Caitlin Donohue

Top 10 of 2011: Moombahton DJ Mr. Lucky’s favorite tracks

Andrew Lam
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DJ Mr. Lucky will Moombahton you. The dashing deej (who gracefully took a face full of pinot noir on the cover of our Beer and Wine Issue) held down the weekly Monday night Skylarkin’ reggae smokeout in 2011, and added a roster of other regular nights to his retinue: Showdown’s monthly Urban Tropic tropical bass-electro cumbia sweat session and Fresh Greens, the Sixth Street bar’s hip-hop-dancehall night. He took the time to write out his favorite dancefloor fillers of the year that was, so we figured we’d best pass them along to you and yours.

10. Laza Morgan ft. Movado – “One By One”. This track was the sure fire selection on any dancefloor. So much crossover appeal and a fun track to dance and hold yuh gal to.

9. Juvenile ft. Rick Ross – “Power”. Did anyone else pay attention to this track? It’s been years since Juvenile broke out nationally and this track shows he’s still got it, even with a little help from the Teflon Don (who had a number of tracks that killed this year too). 

8. Boogat – “Esa Mujer”. Reggaeton meets the sample from Dawn Penn’s “No No No”? Yes yes yes please. This was a secret weapon for me this year.

7. Keys + Krates – “Ring the Alarm”. A track off an excellent release from this live-remixing group outta Toronto. Flips Tenor Saw’s track by the same name and takes it to outer space.

6. Kelly Rowland feat. Lil Wayne – “Motivation” (Diplo Remix). The original version of this song is hot, easily one of the sultriest tracks heard in popular media all year. But when Diplo touched on it this track took on a whole new feel, a throbbing dubby beast that was sure to shake loins!

Kelly Rowland Ft Lil Wayne – Motivation ( Official Video ) from GrillzHipHopTv on Vimeo.

5. Vybz Kartel – “Summertime/Go Go Wine”. It’s kind of a cheat on my part, since I’m naming two Kartel songs but lets face it: The World Boss put out so many tunes this year it’d be hard to pick just one. “Summertime” really caught the essence of a summer beach party and got play well into winter. “Go Go Wine” was the perfect pairing of classic Vybz lyricism and Dre Skull’s more traditional dancehall sound.

4. DJ Shadow feat. Little Dragon – “Scale It Back”. I always have my eyes and ears on Shadow, he’ll always be a hero to me. “Scale it Back” shows the continued growth of the MPC master and paired with Yakumi Nagano’s tender vocals make this tune feel both melancholic and hopeful. Cool video too!

3. Kanye West and Jay-Z – “N*ggaz in Paris”. The highly anticipated Watch the Throne album may have been a bit of a let down, but it definitely yielded some solid tunes. For as much as “Otis” may have been the go-to single, this track was the sleeper track that really blew the shit apart on the dancefloor.

2. Goapele – “Play”. She’s always had an enchanting voice that has spoken to the soul, but with “Play” this East Bay songstress took it to another place. The song drips sex, and her singing and lyrics seal the deal. The baby-making anthem for 2011.

1. (Drumroll please) Riot Earp – “Should I Care”. Without a doubt, this song got the most play from me in 2011. Moombah has been a drug of choice for me since I first laid ears on it, and seeing its progression has been exciting. With the release of Moombahsoul V.3 I was introduced to this beauty of a song that samples Isley Bros. “Footsteps in the Dark” and flips it into a cumbia infused dancefloor bomb.

Riot Earp – Should I Care by RiotEarp

Hey kittens! Cat show this weekend in San Jose

Andrew Lam
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Hey kittens! Cat show this weekend in San Jose

Surely the most exciting news to penetrate your post-holiday malaise this morn: on Fri/7 and Sat/8 you will have the chance to attend a bonafide cat show. Fancy beasts, silky coats, whisker wars? You bet.

The Tails and No Tails Cat Club is hosting the two-day extravaganza at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. The club is a member of the Cat Fanciers’ Association, the world’s largest pedigreed cat registry that was established back in 1906 to the plaintive meows of a nation of four-legged felines awaiting their dry kibble (or oatmeal and milk-drenched bread, as the case may have been).

Here is what you will find upon your arrival at the show. Furry friends will be competing for best in show honors, from the ear-tufted, behemoth Maine coon to the – here, quoting from the press release – “mysterious Birman cat.” You will have the chance to chop it up with breeders, asking them questions that may well lead them landing your vote for the vaunted Spectator’s Choice award. 

Any feline frenzy that the event evokes in your brand-new 2012 self can be cemented with an on-site adoption from a local agency, and door proceeds will be donated to local cat advocates, like the no-kill shelter Town Cats of Morgan Hill.

How will you make it to Friday with your holiday cheer intact? Taking a look at this history of cat food commercials, perhaps?

 

Tails and No Tails Cat Show

Sat/7 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun/8 9 a.m.-5 p.m., $8

Santa Clara County Fairgrounds

Gateway Hall, 344 Tully, San Jose 

www.tailsandnotails.com

 

What the new year brings

Andrew Lam
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What the new year brings

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE 2011 was a harsh year for medical marijuana. During its first half, the number of California dispensaries burgeoned. But a federal crackdown in September has left much of the industry shaking in its buds. By bombarding landlords with cease-and-desist letters threatening 40 years of jail time if they continue to let marijuana be sold on their property, the Department of Justice has effectively closed down walk-up operations for many smaller dispensaries.

But as we head into the year of the Mayan overhaul, one thing seems certain: advocates for safe and available access to medical cannabis aren’t going anywhere. How can they? Since Proposition 215 made it legal in 1996, 200,000 Californians have gotten physician recommendations to alleviate health concerns with marijuana. People use it for chronic pain, to make it through chemotherapy, for multiple sclerosis, severe anxiety.

“We can’t wait for the federal government to do the right thing in California,” said the state director of Americans for Safe Access Don Duncan. “As the state of California gets its marijuana house in order there will be less incentive for the feds to come in.”

Duncan and his organization were co-authors of the Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act — a unified voter initiative that was turned in to the California Secretary of State’s office last Wednesday, Dec. 21. Other contributors include NORML, the California Cannabis Association, the Humboldt Growers Associations, and the United Food and Commercial Workers — the union that now represents workers across the state, including Oaksterdam University employees.

“We’re hoping that this policy will reassure people that we can have a rational system,” continued Duncan in a phone interview with the Guardian. Duncan is convinced that the recent aggression by the Obama administration can be traced to people’s discomfort with the industry’s wild growth, and that a good faith effort to institute a comprehensive regulation system will assuage people’s confusion and fears about marijuana.

His initiative calls for the establishment of a centralized bureau of medical marijuana enforcement, to be comprised of 21 members from various state government offices, patients, advocates, a physician, a nurse, individuals from the marijuana research and policy fields and six people with experience in dispensary operations.

The bureau would be in charge of cannabis registration, industry regulations, and the use of funds that are generated by administrative fees. The initiative also calls for a sales tax of 2.5 percent on medical marijuana retail sales and states that cities — unless voters approve other guidelines — must follow a minimum zoning restriction of a dispensary for every 50,000 people.

In January, a campaign supporting the initiative will begin to drum up awareness. Backers are hoping that by instituting stricter and more consistent controls of dispensaries and growing operations, 2012 will look a lot brighter for the 200,000 Californians that have relied on their marijuana prescription to live their lives.

“I think this is really going to resonate with voters,” said Duncan. “We just need for officials to be able to step outside the controversy of it all.” It’s a hopeful stance. Let’s see how it holds up in the roiling of the upcoming election year.

Pop your cork

Andrew Lam
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Pop your cork

Below are our picks to ring in the new. Events are listed alphabetically. Parties end at 2 a..m. except where noted. For more New Year’s parties, see This Week’s Picks. For New Year’s Day parties, click here. Lampshade hats not included.

 

1984

Light on the Orwellian totalitarianism and heavy on ceaselessly pumping ’80s music, longtime favorite retro night 1984 takes you back to the future once again. And it is free!

9 p.m.-2 a.m., free. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

ALL DAY PUNK ROCK NEW YEAR’S

Considering we’re about to embark upon another year full of economic gloom and doom, the band names from Eli’s lineup — World of Shit, Short Changed, Society Dog — aren’t too uplifting. But at least they’ll help you rage through.

2 p.m.–12:30 a.m., $10. Eli’s Mile High Club, 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Oakl. www.elismilehigh.com

 

BEARRACUDA

What could possibly say New Year more than a hunky mass of sweaty, hairy gay bears getting down until the wee hours? You in the middle! DJs Craig Gaibler and Brian Maier keep it steamy.

8 p.m.-3a.m., $25. Club 8, 1151 Folsom, SF. www.bearracuda.com

 

BOBB SAGGETH

Elbo Room’s NYE spectacular includes the West Coast’s greatest Black Sabbath cover band* Bobb Saggeth, featuring members of Saviours, Citay, 3 Leafs, Sean Smith. Plus, it’s dark metal lords Black Cobra’s homecoming show. *Note: the “greatest Black Sabbath cover band” descriptor is self-inflicted though accurate. With Black Cobra.

9 p.m., $20. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

BOOTIE

Mashup mayhem galore at the original bastard pop party, whose special NYE installment includes mashup band Smash-Up Derby performing live and DJs Adrian and Mysterious D., Mykill, and Dada. Plus: ballon drop!

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $25–$50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

CALIFORNIA HONEYDROPS

With raucous group efforts towards blues, gospel, New Orleans jazz, and R&B, California Honeydrops tend bring the sonic party wherever they play — why should NYE be any different? Admission price gets you live Americana music and a drink of your choosing.

11 p.m., $40. Pizzaiolo, 5008 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 652-4888, www.pizzaiolooakland.com

 

ECLECTIC FEVER

A glowing, global party to dive into, with the effervescent Zap Mama, plus Sila, Non Stop Bhangra, Sambaxe Dance, and DJs J-Boogie, Jimmy Love, DJ Jeremiah, and Matt Haze. A real ear-opener for 2012.

8:30-4 a.m., $65. 1290 Fillmore, SF. zapmama.eventbrite.com

 

EL SUPERRITMO!

We have a soft spot for this weekly throwdown of tuneful styles from Latin America — cumbia, baile funk, reggaeton, and more. This promises be a wild installment with residents El Kool Kyle and DJ Roger Más joined by Ricky Garay, aka Señor Mucho Musica.

9 p.m., $20. Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

 

FOREVERLAND

The show stars 14-piece Michael Jackson tribute band Foreverland, but there also will be the frisky Kitty Kitty Bang Bang Burlesque, an appearance by “the girl in the fishbowl” (a vintage Bimbo’s tradition), complimentary bubbly, party favors, and a traditional balloon drop at countdown. With Slim Jenkins, the Cottontails.

8 p.m., $65. Bimbo’s, 1025 Columbus, SF. www.bimbos365club.com

 

GO BANG!

This awesome, mixed-crowd monthly disco party has zero attitude but all the glamour. It’s like a Studio 54 you can actually get into. Atlanta’s DJ Osmose will bring his scratching turntable technique to bear on some rare disco tracks this NYE, along with Doc Sleep, Eddie House, and hosts Sergio and Steve Fabus. Good times!

9 p.m.-late, $10. Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF. wwwdecosf.com

 

KINK

The colorful boys behind two of the Bay’s most vital party machines — Honey Soundsystem and Pacific Sound (Sunset) — join forces to bring in hot and heavy Bulgarian techno hero KiNK. He’ll be playing live, with a few melted minds sure to follow. Eight other DJs on two floors will help it all out.

9 p.m.-5 a.m., $15-$30. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

KREAYSHAWN

Yep. The controversial, anti-Gucci mini-rapper in thick black frames is back, playing her biggest SF venue to date. The show is all ages and the event is titled “Never Coming Down.” With Wallpaper, Roach Gigz, Starting Six, DJ Amen.

9pm, $38. , Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, SF. www.theregencyballroom.com

 

LEA DELARIA

The much-lauded Broadway star, swingin’ jazz musician, and fabulously blue comedian is back in the town to ring in the new year with peals of laughter. Latest show “Last Butch Standing” promises to be a full-on entertaining eve, topped with some outrageous New Year’s surprises, of course.

7 p.m. and 9 p.m., $30–$35, Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. www.therhino.org

 

LEXINGTON NYE BLACKOUT

If you can’t remember who you kissed at midnight, does it really count? Find out at SF’s favorite lesbian bar, when rockin’ DJs Andre and Jenna Riot and host Sara Goodman turn out your lights — and turn on the craziness. Oblivion awaits!

9 p.m., free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF. www.lexingtonclub.com

 

MAGIC LEAVES

Presented by Seaweed Sway, Loving Cup Presents, and Song Bird, the show boasts a glut of crunchy local freak-folk and a singular midnight champagne toast. Should be a delightfully analog evening. With Little Wings, Range of Light Wilderness, Au Dunes.

9 p.m., $15–$20. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. www.amnesiathebar.com

 

MIDNIGHT NYE 2012

Get ready for a blast of warm tropicalia and clouds of fun, as Club Six rocks steady to reggae, dancehall, and global bass sounds, courtesy of the Daddy Rolo, Spicey, Dee Cee Shakedown crews. With DJs Shawn Reynaldo, Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, Pam the Funkstress, and many more on two floors.

8 p.m.-4 a.m., $20–$30. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

“NEW YEAR’S EVE SHAKE”

This party is all about the shimmy-n-shake, soul, surf, and all other 1960s rock’n’roll sounds. There’ll be live music courtesy of the Barbary Coasters, the Ogres, and the TomorrowMen, along with go-go dancing by the Mini Skirt Mob (which features members of the Devile-Ettes. And of course, the requisite champagne and balloons.

9:30 p.m., $10–$15. Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck, Berk. www.starryploughpub.com.

 

NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS SHOW

The damp, strength-sapping chill of midnight on the Embarcadero is still worth the 15 minutes of promised pyrotechnic glory. Thousands of San Franciscans huddled together under the sky = magic.

12 a.m., free. Pier 14, Embarcadero, SF.

 

NYE CONFIDENCE STARTER 2012

A nice little bash on the edge of the Tenderloin with some quality local peeps. DJ Ed Dee Pee will play “down tempo, New neo-soultronica imports, and broken beat-ish styles.”

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $10. Siete Potencias Africanas Gallery, 777 O’Farrell, SF.

 

OLDIES NIGHT’S NASTY ASS LATE NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY

The title is a mouthful, but it should be a good one. There’ll be a live performance by the Cuts along with Oldies Night regulars DJ Primo and Daniel spinning that twist-worthy doo-wop, one hit wonders, soul, and scratchy seven-inch rock ‘n roll.

9 p.m.-4 a.m., $10. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com

 

OPEL NYE

The spiritually minded, breaks-oriented underground collective rises to the 2012 occasion with and a mad, possibly fire-twirling free-for-all with the UK’s Lee Coombs, plus members of the Strategik and Ambient Mafia crews.

9 p.m.-4 a.m., $25–$40. Mission Rock, 817 Terry Francois, SF. opelnye.eventbrite.com

 

SWEATERFUNK

Fuzzy local weekly party Sweaterfunk has kept the lights on for soulful boogie — and its more contemporary twists and turns — in this city for a wonderful while. For NYE, special Swedish future-funker guests Opolopo and Amalia should really turn you inside out.

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $20–$30. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

 

THE ITALIAN JOB

Get a little swanky at North Beach’s lovely Monroe club, with some pumpin’ house from Italy’s Rufus plus a “family” of DJs, including Stef “The Baron,” Francesco Signorile, and Carol.

10 p.m., $20–$25. Monroe, 473 Broadway, SF. www.monroesf.com

 

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

This festive affair gives you a number of reasons to welcome 2012 into Oakland, among them a bang-up lineup of techno and house DJs from the Space Cowboys crew and an awesome onslaught of funk and hip-hop from the likes of Sake One, Platurn, and Joe Quixx. What up, East Bay!

9 p.m., $25–$85. Oakland Metro, 630 Third St., SF. stayeastbay.eventbrite.com

 

TRANNYSHACK NYE

Queens, queens, and more queens — they’ll be gushing out like a waterfall at this annual drag hoo-haw, with performances by Heklina, Suppositori Spelling, Holy McGrail, Honey Mahogany, Matthew Martin and a million more.

9:30 p.m.-3 a.m., $25–$39. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.trannyshack.com

 

VELVET TEEN

This is your twee, feel-good option, the soaring-sweet vocals and sharp riffs of perennial Bay Area indie rock favorites Velvet Teen will assure a night of arms slung around waists and peachy full body sways. With Happy Body Slow Brain, Fake Your Own Death.

10 p.m., $17. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

 

WAX IDOLS AND TERRY MALTS

And then there are the new local favorites, Wax Idols and Terry Malts — both bands are part of an exciting, classic garage punk rock surge in the Bay Area music scene. And if punks indeed have no future, celebrate the end of times at the Hemlock. The show also includes champagne toast at midnight.

9 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

Gifted: The Poor Bastard’s SF Almanac

Andrew Lam
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0

Hey, Slingshot Organizer gang. Yeah youse, the well-planned anarchists in the corner. Stephen Kovacic would like you folks to know you are no longer the only alt-dayplanner game in town. 

Kovacic — inspired, he says, by his experience working the front desk at the LGBT Community Center — has pulled off the impressive feat of assembling a one-stop guide to sustainable brokeness in this fair city of ours. Not only is The Poor Bastard’s SF Almanac a calendar, but it is also is packed with supervisoral district maps, last-BART-of-the-night times, guides to where to find fair trade coffee, free museum and zoo visits, eight (!) $1 oyster happy hours, and San Francisco pools. The result is delightfully scrappy, delightfully useful package of wisdom. In an email interview with the Guardian, Kovacic admitted to ordering far, far too many of the things from the print shop, so in addition to being able to cop the planners for $12 in local bookstores (we even spotted them at Scarlet Sage Herb Company), you can order them from his website at prices as low as five for $35.

The thing even comes with a mix CD of local artists, from the Dents to Rin Tin Tiger (listen to it for free here). So, maybe New Year’s Day gifts are the new, hot holiday present? Here’s what Kovacic had to say about his labor of love. 

 

SFBG: Tell us a little about yourself.

SK: My name is Stephen Kovacic, I’m a 28-year old male, I’ve lived in San Francisco for nine years. I went to SFSU and CCSF. I like chemistry, and turtles, and Rubix cubes, and the people in my life. I like making systems work better.

 

SFBG: What inspired you to put together this dayplanner?

SK: I was working for three years as the front desk info and referral person at the LGBT Community Center, compiling info for visitors or people off the street who needed referrals to services. I noticed immediately that there were a ton of services and fun things and things to know about the city, but no really good compendium of up-to-date information. Websites on the subject are woefully out of date.   

When budget issues dissolved that job I was gainfully unemployed for a while, living very cheap, going to free things, writing things that were useful into my Slingshot Organizer. I wrote in free zoo and museum days, and I drew guitar chords and such in the back pages. It seemed like a logical progression to make my own organizer and fill it with as many useful things as possible, like supervisor contact info, or last BART times, or when to register to vote, or your rights at work, or a list of anti-gay companies to boycott. Things that empower people to be who they want to get around to being. And to entice people to carry it around all the time, i put games and trivia and interesting days in SF history, free days, zodiacs, SF celebrity births, guitar chords, fun stuff. 

 

SFBG: What’s your favorite feature in its pages?

SK: The history probably. I spent a long time finding things that happened in this city 100 years ago, and there’s a ton of them. I put the most compressible, interesting stories in there. I encourage people to look them up because there’s a lot more to each story than i had room to put in. At the same time, the CD is the thing i’m least tired of seeing. It’s really good.

 

SFBG: Who were the artists that helped you out with it?

SK: The folks on the CD are all local San Franciscan bands. Mostly talented friends of mine that I’ve been collecting. People can listen to the whole CD for free at www.SFalmanac.org. Sometimes compilations are crappy, but this one turned out really good. Mostly because I took songs that were already my favorites and begged their SF writers to let me use them. Everybody was really supportive of the idea. There’s even some gems on there [that are] previously unreleased.

The [visual] art is about one-third mine, the rest is my friends’, people that supported the concept. If it’s going to happen next year I’ll need a whole bunch more contributing artists. The real star player is Justine Lucas, she did the cover and a whole bunch of other pages too. She’s been the most supportive and encouraging person there could be, it would never have happened without her support and advice and skill.

Last-minute gift guide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Last-minute gift guide

HOLIDAY GUIDE Look at it this way: you’re not a procrastinator, you’ve just been resisting the pull of the holiday commercial machine.. until you’re on the way to spin the dreidel — or it’s dusk, Saturday, and the thought of tomorrow’s Christmas festivities with your clan is giving you sweaty palms. Will your lack of giftage imply a cold heart? If you lose your anti-consumerist stubborn, last minute shopping that a. supports your local businesses and b. won’t make you look like you left it all for the last minute is available to you. Here’s our list, complete with the final hour the shop is open on Christmas Eve (which doesn’t mean these stores won’t serve just as well for Chanukers, Kwanzelles, and Festiv-ites).

Z. CIOCCOLATO

Every once in awhile you come across a future giftee like a brick wall. Maybe you don’t know the person all that well (boyfriend’s as-yet un-met mom), you’re having issues getting them something they don’t have already (your too-cool tech-glich neighbor). May we suggest candy? This North Beach sweet spot is open really late on Saturday and stocks the finest in fudge, caramel popcorn, and retro throwbacks. Abba Zabba? Indeed.

Open until midnight, 474 Columbus, SF. (415) 395-9116, www.zcioccolato.com

COLLAGE GALLERY

A store full of knick-knacks is a great bet for finding unique gifts for your loved ones. From loose typewriter keys and scrabble pieces to jewelry by local artists and vintage purses, this Potrero Hill shop is a super stop when you’ve got a femme artistic type in mind. Have a friend who is decorating their new apartment? Sis just had a baby? Collage Gallery is known for having the most eclectic collections of vintage wall letters, numbers, and clocks. So tick-tock, get over there.

Open until 5 p.m., 1345 18th St., SF. (415) 282-4401, www.collage-gallery.com

AMOEBA MUSIC

This music store is godsend on Christmas Eve. With a large selection of new and used CDs, 45s, concert posters, and out-of-print albums, you already know Amoeba Music is a music lover’s dream. You can buy gifts for the whole family: a Grateful Dead album for Dad, Common’s just-released The Dreamer, the Believer for your brother and something vinyl for your “we’ve only been dating a few months, what the hell do I buy them?” partner. Treat yourself to the new Snoop Dogg-Wiz Khalifa collab album when your list is all checked off.

Open until 7:30 p.m., 2455 Telegraph, Berk. (510) 549-1125, www.amoeba.com

GG’S

The place to last-minute shop for mom is clearly GG’s, although you can probably find gifts for just about anyone in this West Portal shop. GG’s is a specialty store with a product selection that traverses from the creative to the elegant to the witty. Selling jewelry, candles, lotions, perfumes, and soaps, pretty little things will catch your eye, almost guaranteed. And GG’s does do giftwrap — a Christmas lifesaver.

Open until 6 p.m., 11 West Portal, SF. (415) 731-1108

THE FRUIT GUYS

For the super-last minute, nothing beats a solid online purchase. The Fruit Guys is a local farm delivery service that was started out of South San Francisco. It’s burgeoned dramatically and now has centers in Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Chicago — so if you have relatives in the Mid-West and East Coast that “don’t get” the whole local food thing, give ’em a little goose. Fruit boxes run as little as $26 per month, and you can cease delivery whenever you wish. (Note: If your rels don’t live in one of those cities, the food might come from a little further away, but the Fruit Guys try to utilize local farms wherever they can.)

(877) 378-4863, www.fruitguys.com

 

>>STORES ALSO OPEN LATE ON CHRISTMAS EVE:

FOOD

Shufat Market Open until 2 a.m., 3807 24th St., SF. (415) 826-6207

17th and Noe Groceteria Open until 11 p.m., 3900 17th St., SF. (415) 863-6337

ART/BOOKSTORES

Green Apple Books Open until 11:30 p.m., 506 Clement, SF. (415) 387-2272, www.greenapplebooks.com

SF MOMA Museum Store Open until 6:30 p.m., 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org/museumstore

Alexander Book Company Open until 5 p.m., 50 Second St., SF. (415) 495-2992, www.alexanderbook.com

TOY/HOBBY STORES

The Ark Toy Store Open until 5 p.m., 3845 24th St., SF. (415) 821-1257, www.thearktoys.com

Jeffrey’s Toys Open until 6 p.m., 685 Market, SF. (415) 243-8697

Mission Skateboards Open until 5 p.m., 3045 24th St., SF. (415) 647-7888, www.missionsk8boards.com

CLOTHING/ACCESSORIES

Gravel and Gold Open until 4 p.m., 3266 21st St., SF. (415) 552-0112, www.gravelandgold.com

Therapy Open until 7:30 p.m., 545 Valencia, SF. (415) 865-0981, www.shopattherapy.com

Unionmade Open until 4:30 p.m., 493 Sanchez, SF. (415) 861-3373, www.unionmadegoods.com

FLORAL SHOPS

Verde SF Open until 6 p.m., 1265 Fell, SF. (415) 796-3890, www.verdesf.com

Utsuwa Floral Design Open until 7 p.m., 1339 Polk, SF. (415) 447-8476, www.utsuwafd.com

 

Small town values

Andrew Lam
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Small town values

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE When we arranged to meet Fairfax (population 7,500) councilperson Larry Bragman, he suggested a rendezvous at “the coffeeshop.” When asked to be more specific, he clarified he meant Fairfax Coffee Roastery. “But you’ll see it, it’s right there.”

Bragman is a San Francisco-educated attorney who began coming to the small Marin County town decades ago. He’s been on town council — whose members pass around the title of mayor every year — since 2003. He was mayor in November, when the four-member council passed Resolution No. 11-58.

Bragman’s voice clogs a little with emotion when asked why the resolution was passed. “I don’t understand how you can justify a policy that denies help for patients that are going through that kind of hardship and suffering.”

The only medical marijuana dispensary in Fairfax, which is located in the county with the breast cancer rate in women is nearly 50 percent — closed its doors last weekend. The Department of Justice’s Melinda Haag sent a letter to the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana’s landlord, the likes of which are all too familiar to the medical cannabis industry nowadays.

The dispensary was located in a school zone. Landlord Fred Ezazi had 45 days to evict the dispensary, it said, or he would face up to 45 years in prison or civil forfeiture. (See 12/14/11’s Herbwise column “For the kids?” about an SF dispensary that received a similar notice)

“It feels like a violation,” says Bragman when asked how it feels to be a small town politician being railroaded by federal agencies. Resolution No. 11-58 supports the Alliance and other California dispensaries’ right to continue business. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a similar resolution in October.

Bragman insists that the policies his city developed to regulate the Alliance were exemplary. When the dispensary was founded by longtime marijuana activist Lynette Shaw shortly after Proposition 215 passed, Fairfax “had the foresight and courage to create the first use permit in the state of California [for a marijuana dispensary],” says Bragman. When called for comment, the city’s finance director Michael Vivrette said the Alliance was one of the top ten sales tax contributors in a town struggling with budgetary woes.

Later, we walk the three blocks to the Alliance, which is (was) located on a quiet street next to a Little League field in a non-descript office building. You have to walk up a flight of stairs and peer inside its windows to even know what it is.

A few despondent marijuana patients lingered in the waiting room, sadfaced and bewildered that the space would soon be gone. “I thought that a press blackout meant that we wouldn’t talk to press,” a woman spits at me when I ask the man at the front desk when they would be closing. It was hard to be frustrated with her truculence.

Bragman went so far as to call Haag to try to reason with her letter’s logic. “I said ‘you’re going to encourage the black market traffickers which we all know are a threat to the community. It’s unbelievable. It’s just so stupid.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article identified the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana as Marin County’s only cannabis dispensary. It is not, and we regret the error

Hot sexy events: December 21-27

Andrew Lam
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0
Hot sexy events: December 21-27

It’s been a minute since we’ve assembled the week’s sex events in this column. That’s our bad – we’ve been busy (mind yer business). But we’re back this week! And thank goodness because the week of Christmas and the beginning of Channukah has to be the least-happening week for sex events of the year. Which is why we’re including the following list of DIY sex events. 

1.Sperm donation. It is very, very chic now to give away for free what you once you were paid lots of money for. Just ask this guy. It’s very 99 percent.

2.Streaking. The city’s going to be way, way slowed down this week, and with all this legal nudity people have been getting way too complacent about their public bareassery. This is the perfect time to run it out down Divisadero in the middle of the day on the 25th, you’ll be glad you did. (Avoid frightening families, please) 

3.Slap-fighting. Not just for the I-don’t-want-to-get-expelled-from-school-but-I’m-still-really-mad-at-you high school kid set! 

4.Gear up for next month adult industry judge-a-rama, the AVN Awards. Read up on the favorites, celebrate the fact that 2010 and 2011’s “best female performer” Tori Black has a new free site. Of course, the only naked she’s getting is on her face — her makeup-less morning confessionals are an experiment in just how much pervs want to get to know their fave porn star. How many people will be getting off while reading how the young Miss Black enjoys her music? (Fyi, she finds it to be  “a way of life. More than that, it’s the feeling of life.”)

Or, just go to these sex events. Ambience is everything. 

 

 

Good Vibes customer appreciation days

You’ll be overloaded on nog anyways, so it’s probably best that the free tipples at Good Vibes are of the non-alcoholic variety. And who doesn’t love Martinelli’s? Certainly no one who needs a nice vibrator for that holiday-time lover. Sales associates will be extra-ready to guide you on your erotic shopping, and, free chocolate. Tip: we’re loving the OhMiBod Freestyle G wireless vibrator, which can hook up to your music system so you can pulse to the beat. Pair it with a homemade playlist and you’ll be making beautiful music for a lucky giftee.

Thu/22 6-9 p.m., free; Fri/23 6-8 p.m., free

Various Bay Area locations

www.goodvibes.com

 

Center for Sex and Culture holiday party

Revel in your sex-positive community with the center’s annual white elephant gift exchange. We’re betting there’s going to be a higher-than-average amount of naughty behavior here tonight, but keep your Santa hats on, people. Potlucking encouraged!

Fri/23 6-10 p.m., free

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org


 

Christmas weekend at KOK Bar

It’s just not Christmas without grinding your belly against a Folsom daddy. KOK Bar is keeping the cheap drinks flowing through the weekend and you should def reward the decision by ditching familial engagements for at least one or two Absolut SF-sodas. Free clothes check for your cruising pleasure. 

Fri/23 5 p.m., free

Sat/24 6 p.m., free

Sun/25 6 p.m., free

1225 Folsom, SF

www.kokbarsf.com

 

“Cigar Play: Mouth, Hands, Eyes, Spirit”

It seems appropriate, on the brink of New Year’s Eve 2011, to light a celebratory cigar. After all, when the world is going to end in mere months, who cares about the pinkness of one’s lungs? And in true decadent SF spirit, there is now a class especially for teaching erotic usage of the cigar. Teachers Konraad and Jazz will take the class through “titillating to tortuous” usages of stogies. First timers, don’t inhale!

Tue/27 8-10 p.m.

SF Citadel

www.sfcitadel.org

Gifted: A $25 three-course meal at the Cliff House

Andrew Lam
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0

Sure, the menu isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of cuisine. But I’ll tell you what, any buddy that turns down a three-course meal at the Cliff House? Clearly, the two of you need to have a talk. Preferably, over ocean views, cheese ravioli, baby spinach salad, and bread pudding.We consider the Cliff House one of SF’s premier destination restaurants. It clearly has one of the more epic locations. Perched on the crags overlooking the ruins of the Sutro Baths and that one creepy cave everyone walks through, it appears to be the gatekeeper to the roiling greyness that the Pacific usually is this time of year. It’s just about the perfect length of a bike ride down through the park (say hi to our freshly acquired baby bison, thanks Dick Blum, husband of Senator Diane Feinstein!), with a couple 100 feet of monster hill climb at the end, so you’re guaranteed to be hungry by the time you get there. 

And now you can take your roommate to the Cliff House’s fancy dining room, the Bistro, for 25 lousy bucks! (Just tell them in advance that they’re paying for their own drinks, unless you’ve been leaving your dirty dishes out recently) Every Wednesday, a different three-course meal beckons you out to where the avenues reach the sea, just north of where the Murphy Windmill’s vanes wait to turn, expensively. 

Hey, today is Wednesday! What’s on offer at the Bistro? Glad you asked… 

 

This week’s menu:

Course the first: Baby spinach salad with satsuma tangerines, candied walnuts, ricotta salata, and white balsamic vinaigrette

Course the second: Cheese ravioli with sautéed wild mushrooms in pomodora sauce and Parmesano-Reggiano

Course the third: Persimmon and white chocolate bread pudding with cinnamon crème anglaise

 

Incredible, yes? Scoop up your lucky holiday honey and celebrate not being at the mall. 

 

Cliff House

1090 Point Lobos, SF

(415) 386-3330

www.cliffhouse.com

How guilty?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
How guilty?

caitlin@sfbg.com

YEAR IN MUSIC You call it godawful taste in music, I call it reverse colonization. Learn to like the schlock on the radio and instead of groaning through that car ride you too can passenger seat-rock fit to make the Acura in the lane next to yours take “lookit this spazz” photos. Famous!

Yes, it takes some synaptic refiguring to truly enjoy Top 40 music. And not just so that you can enjoy facile lyrics — certain idealistic underpinnings can change your head’s bob to Drake’s latest into a rueful shake real quick. Sexism? Yes.

But this year had some R&B and commercial hip-hop gems. The general trend towards dance music has been making the sounds in those worlds fluffier, more addictive. And the videos — well this is the best part about succumbing to the ways of the Billboard Hot 100. One gets to bask in the light of candy-colored, expertly choreographed, lip-pursing versions of heaven. Forever chain-pressing repeat, because you’re not really a fan of any of these jams until you know. Every. Word.

So we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all about mitigating the damage that you’re doing to your psyche. And so here we have some favorite bubblegum-ish tracks of the year, arranged so that the true soul crushers bring up the rear of the list.

 

RIHANNA FEAT. DRAKE “WHAT’S MY NAME?”

Rihanna entranced us in 2011 with her dance-ready beats, her off-kilter brand of hot (red hair dye, S and M wear, and oversize pastel cashmere sweaters playing equal roles), and sass. The yardstick by which all guilty pleasure songs must be judged is how loudly you feel like singing to them, which is usually tied to how much you can puff your chest out while imaging the lyrics apply to you. “What’s My Name?” is exactly the song you want to come on after you’ve celebrated a big win, say gotten a cup of coffee for free from your favorite grounds-slinger, or woken up on time. Plus, in the video Drake hits on Rihanna while she’s buying milk.

Guilty?: Not. Rihanna is the zeitgeist, the rest of us dust on her wind.

 

BEYONCE FEAT. J. COLE “PARTY”

Queen B continued her reign of terror right on through pregnancy this year, enrapturing all those lucky enough to catch sight of her baby bump. Carrying a child did not prevent her from making nearly every song from this year’s 4 into a hit single, or even discourage her from sporting Lycra and jouncing about in the video for “Countdown” (whose dance steps were later proven to be an “homage” to a routine by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker). “Party” is a summer song, and judged by aforementioned I-wanna-be-that metric, it kills.

Guilty?: Do you hate babies? Not guilty.

 

NICKI MINAJ “SUPER BASS”

Another defining characteristic of the guilty pleasure is the inextricably linked dance move that accompanies its entry into one’s auditory landscape. Minaj’s “Super Bass” inevitably inspires a pushing away from the chest movement, usually paired with some kind of stomping of the feet. Wait, but does that make you a Barbie (the singer-emcee’s term for her own fans)? Being one of Nicki’s flock might just speak more to your hip-hop philosophy these days: like Drake, she came from a performing arts background, and makes no bones about the hip-hop world serving as a canvas for performance.

Guilty?: Fans of hip-hop with teeth take it easy — this music’s always been about putting on a show. Not guilty.

 

WILL.I.AM FEAT. SESAME STREET “WHAT I AM”

How do we hate Will.i.am? Let us count the ways. One, his group the Black Eyed Peas are the textbook example of sell-out. Nothing makes it past this group that will not sell Pepsis or $2 toasters at Target. Two, he told Elle Magazine that women who keep condoms around are “tacky.” Three, his participation in the Ed Lee “2 Legit 2 Quit” video (a production that seemed specifically engineered to enrage me). But then, this song, in which this hurricane of a man is surrounded by the beloved scamps of Sesame Street. It makes us want to high step. But is it right?

Guilty?: For above three reasons, all Will.i.am projects must be considered tainted — but positive behavior by him must be encouraged. Guilty, but harm to self is mitigated if you listen to this song while buying Trojan Her Pleasures.

 

DRAKE “MAKE ME PROUD”

A time-honored tradition contained within the “songs for women” canon of male hip-hop and R&B stars is the sweet hook versus the totally busted approach to the female sex in the lyrics. Pretty much the entirety of this year’s Take Care album qualifies for inclusion in this time-honored rite — although the way the singer-rapper calls an ex-flame out of his “old phone” in the track “Marvin’s Room” says as much about him as it does the girls that he’s calling. “Make Me Proud” is a big brother approach to the same hot chick he’s demeaning in every other song on the album. She’s good-looking, smart, she reserves sex because she’s sick of guys hitting on her. Ugh. Too bad Nikki Minaj has a verse on here rapping about being a Sagittarius and it’s now on my Spotify “starred” list.

Guilty?: Are you kidding? Lock yourself up.

For the kids?

Andrew Lam
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2
For the kids?

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Mission District dispensary Medithrive has started doing home deliveries. Since Nov. 22 its medical marijuana patients can have buds, tinctures, Auntie Dolores’ brownie bits, and more delivered straight to their apartment doors.

So why are Medithrive customers and staff members peeved? Because the new feature isn’t an expansion in services — it’s a forced shift in the co-op’s business structure. The dispensary was compelled to close its doors on 1933 Mission Street after a Sept. 28 letter from Department of Justice attorney Melinda Haag threatened its landlord with jail time if Medithrive didn’t cease operations in the space within 45 days. (Full disclosure: Medithrive is a Guardian advertiser)

The feds’ given reason was Medithrive’s proximity to Marshall Elementary School, located a 745-foot walk (according to Google Maps) from the dispensary door.

But Marshall’s principal Peter Avila wasn’t consulted on the matter. When called for comment by the Guardian, he said that he had bigger safety concerns.

“Right next door to Medithrive is a liquor store,” Avila said, adding that there is also a methadone clinic across the street from his school. “We have to deal with people passed out on the property, people smoking — those are more the issues than people buying medical marijuana.”

The principal says he patrols Marshall’s immediate neighborhood three to four times a day, dealing with drug addicts, people with mental problems, and the Mission’s homeless population. He called the dispensary “discreet” and never saw any cannabis usage by dispensary patients. Indeed: “They looked pretty much like the people who were coming out of the Walgreens [down the street].” In the past, Medithrive has offered to sponsor health education at Marshall.

Regardless, the dispensary’s Mission Streets doors are shuttered now. On many days, a staff member stands outside, handing out flyers announcing the delivery service to customers unaware that walk-up sales have ceased.

“We’re actually not in such a unique position,” said Medithrive community outreach liaison Hunter Holliman. The Tenderloin’s Divinity Tree and the Mission’s Mr. Nice Guy dispensaries also closed their doors this autumn in light of similar school zone notifications sent to their landlords. The landlord of Marin County marijuana activist Lynnette Shaw, founder of Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, was also hit. Shaw intends to fight to stay open.

Holliman says the shift to delivery services has been unexpectedly popular with Medithrive’s customers and allows the dispensary to service patients unable to physically access the storefront location — but it’s not without its challenges. Operations have been transient since the co-op is unable to even stage deliveries from the space on Mission Street. The day that the Guardian called, a voicemail informed patients that due to high call volume they’d have to leave a message so that dispensary staff could call them back. Once contacted by a helpful “budtender,” it took a little over an hour for the order to arrive.

Although Medithrive let go of many employees in its initial closure, it’s hired nearly all back in the transition to the labor-intensive delivery services. The dispensary is still hoping to secure another brick and mortar location, but permitting for new dispensaries has stalled at the city level.

Even if the dispensary’s been booted from its space, at least Medithrive patients still have access to medical cannabis — for now. Holliman is convinced that Bay Area dispensaries haven’t seen the end of legal challenges. “I’m sure there’s more to come,” he said grimly. “The feds are really serious about this.” 

Medithrive’s delivery-only menu is available at www.medithrive.com

G-O-S-S-I-Ping with the PreZcotts

Andrew Lam
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1
G-O-S-S-I-Ping with the PreZcotts

It is rare that you get a chance to kick it with a girl group in its early stages. In my admittedly paltry experience in the matter, they emerge full-grown into one’s consciousness. Blame it on lax Disney Channel-watching regime, blame it on the commercial music hype machine — typically by the time one catches wind of a Miley Cyrus four-pack, they already have their own line of hair extensions and rapt fan club. 

Which is why time was of the essence when the email from the PrezCotts‘s publicist came. “You HAVE to Check Out the Dynamite New Modesto-Based Girl Group the PreZcotts!” it preached. Unique capitalization, it was soon to be revealed, is a trademark trope of the PreZcotts’ canon.

“What I love about the girls is that they really represent what teens nowadays go through and look like,” said the email. “They avoid the artificial and sometimes overly matured look of their pop star contemporaries and stick to an empowering and inspirational message of believing in oneself and loving yourself for who and how you are.”

And so, I made a date to meet the PreZcotts. Westfield Mall food court, Monday afternoon seemed like an appropriate place and time.

Perched on some benches, the four PrezCott sisters were on their fourth trip to San Francisco with their manager, an ex-Metallica employee named Frank Munoz, who is on his first foray into the world of teen pop. They (the young women) were wearing vests and gold and pink and zebra prints, which inspired oddly maternal feelings in me. 

What road had led AnaLeyna, ChaLyn, RaNelle, and MaRiah to this sister group? What did the publicist mean by avoiding the overly matured look of their contemporaries? What was the message behind their music? Was any of this their idea in the first place?

“We want to be role models,” said AnaLeyna, who as the songwriter and oldest sister was the first to provide the answer to most questions. She’s the gang leader, clearly. “A lot of our songs are emotionally inspiring.” 

The PreZcotts get with god. They started singing in church at incredibly young ages. Their mom limited the kinds of songs they could listen to as young(er) whippersnappers. ChaLyn mentions that she is the only one who does not believe in evolution in her high school science class (but doesn’t preach contrary theories, at least not in the interview: “I don’t understand how it happened really, I’m not a scientist.”)

As Christians, they’re a bit leery of the scandalizing nature of pop culture. “We try and keep it honorable and appropriate,” AnaLeyna said. When asked how they will avoid the pitfalls of celebrity, a la Miley’s pole dancing or Lindsay Lohan’s… well, everything, the PreZcotts seemed sure that family and their religion will keep them on track. Of those who have fallen before: “They must be under so much pressure, like they crack or something,” AnaLeyna reasoned, graciously. The PreZcotts talked about their faith candidly, a remarkable feat in an interview with a Guardian reporter that gave one the impression that maybe no one has vetted the publication before the interview. 

But they do seem ready to take their family vessel to the top, these sisters. They want to bolster kids their ages through tragedies, share with them what happened when their own dad passed away (his face and birth-death dates adorns their debut album’s liner notes). 

Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

His passing hasn’t been the only rough spot for the girls from Modesto. All four of them have had to deal with bullying — AnaLeyna had to be homeschooled when the harassment got to be too much at her school. “MaRiah always feel like she doesn’t have any friends,” the eldest PreZcott told me, MaRiah quickly turning her face away at the statement. “Gossip” is AnaLeyna’s response to bullying. “It really is affecting people everywhere.”

Though at times the girls seemed unsure of how to answer questions, they haven’t been shoved into a gimmick yet. You get the impressions that their songs are comprised of things that they actually think need to be said. 

But I’m sure it was Munoz who suggested that the girls cover a Metallica song. 

The song features the PreZcotts and Japanese guitar prodigy Yuto Miyazawa. Through a neat trick, it was published on the Metallica Youtube channel, where at the time of writing it has recieved over 31,000 views. But as it is a Youtube video, it has Youtube comments — and reading through them after my interview with the girls it makes me wanna bash heads. Bullies! 

“A lot of the Metallica fans were pretty teed off that a teen pop had covered the song — they were the ones commenting,” said Munoz. The girls seemed a little distressed, so we had a satisfying conversation about how people can get real pigheaded when they’re anonymous on the Internet. 

The PreZcotts’ album smells like strawberries. 

Packaged in pink and images of the girls in lights, its materials have been infused with a strawberry scent that persists a day or so past the time you tear off its shrink wrap. 

The reason for this, Munoz explained to me, is to counteract the younger generation’s tendency to listen to all their music in Internet single form. Indeed, when I asked the PreZcotts what their favorite albums were, I was met with little more than searching stares. (Later we ascertained that some of their favorite artists were Alicia Keyes, Disney pop princess Selena Gomez, and Mariah Carey — though many of these singers release some songs deemed inappropriate by the girls). 

As their publicist had promised me they would, the PreZcotts asked if I’d like to hear them sing something acappella. I said I would, and a few minutes later, in the middle of the mall, I am treated to a private concert. 

“What do you guys want to sing?” asked AnaLeyna. “I want to sing ‘Free Your Mind’ by En Vogue.” Her sisters were fine with that choice, and without losing all of their endearing awkwardness, they start to harmonize like pros. Well, because they are, of course. “We’re here to tell you it’s okay, things happen.” AnaLeyna told me. “No matter what the latest fashion trend is, be yourself.” 

Erotic string art. (And just like that, your holiday gift list is taken care of)

Andrew Lam
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2
Erotic string art. (And just like that, your holiday gift list is taken care of)

Pop quiz, secular Jews: when does Hannukah start? If the question is inspiring sweaty palms and twitchy elf ears, the message is clear: it’s time to get started on that shopping list. For the pervs on your list, the answer is clear. Kevin L. Muth’s X-rated, blacklight-ready DIY string art kits.

Right? The kits are the 2011 version of Muth’s boob-and-penis laden shag pillow packages, which we were all over last year. For $25, your horndog loved one can punch, pattern, and stitch their way to some top shelf art work, perfect for hanging alongside one’s favorite velvet painting of the woman in the fur bikini and possibly positioned so that it is visible through that beaded curtain entry way into one’s love den. Order by Monday, December 19 and your trick will recieve their gift on time. After that, you can pay an extra fee for expediated shipping. 

It appears at the moment that selection is limited to “hetero,” but if your lucky gift recipient is of the same-sexual orientation, feel free to cop them a nice girl-on-girl or all-boy handjob scene that Muth made available last year on those aforementioned shag pillows. 

Other randy gift ideas? Well there’s always…

– The candy nipple tassels we touted in this year’s Guardian Holiday Guide

– A heartbreakingly lovely and minimal bra from the UK’s Coco de Mer (or one of the line’s ceramic butt plugs)

– A candy cane dildo

– What the hell, why not a sex toy for their dog

P.s., Hannukah starts on Tuesday the 20th. 

Just gimme the nudes: Art Basel’s pervy side

Andrew Lam
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2

I dare you to lay your fingers on a city that’s sexier than Miami. The whole urban area is one big infinity pool — Cuban dancing, too-much-is-not-enough cleavage, shiny shirts, flirting in traffic jams. Add Art Basel weekend, when the population of nubile arty types skyrockets and you have yourself an I-saved-my-money-up-to-blow-it-here powder keg. Small wonder that the Miami Convention Center was packed with nudes and nakeds last weekend. Art’s a great excuse to be pervy.

The Convention Center was sexy on Saturday, Dec. 3. There was this vibrating hush in the cavernous building, the result of a massive group of people (the show attracted 50,000 people over the course of four days, according to official festival numbers) trying to be quiet. But it was hard to be quiet when you wanted to yelp in pleasure every 15 minutes. A voluptuous python curling sleepily around a brother from another mother (the latter attached to another man’s crotch). A classic Helmut Newton starlet, leaning coquettishly on a hot rod, Hollywood sign evident in the background. 

From a pure beauty standpoint, what can beat a nude? Like food porn, images of the tropics, and cuddly kitty portraiture, the art of the nude necessitates no graduate level art history seminar to appreciate. It’s flesh. You want to be on it. But you’re in one of the largest makeshift gallery spaces in the world, so try to hid your aesthetic exuberance until the after-party. Lucky for you, there’s quite a few at Art Basel.

There was clothed art there too. I’ve already posted an exploration of Wynwood, Basel’s street art district. And you’ll definitely want to check out my trip to the SCOPE Festival for urban art and rhinestone hamburgers. Shh, there’s a naked in that one too. 

Unless otherwise noted, all images were on display at Art Basel Miami Beach

 


Occupy hip-hop

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Occupy hip-hop

caitlin@sfbg.com

LIT The Occupy movement, though it’s been criticized by many for the lack of racial diversity among protesters, has certainly attracted its share of black rappers. Here in the Bay, Boots Riley has been a vocal supporter, participating in Oakland’s November 2 general strike. On the other side of the country Occupy Wall Street has met Kanye West, not to mention music mogul Russell Simmons (okay, he’s not a rapper) making space in his predatory debit card-selling schedule to stage rants over the influence of lobbyists on the federal government. And how could forget the furor that erupted over Jay-Z’s line of OWS-inspired Rocawear T-shirts?

The admirable efforts of Boots notwithstanding, there was a time when all of hip-hop was going to save the world, not just sell its most vital revolutions for $22 a shirt. The time is ripe, it seems, for some books to pay homage to that fact. And although they vary in the specifics, there are a few that are doing just that.

THE PLOT AGAINST HIP HOP

By Nelson George

(Akashic Books, 176pp, paper, $15.95)

Hip hop academic par excellence Nelson George is occupying the bottom half of a computer screen for a Skype-conducted interview with the Guardian.

George’s latest novel (his third, though he’s better known for his non-fiction, including the seminal Death of Rhythm and Blues) follows the adventures of D. Hunter, a security guard from the projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Hunter is embroiled in the murder of Dwanye Robinson, a hip hop academic who bears more than a passing resemblance to George himself. To solve the crime, Hunter must plunge into the untoward world of the hip-hoperati — the movers and shakers and producers and makers that may or may not be out to annihilate the culture’s populist powers.

George isn’t an adherent of all the conspiracy theories in the book. But he is concerned about a “chill factor” that has artists considering the views of corporate sponsors before penning lyrics that speak truth to power.

“This stuff they’re making,” he says, speaking of today’s radio stars in his characteristically familiar tone (he is, after years of writing about them and producing VH1’s Hip Hop Honors awards show, on a first name basis with many of the big guns). “They’re not even hoping for art. They’re just hoping to sell sugar water, T-shirts — whatever Jay(-Z)’s selling this week. I don’t think people were feeling that way about L.L., Eazy E.

“There was a whole period when every success, every commercial was a cause for celebration,” he says. “Now, the whole game has to change.”

And in Occupy, he sees an opportunity. Emcees have made their way down to Zuccotti Park — and not just Simmons and Jigga. Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, and David Banner (of “Whisper Song” fame) have performed and listened at their local Occupy encampment. “I think this will goose people to deal with a lot of things that are going on,” says George.

Reading the rife-with-history Plot Against Hip-Hop can’t hurt one’s knowledge of the institutional forces behind what we hear on the radio. Says George before signing off: “Every book I write is a tool of education.”

THE LEGENDS OF HIP HOP

By Justin Bua

(Harper Design, 160pp, hardcover, $34.99)

Of course, not every one believes in the institutional approach to social change. Hip-hop artist and author Justin Bua follows the personal habit gospel. “Veganism, that would really change the world,” he says. “Everyone should have a garden if they can. When people lead, the leaders follow.”

This individualized vision of change makes sense in relation to Bua’s art. He is a portraitist, famous for “The DJ,” a print of which went viral in the college-dorm-room-poster sense of the word. Though he started out by painting jazz scenes, he created “The DJ” after convincing his distributor that there was a chance that hip-hop images would sell just as well. He was right — that initial foray turned out to be one of the top selling posters of all time.

His most recent project is a love ode to similarly meteoric rises: to the B-boys, graffiti artists, emcees, and producers that made it to the top of the pack. In Legends of Hip-Hop, Bua pairs his trademark expressive faces and limbs with kind-of journal entries that sum up what they to him, or to the world of hip-hop at large. Veganism doesn’t make an appearance — but that’s not to say the book is without social significance for him.

“These people are part of our history,” Bua says during his Guardian interview at vegan Mexican restaurant Gracias Madre. “It’s really in the tradition of the Grecos, the Raphaels, the Rubins.”

And where the old masters painted kings and queens, Bua paints Biggie and Queen Latifah. To Bronx-bred Bua, they are royalty and more than that, the meter sticks of our time. Hip-hop’s effects can even be seen in the Oval Office (President Obama’s is the face that concludes Legends of Hip-Hop).

Bua thinks this power can be harnessed. “If you look at all the money generated by hip-hop — that could change the world.” And by no means does he think that the animal-product-free lifestyle and that of beats and breaks are unrelated.

“I think being vegan is the ultimate expression of hip-hop,” he says before rattling off a list of dairy-free icons. (KRS-ONE, Russell Simmons, Dead Prez, DJ Qbert, and famous breakdancer Mr. Wiggles the are all vegans.) “It’s irreverent, subversive, truth — it’s about having a clear head and mind. The ultimate form of respect is to not eat each other. That’s fucking weird.”

SOME DAY, IT’LL ALL MAKE SENSE

By Common

(Atria Books, 320pp, hardcover, $25)

Common’s autobiography (which he penned with the help of ghostwriter Adam Bradley) debuted in the 20th spot of the New York Times’ hit parade. The book itself is heartrendingly earnest — you’ll find none of the sly jabs of Bua or George hidden among its pages. But in a way, it is the more personal ode to the curative powers of hip-hop than either of those authors’ tomes.

Putting aside the namedropping of ex-lovers (Erykah Badu) and current brothers (Kanye West), Some Day exposes a shocking truth. Common, he himself insists, is no more godly than the rest of us — he just chose the music as the rope that would pull him to that level. Sure, he wrote the woman-worshipping “The Light,” but don’t you still hear him using the word ‘bitch’?

Common has perhaps the most call of the three authors to strike out against Tea Party tomfoolery and mechanized mediocrity in American government. (Lest we forget, when Obama invited him to perform at the White House, the Fox News Palin-Hannity-O’Reilly cabal screeched he was a “vile rapper” in part due to his song for Assata Shakur — something he speaks frankly about.) He also seems to have realized something that many haven’t: hip-hop can be, in fact has proven itself to be, a tool towards whatever ends an artist has in mind.

The player shapes the game. Which is something, I fear, that will take a long time to start making sense to some.

You grow, girl?

Andrew Lam
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You grow, girl?

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The average celebrity autobiography follows an arc of learning and growing. The earnestly-made mistake — whether in the form of childhood shenanigan or adult infidelity — and then the ensuing redemption. But rarely do book-sized treatises emerge from the decision to leave the celebrity fold for the greener fields of bud agriculture. Leave it to the girl from the Blair Witch Project to produce that one.

You know Heather Donahue’s snotface. Apparently too well, because as she writes in her new memoir Grow Girl: Once Upon a Time She Made The Blair Witch Project, Then She Went to Pot. Literally (Gotham Books, 286pp., paper, $26) — score nothing for succinct subtitles — too many people took the movie’s faux-reality premise seriously. Casting agents, it seems, couldn’t shake the feeling that this professional actress was merely a kid caught with a Camcorder when a malignant forest spirit got a bee in its bonnet.

But then she met a guy from Nuggettown (an actual place, renamed for anonymity). What ensued was a romance that left Donahue the proud renter of a secluded house in the wood and enough pot-growing equipment that she had to grow to stay afloat financially.

Such a pat story! Throughout Donahue’s at times overly flowery, but on the whole eminently readable narrative, the growth of her fellow (capital G) “Girls” mirrors her struggle against the confines of society — the larger, non-weed growing one but also more interestingly, the grower (capital C) Community of Nuggettown.

For not all is hunky-dory in the land of impressive tri-cone crystal formation. Women in Nuggettown are relegated to supporting roles — the kept “pot wife,” the “grow girl” that is often bossed about by her XY-chromosomed peers. On the cover of the book Donahue is clutching the top of a healthy bud plant to her naked breasts, a stereotypical male fantasy if there ever was one — but it’s ultimately all about empowerment. She blooms from a shattered ex-actress to a fuller human being, all under the Mondo Reflector she installs herself on the grow room ceiling.

One approach the medical marijuana movement might benefit from is humanizing its growers. Imagine a commercial like those for Florida oranges or California cheeses. A proud farmer fluffs up Mary Jane’s leafy bustle while a down-home voiceover plays in the background (“High CBD levels, if you want ’em. Donchaknow.”) Yes, your friendly medicine agriculturist is a person too, says Grow Girl. Possibly a person that reinforces gender stereotypes through a strict hippie code of conduct slash double standard, but a person with debts and passions and doubts nonetheless.

Donahue humanizes the cannabis industry. Some farmers, she writes, are making enough money to keep Nuggettown’s kayak store in business, but any conspicuous consumption masks the fact that it’s not really advisable for smalltown weed people to be saving their ducats in your run-of-the-mill local credit union. These are moms-and-pops, guys!

The book is slightly dated. The storyline ends in Nuggettown’s hope for a persecution-free Barack Obama presidency (Obama’s very promises rendered all the more poignant for today’s reader, informed of the President’s about-face on the issue of raiding state-legal growing facilities). For a brief moment, it seemed like cannabis would slough off the shackles of social stigma and claim to an honored position in our medical establishment.

That didn’t happen, of course — the feds raided Mendocino County’s Northstone Organics in October of this year, for chrissakes. But Mary Jane, still she rises, as does Donahue by book’s end, after agricultural disasters, horrendous break-ups, and shattered expectations.

So, Grow Girl is great if you like your marijuana stories imbued with a general sense of struggle. (And what other kind, really, exists these days?)

Art Basel frontlines: SCOPEing out Friday

Andrew Lam
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Guardian photos by Paula Connelly

Art Basel is not the only show in Miami’s town this weekend. In addition to every gallery, boutique, and busy streetcorner hosting its own opening of varying degrees of importance, there are approximately 2,100 smaller art fairs going on (give or take). One of these is SCOPE, which I heard about first because urban art trendsetter SF gallery White Walls was trucking some canvases of ABOVE’s stenciled hip-hop dancers– and street artist ROA’s drawings of animals in capitivity, etched on wooden crates — down to show. (CORRECTION: ROA’s publicist has informed us that his installation is not wood etchings. His mediums are enamel, charcoal, China ink, aerosol and acrylic on found wood….no crates.) 

But to get into SCOPE, I first had to make it past the Alpine climber.

And I’m not talking Avery Lawrence’s “Moving a Tree,” though his real-life treadmilling amongst the artourists was a refreshing welcome to SCOPE’s cool white-tent embrace.

“Hi! I’m hear for press reg — ” I began, but didn’t take into account there was an older, wealthier European man with three likewise situated adults with him, behind me. 

“WELL WHAT IS THIS?” he bellowed, and the young woman at the front desk switched her attention like some money-seeking automaton. “Hello! This is SCOPE Festival!” 

“Is it mainly… emerging artists?” ventured the woman in tow with the man, who was now at my elbow at the front desk and had briefly given me a look of consolation when he realized he had asserted his importance over mine. Whatever, they paid first and then the other guy at the counter took pity on me and let me in. 

Everyone clucks when I tell them this story later in the wind of a South Beach hotel terrace. Were you trying to buy art? Well then. SCOPE, on its own, is responsible for $100 million in art sales each year. It concentrates on more edgy art — statement pieces, if you will. And there was some fantastically beautiful things on sales.

Here is the art fair to attend if you are interested in purchasing a life-size replica of a taco shack (Kenton Parker), multi-level traditional Iranian drawings wherein size-appropriate photographs of modern Iranians seamlessly collaged in (Soody Sharifi), Isabel Samaras‘ “Nuthatches With Attitude” (they’re wearing NWA hats and dookie gold and they’re adorable). But also, a rhinestone hamburger. 

This was the most serious buyer-seller discussion I heard, and yes I took photos of it with my Droid (above!) The couple were deciding between the basketball-sized hamburger, opened Lifesavers pack, or Chanel perfume bottle, all shiny and glorious. The Chanel bottle was beginning to rise above the hamburger, and the salewoman smoothly informed them “this one is $26,000. You see, the artist applies each stone individually. It really is amazing.” Reflecting on how little I wanted to see that puppy installed in someone’s home (or dressing room, e-blargh!) I moved on to eavesdrop on other, less trainwrecky people.

Later on the same day, a few blocks from SCOPE, we wandered into the Rubell Family Collection, currently hosting an exhibit featuring a room wallpapered in full Budweiser sixpacks (old label design) and sculptures of gravestones with putt-putt holes on the grass before them, human hands protruding from their flanks holding paper cups where their gravestone ears would be. It is called “American Exuberance,” but judging from my experience at SCOPE you could most likely have the same experience at any of the art fairs in Miami this weekend. Duh.  

Art Basel frontlines: Thursday night in Wynwood

Andrew Lam
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All I did was program in the coordinates of a wall my friend was painting in the midst of Miami’s mega Art Basel weekend and all of a sudden I’m in mural heaven. Going traffic snail-slow down the Wynwood neighborhood’s Second Avenue (at one time a Puerto Rican enclave, now a place where corner restaurants are popping up with floor-length windows that display spindly humanoid statues clad in multi-colored sweater), all I could see were flood light-illuminated muralists in the finishing stages of turning the street into the most painted lane I’ve ever seen.

The art galaxy has descended upon Miami for the week. It’s a big blender-fuck of small dresses, dyed eyebrows, free drinks (hell yes), and mmhmm, ART. You can read a little bit about the general mayhem in Erick Lyle’s two–part story for the Guardian about 2009’s festival — arts writer Matt Sussman and I will be covering the festival for y’all this year.

Wynwood is serving as ground zero for the street art world, which explains why Art Basel established the “Wynwood Walls” courtyard in 2009 in the neighborhood, though since then side streets and new galleries have added their own murals to the week’s list of must-sees. 

This year, Wynwood Walls has been decked out by names that even the most high brow art lover will recognize: Shepard Fairey, the Brazilian whimsy-worlders Os Gemeos. Retna, the early front-runner for the festival’s 2011 street art darling, has a massive wall here, plastered with his recognizable columns of symbols and big block painting. 

Danilo Gonzalez, a Dominican who moved to Miami two years ago to open his gallery at 2722 Second Avenue, says the weekend is a marked difference from the rest of the year when “it’s really quiet.” Though his gallery featured three modern Dominican artist (including his own thicket of wooden abstract shapes, “Forest”) he says a lot of the art scene here was “too fancy” for his tastes.

Wynwood’s residents get in on the action too — kind of. Though signs of neighborhood art are not forthcoming, many of the neighbors themselves have set up informal valet systems and viewing parties. They’re probably hoping that girl in the Gaga heels is going to trip in front of their lawn. I kind of am too… 

 

Ongoing research

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Ongoing research

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is better known for its scientific research on hallucinogenic drugs than on marijuana. That’s because the federal government is holding, but it won’t share with the decades-old nonprofit.

“The National Institute of Drug Abuse is ‘the National Institute of Drug Abuse,'” said MAPS director of field development Brian Wallace in a recent phone interview with the Guardian. “It’s not ‘the National Institute of Drug Research’. Its members are focused on the abuse of drugs, not their potential applications.”

Wallace — who was in the midst of preparing for “Cartographie Psychedelica,” next week’s MAPS 25th Anniversary Conference in downtown Oakland — was speaking about the NIDA’s decades of refusal to sell clinical study-grade cannabis to his organization. MAPS’ mission is to learn more about the potential of psychedelics and marijuana in treating ailments that Western medicine has proven ineffective in mitigating.

“It’s a conflict of interest that they have the monopoly on that cannabis,” said Wallace, adding that a farm located on the outskirts of the University of Mississippi is the only enterprise legally permitted by the federal government to produce buds.

The continued rebuff means that studies that could potentially prove the medicinal properties of cannabis are impossible to conduct. Not that there aren’t better buds out there. “Any medical marijuana patient has access to better weed in California’s dispensaries,” says Wallace, noting that government-approved weed isn’t available with the same diversity of cannabinoid levels.

Ironically, MAPS has had more luck obtaining MDMA for its clinical studies than marijuana, which they hope someday to test in post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans.

But the group has had its share of victories to celebrate over the last few decades. Enter the anniversary conference, five days of lectures, workshops, and parties that will assemble drug experts to speak on the past, present, and future of drug research. The event will feature a banquet to honor the progenitors of holotropic breathwork, a self-healing technique that involves quickened breathing and music engineered to take listeners to another stage of consciousness. The conference’s “most festive occasion,” according to Wallace, will be Saturday, Dec. 10’s late-night “Medicine Ball,” featuring glitchy DJs like LA’s Sugarpill and Canadian soul vocalist Ill-Esha.

Of course, it won’t be all fun and games at the Oakland City Center Marriott. The days’ programs are filled with hallucinogenic and marijuana-themed lectures and workshops. Cannabis enthusiasts will be stoked on opportunities to learn about the cutting-edge of research theories, even if the government is being prohibitive about testing the theories out. A full day’s workshop on the science and politics of medical marijuana is planned featuring doctors and activists for Friday, Dec. 9. Those unwilling to sit through that many hours of dishing on dank can check out University of California San Francisco Osher Center’s Donald Abrams, who will be giving a run-down of the past two decades of medical marijuana research in a lecture on the afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 10.

Wallace hopes that the conference will provide a learning opportunity — even to those who are not died-in-the-wool drug users.

“We have people that come dressed in a suit and tie and we have people that come dressed in tie-dye,” he says of his organization’s reach. “The MAPS community is expanding and growing to be much more expansive, to the point that a veteran who is affected with PTSD will know about the work that we do.”

“CARTOGRAPHIE PSYCHEDELICA: MAPS 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE”

Dec. 8-12, all access conference pass $310–$455

Medicine Ball Party

Dec. 10, 8 p.m., $25–$35

Oakland Marriott Civic Center

www.maps.org/25

 

It’s all in the angle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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It’s all in the angle

caitlin@sfbg.com

SEX “It’s hard when you’re making out with a babe and it’s really hot and you realize you’ve been videotaping a wall for two minutes.”

No one ever said that making self-filmed feminist porn was easy. But for local self-proclaimed “slut kitten” Maxine Holloway, it’s an important — and incredibly arousing — process. Holloway is the newest webmistress on Femina Potens gallery founder and sex activist Madison Young’s Feminist Porn Network. Holloway’s sub-site Woman’s POV (www.thewomanspov.com) is perhaps the first to feature only shoots which are filmed by the actors themselves — the letters in the title standing in for “point of view,” of course.

Hence, her phone interview with the Guardian last week had turned to tricky camera angles. It can be incredibly difficult to film your own orgasm, Holloway says. But she’s learned a lot since her first POV scene (in case you were wondering, it involved a passel of “Italian babes” and a hotel room). The key, she says, lies in reconfiguring the way you look at having sex on camera — which inevitably involves spending a lot more time in your viewfinder.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. “You see things that you wouldn’t normally have the time to focus on,” Holloway explains. “Twitching fingers, a hand on a thigh that looks amazing.”

And she’s hoping that fingers will walk to the site to check out its clothes-on segments, also. “We have these really sexy, amazing, vivacious women on our website, and I want people to lust and jerk off to them. But I also want them to hear what they have to say.” Woman’s POV has posted interviews with Kink.com fetish model Eden Alexander on what it’s like to work in the porn industry. Holloway has penned educational letters to the syphilis infection (Hitler, Van Gogh, Beethoven, and Lincoln, it says, were all rumored to be victims of the STI), and conducted an interview with erotic comedian and dandigrrl AfroDisiac.

“We’re showing the wholeness of what makes women attractive,” she says. “It’s not just their breasts or how they fuck, it’s what’s on their minds.” Bay Area women will have a chance to be featured on the site at Mission Control’s monthly queer sex-dance party Velvet on Fri/2 — Holloway and Young will be trucking out a dirty videobooth for self-filmed couplings (or singlings), not to mention conducting a workshop on the empowering and relationship-boosting aspects of filming your hook-ups with a partner. It will be a “fun and safe place for people to explore their exhibitionism on camera,” promises Holloway.

This kind of multi-lateral approach to sexuality is just what Young intended when she started her first website, Madison Bound, in 2005. Although she was already a successful sex performer who had been curating sex-art shows at Femina Potens for five years — having recently pulled together “White Picket Fences”, a multi-disciplinary look at what family and future mean to local queer artists and sex workers — she found the web to be a particularly useful tool when it came to advocating alternative sexualities.

“The Internet has the capacity to reach a lot more people,” she told the Guardian on a recent afternoon in the large, white Mission-Bernal Heights studio that is serving as the Femina Potens office space while the gallery is between brick and mortar locations. “I’m a girl from Southern Ohio and I’m always thinking about the girl from back there.” Despite her central role in a burgeoning alt sex community here in the Bay Area, she feels a responsibility to make images of queer sex available for Middle America. “You’re just not going to have this stuff happen in front of you in Iowa.” Other subsites on the Feminist Porn Network include Perversions of Lesbian Lust, a slutty take on lesbian pop novels, and Femifist, a site devoted to the much-maligned practice of fisting.

Young has known Holloway for years — Holloway has hosted many of Femina Potens’ “Other View” panel discussions on BDSM, consent, and the anti-rape movement — and over the past two has watched her develop a distinctive voice when it comes to directing porn. “I wanted Woman’s POV to be a place where she could explore that voice,” she says. “It’s super empowering for [the webmistresses and actors] because they’re able to find out what they think is hot. Women aren’t usually put in that position to be able to find what turns them on. People are like ‘oh my god that’s hot. Oh my god that’s me!'”

That kind of discovery, Holloway says, isn’t just sexy — it strikes back at the disempowering way that society treats sex workers. She mentions that she sees the site as an important step in the sex workers’ rights movement. When asked to elaborate, she says that the movement’s about “the ability to support yourself safely and creatively.” In other words, it’s not enough to have a safe working environment for adult film actors — although that’s important too. It’s important that sex workers have the opportunity to portray the kind of intimacy that turns them on. What better way to do that than hand them the camera? 

VELVET

Fri/2 8 p.m.-2 a.m., $20 free membership required

Mission Control

Private location, see website for details

www.missioncontrolsf.org

www.womanspov.com 

 

Zero-calorie pleasures: McSweeney’s children’s imprint takes over a gallery

Andrew Lam
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There is no better guilty pleasure than children’s book art. Calorie-free, family-friendly, welcoming characters. Mixed with the verbaciousness (I made up that word for the occasion) of McSweeney’s, this is prime post-Thanksgiving eye candy. Y’know, when you’re too food-hungover to delve overmuch in character and plot. This is why we saved the above slideshow of images from McSweeney’s upcoming art opening (Dec. 3) at Electric Works for a sleepy Nov. 25 Friday morning, enjoy.

Among the gems of “McSweeney’s McMullens: Artwork from Children’s Books, plus 1,032 Illustrated Lunch Bags”: Jordan Crane’s Keep Our Secrets, a book that mimics everyone’s favorite T-shirt from the 1990s, the one that changed colors when you breathed on it. Hypercolor! 

Hypercolor is an apt word to describe the rest of the offerings: Amy Martin’s ecstatic illustrations for Symphony City, the ever-lovely Clare Rojas‘ reticent creatures that she’s appropriated for Shelia Heti’s We Need a Horse. Peruse the offerings above and know this — there will also be paper bag art. The images come from books already cobbled together by McSweeney’s children’s imprint McMullens, and some hail from tomes still in the cobbling process. Throughout the duration of the exhibit celebrity readings will be held, open to any hipster reader kids willing to sit and listen. And there will be a gift shop on premises. Think lots of books and the standard nonsensical McSweeney’s swag — banana slicers and fish-scrubbing gloves, I hear. 

Rounding out the exhibit, in the “deluxe reading room” supplied for the young’ns, are paper bags. These are creations by Robert Barnes, another example of prosaic items brought into greatness by a little doodle. There will be hundreds of them. 

So, not to bite on L.E. Leone overmuch but, new favorite art exhibit. 

 

“McSweeney’s McMullens: Artwork from Children’s Books, plus 1,032 Illustrated Lunch Bags”

Dec. 3 – Jan. 7

Opening reception: Dec. 3, 4-8 p.m., free

Electric Works 

130 Eighth St., SF

(415) 626-5496

www.sfelectricworks.com

 

 

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