Strange Sex was filming with me in Fremont, I received a call from Meg Whitman’s office. After almost 15 years working at Hewlett Packard’s HQ in Palo Alto, the corporate officers wanted to investigate my activity as a sperm donor, and asked me to out the families at HP who I had donated to as part of their investigation. Knowing that Ms. Whitman was against gay marriage and gays having children, I felt it was worth me to sacrifice my job versus letting the HP board bully the families who I donated to (some who had newborns at the time). So my response to Meg Whitman was, I didn’t cave to the US government (the FDA) when they demanded I stop donating, so I’m certainly not going to cave to a corrupt politician such as yourself. Needless to say, I was fired by HP for not cooperating in their investigation of my activity as a sperm donor. My first thought was to sue HP, but the biblical scripture from Jesus “if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well” changed my mind. I’m remaining a sperm donor without my six-digit salary from HP. But I’m committed to hanging in there. And HP’s stock is hitting a multi-year low, so I have the last laugh.
SFBG: Have you ever thought about having a kid through sex with a woman or having a kid of your own?
TA: I don’t see non-donor sex in my future. I’m probably the only virgin with over a dozen biological children, but this passage from Matthew 19:11-12 sums it up. Jesus said, “Some people were born differently to be celibate, so accept the fact and use it to further God’s kingdom.” I doubt anyone who ever read that scripture would have ever guessed how being a virgin can make you the person with the most biological children in California.
It is wonderful to hear the stories from parents I have helped telling me how the children have brought joy into their lives and make them laugh every day. I guess hearing this feedback from the parents makes up for whatever else might be lacking in my life by not having my own children.
SFBG:Have you met any of your children? What was that like?
TA: I just received a birthday invitation in the mail from the parents of a two-year old girl who lives in Sacramento. Never thought that day would happen! I think it’s going to be a little awkard for me to show up to the party, being the donor — meeting the grandparents, and sitting around having birthday cake, and chatting. I replied to the RSVP and said I would make it, so I’ll let you know how it goes!
Catch Arsenault on TLC’s Strange Sex on Sun/5 at 10pm
There is good and bad about the rise of the “mommy blog,” says mother and author Kate Hopper. Good: women should write! Writing spreads one’s voice, motherhood can be an intense time. Bad: why must we qualify them as something apart from any other blogger, memoirist, etc. Hopper promises to discuss these topics — and more saliently, how you can get started on a chapter of your own — at her upcoming appearance at Good Vibrations‘ mothers-specific hang-out, which also features Carol Queen speaking about post-natal nookie, on Wed/1. We caught up with her before she hit SF to get a sneak peek at her relationship with the written word.
SFBG: What’s with the current mommy blogger vogue? Haven’t women always been writing about parenthood? Why is it so popular right now, and why use that particular label?
KH: Women have been writing about parenthood for a long time, but not in [these] numbers and not so publicly. The Internet and blogging have given women a forum to write about their lives in a way that hasn’t happened before. Countless mother bloggers have really found a sense of community in the blogosphere. Motherhood can be so isolating, and blogging can help combat that isolation. And they can make money. I have never advertised on my blog, but I know it can be lucrative.
About the label: I really dislike the term “mommy blogger,” just as I dislike the term “momoir” to describe memoirs that have anything to do with motherhood. The names people use to describe literature or movies — or anything — have an impact on how those things are perceived. And when you categorize books as “chick lit,” “mommy lit,” “momoir,” and blogs as “mommy blogs” you make it easier for people to discard these books and blogs. They are viewed as less serious, less important. Once something is labeled “momoir” or a “mommy blog” people don’t take it seriously as literary venture. And there are some really amazing books and blogs being written by mothers right now.
The motherhood literature I read and review (and the motherhood blogs I read) deal with more than the minutiae of daily life with children. They are dealing with issues of identity, with loss and longing, neurosis and fear, ambivalence and joy. They are about transformation and how we see ourselves in relation to the world in which we live.
SFBG: At what point did you realize motherhood would become the primary thing you write about?
KH: I began writing about motherhood in 2004, a few months after my older daughter was born prematurely. Stella was born two months early and spent a month in the hospital, and the long winter months that followed home with me. At the time I was in the third year of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, and I had to withdraw from school in order to stay home and care for my fragile and extremely fussy daughter. Up until that point, writing had been the way I processed what was happening in my life. But I couldn’t think much less write in those early months.
It was only when Stella was five months old that I finally realized I needed to find my way back into words. So I went to the coffee shop near our house and pulled out paper and a pen. And the images of my daughter — a miniature thing on an open warming bed, her legs splayed like a frog’s, a white ventilator tube taped over her mouth, purple veins tracking across her skull like spider webs — came spilling out. After an hour, words covered the page. And for the first time since Stella was born, I felt grounded and the world felt a little bigger. I felt less alone. I’ve been writing about motherhood ever since, though in recent years, I’ve spent more time helping other women get their motherhood stories down on paper.
SFBG: You teach women how to write. Is there a particular challenge that you see as being particularly difficult for your students?
KH: One thing that always comes up when you’re teaching creative non-fiction is the ethics of writing about the people in your life. This ethical dilemma is heightened for women writing about their children, because it’s our job as parents to protect these small people. I always tell my students not to worry about this as they are beginning to write. If they do, they will self-censor and might not get to the heart of the stories they need to write. But before they decide to send a piece of writing about their children out into the world, it’s important to acknowledge how their children might react to reading it. It’s a very personal decision and there is no right or wrong way to it, but it’s important to know what you feel comfortable with — what’s the line you won’t cross? — and then trust your gut.
SFBG:Who, in your opinion, are the best mommy bloggers in the game today?
KH: I’m not sure I can say who the “best” motherhood bloggers are, but I know whose writing resonates with me. A few of my favorites are Rachel Turiel, Kristen Spina, Jenn Mattern, Heather King, and Elizabeth Aquino. They are all very talented writers, and their posts are reflective and well thought out. They also all write from the heart and aren’t afraid to be honest. I really respect that.
SEX“I was basically wearing a wet sock full of sweat,” porn crossover star of the year James Deen tells me. “There was hair everywhere, I was pulling hair out of the girl’s mouth.”
Perhaps another interviewer would not have led with questions about Deen’s recent involvement in an offbeat Kink.com panda gang bang production. Hey, this isn’t TMZ. And who doesn’t already know the standard gossip about the 26-year old, who has shot porn nearly every day of his life since turning 18?
(Just in case:) This year, Deen became the youngest performer ever to take home the industry’s vaunted AVN Award for Best Male Performer. He recently landed a starring role alongside Lindsay Lohan in a new, non-porn feature film penned by Brett Easton Ellis and directed by Paul Schrader, writer of Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, and Raging Bull.
Anyone remotely familiar with the Deen canon knows about the Deenagers, the actor’s legions of underage fans who fill Tumblr with odes to his dick and smile. These superfans were immortalized in epic fashion by an ABC Nightline segment which host Terry Moran introduced with this warning of corruption and apocalypse: “For any parent concerned about what their teen does online, the huge popularity of the young man you are about to meet may be deeply disturbing.”
But like I said, these facts have been written into public record, and dammit, I want to talk about panda porn. Because although Deen’s crossover from Simpsons porn parodies (he played Moe the Bartender, and fucked Cookie Kwan) to The Lohan and Perez Hilton coverage is certainly interesting, the fact that he has also been shooting brutal BDSM porn for years says something else entirely. And he doesn’t think anything of it! Perhaps this flip, blogging, boy-door-faced individual is the first real sign that BDSM porn is coming out of the closet (dungeon, steel-barred cage), and into mainstream consciousness.
BAMBOOZLED
In PANDAMONIUM!!! PANDA LULLABY!!! PANDA PORNO!!!!! adult star Ashli Orion is subjected to the penises of six, raping panda bears. One of these panda bears was Deen, in a furry suit with a custom-made dick hole.
“But I thought pandas were supposed to be nice!” Orion pants, surrounded by hazy pink lighting, artfully-placed bamboo shoots, and silent pandas who mostly remove their furry paws by the end of the scene because their fluffy baseball mitts turned out to be prohibitive to the nitty-gritty of sex acts.
The mini-movie could be considered the first Kink.com furry shoot — a wry twist on director Princess Donna’s usual product released through Kink subsite Bound Gang Bangs.
Not all of Kink’s regulars, and especially not the Bound Gang Bang enthusiasts found PANDAMONIUM!!! to their liking. User comments expressed their concern that Orion wasn’t even bound. Given the limited mobility of the men in the panda suits, she had to be mobile for copulation to even be possible. “I spent a lot of time holding fur out of the shot so we could see the penetration on camera,” said Princess Donna in an email interview.
“Some people think it’s the best thing that ever happened, some people think it’s the worst porn ever made,” she continued. “That’s what happens when you take risks.”
But Deen says he did the panda gang bang — just like every other project he takes — less because of the viewers, or for the chance to express himself creatively, as much as the kicks. “Princess Donna said she had this idea, I said that’s amazing. While it was going on, I just wanted it to end. There was hair everywhere. But the second it was done and we were all hanging out after I was like, I wanna do it again.”
Deen thinks nothing of a work schedule that takes him from vanilla scenes for Digital Playground to deliberately humiliating public sex in Spain for Kink to Dallas XXX parodies.
“It’s completely standard,” he says in our phone interview. “For pretty much every freelance talent, you go where the call takes you.” Sure, there are a few sex acts that Deen will not perform. These include sex with a person who is not into it, sex with clowns, and sex with men. He apologies to me for this last stipulation. “I’m a lame old straight boy.”
And the fact that Deenagers now refer to him affectionately as Baby Panda? (At ‘5″8, Deen made a shorter bear than his suited Kink peers on the shoot.) No dissonance there, says Deen, who hawked T-shirts emblazoned with the nickname on his website. There was no coordinated attempt to wind up alongside Justin Beiber and Robert Pattinson on dorm room walls, he says. “I’m not Joe Camel. I’m just going out and doing my job.”
Deen has minimal support staff besides his publicist. During our interview, I express my disbelief that a person that has sex for a living wouldn’t be worried about getting exploited without someone to review contracts, approve press requests. Deen shrugs it off. “There’s no reason to battle over everything, just be nice. You catch more bees with ants — honey, vinegar, whatever it is.”
Maybe everything really is just that simple. So seems the tale of Deen’s porn provenance. As a teenager, he heard Jenna Jameson tell a radio host that being in skin flicks simply took a complete lack of modesty, superhuman stamina, and an ability to ejaculate on command. He began proving he had those skills by having public sex at parties. Soon, he was on his way to 300 shoots a year, a figure that seems shocking to those unfamiliar with the standards of those unfamiliar with the grinding nature of the porn industry.
And now, Hollywood is knocking, seemingly uncourted by Deen himself. Ellis bagged him for The Canyons role by tweeting that he was interested in Deen for his low-budget, Kickstarter-funded film. (That momentous tweet mentioned the actor would have “to act and be full-frontal naked banging girls and guys realistically.” Will Deen’s comfort zones shift for fame?)
The two had dinner to talk about the writer’s vision for the tale of disaffected 20-somethings moping around drop-dead beautiful LA locations. Ellis, Deen relates to me, has a somewhat cynical view of modern-day celebrity. “People like Charlie Sheen, his acting didn’t make him famous,” Deen explains. “It was because he was Charlie Sheen.” As actor with next-to-no inhibitions and a famously goofy tell-all blog, Deen was perfect material for Ellis’ experiment in equating stardom with sheer exposure.
And sure enough, Deen is now getting a taste of what’s it’s like to live life à la Sheen — or put more aptly, à la Lohan. All it took was for the two to duck out of a restaurant for a smoke break and paparazzi blew up the Interwebs with rumors they were sleeping together.
This kind of thing seems besides the point for someone like Deen, who it would appear rarely sleeps with someone without posting a picture of their distended orifice on his blog. If the LiLo rumors had been true, he wrote on his site, “I think I would tell everybody.” And search engine optimize it with a shot of her boobs, one wants to add.
“I’m not surprised, because he’s that type of guy,” says a post-panda Orion when I contact her about Deen’s recent rise in profile. “He’s very charismatic and he has a look that’s definitely commercial, so I’m not surprised that he would get into Hollywood, you know what I’m saying.”
And for all of Nightline‘s tut-tutting, porn stars have been making waves in clothes-on culture for decades. Traci Lords appeared on Roseanne and Married With Children. Ron Jeremy, Nina Hartley, and Jenna Jameson have all made Hollywood features. And nowadays, even the hardcore stuff is surfacing more and more — like in Rihanna videos and 50 Shades of Grey, a 2011 novel that has become so ubiquitous that sex activists I’ve interviewed refuse to even say its name, so quick was it to sloppily spotlight their subculture for the viewing pleasure of soccer moms, et. al.
Switching between kink erotica and vanilla porn doesn’t seem to be that unusual anymore for adult talent. “When I first started there was a more clear delineation between ‘porn’ models and ‘BDSM’ models,” says Princess Donna. (“Donna is Kink.com. Without her, the company wouldn’t be as successful, and that’s a fact,” says Deen.) “Most BDSM porn didn’t have penis-in-vagina sex in it,” she continues. “Now that it does, you there is a huge crossover.”
Of course, there are other reasons why porn actors shift between kinds of erotica. It’s because they want to get paid.
“I’m a crazy nympho,” says Orion in a phone interview. “I’m down for everything and I always have been. But there’s a lot of girls who are like no, I would never have sex with [that] guy, or never in my ass, no kink. And now, that’s what they’re doing because they have no money!” In the era of low-budget gonzo porn and the consumer’s unwillingness to pay for any kind of media “You can’t rely on girl-girl scenes to pop up everyday if everyone is competing for that,” says Orion.
So maybe Deen is right, and he’s just a guy who is riding high on porn practicalities coupled with an increased tolerance of sluttiness and bondage in pop culture today.
Where will it all lead? I ask him about his career goals to round out our chat. “I want to keep myself in a constant state of smiles,” he says. “I like to smile. I am currently smiling.”
Doing what, pray tell? He has the day off from The Canyons‘ hectic shooting schedule that’s had him sleeping in odd, daytime spurts. What does James Deen do when he gets a moment to spare? Oh, you know. “I’m shooting some porno,” he says.
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WEDNESDAY 1
East Bay Science Cafe Cafe Valparaíso, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. www.lapena.org. 7-9pm, free. In an attempt to involve the community in the scientific issues of the day, the Berkeley Natural History Museums hold this discussion night in La Peña’s cafe space. Tonight, Gallant Laboratory researcher Mark Lescroart talks about how damage to the visual cortex affects our ability to understand what we see.
Mommy’s Playdate Good Vibrations, 1609 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com. 7-9pm, free. Kate Hooper wrote about the power of the mommy blogger in her new book Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers. At this Good Vibrations event, she’ll be sharing why it’s important for moms to speak their piece – if you attend, you’ll also get a chance to hear GV staff sexologist Carol Queen talk sex after childbirth, and meet other sex-positive moms. Drop into Dunya Mediterranean from 5-7pm across the street for a $10 glass of wine and appetizer special.
THURSDAY 2
Anna Joy Springer and Janice Lee Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St., SF. www.mtbs.com. 7pm, free. The two Jaded Ibis Press authors will cover the full gamut of queer and weird – semiotic cults, chewed glass, the Goddess, and cyborgs.
Spacecraft CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, SF. www.cellspace.org. 8pm-midnight, free. Local artists interpret what affect science and fiction play in our lives.
FRIDAY 3
Dancing with the Stars Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com. Every Friday through Aug. 31 8-10pm, free. Grab your rug-cutting loved one – no, not Kristie Alley or Joey Fatone – and head down to Oakland’s gorgeous waterfront to learn to dance under the night sky. You can learn a new way to boogie every Friday in August – today’s lesson is on the fox trot, but you’ll have the chance to cha cha, hustle, and do something called the “night club two step” on future dates.
SATURDAY 4
Bay Area Aloha Festival San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga, San Mateo. www.bayareaalohafestival.org. Also Sun/5. 10am-5pm, free. Spend your weekend immersed in Pacific Islander culture – snack on kalu, lomi, and malasadas when you’re exhausted from perusing the 100-plus Polynesian merchants, kid’s ohana corner, and two dozen musical and dance acts.
Nihonmachi Street Fair Japantown, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Celebrate Asian-Pacific culture (and the wonder that is an icy boba tea on a hot day) at the 39th year of this classic Japantown celebration.
Risk for Deep Love Temescal Art Center, 511 48th St., Oakl. (510) 526-7858, www.temescalartcenter.org. 8pm, free. Frank Moore brings you his altered sense of reality in his shamanistic performance art. You are encouraged to bring your own musical instrument to this sure-to-be-bizarre participatory show.
Meet the Animals Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF. (415) 554-9600, www.randallmuseum.org. Every Saturday in August. 11am, free. Did you know that over 100 animals who were injured and can’t live in the wild anymore. Instead, they’re hanging out providing educational opportunities for families who want to meet rodents, amphibians, and even a great horned owl.
Beer garden clothing swap Classic Cars West, 411 26th St., Oakl. www.classiccarswest.com. 2pm-dusk, free. We’re not sure what kind of styles you’ll find at this clothing swap hosted by a classic car shop – but after a couple rounds of microbrews and Rosamunde sausages, we’re not sure you’ll care. Bring a bag of tired ties, or had-it heels.
Summer Cinema on Center Street 2219 Center, Berk. (510) 642-0808, bampfa.berkeley.edu. 7:30pm, free. Before The Atomic Brain (the story of a mad scientist who implants a cat brain into an abducted au pair’s body), Smooth Toad Jug Band will fiddle away, an artist will showcase neuronic sound-emitting sculptures, and there will be a talk on the brain’s neural connections. Random, yes. Fun, probably!
K9 Playtime open house K9 Playtime, 590 Brannan, SF. (415) 796-2245, www.k9playtimesf.com. Also Sun/5. 10am-4pm, free. Bring your furry friend down to this doggie happy hour at this doggie daycare center. There will be a professional pet photog on hand to document your day, snacks for humans and pups alike, and the self-wash bathtub where you can suds up your best friend, gratis.
SUNDAY 5
Prepare for the Playa Cafe Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF. www.preparefortheplaya.com. Noon-7pm, free. Snag everything you need for your Burning Man adventure – over 50 vendors and designers amass at this event to provide you with hella fun fur (and other things, maybe.) Plus live performances by spinners, dancers, hoopers, and playa art installations.
Sunday Streets at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts 2868 Mission, SF. (415) 821-1155, www.missionculturalcenter.org. 11am-4pm, free. Celebrate the closed streets of the city’s play day at MCCLA, where there will be taiko, a zumba class, cumbia orchestra, and more.
Gay Men Drawing Vaginas Dolores Park Gay Beach (area near Church and 20th St.), SF. Facebook: Gay Men Drawing. 1-5pm, free. You have nothing to do with vaginas, you say? Tell that to your mom’s midwife. Today a bunch of dude-loving dudes are going to get together to draw lady parts. Editors Shannon O’Malley and Keith Wilson will be culling from the scribble-scratch for entries that will appear in their new book. Anatomical authenticity should not be a concern for you – the book’s called Gay Men Draw Vaginas.
Jerry Day Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, McLaren Park, SF. www.jerryday.org. 11:30am, donations suggested. When Jerry Garcia’s estate donated the money needed to renovate a rundown Excelsior playground, the neighborhood found a way to give back. It renamed an amphitheater after the Grateful Dead frontman who grew up in the neighborhood, and holds a yearly concert honoring his legacy.
The Blasphemists zine assembly party Cafe Royale, 800 Post, SF. www.theblasphemists.webs.com. 3-5pm, free. Gotta poem? Get published at this zine-making party. All it takes is 100 copies of your work on a 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper – the lot will be assembled and distributed as Blasphemy: Public Assembly Magazine.
MONDAY 6
Showga Starline Social Club, 2232 Martin Luther King Jr., Oakl. Facebook: Bay Area Showga. Every Monday 6:30-8pm, $5-$15 sliding scale. Katie Colver started this live music-yoga showcase for those of us turned off by staid studio-yoga culture. Come through to hear up-and-coming Bay bands while you walk your down dog.
HERBWISE The neatly-dressed line of donors waiting outside the Fox Theatre on July 21 gawked at the procession coming down Broadway Avenue. Was it the impassioned protesters in wheelchairs, the oversized fake joint, or the realization that stoners could be so… vehement that had them transfixed?
"Obama keep your promise!" On the occasion of the President’s fundraising trip to Oakland — his first to the Bay Area since medical cannabis cornerstone Harborside Health Center was ordered to close in a letter from US Attorney Melinda Haag — medical marijuana had turned out for an unwelcoming party. Obama’s administration has been messing with weed, and patients weren’t about to go quietly into the night. A crowd of hundreds took a lap around the theater, starting and ending at Frank Ogawa-Oscar Grant Plaza.
Of course, the President wasn’t there to see it. Obama was hours late for his announced appearance at the Fox at 3pm.
Pre-march, sharing space in an Oaksterdam University classroom with a bank of healthy marijuana plants, OU president Dale Sky Jones welcomed members of the media to a panoramic look at today’s cannabis advocates. Jim Gray, ex-assistant US Attorney and current Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate spoke, and Harborside’s Steve Deangelo asserted that "if the US Attorneys can come after a dispensary like Harborside, no dispensary in this country is safe." Patients finished out this chorus of voices. The father of a medical marijuana patient — his young boy has Dravet Syndrome, a type of infant epilepsy — despaired that, should Harborside go under, his offspring would never get the right kind of medicine.
"What am, going to ask a drug dealer ‘do you have CBD?’" he asked, hands and voice shaking. "You’re going after the wrong drug."
DABBING 101
Oddly enough, considering the drama surrounding its legality, cannabis culture continues to grow unabated. Consider this: there are forms of ingestion that even I, your somewhat-dedicated pot columnist, remain unacquainted with. This is annoying, so upon pot Internet celebrity Coral Reefer’s 1000th tweet regarding "dabbing," I called her out on it. Would she be willing to teach me the ways of this mysterious process?
She would! Dabbing means inhaling the vapor the results from melting butane, or even super-melt cold water-extracted hash. Intriguingly, it resembles nothing so much as smoking crack with a bong, but never you mind, vapor has a lower impact on your lungs and increased potency means its a quicker process than smoking "flower," or regular dried buds.
So: heat up your dabbing surface. Reefer had no less than four kinds of set-ups for dabbing in her apartment, including a "skillet," or flat disc that attaches to any glass-on-glass bong (most dabbing kits will work with your pre-existing water pipe) and various kinds of "nails," or round, rimmed surfaces specifically made for dabbing. Wait until it’s red hot. Take your specially-designed metal pick, or "dabber," and with it rub some concentrate, called "super-melt" or "wax" at most dispensary, onto your post-red-hot surface. Inhale. Clear. Inhale. Repeat process.
Last month, Kink.com director Princess Donna (perhaps you remember her Guardian advice column?) took a risk and made a gangbang movie featuring bad, bad pandas. Per usual, change was hard. Some members rebelled — “I haven’t even watched this because there is nothing about pandas fucking a girl that would make me get remotely aroused,” said one user in the video’s comments section.
“The reaction was exactly what I expected it to be,” Donna told us in a email interview. “Some people think it’s the best thing that ever happened, some people think it’s the worst porn ever made. That’s what happens when you take risks.” People, can’t a woman take risks every once in awhile? She didn’t get to be the director of three Kink.com subsites for nothing. “My ideas make money for the company, that is my role,” Donna said when we asked her about the part she plays at the Armory. “But my focus was never on what people would think, my focus was on feeling free to express myself creatively and allowing myself the freedom to create things regardless of what the response would be.”
The video is kind of gorgeous, especially (and perhaps this is our ignorance showing but) for a gang bang porn. You get a full storyline — panda hallucinations! Freakouts at the bank! — before porn starlet Ashli Orion is subjected to five panda penises. Well, human penises (including that of porn crossover star James Deen, whose participation is the subject of our cover story next week) sticking through custom-designed cock holes in panda suits, but you get the idea.
What would it be like to be in a Kink.com panda gang bang? To the best of Donna’s knowledge this was the first, so really only one woman knew the answer to our question: the baby-faced Ashli Orion, star of PANDAMONIUM!!! PANDA LULLABY!!! PANDA PORNO!!!!! So duh, we called her up.
SFBG:So tell me about how you found out about the panda porn.
AO: I didn’t find out I was doing the panda porn until I got to Kink that morning. I got off the plane and I saw Princess Donna and she was like “guess what, we’re going to do a panda porn!” and I was like are you serious? Oh my gosh. Because it was Gang Bang, so I was like pandas? This is gonna be great. I was so excited, I was so stoked.
SFBG: Have you shot for that site before?
AO: I have actually, I shot a scene with Lily Labeau – James was also in that one, we were actually just bound up. It was Bound Gang Bangs, there was no panda suits.
SFBG:Damn. What was it like shooting the panda porn?
AO: You know what, it was really fun. We got to do an intro, kind of like a movie monologue, like montage at the beginning. I saw the pandas, they’re so cute, and I totally forgot I was there for bondage, and then they start smacking me around. I was like oh fuck, I forgot I’m getting beat up now. I’m like, I thought pandas were nice!
SFBG: Right, I watched the movie and your lines in it were the best.
AO: I haven’t watched – only the trailers.
SFBG:You haven’t watched the thing?
AO: I watched the beginning, but I hate watching myself. You know, I don’t know I hate seeing myself naked.
SFBG: Yeah, I hear you. That’s unique, though.
AO: It was pretty cool and crazy because all the guys, they’re, you know, they’re all fit, but they have these big [panda] bellies so their cocks couldn’t come out all the way. And there was hair everywhere, in my mouth, on their cocks, in my pussy, in my ass. It was nuts, it was just like – I don’t even know how it turned out. It was like, whoa pandas!
SFBG:Pandas everywhere. Did Princess Donna tell you why she wanted to shoot with pandas?
AO: She just told me she wanted to do something crazy, like out of the box. Is there a real reason I don’t know?
SFBG: No no, I was just asking.
AO: Yeah, she just wanted to do something different because she was sick of doing the same old thing. She used me because I’m down for anything usually.
SFBG: Yeah totally. When you were shooting it did you think at all of what the audience reception was going to be like?
AO: I was actually really excited. I don’t know, I thought it was funny. I figured if I was younger and not in porn I would show it to my friends, like viral porno. Look at these pandas fucking this girl!
SFBG: Have you kept track of the member comments on the website?
AO: Yeah, I did actually. I saw how horrible they were because they were like “we want to see a Bound Gang Bang, not pandas. This is a different site, I’m canceling my membership, I’m not into furries.” And then other people were like “ooo I have a new fetish. I love furries.” Everyone has their opinions, mine is just like, we created something creative and cool and I was down for it.
SFBG:Are you open to these types of projects in the future?
AO: Oh, totally!
SFBG:Kitties!
AO: Oh my gosh, I would love kitties. I’m a crazy cat lady.
Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
WEDNESDAY 25
Grey Panther picnic Live Oak Park, 1301 Walnut, Berk. (510) 548-9696. 1:30-3pm, free. Come hang with the older radical set at this summer fun time – music, poetry, politics welcome.
Bollywood Nights after-hours at the Conservatory of Flowers Golden Gate Park, 100 JFK Drive, SF. www.conservatoryofflowers.org. 6-10pm, $5. Non Stop Bhangra fills the humid air with Punjabi folk notes at this gorgeous greenhouse – learn how to dance bhangra with the group and grab a free cup from the Chai Cart afterwards, with a snack from the Curry Up Now food cart to boot.
KQED free film screening Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., SF. www.kqed.org. 8pm, free. Two stories of San Francisco take the stage in this free double feature: A Brush With the Tenderloin, the story of muralist Mona Caron’s ode to the neighborhood, and Stage Left, which looks at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop and its effect on the city’s theater community, starting in 1952.
THURSDAY 26
SF International Poetry Festival Various SF locations and times. www.sfipf.org. Through Sun/29. Readings with bards from around the world take place across SF this weekend – from North Beach to Civic Center Plaza, Amiri Baraka to poets from Sweden and the Phillipines. Check out a stanza or stay for a neighborhood-wide poetry crawl.
“The Berkeley You Didn’t Know” Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar, Berk. www.bfuu.org. 7pm, donations suggested. Three Berkeley historians – including the first black woman to serve on the town’s city council – talk about radical traditions in their city. The event is part of this year’s LaborFest (www.laborfest.net), and was organized to provide food for thought for this era’s activists.
FRIDAY 27
Gilroy Garlic Festival Christmas Hill Park, Gilroy. www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. Also Sat/28 and Sun/29. 10am-7pm, $17 one-day admission. Whoever the genius was that snagged the breath mint sponsor of this year’s garlic cook-off: clap, clap. Come for the entertainment (rockabilly to mandolin), stay for the pageant (Miss Gilroy Garlic!), eat garlic-graced snacks from icecream to salmon throughout the day.
“The Culture of Beer” San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. (415) 437-1357, www.sfai.edu. 3-9pm, free with pre-registration. Hans Winkler turns the SFAI campus into a beer garden, complete with suds-themed readings, hard-to-find German pints, and originally-designed coasters.
SATURDAY 28
Ohlone basket ceremony Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, SF. www.museumca.org. 1-3pm, free museum admission. Myriad are the issues involved in exhibiting Native Peoples’ crafts, which oftentimes were never meant to live in a sterile museum environment. That’s what makes this ceremony welcoming Ohlone scholar Linda Yamane’s specially-commissioned basket to the museum – it was made to be here. In honor of the 20,000-stitch, 1,200-bead work, the whole family’s invited for storytelling circles, and performances.
Graffiti panel discussion and BBQ 941 Geary, SF. www.941geary.com 2-5pm, free. Local graf artist Apex and the president of aerosol spray can company Montana Colors are among those on this panel looking at graffiti and the environment. Before the chat, get loose with BBQ and beer sponsor Trumer Pils.
Beer Olympics Impala, 501 Broadway, SF. Celebrate the opening of the London 2012 Olympics at Impala’s Beer Olympics. Come wearing a unitard of your choosing – triple “country shots” will be available for the flag of your elected homeland, a perfect warmup for the beer pong, flip cup, and relays that will take place throughout the evening.
“Hotter Than July” bellydance extravaganza La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. www.lapena.org. 1pm, $10-$25 suggested donation. Undulate your way through Saturday at this showcase of Bay belly beauties. The cost of your admission goes to supporting Girls Raks Bellydance, a program that improves young girls’ body image through lessons in a judgement-free dance form.
World Naked Bike Ride Justin Herman Plaza, SF. www.worldnakedbikeride.org. 11am, free. Protest global oil dependency by cycling in the buff through town – you’ll be joined by eco-nudes all over the world at the concurrent events in other cities.
Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar E. Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker Way, Berk. (510) 235-5483, www.berkeleykitefestival.com. Also Sun/29. 10am-6pm, free. A Japanese kite team, ginormous animal flyers, and ample opportunities to make your own creation take center stage at the 27th year of this festival. Soar in for kites, snacks, and a bouncy house for the kiddos.
“No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics” Pegasus Book, 2349 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 649-1320, www.pegasusbookstore.com. 7:30pm, free. Justin Hall visually presents the new compilation he edited of LGBT cartoons going back four decades. The book includes Dan Savage’s early work, not to mention Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Ralf Konig.
SUNDAY 29
Up Your Alley Dore Alley between Howard and Folsom, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com/alley. 11am-6pm, $7 suggested donation. Each year before the world descends on San Francisco for the leather mania of Folsom Street Fair, Up Your Alley takes place for a slightly more local, intimate, kink street fair. The Folsom-Dore production company donates thousands of dollars each year to small nonprofits, so feel real good about being real bad here.
MONDAY 30
A Million Heavens McSweeney’s book launch party Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. www.amnesiathebar.net. 6:30-8:30pm, free. A piano savant in a coma, a wolf on the porowl, a motley vigil in the New Mexico winter. Learn more about the plot of – and raise a glass in this tiny, soju cocktail-endowed Mission venue — John Brandon’s latest novel at this release party.
TUESDAY 31
Stories in the Sand: Sunset District 1847-1964 reading St. Philip’s Catholic Church, 725 Diamond, SF. 7pm, $5. Author Lorri Ungaretti reads from her new book on the early to mid-20th century pioneers who settled the sand dunes of the Sunset. The event is free for members of the SF History Association, which is hosting the event.
So the President was late. Around the time the “Fire Melinda Haag” press conference (as it had been called in emails I’d received from the various cannabis advocacy groups) at downtown Oakland’s federally-threatened Oaksterdam University was starting, one attendee drily mentioned that Obama was reported to still be in Las Vegas.
“I mean, I know the private jets can get you places really quickly and all, but still.”
It didn’t matter — medical marijuana had assembled in Oakland, the world cannabis community was watching, and there was going to be a show of numbers, regardless of what Air Force One was doing or when the President’s scheduled appearance at the Fox Theater a block away would actually get going.
But first, the formal press conference at Oaksterdam. Grow lights warmed the pot plants on one side of the room as dispensary founders, politicians, and patients said their piece on stage.
“Name the advantages of continuing the drug war,” said Oaksterdam University president Dale Sky Jones (OU founder Richard Lee on stage a few feet to her right.) “We continue the failed drug policy that targets young people of color.”
“This is simply not the right thing to do,” said Jim Gray, a retired Orange County superior court judge and former assistant US Attorney. “It will not result in less marijuana being sold or consumed in Oakland or anywhere else.” Later on, during the march that would take medical marijuana users on a lap around the Fox, some protesters were seen lofting signs with the ex-official’s name on it — he’s the Libertarian Party’s nomination for vice president. His crowd-pleasing efforts struck gold at Oaksterdam in the form of a quip. “I think going forward, the slogan should be ‘the hempire strikes back.”
Steve Deangelo, founder of Harborside Health Center, was adamant in his call for an immediate freeze on all enforcement actions until courts deemed them consistent with the Obama administration’s policy. Deangelo and the patients that depend on his dispensary have a lot to lose should their call go unheard: a recent letter sent to Harborside by US Attorney Melinda Haag ordered the collective’s closure based on the rationale that it is a “marijuana superstore.”
“If the US Attorneys can come after a dispensary like Harborside,” Deangelo told the assembled crowd, “No dispensary in this country is safe.” Commonly referred to as the best-known dispensary in the country, Deangelo’s dispensary and its staff were the subject of last year’s Discovery Channel reality series Weed Wars.
Perhaps the most poignant voices from the day were those of the consumers who will be most affected by the loss of safe and accessible medical-grade marijuana. Yvonne Westbrook-White, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, credited cannabis with getting her out of the house that day and appealed to the President to keep his promise to leave state-legal dispensaries alone.
Jason David’s baby son has Dravet Syndrome, a rare disease with epilepsy-like symptoms. He told the crowd at Oaksterdam that a non-psychoactive cannabinoid tincture had made his boy go from acting like a zombie to being a bubbly kid that greets people at church and at home alike. His voice and hands trembled as he thought out loud about what he would do if Harborside went the way of so many other cannabis businesses in the Bay Area.
“What am, going to ask a drug dealer ‘do you have CBD?’ You’re going after the wrong drug.”
An hour later, feet from the massive Obama-as-cop “Dear Leader” design that members of Chalkupy had painstaking sketched out the same day, a crowd that police later estimated at 800 to 1000 people were ready to march for their cannabis rights. The route took us up Broadway, past the lines of Obama fans patiently waiting for their president to show, down 20th Avenue to San Pablo Avenue, and right back to Oakland’s City Hall.
Would things continue to go as peacefully through the President’s eventual visit? All signs pointed to yes when your Guardian journalist left around 4:30pm, but one protester put it rather succinctly. “Today’s not over yet,” he said.
A rather strange-looking book alit upon my desk the other day. It told me it would teach me how to fold underwear. It lied. Luckily, the book did contain a rather amusing little cat-and-mouse story about a cute SF DJ traversing Hong Kong and surrounds in the exuberant days of the late 1990s. This is local author Steven Fruhmoto’s Underwear Origami — a misleading title if ere I’ve heard one. Nonetheless, Mr. Fruhmoto invites you to swallow your dismay at not being able to learn how to fold underwear (it’s a metaphor), and accompany him to the location of the book’s first scene for some beveraging, reading, and book signing on Sat/28.
I read the book, and recommend for anyone who is into tales that revolve around international party scenes, casual drug use, and Norweigan pop stars emerging from dancing mushrooms. Fruhmoto is a product of Dartmouth College’s masters program in electro-acoustic music — founded in 1989, do you believe? — and Underwear Origami‘s tone is educated in the bpm of the music that fuels its characters, but also literate enough that the whole thing doesn’t come off as a product of someone’s bed-bound Burning Man comedown.
Why the 1990s, though? Don’t we have enough DJs around these days. Says Fruhmoto, via an email sent to the Guardian in response to that question:
I lived in San Francisco from 1994 to 2002. The period of the mid- to late ’90s was a uniquely optimistic time in the city, and I wanted to capture the exuberance and innocence of that time. It was pre-9/11, with no Osama Bin Laden, no Iraq, no Guantanamo, no Great Recession, etc. It was also the early days of the Internet, with the excitement of the dot-com phenomenon, and the US economy was booming overall.
I suppose if I were to have set the book in current times, the feel might be a lot more edgy, because the 1990s were a very different time. Also, the advancement of music composition and performance technology, and the advent of the social media connectedness of people would be important themes. In terms of music, I’d probably be talking about the phenomenon of the mainstreaming of electronic musicians, and new genres like dub-step, glitchhop, etc.
Anyways, I suppose we’re all in for some unique optimism. Drop by the Noc Noc for a free beer when you buy a paperback copy of the book.
In the interest of behaving badly, let us first say that we won’t apologize for the “roving feminist gangs” comment, nor the laughter that ensued at our July 11 “Bay Area Feminism Today” panel. In the light of the sexual attacks that have terrorized Mission District residents this year, Celeste Chan’s joke (actually a reference to comments made by Fox News in reference to the New Jersey Seven) has to be read as a self defense tactic — and source of comfort and strength to the women living in the neighborhood. Not a threat to men. Unless they’re commiting sexual assault, of course — but then, women commiting sexual assault will probably have the gang’s wrath to face as well.
Seven women from all walks of Bay Area activism — arts, nightlife, immigrant advocacy, domestic violence organizations, and more — came together at City College’s Mission branch to discuss what our SF progressive community needs to work on, recent feminist victories, whether they even believe in the term “feminism,” and everything in between. Our “Faces of feminism” cover story announcing the event attracted a decent-sized crowd of around 120 (mainly young women, with zero male elected officials in attendance.) We laughed, we nearly cried, we came away with a lot to think about. Here’s some of the general topics that were discussed. And here’s to this being a spark for continued talks, however a Fourth Wave Bay feminism may take shape.
Reproductive justice has long been a feminist goal, but with the recent spate of attacks on birth control and abortion access it’s come up again. Are we here in the Bay Area isolated from the War On Women?Some panelists thought we can affect the country’s situation positively.
“Part of what we do here in the Bay Area is we send strong women to Washington,” the Drug Policy Alliance‘s Laura Thomas said. “We are responsible for a significant amount of women in Congress.” But California’s reproductive justice situation is more complicated than it may seem. St. James Infirmary‘s Stephany Ashley noted that reproductive health here is under attack with “criminalization of HIV-positive people,” and that California “just cut all funding for HIV prevention for women.”
Chan, founder of Queer Rebels Productions, added that California is cutting domestic violence services through slashing CalWORKS funding. Mujeres Unidas‘ Juana Flores noted that the Bay’s Latino communities can find it difficult to support aspects of reproductive health because of religion and tradition. But she said that people need to work together and realize that “it’s a real war. It’s a real war on us.” She warned that “politicians are not going to fix things just because they want to improve our lives. We need to fight back.”
Transgender activist and member of SF’s Youth Commission Mia Tu Mutch said that part of the war on women has been a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, as well as a wave of hate crimes, especially against trans women of color. Some legislation in Tennessee is making it more difficult for trans people to go the bathroom, she said. “Reproductive justice is important, but we also need just the simple right to pee.”
But what about the word itself?
Does feminism have power as its own concept now, or has its work been rightly subsumed into the queer movement, the civil rights movement, and other forms of activism? “A lot of us can agree that there isn’t something you can point to and say, this is the feminist movement in San Francisco,” Ashley said. “But there are many important feminist projects happening.” Alix Rosenthal, who created a controversial women’s slate in her bid for re-election on the SF Democratic County Central Committee recalled how “30 to 40 years ago, we all had to join together because there weren’t enough of us. Now people have splintered off.” Chan brought up the bicycle scene in 1983’s feminist sci-fi film Born in Flames, and quoted Audre Lourde: “for so long, we’ve been on the edge of each other’s battles.”
Tu Mutch said that she “would rather identify as fighting for LGBT rights, progressive rights” than as feminist. But, she continued that it is “under the system of patriarchy that we’re all getting screwed over.” She said that women are treated as second-class citizens, and trans and gender non-conforming people are treated as third class citizens in our society. Edaj, longtime Bay Area DJ and director of the Women’s Stage at Pride for a decade, agreed that the word feminism “sparks a lot of emotion in people” and can create obstacles in growing support. Said Flores: “it’s a big word. People call me a feminist when I claim my rights. When I see another women who is suffering or being abused it’s unbearable to me,” Flores said. “When someone calls me a feminist, I feel proud.”
The inward gaze: how does the San Francisco progressive community do on feminist issues?
In a word: okay. But there’s work to be done even here, in “progressive” San Francisco. Thomas led the charge, talking about the state’s current legal ability to shackle women prisoners during childbirth. Tu Mutch expressed a need to stop “pitting groups against each other,” and to get rid of a City Hall attitude that says “my budget is more important than yours.” Tu Mutch said “there’s still rampant transphobia and gender essentialism,” that affects not just women, but the “countless people born with intersex conditions and who identify outside the binary.”
Ashley pointed out that “even some of our favorite male progressive politicians, you don’t see them cultivating leadership among women, queer people, trans people.” She talked about how that’s a traditional feminist organizing principle, “mentorship and meaningful participation, not just tokenizing participation.”
As a (not) side note, there wasn’t a single male politician in the audience that day. As Ashley put it, “patriarchy is really the problem.” Ashley and panel moderator, SFBG culture editor Caitlin Donohue shared the fact that they’ve felt diminished by remarks made by and in the company of the city’s so-called “progressive politicians.”
Recent feminist victories
But enough depressing stuff. How about recent feminist victories, asked an audience member.
This question was met with a disconcerting silence. Until Chan jumped in: “I’m really inspired by the place queer arts are at right now.” She told of the “lineage of resistance” of art that deals with questions like “how do people survive the unimaginable? How do people survive the truly horrific?” Disturbing incidents like that of transgender prisoner Cece McDonald beg the question, “is the perfect victim a dead victim? If you fight back, you’ll be criminalized? Now more than ever we need a movement. We really need to come together,” concluded Chan.
Rosenthal saw hope in surprising places. “Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman,” she said. “These women are so incompetent. But they made it. They really made it.” She talked about how usually women have had to be five times better than the men they competed with, but “Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman are not five times better than anyone. But they made it.” Laura Thomas was inspired by Julia Bluhm, the 14-year old ballet dancer from Maine whose online petition led Seventeen to promise to stop using Photoshop to alter women’s body types. Ashley acknowledged Tu Mutch’s advocacy work, and said she was recently inspired by a “take back the plaza” event Tu Mutch had organized. Edaj was inspired by being named a Pride Grand Marshall, and the feeling that the Pride organization was acknowledging the importance of the space created at the Women’s Stage. She was also inspired by Morningstar Vancil, a Filipino vet who is a two-spirit drag king, and Vancil’s commitment to disabled veterans issues.
Action items
In response to a question that asked what the 2012 action plan for Bay Area feminists should involve, Ashley said “principles of intersectionality, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism” had to be valued more than they have been in past feminist movements. They’re there in Third Wave feminism, Ashely said, only they are “wrapped up in theory and academia.” Those guiding principles should have “more on the ground” applicability. What needs to happen right now, speaking of on the ground? Back to 2012’s spate of sexual violence in the Mission, there’s a distinct necessity for “a perfect community response that doesn’t involve the police, so that we all of a sudden feel really comfortable taking a walk at 3 in the morning through our favorite neighborhood.”
Flores said that any new form of feminism would need to be about “mutual respect” and “against any form of injustice,” to which Thomas agreed, saying it needs to be “less theory, more practice.” It also, Thomas said “has to deal with gender in a different way. A new feminism needs to go beyond gender, or deal with gender differently” in the sense of respecting gender non-conforming identities. A tricky prospect, she admitted. “How you develop a gendered movement that doesn’t use gender as a defining construct, I don’t know.” More specifically, she underlined the importance of “progressive revenue measures,” and “an end to cuts to childcare and domestic violence programs.” “Our economy’s not coming back through more cuts. We need revenue, more taxes,” she said, to cheers from the crowd. Well this was a Guardian forum, after all.
Edaj reiterated that “that word scares off a lot of people who might otherwise want to join.” Tu Mutch underlined that it would need to “take up the idea that men and women are opposites. That only serves to degrade women.” A new feminism, she said, would be about “turning away from that and realizing there’s lots of different genders.”
Tu Mutch said she would like to see success for her organization to fight for trans healthcare rights, FEATHER. “People have to spend ridiculous amounts of money to transition,” she said. “We need universal healthcare for all, including trans people.”
Chan pondered the question. In the end, she concluded, “roving feminist gangs,” inspiring at least one angry letter from a slighted middleaged white man in the crowd. Which wasn’t the only reason why we deemed the panel a success, but an important one.
With Occupy’s first anniversary sneaking up on us, has enough time past since its inception to reflect on its urban encampments and frightening conflicts with law enforcement in a rational, reasonable manner? Maybe rational is the wrong word — I’m sure many would agree that the movement’s major contributiont to date was a general firing up of the 99 percent, even of those 99 percenters who would sooner have ridden a bike to work than sit in on GA meeting in Oscar Grant Plaza. Through leaving its agenda undefined, Occupy allowed us all to paint our own hopes and dreams for the world onto it like a piece of drawing paper.
For some more literally than others. This month, an exhibit opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that accumulates the work of 25 Bay Area artists who spun their Occupy dreams into poster form. Chuck Sperry is perhaps one of the most well-known name of the bunch. Sperry’s lived in the Bay since 1989, and recently came home early from a camping trip to answer our questions about his relationship with Occupy, the way he distributed his “This Is Our City And We Can Shut It Down” prints on the day of the Oakland port shutdown, and general “what does art mean” token asks.
SFBG:At what moment did you realize that Occupy was an important event? How did you first hear about it?
CS: Through the beginning of 2011, I was creating an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curated by Renee de Cossio, with artists Chris Shaw and Ron Donovan. Each artist would install work in one of three artists’ gallery windows on the side of the SFMOMA on Minna Street. The proposal for the installation was to bring the aesthetic of San Francisco’s poster traditions to painting, and to realize these in monumental form. I wanted this piece to reflect San Francisco’s poster history beginning in the freedom of speech movement through the 1960’s, and to also reflect the psychedelic tradition that gave birth to the rock poster.
While I was working on an 11-foot by nine-foot acrylic painting, I was following the progress of the Arab Spring movements, Tahrir Square, and the gathering Occupy Wall Street movement that was spreading across America. I decided to use my reaction to these events as inspiration for an iconographic painting titled, “Saint Everyone.” I wanted to express the opening mind, and spreading enlightened humanism, the decentralization of power — or awakening sense of people power — to the piece. I used vibrating, reactive colors to paint a figure holding an opening lotus (symbol of enlightenment), against a background of op-art circles, which communicate decentralization — that the background has many centers — like the movement which has no leaders.
“Saint Everyone” was installed at the SFMOMA in June 2011. So I was getting with it by then.
As Occupy Oakland was forming by the fall of 2011, my artist friend Jon-Paul Bail of Political Gridlock was printing his iconographic “Hella Occupy Oakland” posters on Frank Ogawa Plaza (re-named Oscar Grant Plaza) from the point when people were first gathering there. When I say printing, Jon-Paul Bail was printing live, right there, with a table set up in the open, printing and handing people freshly-made posters. In a few short weeks he had printed hundreds, if not, thousands of posters which were being handed out to people there. He was joined there on Oscar Grant Plaza by Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza of Dignidad Rebelde, who created more iconographic posters for the Occupy movement.
SFBG:What led to your decision to make art inspired by Occupy? Was it a different process than your other creative projects?
CS: In September I was in an art show, LA VS. WAR, with Bail, Barraza, and Cervantes, (among others) and we discussed making posters for the November 2 Occupy action to close the Port of Oakland. Fellow artist Chris Shaw — who was involved in the SFMOMA Window Gallery Installation — offered to pay for the production of any Occupy posters through the printing account of rock band Moonalice who was in solidarity with Occupy.
I created “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” I usually work with images and take a lot of time to work my art into a design. In this case, the message was so overriding and important that I felt it was my job as an artist to stay out of the way, and let the words and message do their job. So in this way it was different. I used color theories learned in studying the long San Francisco tradition of psychedelic poster art, the use of hot colors against cold colors to make the words read from a half mile away — haha! I wanted a strong, radical message, used with bold nurturing colors that convey a positive emotion. It would not be a typical political poster.
SFBG:How do you want your Occupy poster to be used?
CS: Chris Shaw and I discussed printing our posters on heavy paper stock, and printing on both sides to double the exposure we could give people to our message. You could use this poster as a placard, hold it up over your head. It would make quite an impression and be useful to the action. I stood at Oscar Grant Plaza next to the street and passed out nearly 1000 posters in 45 minutes to the front of the march, so when television camares picked up the action at the Port of Oakland, the front of the march was a sea of my poster with the message, “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out.
SFBG:What’s been some of your favorite protest art throughout history?
CS: I am very inspired by Emory Douglas‘ art in the Black Panther Party newspaper. I’ve had the honor to work with Mr. Douglas to reprint some of his iconic images. I also am very fond of the French Situationist posters of May 1968, and had the good fortune to print a poster, while I was visiting Paris to make a poster show about five years ago, on the very same press that produced these memorable images. When my artist friend told me that Guy Debord had worked with artists on this very same press, I laughed and dropped to my knees and just could not believe it.
Sperry at Occupy
I invited Jon-Paul Bail to collaborate in teaching a class at the Free University of San Francisco, as I’m organizing the art department of that cooperatively-organized free school. We told the story of making posters for the Occupy movement and created a poster for the Occupy Education action last spring. I think the ideas coming together from the Occupy protests will move through society in a very healthy and transformative way. There’s no way to stop people once they have been awakened to their potential.
SFBG: What is the role of art in social protest?
CS: Art can reach many people in many walks of life. I was invited by San Francisco’s Varnish fine art gallery to exhibit at SCOPE / Miami in conjunction with Art Basel Miami art fair. Even in the context of the fine art world I felt it was important to express the social revolution that was taking place through the Occupy movement, and created a piece titled, “Mind Spring,” which expressed some of the same ideas I put in my SFMOMA painting and my Occupy poster. In “Mind Spring”, I created an icon of the worldwide Occupy movement and it’s antecedent in the Arab Spring. The figure wreathed in blooming spring flowers is a representation of the surprising enlightened humanism, the opening mind, the broadened socio-political possibilities which has swept the world in 2011.
I’ve had many discussions about the role of political art over the years. Two solutions to this problem constantly come to mind, first, “content over style” — that content is more important than style. Your message is the most important element in creating art of social protest. Second, that “the personal is political”, your own experience is so very often shared by others all over the world. When you make a piece of art in social protest, and just tell your story from your own perspective, and you do not hold back, you will be describing a situation that is shared by others half a world away. It’s uncanny, but our local problems are very similar to everyone else’s globally. So get in there and try to change what you can from where you are. Many hands make light work.
HERBWISE First things first, because I just saw the new Oliver Stone weed movie and I’m dying to tell you which of the grisly marijuana murders was my favorite. But there are bigger things afoot, namely the President’s journey to the East Bay on Mon/23.
PROTEST
Is there anyone in the Bay who has more to protest, in regards to medical marijuana, than the staff and students — not to mention the patients who depend on their harvest — of Oaksterdam University? Earlier this year the place was ransacked by the feds, who left nothing “short of the tables and chairs and teachers,” new school president Dale Sky Jones told me in an interview in June (Herbwise “After the raid” 6/20/12).
And so, the school may be hosting a welcome wagon for the President’s fundraising foray to Oakland on Monday. Details weren’t quite hammered out by the time we went to press, so stay on top of developments if you’d like to add your voice to those that are calling for President Obama to reign in/call off/fire the overzealous lawmakers who are trampling state law by persecuting our cannabis businesses.
Oaksterdam Obama protest Tentative meet-up: Oaksterdam University student union, 1915 Broadway, SF. 3:30pm, free. For definitive information and last-minute logistic changes, see facebook.com/safeaccessnow
KUDOS
… to the city of San Francisco for doing what it can to support cannabis, says David Goldman of Americans for Safe Access. Goldman got me on the horn last week to talk about ways you can support the dispensaries that are still with us — not to mention the new ones that have recently opened their doors. Here’s a few ways to engage in cannabis culture in the city.
Home Grown Author Night Oaksterdam University, 1600 Broadway, Oakl. 6-8pm, free. www.oaksterdamuniversity.com. Journalist David Downs of the East Bay Express hosts this panel of weed intellectuals — Ed Rosenthal, author of The Marijuana Grower’s Handbook and OU professor; a senior researcher from the Drug Policy Center; and the author of a book on Mexican marijuana cartels will speak.
Americans for Safe Access San Francisco chapter meeting 847 Howard, SF. First and third Tuesdays, 7:30pm, free. www.safeaccessnow.org. Past chapter meetings have included trainings on what to do if you get caught in a dispensary raid as a patient — but ASA meetings are also a good chance to meet other cannabis activists, find out about upcoming events, and drink free coffee.
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DANK
HopeNet (223 Ninth, SF. (415) 863-4399, www.hopenetcompassion.org) joins Vapor Room in closing after a final day of operation on July 31. Another threatening letter from US Attorney Melinda Haag was the culprit, leaving us with one less way to fill cannabis physician’s recommendations.
HOLLYWOOD CHIMES IN
How apt a description of the marijuana industry is Oliver Stone’s new movie Savages? For all the buzz surrounding the release — and Stone’s corresponding mugshot, interview, and incendiary jabs at the prison-industrial complex featured on the cover of High Times — the frenetic, hyper-violent film still seemed to me as though someone took a cocaine movie and slapped a bunch of glamour shots of nug jars on top of it. Perhaps Stone learned from the lackluster numbers of his recent releases that explored Wall Street, South American democracy, and George W. Bush, that you need a few good head explosions and cannabis-fueled three-way to ring up Hollywood-level revenue.
There is some subtle cannabis messaging buried in there, like joint-smoking shots that cut to John Travolta’s federal agent dragging on his cigarette. And yes, the futility of the War on Drugs is a theme, again subtly. But the way in which the economics of the drug trade is dealt with is pretty standard, as are the way faceless drug peons are shot down in the name of saving Blake Lively’s kidnapped hippie goddess. (Who is addicted to marijuana!)
Ah yes, the hippie goddess. Since I’ve been on somewhat of a feminist tear recently, I’ll close with a word on the female characters in Savages. There are three, maybe three and a half, all plucked straight from the Hollywood firmament. Two (Lively and Sandra Echeverría as a Mexican cartel princess) are young, impossibly lovely women who are kidnapped and forced into bondage for most of their screen time. Another is an impossibly lovely Latina cartel matriarch (Salma Hayek), who rips off her wig when said daughter is taken and wears lace-and-spandex numbers while conducting business in her home office. The last female character, who barely counts as such, is a sultry, mysterious drug peon whose most momentous role is helping Benicio Del Toro rape Lively.
Shout-out to all the women who can make the protest on Monday!
Blatant disregard for traffic safety be damned (really, the bike-riding sparklers past the Castro Theatre shot is magick), the new Double Duchess video for “Bucket Betch” looks like something I’d show to my friends who don’t live in San Francisco to make them jealous. See, New Orleans and Brooklyn aren’t the only place with queer hip-hop anthems right now. See, it is possible to dance in those shoes. See 2:55 for an expert glitter vogue move. Try to count how many flagging club kids you can spot in this tour of ass-cheek-exposed SF summer. You can catch the duo performing with drag-wreck Christeene at Peaches Christ‘s new quarterly party Church on Aug. 10 at Public Works.
Have you heard the news about our most Hollywood dispensary getting put on notice by the feds? Harborside Health Center staff, stars of everyone’s favorite marijuana reality show Weed Wars, arrived to work July 9 to a letter from US Attorney Melinda Haag.
She’s no one’s favorite pen pal in the medical cannabis industry these days. (xoxo) In the letter, she filed civil forfeiture actions against Harborside, despite the fact that unlike most of her office’s previous targets, the two Harborside dispensaries are not within 1,000 feet of a school or park. After the federal raid of educational institution Oaksterdam University in April it seems that now, all dispensaries are fair game for federal targeting. This could be curtains for patients’ safe and easy access to cannabis.
Haag explained her office’s reasoning in a statement released yesterday.
This office has used its limited resources to address those marijuana dispensaries that operate close to schools, parks and playgrounds. As I have said in the past, this is a non-exclusive list of factors relevant to whether we should commence civil forfeiture actions against marijuana properties, and circumstances may require us to address other situations.
I now find the need to consider actions regarding marijuana superstores such as Harborside. The larger the operation, the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state’s medical marijuana laws, and marijuana in the hands of individuals who do not have a demonstrated medical need.
The filing of the civil forfeiture complaints against the two Harborside properties is part of our measured effort to address the proliferation of illegal marijuana businesses in the Northern District of California.
Basically, no rationale for targeting Harborside besides the fact that it’s a big operation (probably the largest in California.) The situation echoes the recent federal raid of cannabis educational institution Oaksterdam University. Harborside has struggled in the past with castigating audits by the IRS, which declared that the collective was unable to claim simple business expenses on its taxes.
Oakland city councilperson Rebecca Kaplan recently released a statement in response. Here is the full text:
We are disappointed to learn that yet another licensed, legal and locally regulated medical cannabis facility has come under federal attack.
The last time that the federal government used its resources to go after a permitted facility with no history of crime or violence, there was a school shooting taking place across town while federal agents tagged and bagged medical marijuana plants.
We can’t let this happen again.
The Justice Department has said in the past that it wouldn’t target medical marijuana.
They went back on their word – starting to target medical cannabis facilities allowed under California law. Then, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said they are specifically targeting cannabis facilities located within 1,000 feet of parks and schools.
Let’s be clear: Harborside Health Center is in compliance with our democratically-enacted laws – and is not near either a park or a school.
During the raid on Oaksterdam University, the federal government used cops – this time they’re using lawyers.
If federal prosecutors have extra time available, I ask – on behalf of my constituents all across the city – that they instead prosecute the illegal gun dealers who are the source of death and violence in Oakland.
Federal agents have worked successfully with local law enforcement this year to go after guns and violence – and we are deeply thankful and appreciative of that help.
That’s what we need more of.
If there are federal resources available, we need them directed against the violent perpetrators and co-conspirators of the senseless gun violence on our streets.
Local news media reported recently that, on the day of the federal raid and the school shooting, local law enforcement said the federal raid against Oaksterdam University ‘drained the vast majority of [the department’s] west-end staffing thus resulting in several priority calls being stacked — something that might have [been] prevented.
Wasting resources going after legal, licensed and locally regulated medical marijuana facilities is not only inappropriate, but directly harms our ability to fight crime and respond to violence in our city.
We respectfully ask the Justice Department to devote any available resources to fight gun crime and stop the interstate flow of illegal guns into our city.
If you have a chance to interview John McCain’s daughter, and she identifies as a feminist, and is demonstrably more comfortable in strip clubs than the “liberal comedian” with whom she has embarked on a tour with in promotion of their book America, You Sexy Bitch! (Da Capo Press, $26, 352pp), you have to seize your moment to ask the big questions.
The pause from the other end of the telephone line tells me Meghan McCain, however, does not know what this term refers to. “Do I consider myself sex-positive? I’m not sure what you mean.” See?
She and Michael Ian Black will be in conversation at the Castro Theatre on Tue/17 at an event sponsored by the Commonwealth Club, by the way.
“It’s a term that we use — keep in mind I’m calling from San Francisco,” I say. “To mean not ashamed of sex. Of the opinion that having sex with people is OK. Different kinds of sexualities?” Apparently I don’t know what sex-positive means either, or else I am awkward in explaining the term to Republicans.
McCain, having been raised in the belly of a well-oiled political machine, is wary of potentially loaded questions from reporters. But she has also built her adult career on being a fiscally conservative woman who delights in bucking the social mores of the Republican Party. As such, she is able to compose a categorical response that is still pretty charming to her commieweirdo interviewer.
“I’m a big supporter of the gay community, if that’s what you’re asking me. And when it comes to my personal life, I am not abstinent, if that’s what you’re asking me as well. I am straight, if that’s what you’re asking me. I only date men. But sex and sexuality, I’m not terribly prudish. I think it’s private in nature but as far as I’m concerned, everybody can do whatever they want as long as it’s legal. In the privacy of their own homes, that’s their business, literally. As long as they’re not hurting anybody, I don’t care. Do your thing.”
Despite the many pages McCain and Black spend casting themselves as a “real” conservative and liberal — McCain as a gun-loving war eagle, Black as a snarky priss — the secret-not-secret point made by America, You Sexy Bitch is: politics don’t make the person. To that end, readers are taken on a RV tour of the country with McCain and Black, a trip that threatens to reveal the real America. We learn that McCain is far more comfortable in strip clubs than Black and is happily single at 27, while the Ed veteran has been married since his early 20s, rarely gets drunk, and lives in the suburbs with the wife and kids.
One of my favorite aspects of McCain (and I have many), is the way she speaks out against the treatment of women in the media. Her fervor should come as no surprise: last year, she wrote a scathing open letter to Glenn Beck when he called her fat on his radio show. (“As a person known for his hot body, you must find it easy to judge the weight fluctuations of others, especially young women.”)
“I would have an entirely different career, an entirely different life if I were a man, which I think is just ridiculous,” she tells me. She laments the fact that women politicians have to deal with the “complete BS” that is appearance-driven mainstream media reportage.
She’s great! We’re best friends! Hang out with me, Meghan! But then, this, meant to be completely free of irony: “I hate this idea that the feminist movement has been caught up in the pro-choice movement and somehow the denial of femininity, which is something I don’t understand. For me being a feminist means giving women the choice to do whatever they want.”
