Caitlin Donohue

DJ Jazzy Jeff brings the “Summertime” to SF

Andrew Lam
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Jeffery Allan Townes has never been a man of many words. Big Will was the one given to the neon pyrotechnic dancing on the show and in videos, after all. So it’s not surprising that now, over 20 years deep into his DJing career (which brings him to Mighty on Fri/21), Townes – a.k.a. DJ Jazzy Jeff – is not given to overexplaining his steez.

Hey Jazz, what’s up with your set these days? You’ve been reaching past the early ’90s hip-hop classics to diversify your time in the booth as of late, what are some of your favorite tracks to spin these days? You dig jazz (obviously), what’s up with that?

“I have a love of all music. Classics may be my fave though, just because there are so many to choose from,” was Jazz’s taciturn reply. DJs love music! Fantastic. But what’s snark ever done for us — Jazz has a decades-long reputation of being a high quality beat-bringer that started in Philly house parties, trucked through the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air days, and continued to thrive even when Will Smith moved on to summer blockbuster ass kicking. In 1990 (right as the TV show was taking off), Jazz started his own production company, A Touch of Jazz, that was responsible for a slew of platinum careers, including that of R&B poet Jill Scott and funkster Musiq Soulchild.  

And he’s still scratching. Jazz was famous for pioneering DJ moves like the transform scratch, a tricksy manuever involving repeated movement of the crossfader. In 2009, he joined the ranks of scratch legends Grandmaster Flash and DJ Shadow on the X-Box hit DJ Hero. Jazz tries to use his powers on the ones and twos for good: “I want to make people forget all of there problems and have a great  time. I want to take them on some sort of musical journey,” he wrote.

Multi-dimensional career aside, we were still gonna ask him about the Will Smith brood. Rumors are that Jazz will be producing a “Parents Just Don’t Understand” remix with none other than “Whip Your Hair” 10-year old “good as her dad” Willow Smith. He was coy about their collaboration, only saying that he hasn’t started working with her – yet – but he did sound impressed about Willow and brother “Karate Kid” Jaden’s genetic mastery of show biz. “I tease Will that they’re “The Incredibles” with all the talent they have,” Jazz lol’s.

There’s always gonna be that “Parents Don’t Understand”- “Summertime” laurel hanging over Jazz’s headphones – which, unlike a lot of celebrities who continue to be known for the glory days way back when doesn’t seem to bother him. “I’m not mad at the association. I don’t care why people know me or like me — as long as I can grab them through music it’s all good.”

Which makes sense – when you’re a DJ famous for making music that makes people get loose, wear their baseball hats rakishly askew, and dance around to, you’re not exactly trying to escape your reputation. Or get overmuch concerned with talking about it, it would seem. 

 

DJ Jazzy Jeff 

Fri/21 10 p.m.- late, $20

The Mighty

119 Utah, SF

www.119utah.com

 

Hot sexy events January 19-25

Andrew Lam
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1

We’re normally asses up here at the weekly sex events column, but for the purpose of January 19-26, we’re asking you to lift another body part altogether: your pinky. That’s because tonight (Weds/19) you’ll get the chance to learn about an entirely refined BDSM social function, that being the tea party. Ms. Margaret, who used to coordinate educational services for the smOdyssey website as well as the  Folsom Fringe conference, runs the classy “Tea With a Twist” affair with long-time slave Erich. Rumor has it she never takes her tea the same way twice, for which you will learn the reason at this lace tablecloth-leather dress how-to affair.

 

Tea With a Twist

Why must all BDSM parties take place in a dungeon? What of the mistress that requires some amount of refinement and grace – not to mention finger food? These classy souls are invited to this primer on dom-sub tea time, sculpted by Ms. Margaret’s “velvet glove over steel hand” mentality. 

Weds/19 8 – 10 p.m., $15

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


Pits

Raise your hand if you’re an armpit man. (See how that works?) Chaps has got the jock-tastic bash for you this week. Pits is part of their fetish night series, so no longer will you be wondering if that hottie with the body holding the Jager bomb will mind if you want to grab him by the under-bicep. He’s here too, ya know – just be prepared to give as you get, gentlemen.

Weds/19 

Chaps 

1225 Folsom, SF

(415) 255-2427

www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com


Radical Love Workshop

At some point in our lives, we’ve all wished we had this line on our resume: “revolutionary activist of the heart.” Sure you deserve it, sweets – but Wendy-O-Matic can say it with a straight face. Ms. O-Matic has spent years standing strong and educating on behalf of the polyamorous community, and now she’s presenting this workshop at Mission Control on the ins-and-outs of loving whoever you damn well please, and sharing them with whomsoever you see fit — with a basis on love and intimacy, not picking the right music for the orgy.

Thurs/20 7-9 p.m., $25 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Community Porn Forum

Skin flick performers get together to discuss the upcoming Cal OSHA meeting (the next is Feb/8) regarding occupational safety measures in the industry. The perfect chance, you XXXers, to learn about how you can tell the regulating body what you need to feel safe on the job – particularly regarding condom usage, a hot topic at recent meetings on the subject. MSM (male on male) performers especially encouraged to attend.

Fri/21 3 – 5 p.m., free

St. James’ Infirmary

1372 Mission, SF

(415) 554-8494

www.stjamesinfirmary.org


10th Annual Butch-Femme Holiday Party

Get all festive and feisty at this sexy winter ball. Of course, this being an all-lesbo affair, all manners of dress are welcome for the dancing and drinking – festive wear would be appropriate, but so too would be whatever ‘fits you wanna rock for the evening. Event organizers would be thrilled to death if volunteers want to bring finger food, refreshments, ice, or wood for the outdoor fire. Outdoor fire? Now we’re talking.

Sat/22 6 p.m. – midnight

Humanist Hall

411 28th St., Oakl.

www.erobay.com

email: butchfemmesocials@yahoogroups.com


Lip Service

Smack, suck, caress – and that’s just before the tongue gets activated. Kissing is one of those arts that can get passed over in pursuit of the all-powerful O, but it’s one of the most important (and public spaces friendly) weapon in your arsenal of sexual equanimity. Let sex educator Tracy Bartlett show you the ropes course to a good make-out sesh – grab your partner and get to mashin’.

Mon/24 6 – 8 p.m., $40-45/pair

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com

 

 

 

 

 

Gorgeously Gorey

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Gorgeously Gorey

caitlin@sfbg.com

NIGHTLIFE Actually, the Edwardian Ball — now in its 11th year of gothic, ghoulish, glorious celebration — isn’t strictly a gathering of period costume nerds. In fact, those who focus on historical accuracy, says event cofounder Justin Katz, are kind of missing the point. “Much to their frustration, the founders of the ball don’t care if your collar is Edwardian or not,” he chuckles.

That’s because, as any good SF costume freak will tell you, the original Edward of this shindig is Gorey, not Windsor. In its first years, it was actually named the Edward Gorey Ball, a theatrical homage to the work of the macabre writer and illustrator of such classics as the A-to-Z book of child demise, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. This tome was read at the ball’s first incarnation, which was hosted by Rosin Coven, the pagan lounge ensemble that has graced the stage each subsequent year.

Why Gorey? “Once we began to explore his work, we really enjoyed his ‘untelling’ of stories,” Katz continues. “Almost nothing happens in his books!” Which isn’t exactly true, of course, but his slight and spindly, grave-studded plot lines seem slightly unsuited for nightlife action, especially the bedazzled, bedazzling theatrical productions that Mike Gaines’ Vau de Vire Society circus-dance troupe so spectacularly gives birth to on stage at the ball.

“It isn’t the easiest thing to base a dramatic stage show on,” Gaines admits. “But Gorey left [his stories] up for interpretation. He was a real theatrical cat.” Gorey was a noted ballet fan, and his illustrated landscapes could easily double as sets. And if he did indeed mean for his creepy-cute stories to be blown into phantasmagoric carnivals someday, then he is smiling down on the Edwardian Ball.

But as far as the event goes these days, Gorey stories are but one of its attractions. In addition to all the offstage attractions at the ball (which has burgeoned into a weekend-long affair that includes an expo of steampunk wonder-toys, entire floors of the Regency Ballroom given over to vendors of satin and skeletal finery, even a Friday night-only Ferris Wheel to be erected inside the ballroom itself), the event has become a group therapy session for SF’s costume-addicted party people. Well, a therapy session in which the addicted bust out their most flagrant behavior and congratulate each other on having done so.

Top among Gaines’ favorite get-ups from years past was an homage to Gashlycrumb‘s Winnie, the poor tot who met her maker after becoming “embedded in ice.” The intrepid Edwardian in question encased herself in frosted Plexiglass for the evening’s festivities. Others choose more technically Edwardian-accurate ensembles, and others still will use the event as an excuse to wear whatever the hell gets their creative juices flowing: goth-steampunk-geisha, anyone?

This inclusivity most likely explains the success of the ball. Katz mentions that one is likely to see one of the aforementioned period fundamentalists having a cuppa with a giant grasshopper, one table over from a couple who “look like they just crawled out of a nightclub,” all in a steam-powered tea garden. And then they’ll all join in a round of ballroom dancing that takes place near the main stage on Saturday. One mustn’t forget about the ballroom dancing. *

EDWARDIAN BALL AND WORLD’S FAIR

Fri/21 “World’s Fair”: 8 p.m.– 2 a.m., $28–$75

Sat/22 bazaar: noon– 6 p.m., free; ball 8 p.m.– 2 a.m., $38–$85

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

www.edwardianball.com

 

A fiction writer that beats FOX News for war coverage

Andrew Lam
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0

Kudos to the New Yorker for bringing Daniel Alarcón to the attention of the eastern rag’s audience. The Oakland writer is one of the three West coast scribes from the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 “young” writers anthology who will be reading at City Lights Books on Weds/19. I suggest you go check up on the event – if not for the magazine’s time-proven track record of tagging future lit stars, then because the more people in this country who read Alarcón, the less likely we are to plunge our country into madness.

Alarcón’s are war stories, but not in the sense that we grow up with in America, where the term brings to mind bombs and sharp, whizzing death. Alarcon draws on his cultural memory of home country Peru (where he left for Birmingham, Alabama when he was three years old) to speak of the more prosaic nature of conflict through the eyes of people to whom it is brought, not those that strap on uniforms and board helicopters to go to it. 

Take the novel he’s best known for, Lost City Radio (Harper Collins, 288 pages, $24.95). It takes place – in the grand tradition of Latin American epics — in a mythic town, or at least an unnamed city. A war has raged for years, resulting in the disappearance of radio star Norma’s husband, Rey. An orphaned boy from the city shows up and with him an end to her endless, ragged wonderings about what happened to Rey. Every one of the book’s characters is struggling to deal with the real nature of war: a messy business, sure — but not one where the women, children, and elderly are left at home, as they are in many of our country’s depictions of conflict.

There are few gunshots fired in Lost City Radio. Instead, the scene of war is rendered in social notes – illicit dance parties held after curfew, names you can and can’t say on the radio, acceptance of loss, confusion. The story that Alarcón contributes to 20 Under 40 is Second Lives, which tells the story of a Peruvian family who sends their eldest son away from inflation and civil war to America, where he promptly immerses himself in the American life, which is to say he starts water-skiing, job-hopping, and stops writing home to his mom, dad, and brother.

What would our wars — including the one we are waging on immigration — be like if the general populace of our country saw it this way, instead of through the clip art pyrotechnics of TV news channels? 

Plus, Alarcón is the only author I’ve ever heard to name-check a seminal tome from my childhood, The Phantom Tollbooth as being an influential one in his life. Plus, he lives in Oakland. The night’s other readers, Chris Adrian and Yiyun Li, both hail from the Bay too. The last time the New Yorker pulled this same anthology stunt in 1999 they pegged Junót Diaz, Jonathan Franzen, and Jhumpa Lahiri before their ascent into best-sellerdom, so it’ll be perfect if you’re the before-the-curve type about the national fiction scene.

 

20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker

Weds/19 7 p.m., free

City Lights Books

261 Columbus, SF

(415) 362-4921

www.citylights.com

 

Faces of debt

Andrew Lam
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0
Faces of debt

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED In this weeks’ issue, Rebecca Bowe examines rising tuition and its effect on this generation of Californian students. Here, we profile three scholars that are dealing with very real repercussions from their student debt load.

 

BEN GLEASON, 31

Mills College, teaching credential

Oberlin College, American literature major

Total debt: $25,000

Ben Gleason remembers the day that he applied for his $10,000 student loan from Citibank to finance his teaching credential tuition. “I got it done online within a half hour. I didn’t have to talk to anybody or write an essay — easy money with severe consequences.” The consequences of such a serious financial decision — sans the aid of any counseling from either his school or bank? Gleason’s eventual decision to leave classroom teaching.

It’s not an uncommon story for this generation of teaching school graduates, in a state where teaching salaries are hardly keeping pace with rising tuition. Gleason started working as an ESL teacher in Richmond’s underfunded West Contra Costa Unified School District right after graduating from Mills College. His student loans were overwhelming — a problem that was exacerbated when he took a trip to Guatemala to work and improve his ability to communicate with his Spanish-speaking pupils. To remain afloat financially, Gleason applied for a forbearance on his loans and was surprised to return home after two years to a loan that had gone up by 25 percent due to interest. “I was really, really screwed,” he recalls.

Gleason didn’t feel like there was any way he could go back to his teaching salary, so to support his new wife (the two met in Guatemala) and daughter, he decided to start his own business with the help of an old boss — a private firm that helps reeducate state government workers on sustainability issues.

That means one less qualified teacher for low-income Californian children. And Gleason still has 15 to 20 years left of debt payments. “I wish that there was a more systemic way to solve this problem,” says the former public educator.

 

ANNE MOSTAD-JENSEN, 28

Santa Clara University, law degree

College of St. Catherine St. Paul, library sciences

Concordia University St. Paul, international studies and history major

Total debt (estimated at graduation): $120,000

Anne Mostad-Jensen and her twin sister grew up in a small Minnesota town. They attended the same college, Concordia St. Paul, where they both majored in history and international studies. After that, they went on to College of St. Catherine (also in St. Paul) to get their master’s degrees in library science. But then their paths diverged. Her sister traveled to Denmark in pursuit of her Danish citizenship — their father is Danish — and was able to complete her master’s in a country where the government pays for most of its citizens’ educations. Mostad-Jensen remained in Minnesota, to continue on in the American university system.

What kind of difference has the move made in these women’s lives? Try $65,000 of student debt. That’s because Mostad-Jensen’s sister, even after completing her master’s and attending one of the Icelandic languages programs she’s currently applying for, will only owe roughly $55,000 worth of loans — all from her time at American schools. Mostad-Jensen, who is now attending law school at Santa Clara University, will owe $120,000 by the time she graduates. “I’ve never had any consumer debt, but I’ve always told myself not to pass up educational opportunities just because I didn’t have the cash on hand,” she says.

Mostad-Jensen wants to work at the intersection of international copyright and technology law, possibly in a law library, a specialty career that benefits from degrees in multiple areas of study. She counts herself lucky that homeownership and a family aren’t her immediate goals. “Having a family — I just don’t understand how people do it with debt these days.” Her Midwestern community values come to the fore when she talks about the U.S. government’s inability to provide Americans with affordable education. “Isn’t the government an extension of the community? Europeans, the lack of stress they have by not having to pay out of pocket for health care and education — I mean they can actually live their lives.”

 

RAMON QUINTERO, 32

UC Berkeley, geography major

Total debt: $25,000

Ramon Quintero is a UC Berkeley student activist, but he wasn’t always radicalized around debt issues. “I didn’t come to Berkeley because of its activist reputation. I became an activist because of my situation,” he says. Quintero could no longer pay for his student housing and wound up living in his 1979 Toyota truck with camper shell on the streets of Berkeley, sending his baby daughter home to live with her grandmother.

Quintero came to Berkeley via Southern California, where his family landed after immigrating from Sinaloa, Mexico, when he was 11. He attended community college to get his core credits before coming to Berkeley, where rapidly rising tuition fees are putting a strain on the student community. Although he is a legal resident, Quintero was especially concerned about the effect that the rising cost of education was having on undocumented students.

And, of course, on his leaky camper shell roof. He sprang into action, driving a truck that he calls Santa Rita, to all nine UC campuses, encouraging fellow students to paint art on it that spoke to their concerns for the future of public education. Quintero was arrested twice for his roles in campus protests and he and Santa Rita were profiled in The New York Times and several California newspapers. Suddenly, the university found space for him in student housing.

“I saw the hypocrisy in the system,” says Quintero, who has fulfilled all his UC coursework for graduation but has convinced a professor to hold credit for one of his courses for another semester so he could go on a research fellowship to Madrid. The fellowship, he says, is crucial for his application to grad schools — another step toward fulfilling life goals he doesn’t think would be possible if he has to begin assuming the burden of his student debt. 

 

Hot sexy events: January 12-18

Andrew Lam
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0
Hot sexy events: January 12-18

Historically speaking, it’s good to be a geek. Think about it – has any era in history more readily rewarded those whose aptitudes shine in the areas of minutiae and social awkwardness? Thanks to the Internet, every geek has an audience – and thanks to the Internet there’s the Internet, a land where technological know-how gets you feature film bio-flicks and material fortune beyond your wildest science fiction fantasies. Basically, geeks get laid these days. Definitely prime time for Bawdy Storytelling to hold an evening of live show-and-tell entitled “Sex Wonk,” (Weds/12) wherein those who are super gungho about the old in-and-out can revel in their geekiness – and that Star Trek hand sign takes on new levels of perversion.

 

“A Penis Show”

Jack Davis crochets penis. Neither more nor less – the artist has whipped up hundreds, if not thousands of the little fellers since his first show upon graduating college. Thanks to his work, you can surround yourself with colorful, crochet cock and balls at Magnet, the free sexual health center in the Castro – take one home to make your apartment walls stand a little more erect. It’ll look great with your ’70s porn pillows!

Through Jan. 31 

Magnet 

4122 18th St., SF

(415) 581-1600

www.magnetsf.org


Bawdy Storytelling: Sex Wonk

The featured guests at this month’s sharing-is-caring story series include Sarah Dopp, eminent webmaster for the transgendered community, engineers, sex educators, and the good people from SF Sex Information, who will be on hand to answer all your pleasantly nerdy queries on boning in between the witty, touching, and downright blush-inducing stories from all the speakers. 

Weds/12 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Invasion: A Queer Takeover of the Citadel

The Citadel sheds all signs of straightness for a night: hosts Asher and Char preside over an evening of gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, fag, dyke, leatherman, leatherwoman, butch, femme, transgender, transsexual, and genderqueer-styled BDSM debauchery. Added bonus: for all you cheap queers, members are invited to volunteer for an hour at the event and get in gratis.  

Fri/14 8 p.m.-1 a.m., $25 members only

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org


SF Spanking Society Munch

Do you ever attend BDSM munches and feel, well, a little soft core? Is all you really want a good spank (or ass to spank)? This is the get-together for you then, cause all that’ll be on the table are the possibility of red cheeks and the probability of kinky conversation. 

Sat/15 noon-2 p.m., free

The Thirsty Bear 

661 Howard, SF

www.soj.org/calendar


Heavy Petting Zoo

Surely this month’s Kinky Salon dress-up swinger’s ball has a theme that most SF weirdos can get down on: the furry, feathery, bescaled kingdom of animalia. Everyone has some kitty cat ears or frog-hued face paint lying around the house, don’t they? And even if you don’t, you can still get your bootie on: swipe your buddy’s denim overalls and viola! You, sir, are a farm hand. Now get to milking that cow.

Sat/15 10 p.m.-late, $30-35 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Bedroom Body Moves

Y’know all those classes that are the rage with your racy Aunt Carol in Modesto, the pole dance for exercise courses? Those things are all over the place. But what the hell, why strip for the caloric exodus? Seems silly when you could instead take it all off to get your partner off, amiright? Leaving aside all questions of “staying in shape,” then, we present to you this course, which focuses on the simple act of clothes removal and its seductive powers (especially when you’re sitting on someone’s lap). 

Tues/18 6-8 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

Local bounty

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Local bounty

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED “People are very confused about what’s safe to eat as far as mollusks go.” Champion monkeyface eel angler Kirk Lombard offhandedly throws the remark out at his “find your own marine sustenance” primer offered by DIY food cabal ForageSF. For a moment I panic. My mercury levels! But then I remember: I’m on his San Francisco fishing tour because I have never, not once, even thought to harvest the bay’s bounty on my own.

Isn’t life in the city just like that? You never get out to Alcatraz, you never hit up Muir Woods — they sit there trying to catch your eye and you shuffle past, going about your routine. It’s easy to duck the pressure of actually making the most of what the Bay Area has to offer.

But it’s 2011 (only one year left till the end of the world!) and you need to get out there. Back to Kirk Lombard, who is gesturing to the rocky edge of the Marina Green, where on a good day you can find limpets and turban snails adhering to, and rockfish darting amid, the boulders. “You have to pound the shit out of them to make them tender enough to eat,” he counsels. This referring to chitons, shellfish resembling centipedes that are plentiful in the Bay Area and can be popped off rocks to be enjoyed.

Lombard’s class is an example of the utility of local expertise. At the tail end of many years with the Department of Fish and Game surveying the catch of Bay Area fishermen, he is also the creator of a blog (monkeyfacenews.typepad.com) that makes me wish I fished, which I must say has never happened before.

Other things that can be caught and eaten around these parts include the tiny, perfect-as-salad-topping limpet, the hideously ugly but reportedly nutritious cabazon fish, monkeyface eels (thrilling to hear Lombard discuss his record-holding pursuit of them) and California and blue mussels. Of these last two you are only allowed to harvest 10 pounds per day, an astonishing rule that seems well beyond my capabilities past, present, or future.

Lombard’s walks take participants out on the windy, disconcertingly cold spit of land near the wave organ on the Marina Green. Our group of 12 meanders after him as he enthusiastically answers questions about feeding oneself on the seaweed and fishies of the bay. Lombard himself hasn’t bought fish in years and tends to focus on smaller, quicker to mature species that are difficult to overfish. “I’ve found myself really embracing the smelt family,” he reflects.

Having graduated from his one-time course, do I now stuff my rod in my Chrome bag every day before I leave the house? Are we munching monkeyface all the live-long day? Well no. But the beauty of Lombard’s tours, and the following SF classes, isn’t that they will revamp your life in one fell curricular swoop. It’s that they just might open your eyes to a little more atmosphere, from mussels to mushrooms, architecture to enlightenment.

WILD SEAFOOD: SAN FRANCISCO FISHING TOUR

Next walk: Sun/16 2–4 p.m., $30

Register at www.foragesf.com

 

MUSHROOM FORAYS

All hail the Mycological Society of San Francisco! Now more than 60 years old, the mushroom lovers club focuses on expanding the community’s knowledge of our fungal friends — from the tastes and nutrition they provide to their scientific and aesthetic qualities. You can drop in on one of its potluck gatherings or beyond-informative Fungus Fairs, but why not start from the beginning? The society regularly conducts forays into nature to teach wannabe mycologists how and what to look for when they’re tracking toadstools in the moist corners of the Bay Area — which, due to its temperate climate, happens to be a superlative spot to find them.

Next foray: Sat/15 10 a.m.–3 p.m., $25. Register at www.mssf.org for start location

 

“SEASONAL EATING, HEALTHY LIVING, DIGESTIVE BLISS”

What is even more soothing than taking a class amid the community-building rows of plants at Hayes Valley Farm? Try taking a class on how to use those very fruits and veggies (or seasonal varietals like them) toward more robust bodily health. It’s part of a four-class series, but you can attend individual sessions — this upcoming one focuses on lower intestinal health, where 70 percent of your immune system lives.

Sat/19 10–11:30 a.m., $25–$50. Hayes Valley Farm, 450 Laguna, SF. www.hayesvalleyfarm.com

 

INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHISM AND ZEN

Of course, all this seeking and searching — it’s the new year and all, but don’tcha know that desire is the root of all ignorant, pig-headed maleficence? You’d know that if you were Zen, see. But grasp no further. The SF Zen Center has been in the practice of expanding minds — often for cheap or free — for years. Take one of their friendly entry-level courses in meditation and all that new ksanti (patience) is sure to lead to some prajna (wisdom). Guest student courses offer amazing rates for meditation, lodging, and meals.

Jan. 29– March 19, 9–10 a.m., $96-$120. San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page, SF. (415) 863-3136, www.sfzc.org

 

SAN FRANCISCO INTERIORS

You gotta suppose that after drawing your city in intimate detail, you’d see a little more of it. A gable, a funky load-bearing pole. Maybe we just don’t hang and stare at walls enough. Or maybe not, but anyway this no-credit City College class taught by artist Jacqueline Ruben explores some of SF’s more artistically fertile nooks and crannies, teaching you drawing style to boot.

Feb. 26–March 19 9 a.m.–noon, $100–$110. Fort Mason, SF. (415) 561-1860.

www.ccsf.edu 

 

Revolution 101

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Revolution 101

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Of course, you could just stop paying for school all together. Instead of putting their hopes for the future of education behind state reinvestment in university systems, a group of SF radical intellectuals are seeking to revamp the definition of learning by introducing the Free University of San Francisco. The nascent institution holds its first teach-in Feb. 5-6.

“Education is revolution,” says the incubator of the Free University, writer and poet Alan Kaufman. This ain’t Kaufman’s first rodeo. In 2004, while an instructor at SF’s Academy of Art University, he organized a student walk-out to protest the school’s violations of free speech rights. Employed through a temporary contract with the academy, Kaufman was not hired back the next term.

For him, it was a wake-up call that the current university system was teaching for the wrong reasons, not the least of which was the hefty price tag for classes that left his pupils in poverty. One student, he said in a recent phone interview with SFBG, had been “starving before my eyes, surviving on Ramen Noodle Cups” — all she could afford on top of tuition fees. He gave her $60 for food. But it wasn’t enough. Something had to be done.

When asked what he thinks the point of education is, Kaufman barely hesitates. “Liberation, freedom.” The current trends of privatization in public colleges, coupled with soaring school fees that far outpace students’ budgets, is symptomatic of a system that, as he prettily puts it, “funnels hearts and minds into narrowing corridors of survival. Creating profits for the university — that is the end game.”

He’s not the only person who thinks so. Kaufman and other Free University supporters have organized a teach-in next month that will feature college-level lectures from leading Bay Area artists and intellectuals, including Beat poet and SF poet laureate Diane Did Prima, former president of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez, and Pirate Cat Radio’s Diamond Dave Whitaker. The courses are no-credit, but the event is a symbol that the current educational system isn’t fulfilling some basic student needs. Instructors will teach on subjects that range from 19th-century poetry to natural geography.

Eventually Kaufman he envisions an “actual mobile university” capable of bringing the possibility of a college education to places where such a thing might be considered unattainable. And it wouldn’t just be beneficial to students. Guest faculty could experience “a kind of cleansing,” a temporary return to their original ideal of academia.

Of course, there are a few — ahem — challenges involved in starting a school that has no tuition, teacher salaries, or even monetary donors (Kaufman says the Free University will accept gifts in the form of books or other resources, but no cash). University supporters have decided to eschew accreditation for now, and true to Kaufman’s nomadic vision of the school, no location for classes has been set. First the teach-in, Kaufman says, and based on feedback, the consensus-based, hierarchy-free project will take it from there. The idea of the Free University, it would seem, is the thing for now.

It’s been done before. In the wake of the French Revolution, France established its Grandes Écoles system, a 250-school system that remains for the large part, tuition-free. The East Bay Free Skool is one outlet in the Bay that offers skill training, gratis. So for all the pie-in-the-sky idealism involved, perhaps the true test of the Free University of San Francisco won’t be its creation at all — crazy things have happened, haven’t they? Instead, it may be the extent that humanist students can steel a harsh economic climate that tends to reward monetarily-driven educations.

So why would a student chuck their pursuit of an accredited degree to participate in an uncertain radicalization of education? “Would it have practical application in a corporatized universe? Good question!” Kaufman chuckles. He launches into a torrid Marxist prediction: that our patently unfair education system cannot stand. “The system must be changed. When the pain is bad enough, people start to change.” *

FREE UNIVERSITY TEACH-IN

Feb. 5–6, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., free

Viracocha

998 Valencia, SF

(415) 374-7048

fusf.wordpress.com

Dan Witz gifts SF his finest S&M grates

Andrew Lam
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Given that he’s best known for his series of tiny, jewel-like airbrushed hummingbirds, it may strike his hordes of ardent fans as dissonant that street artist Dan Witz‘s latest offerings are so, well, fucked up. His current show at White Walls (on display through Feb. 5) is comprised of fake grated windows that Witz sneak-bolts onto buildings. The windows reveal chiaroscuro women with ball gags in their mouths and wasted man-prisoners. Witz, a classically trained artist, has rendered them realistically enough to invoke stomach-lurching concern in the onlooker. WTF, right?

But the artist, who I called up at while he was working at his chilly studio in dead-of-winter New York City, doesn’t see the birdies and the ball gags as being all that different. “Everything I do is an act of cultural aggression in some way,” he says. In 1979, when a young Witz airbrushed 40 of his now-famous hummers below 14th Street in Manhattan, their preciousness was a radical departure from the then-current trends in street art. Now, he says, his window grates onto depravity similarly represent what’s lacking in today’s milieu.

 

Keep your eyes on the road people — you can peep Witz’s highway pieces en situ above

 

“There’s a darkness and provocation that I think is missing from street art right now. Those uncomfortable moments, there’s just not much of it,” he reflects. Witz is a genius at creating, as my gallery-going companion at the White Walls opening on Saturday put it, “art that makes you feel something. Really any art that makes you feel something, I mean, that’s good.” 

Witz thinks the very act of making art that people don’t have to pay to enjoy – or be disturbed by, in the case of the grates he’s installed in undisclosed locations all over SF in anticipation of his White Walls show – is subversive. Y’know, the whole “taking the art to the people thing.” One of the problems about art today, Witz tells me, is that “as artists, we’re making art for rich people.” 

Wait – but the whole point of this article is that he’s having a gallery show in which his grates are being sold at prices that most people reading this article will not be able to afford (presumably, I’m actually kinda nervous to call and inquire – that whole “if you have to ask” business and all). I raise the point with Witzy, who tells me not to hate, essentially.

“We have to support this art. I think that’s mainly why people buy these pieces,” he tells me. Galleries are where Witz makes his bread and butter – otherwise how would he afford a life of donning maintenance worker outfits and affixing freaky photo-paintings of fetish models in shackles to buildings? It’s an argument that I’ve heard repeated a few times, by many different artists who’ve gained notoriety on the streets – public art is what inspires them, but without price tags and collectors, they’d be back to their day job. 

Plus, Witz informs me, the street is never far from his shows. At White Walls, great pains have been taken to locate the grates’ original use for the casual viewer – photos of them in their pavement-side locations abound, and each buyer of the indoor grates receives a photo print of their purchase’s al fresco twin, most likely made by Witz in the same batch of work. 

He says that as he ages, he’s become less concerned over what the art world’s opinions of his work is – but he’s created hundreds of the grates so far, to try to figure out which images snap the most necks, or as he puts it: “lie plausibly” on the streets. Indicative of the care, love, and reptilian focus that Witz injects into his work, this is a process in which he likens himself to a fertile mother sea turtle. “Those sea turtles, they lay a hundred eggs and only like two survive. I have to lay a fucking lot of eggs.”   

 

Dan Witz: “What the %$#@?”

Through Feb. 5

White Walls 

839 Larkin, SF

(415) 931-1500

www.whitewallssf.com

 

Turn to the left: Transgender threads hit the online runway

Andrew Lam
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0

Fashionable transsexuals are in the air, floating about on a current of gender smarts and well-fitting blazers and pant hips. Consider the evidence: on Friday, local trans rag Original Plumbing held a runway show at the Elbo Room to celebrate the release of its fashion issue, Justin Vivian Bond just issued a flowering proclamation of pronoun for those looking for a way to describe v (read it already), and now, a transpeople website that promises it will finally provide you with a dress that’ll fit right over those shoulders of yours. 

“This is a group of people that often need custom clothing and haven’t figured out how to get it yet.” Sarah Dopp is a transgender connector. The founder of Genderfork, a warm feeling-inducing collection of photos and stories from folks rejecting the binary model of gender from around the world, Dopp identifies as a “female, androgynous, genderqueer.” When we got the chance to catch up with her via phone last week, she told us that the idea for Genderplayful is one that she holds close to her own zipper.

Take, for example, her trip home for the holidays. Dopp’s well-meaning mom drew her aside one day before Christmas to talk presents with her. “She said she wanted to give me mine in advance because she didn’t know if I was going to like it and she didn’t want us to go through all that stress on Christmas Day,” Dopp says. The gift was a much-needed coat. Dopp, endowed with what she calls “a broad back but big hips,” can’t fit into most store bought clothes. “I just burst into tears. It’s just such an emotional subject for me, especially since I’m working on this project.”

Clothes that fit right are a common concern for a lot of transsexual individuals who are looking for a good Friday night frock – or even just an outfit to wear to work. Such sartorial endeavors often require a lot of time to search for the perfect fit, or as Dopp puts it, “a lot of money, and you better be comfortable talking with your tailor.” Plus, most stores are totally boring. “Conventional retail stores,” Dopp says, “just don’t have the most interesting clothing these days.”

On Genderplayful, she hopes to create a community wherein these kinds of concerns can be a source of empathy and DIY commerce instead of stress. Picture an Etsy stocked chockfull of transgendered buyers and sellers, only minus the limiting rules that all items exchanged be either handmade or over 20 years old to be considered vintage. Buyers will be able to describe their dream garment, and sellers will be able to display their broad shouldered-broad hipped coat designs (or tuxes with room for bosom, or robo-pirate-hipster-gypsy-goth wear — whatever the case may be) for a worldwide audience of eager fashionista/o/vs. 

Genderfork user Courtney submitted this fierce shot of beautiful-handsome hotness

Given the amount of interest already generated by the site, Dopp is hopeful that it will be a revenue-generator, not just a feel-good project. “We’re starting with the buyers, which I think is an interesting thing in a recession.” Handmade e-commerce seems to have dodged much of the financial ruin affecting the rest of the online retail industry – Etsy experienced a 65 percent increase in sales in December 2010 over last year’s figures at the same time, making it the site’s biggest month yet.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a little in Genderplayful’s coffers to get the online marketplace up and running, which Dopp estimates will take another three to six months. The site is currently fundraising – donors (won’t you be one?) can be a part of the magic until Sat/15. Added bonus: if you give money now, you can be a part of the site’s soft opening, checking out the transgendered transactions weeks before the regular public is allowed in. “If can we can raise $5,000 we will do it. If we raise $50,000 we will do it really well and awesomely,” Dopp explains.

“The wrong clothes can feel like trying to speak gibberish with conviction,” says a bespectacled dapper who weighs in on the darling video of testimonies by Genderplayful’s supporters-potential customer base. One can’t help but wish the plucky Dopp and her e-gang of genderqueered dandies well on their way to style glory and accessibility. Because the dressing room is a rough experience for many of us – even leaving aside the question of which one to go into. 

Expert opinion: how best to love your Oregon Ducks

Andrew Lam
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There are sports fans who watch every game, know all the stats, own all the gear, take it upon themselves to achieve championship-level drunk status upon every win and loss their team achieves — and then there are real sports fans. Those are the guys that cobble together high-quality parodic hip-hop videos with their buddies that become their football team’s anthem and Youtube blockbusters, getting them flown around the country to perform — and getting star-struck coeds to swoon at the tailgate.

That’d be Jamie Slade, Brian McAndrew, and Michael Bishop, whose Supwitchugirl team starred in and edited the Eugene, Oregon party anthems “I Love My Ducks” and “I Love My Ducks (Return of the Quack),” as well as a host of other tunes dedicated to frat juicin’ brobots and bathroom water conservation — even at the price of party foul.  Lucky us, SFBG had the inside line on these young bucks and got Jamie Slade, the group’s tallest member with its curliest hair, to email with us about ways you can be the ultimate Ducks fan at the team’s championship title run on Mon/10 against Auburn University — or front like you are, at least.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s the most important thing that someone unacquainted with them should know about the Oregon Ducks’ season this year?

Jamie Slade: This is Oregon’s very first run at the national title and last year was the first year since 1995 we went to the Rose Bowl so both this year and last year are monumental years for Duck football history. That’s why Oregon has been getting so much hype lately on TV — that and head coach Chip Kelly has only lost three games in his whole career — which has only been two years, but it’s still very impressive.

 

SFBG: An all-purpose line to make yourself sound like a real fan?

JS: I LOVE MY DUCKS

 

SFBG: The season highlight? Lowlight?

JS: The season highlight was beating Tennessee. They’re in the SEC conference, which is known for being the best conference, historically, in college football. Also, beating Oregon State and solidifying our spot in the national championship game. Also the Stanford game, they’re now the best one-loss team in the nation and WE beat them. They just won their bowl game which makes us look GOOD. Lowlight? I guess the Cal game where we only won by two points when we were favored to win by 30-plus.

 

SFBG: How can you tell who the Ducks fans are?

JS: We have the loudest stadium in college football — literally, the decibels in Autzen Stadium have been recorded as louder than a fighter jet taking off and that isn’t because of how the stadium is engineered and built, it’s because we yell our asses off. Duck fans are loud and will be happy to yell in your face if you’re an opposing fan.

 

SFBG: Have you met the team? Which player made the biggest impression on you and why?

JS: Yeah we’ve met the team, well most of the players at least. Two players that have been really nice to us has been DJ Davis, our wide receiver and defensive end Kenny Rowe. DJ Davis is just an all-around nice guy with a really sincere personality and Kenny Rowe is a really funny dude. Every time I see him he always says “Man, I wanna be just like you” even though he leads the Pac-10 in sacks and is a menace on the field.

 

SFBG: How’d Supwitchu Girl get together? What was the first video you guys made?

JS: We met in the dorms. Michael and Brian have been longtime friends and I met them when I was on the Oregon track team my freshmen year. Because of Saturday practices I would stay in the dorms on Friday nights and Michael and Brian coincidentally stayed in as well and our personalities just clicked. Our first video is called “Just Don’t Flush It” and it’s a music video about water conservation. It was an inside joke at first about how Brian would never flush the toilet in our tiny apartment during our senior year. 

 

SFBG: Are you super stars in Eugene at this point? 

JS: We’re more sex symbols if anything, Caitlin. Just kidding haha. I wouldn’t say we are super stars at all — we get recognized just because the video is so popular but we don’t get star treatment or anything, we still had to go to school and do everything else every other student has to go through. Sometimes people say “Hey are you that “I Love My Ducks” guy?” and I say yes…but we are so much more than JUST the “I Love My Ducks” guys.

 

SFBG: Do you have plans to extend your reign of terror to other college towns?

JS: NO. We are die-hard Duck fans. That’s where we find inspiration for these songs…out of true emotion and love for this team.

 

SFBG: Future video plans? Or are you done with the UO scene now that you’re graduating?

JS: Yep we have a video coming out after the BCS game called “Pogs” and it is about that childhood fad of throwing Pogs and slammers etc. Should be funny. But we all plan on travelling for a few months and reconvening afterwards to figure out what our next step will be.

 

SFBG: What line from your songs do you hear people repeat the most?

JS: From the first song: “Holy Moly, is that my boy Masoli?” From the second song: “Eatin chips ‘n’ dip with the brain Chip Kelly!”

 

You can yell your ass off (or get yelled at in your face) with the rest of the Oregon fans at The Independent (628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com), which will be playing the national championship game on their pull-down movie screen.


BCS National College Football Championship Game: University of Oregon vs. Auburn University

Mon/10 5:30 PST, FOX Sports

 

Hot sexy events: January 5-11

Andrew Lam
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Strutting his stuff as the leather parade marshall in last year’s Pride festivities, Steve Ward no doubt had many thoughts relating to the thriving kink community that cavorted about him. But one of those was surely that people need a guide to this crazy wonderland. After all, many of us crave a good spanking at the hand of an experienced master — or vice versa — but often that urge has trouble translating readily into one’s role in the sex community. 

Luckily, now we have a guide. Ward is organizing a class on Tues/11 entitled “The Crooked Path: Carving out your niche in the BDSM Communities,” a one-time course that will explore the difference in roles in the BDSM community from dungeon volunteers to leaders of events, and to those that adopt leather as a lifestyle versus those that do it on the studded side. The sociology of kink? Perhaps – give it a look to learn more about your sensual stylings. And hey, what’s the rest of all this? Oh, just another week of sexy SF events.

 

Beginner’s Dungeon Class

Angela and Iain, officers in the Society of Janus and dungeon masters extraordinaires teach this primer on how to rough up and get roughed up sexily and safely. There’s an art and etiquette to the SF BDSM scene – and being Emily Post ensures you’ll have plenty of friends to play with ’til that whippin’ wrist tires and your cheeks glow red.

Thurs/6 7:30-10:30 p.m., $10-20 sliding scale

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org


Urge

For all those fond of house training, this play party is meant only for those kinky menfolk under the age of 40. Think of it – 5,400 square feet of naughty necessity, stocked with the younger half of kinky society! Does it get you hard? Does it polish your leather? Indulge those urges. 

Fri/7 8-11 p.m., $25 membership required

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org


Naughty Nibbles

Femina Potens has lost its clunky shoulder pads – the sexy art gallery (arty sex gallery) has shuffled off its bricks and mortar coil and, for the time being, will be holding events here and there about the sex-positive venues of SF. Tonight, they’re hosting an art-bondage melting pot in the hour before Mission Control’s lady lovin’ Pink party. Femina founder Madison Young talks shop about merging ropes and art, and FiveStar does an arty, ropesy number of her own. Art!

Fri/7 9-10 p.m., free, members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Perverts Put Out

I have a lot of favorite FOX News clips, truly. Hilarity. But one of my tippy-top most near and dears has got to be its segment on Perverts Put Out, the sluttiest reading series out there. I believe it had something to do with the organization receiving a government art grant – something along those lines. The fact is, this is SF at its finest. This week, emcee Simon Sheppard welcomes the “talents” of Philip Huang, Greta Christina, and Lady Monster, among others. 

Sat/8 7:30 p.m., $10-15 sliding scale

Center for Sex and Culture 

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


Military

A particular poignant night of banging studs in a bar – don’t ask don’t tell has finally been stricken off the face of the earth! Surely, this will lead to legions of gays banging down army recruitment office doors – or at least great sales numbers for Raging Stallion’s newest release, Assghanistan (current SFBG office joke de rigueur, not actual impending release, sorry). This is Chap’s military fetish uniform night, so pack your camo jock.

Sat/8 6 p.m.-2 a.m., free

Chaps

1225 Folsom, SF

(415) 255-2427

www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com


The Crooked Path

A panel discussion of SF leather luminaries, all members eager to share with you the story of their ascent into the leather community’s leadership roles. Heading up the charge is Steve Ward, who serves on the national Leather Leadership Conference. Wondering where you fit into the wild rumpus? Here’s a great place to hear some educated opinions.

Tues/11 8-10 p.m., $20

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org

 

On the Cheap Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

On the Cheap listings are 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 5

Concierto de Reyes Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; (415) 643-5001, www.missioncultural.org. 2pm, free. The Coro Hispano of San Francisco, a chorus comprised of Spanish-speaking community members, has been celebrating Latin America through song since 1975. Join ’em for their annual kids holiday concert, which will cover turf as varied as renaissance motets and aguinaldos (Christmas folk music) from Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and more.

Glen Canyon habitat restoration Glen Park Recreation Center, 70 Elk, SF; (415) 337-4705, www.sfrecpark.org. 9am-noon, free. Sure, you’ve made “that” resolution for the millionth time. But how about you snap out of that pudgy pity party and truck out to a little exercise that benefits more than just your waist line? SF parks are in need of TLC if they want to fend off invasive species and you can join in on the action at this morning of weeding, planting, and pruning. Dress to get muddy and active – and indulge in the free snacks provided free of your Christmas cookie guilt.

FRIDAY 7

Jaime Cortez: “Universal Remote” Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., SF; (415) 863-2141, www.soex.org Through Feb. 19. Opening reception 7-9pm, free. It’s been months, but we still have a big in our hearts the size of a glittery glove. Thankfully, here comes visual artist Jaime Cortez’s solo exhibition, which calls out the tragic, tremendous pop culture whorl that was MJ – and highlights the King of Pop’s fluid moves through race, sexuality, and zombie-human relations.

Oakland Art Murmur Telegraph and 23rd St., Oakl.; www.oaklandartmurmur.com. 6-10 p.m., free. Rediscover what downtown Oakland’s got going on art-wise with this monthly show-and-tell by the neighborhood’s best and brightest art galleries. This week, catch Jennie Ottinger’s book art at Johansson Projects (excerpt from her truncated version of As I Lay Dying: “Holy shit, this family is cursed! Very National Lampoon’s Vacation.“)

SATURDAY 8

Parent-child snow globe class Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF; (415) 554-9600, www.randallmuseum.org. 1-4pm, $6 for children; $10 for parent-child duos. The holidays are over, and yeah it’s still cold and rainy. But take heart! Winter can be time for good cheer even after Santa’s packed up the sleigh and gone north. Make a shakable wonder with your wee one and enjoy the rest of Randall Museum’s “Saturdays are Special” event (10am-4pm), which includes railroad exhibits, live animal feedings, and the rest of the science-y wonders present throughout the rest of this always-free museum.

Vintage Paper Expo Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Lincoln and Ninth Ave., SF; (328) 883-1702, www.vintagepaperfair.com. 10am-6pm, free. (Also Sun/9, 10am-4pm) Postcards, photos, brochures, stereoviews, and so much more! What’s a stereoview, you ask? Why, nothing less than an antique 3D image – something you can acquaint yourself with at this fair of all things printed and retro. The Vintage Paper Expo’s got over 100 vendors this year, all primed to sell you affordable scraps of history.

Writers With Drinks The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF; (415) 647-2888, www.writerswithdrinks.com. 7:30-9:30pm, $5-10 sliding scale. Writers? Drink? Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything! This long-standing lit night series pairs local scribes (this month’s are girl group Gogos founder Jane Wiedlin and socio-writer Ethan Watters) with a crowd that’s anything but stiff for readings, skits, and stand-up.

MONDAY 10

Cinema Drafthouse: Machete The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF; (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com. 9pm, free. A deliberately silly revenge plot that’s both spot-on vintage homage and semi-serious commentary on America’s ongoing immigration debate gets the Indy’s free movie night treatment. Watch the film with a beer in hand (or two) – and feel free to shout advice to the characters on-screen. You’re in a music venue, for chrissakes.

TUESDAY 11

Pecha Kucha 330 Ritch, 330 Ritch, SF; www.pecha-kucha.org. 7pm, $5 donation suggested. Embarking as we are on month number one of year two-thousand-and-one-one, the theme of this month’s installation of this cross-discipline art night series is, yes, “one.” Not the most specific theme, sure – but that’s the way artists like it, and when you’ve assembled a passel of them from fields as varied as industrial design, animation, and fashion, sometimes it’s best just to step back and watch them unify.

Eat, pray, defend chick lit

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Eat, pray, defend chick lit

caitlin@sfbg.com

LIT I read Eat, Pray Love a while ago, and I’m nervous to tell you that I liked it. Ever since bottle blonde Julia Roberts assumed her best worried-kitten face for the book’s film version, no self-respecting lit snob would ever admit to having enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s account of her year of finances-be-damned travel, healing from divorce, and fulminations on the belabored pursuit of love.

The release of her follow-up, Committed (Viking Adult), a socio-historical look at marriage couched in the story of Gilbert’s own unexpected union to her green card-challenged hubby Felipe — and the announcement of her Jan. 14 appearance at the Yoga Journal Conference — goaded me to examine just why people are down on Gilbert. After perusing the con side (a blog called Drink Curse Hate was enlightening) I found that the ire seems to hinge on two precepts: that she is self-centered, and that her writing is what we diminutively refer to as chick lit. Well three, if you count complaints about her flippant usage of Eastern spirituality for self-help. But I’m not sure I have much to answer back to on that front.

First, a self-centered writer? Well stomp my keyboard and call me Danielle Steele. Writers write because we think we have something interesting and important to say. There are plenty of writers who write about themselves, and only themselves, and whom people fall over themselves to love. Hey, David Sedaris. Eat, Pray, Love is indeed all about Gilbert, but that doesn’t make it uninteresting. Glamorous travel writer leaves unsatisfying marriage, mends heart with an empowering trek around the world, yoga, Italian food, and impressively hunky Brazilian men encountered along the way. Hate on, haters, you’d write about it if it happened to you.

Second, chick lit. Literature written for chicks, by chicks, about chicks — am I getting the definition right? This term can stop being a pejorative one yesterday, as far as I’m concerned. And really, any book that teaches women that it’s okay to long for more than children and complete kitchen sets (which EPL does in spades) should be applauded in these uncertain times.

The funny thing about Gilbert is that before Eat, Pray, Love, she had a thriving writing career. Her creative nonfiction books were about men, of all things: an account of the macho culture of a Maine fishing village (named Stern Men) and the tale of an awe-inspiring, if prickly master outdoors-man (this titled The Last Man in America). Gilbert was a regular contributor at Spin and GQ, for which she penned the article on her days bartending at one of Manhattan’s most testosterone-heavy dives, Coyote Ugly Saloon. There was a movie based on that one, by the way.

“I couldn’t believe that Disney wanted to buy this story, it was so raunchy,” Gilbert tells me over the phone from the converted New Jersey church where she and Felipe had set up shop just prior to the onset of Eat, Pray, Love fever. “I still don’t know how they did it — I was like no! I can still smell the vomit.”

No, she could never have anticipated the last book’s zeitgeist-level success. No, she doesn’t expect Committed to replicate those sales numbers. The Eat, Pray, Love mania was “like a big circus parade going on just outside my door nonstop. I spend my day washing dishes and doing laundry and then I look out the window and go, ‘Wow, there’s that circus out there — they have dancing bears!’ and then I go back to doing what I’m doing.”

As far as she’s concerned, the book was the pinnacle of her career — and that’s fine. “The definition of a phenomenon is that it only happens once and you don’t know why it happened.”

But my money’s on Committed to be a success in its own right. The premise: Gilbert’s just not that into marriage. But marry she must, to secure Brazilian hubs Felipe the right to live in the country they’ve made their home, so she embarks on finding out what the hell it is about societally recognized partnership that people down through history have found acceptable, even appealing. She comes up with divergent and fascinating tidbits: that early Christians eschewed marriage, a socially conservative writer’s thesis that marriage is in itself a subversive act.

I read the book in a day. Gilbert’s conversational flow carries you through her life’s intimate details, like the transcribed list of personal faults she complied for Felipe. (She includes her need for attention and overly enthusiastic cold shoulder, yet leaves out the inevitability that every iota of their relationship will at one point be discussed by book clubs around the country.) A tone as engaging as hers has rarely been applied to the question of what marriage means in this day and age, and it’s refreshing to see that matter given some thought — even if her research is by her own admission not exhaustive. Hey, I probably wouldn’t have read the book if it had been.

I wanted to give the book to my newly sprouted crop of married friends, see how my mom reacts to Gilbert’s conclusions on child rearing, copy a chapter on the importance of solo travel for my boyfriend to read.

But they’d probably make fun of me. Elizabeth Gilbert? Please, that’s chick lit.

YOGA JOURNAL CONFERENCE: AN EVENING WITH ELIZABETH GILBERT

Jan. 14, 7:30 p.m.,

$29–$39 conference attendees, $49–$59 regular admission

Hyatt Regency

5 Embarcadero Center, SF

(800) 561-7407

www.yjevents.com

 

Boogie blows up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Boogie blows up

“It was an honor to be a part of history. The rest is history.” Spray paint artist Chor Boogie (www.chorboogie.com) is hanging out amid spurts of December rain in Clarion Alley, standing before his mural debut in the heralded Mission community art space. But he’s talking about a different piece, on a different chunk of creative community space, in a city halfway around the world: The Eyes of the Berlin Wall, which Boogie painted on an actual section of the Berlin Wall and was reported to have sold for 500,000 euros this fall.

The real story is a bit more complicated — and perhaps speaks to the uncertain position in which street art finds itself. After all, we’re at the close of a few years of pop culture re-ascendance, during which Banksy made a stencil art photographer of every major city tourist and that are ending with Brazilian muralist Blu’s commission of a massive mural facing a World War II memorial by Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art that was subsequently whitewashed when he painted a wall of coffins draped with dollar bills.

What is street art’s role today? A form once used by inner city youth to reintroduce their stifled voices into their surroundings is now heralded in the upper echelons of the art world and hipsterdom alike. Still, many so-called street artists are getting stuck in stale, reductive modes of being presented to the public — stale because many do public art as a form of getting known, fluidly moving back and forth between the corner and the gallery. What are we to call these artists?

I know one name for them: Chor Boogie. After a tough youth spent tagging in San Diego, Boogie, borne on the wings of a technique and style that pushes the capabilities of the aerosol can (he never paints without it) has achieved artistic notoriety. His low pressure, inverted style of spraying and rejection of stencils and other tools gives birth to kaleidoscopic psychoscapes — but why don’t we let Boogie describe Boogie?

“A surrealistic expressionism of a street romantic voodoo. Emotional landscapes of a melodic symphony through color therapy — that’s my style in a nutshell,” he tells me, pointing up at the twisted face-in-purgatory that he recently completed in Clarion, a piece that extends a full foot above the boundary delineated by the alley’s mural collective and onto the high priced condo above.

Boogie has painted at the Beijing Olympics, done portraits for Hugh Hefner and Jay-Z, has vast, stained glass-cosmos murals all over town, and gallery shows up and down the coast. His name gained widespread recognition when some kids tried to steal a few of his cans while he painted a Market Street mural in late 2009. He chased them into a dark alley and was stabbed twice. “I didn’t feel it at all because I was drawing,” he says, despite one wound landing an inch from his lower intestine.

His distinctive style may have been what drew the fateful attention of Patrice Lux at Berlin’s Stroke Urban Art Fair. For two days, the German art collector had scrutinized Boogie while painting at his festival booth. Boogie had no idea who the guy was. “He was studying my every move — finally, he walked up to me, asked me what my name was, and asked me if I’d like to paint the Berlin Wall. He took me up to his studio and he had a piece of the wall with Michael Jackson painted on it. I was like, ‘You want me to paint over that? Because I will!’ I think he thought it was kind of cool to have an American artist painting over this American pop star.”

Boogie was signing up to paint on a piece of graffiti history. When first erected, artists came from around the world to cover the western side of the wall in color, often working under the ominous gaze of East Berlin patrollers who kept the eastern surface sterile. “Artists risked their lives painting that wall. You went there at night and painted quickly,” says James Prigoff, an international street art photographer.

But by his visit in 1985, Prigoff was underwhelmed by what he saw. “It had become a funny zoo,” he remembers, tourists gawking at East Berliners and tagging the wall with shout-outs to relatives in Des Moines.

Although Keith Haring and Quick subsequently created memorable pieces on the wall, Prigoff thinks the site’s sociopolitical significance has shrunk. “Chor Boogie is a great artist, he deserves all the attention he gets. But [his painting on the wall] doesn’t do anything for me in the context of art. There are a lot of walls in the world, and that’s just one of them.”

Not everyone agrees. Lux tipped off Die Bunte Zeitung, one of Berlin’s major newspapers, that he would be looking for 500,000 euros for the piece of the wall Boogie had painted — dwarfing sales of individual wall pieces in the past. The day after the article ran, they had an offer. The piece still wasn’t finished. After that, Boogie had an audience of 100-plus people watching him complete his cash cow.

Back in San Francisco among the streets he’s helped to make more beautiful, Boogie’s not sure what’s going on with the deal — and perhaps almost as important, all that cash — vagaries of “contracts and commissions,” he says. Improbably, he’s washing his hands clean of the matter, for now.

“What’s the next one?” He smiles, possibilities dancing across his face. “The Great Wall of China!” He’s joking, but the future for Boogie — and street art in general — will invariably include larger canvasses. 

 

CHOR BOOGIE’S URBAN OSMOSIS NYE OPENING PARTY

Fri/31 7 p.m.–late, free

Space Gallery

1141 Polk, SF

www.spacegallerysf.com

March Fourth Marching Band reveals its gypsy secrets

Andrew Lam
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One of these days, I’ll hop a bus outta this town. Pullin’ out of here on the wind, if you want to quote the Boss (sometimes I do). One of the groups I’ve been keeping my eye on as a possible accomplice is March Fourth Marching Band. You can find the million-piece ensemble’s rig parked at nearly every festival, ever – always with a few stilters or trombone players spilling out the door, sprawled on a tarp nearby, or if you’re lucky, tapping out a cheerful marching band symphony by a campfire at around five in the morning (hello, High Sierra!) 

And onstage! They’re like a big, loud circus onstage – until all of a sudden they’re off the stage and you’re engulfed in 360 degrees of marching band madness, now having a dance party with its frenzied audience. In anticipation of the band’s upcoming pre-NYE show at The Independent (Thurs/30), March Fourth’s bandleader John Averill sat down at his email portal to tell us all his secrets about where he found the mail order balls needed to make touring with so many moving parts possible.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: When March Fourth got together, was touring part of the original concept? How’d you get the balls to take such a massive group on the road?

John Averill: Well, the band was put together for a Fat Tuesday party, so at that time the main concern was learning seven songs to play. Touring was never part of the original concept.  After our first road trip, though, it was pretty evident to me that one, traveling as a group was fun, and two, our project had potential to reach audiences outside of our hometown. We purchased the actual balls to take this massive group on the road by fund-raising and applying to www.theballsyouneed.com. I think we spent like $172 or something. Most balls are less expensive, but M4 is a large group and therefore required extra large balls. But, to anyone out there looking for balls: it’s definitely worth it to spend the money for big balls, if you really need them. I think this year we’re going to purchase an extra set of back-up balls just in case.

 

SFBG: How many musicians do you typically have touring? What’s the toughest part of rolling so deep on tour?

JA: About 13 musicians, five dancers, and two bus drivers is what we’ve been touring with lately. The toughest part is making payroll, which is why we’ve been traveling with a “smaller” group (we used to travel with upwards of 30 people). When we go on tours that are longer than three weeks, there are also issues with accruing very little sleep and not having much personal space. We’re lucky that we get along so well or this thing would be a disaster after a couple of weeks. 

The whole gang. Photo by Andy Batt

SFBG: I’m really into the bus — I’ve seen your rig all over the place, camped out at festivals, etc. What do you keep on there? Does everyone sleep on it? Where’d you get the bus and what’s it’s make and model?

JA: Our bus is a 40-foot MCI coach. It was built in 1984 in Roswell, New Mexico, presumably by aliens. We bought it on eBay 3 years ago and converted it to suit our needs. It can sleep 10 people comfortably, or 20 semi-comfortably. It has become our home on wheels and is probably the single wisest investment we have ever made. It’s where we cook, get dressed, etc. Most promoters can’t pay for lodging for 20 people when we’re on tour so we sleep in, on top of, and around the bus. We keep our camping gear on top and set up tents when we can, and when it’s not miserable outside. Our bus doesn’t doesn’t have an official name, although it is called “Razzle Dazzle” by many. I personally refer to it as “The Shire,” although the idea to have round doors installed was not practical.

 

SFBG: Where do the costumes come from?

JA: The costumes are designed by the people who wear them, for the most part. Most of us are pretty good at finding cool vintage stuff and thrift-store items and then augmenting them to fit us. All of our dancers have mad costume skills — some are bona-fide full-time designers and they help out the musicians who don’t know how to sew.  

 

SFBG: What genre does March Fourth classify as? Are there groups out there that you see as your peers?

JA: I don’t know what our genre is. Is there a genre for rockin’ crazy fun global groove tribal symphony with stilts?  Actually, one of my favorite things about this project is that we don’t have a genre, and we’re not easy to pigeonhole. Yet, at the same time we’ve developed a “sound.”  There are some groups, like Gogol Bordello, Balkan Beat Box, Ozomatli, Yard Dogs Road Show, and Mucca Pazza who I see as energetic peers and/or kindred spirits, even though we don’t sound like any of them.

 

SFBG: Who are the group’s role models?

JA: You’d probably have to poll everyone in the band to get an accurate answer. Part of the original inspiration for putting the group together was after seeing Extra Action Marching Band and The Infernal Noise Brigade at Burning Man in 2002. Myself and a few others, were thinking “hey let’s try doing something like this in Portland,” but we never sought to emulate those groups in terms of the style of music we performed or how we presented ourselves. Now there’s an alternative marching band in just about every major city in the US and there are a couple of festivals like HONK! in Boston and HONK! Fest West in Seattle that have become a sort of mecca for large brass and drum-heavy bands to converge and play together. On a personal level, I’ve been inspired by the model created by the Grateful Dead, big bands of the 1930s, large contemporary ensembles such as Polyphonic Spree, and some of the stuff coming out of Brooklyn, Dap Tone Records in particular. I’m inspired by anyone who can actually make ends meet doing this.

 

March Fourth Marching Band

Thurs/30 9 p.m. $15-17

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

On the Cheap Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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On the Cheap listings are 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 29

Snowboard movie night The Riptide, 3639 Taraval, SF; (415) 681-8433, www.riptidesf.com. 9pm, free. It’s absolutely dumping on Tahoe, but you’re stuck “working” tomorrow at your “place of employment”? Square. But Riptide forgives you – in fact, the Sunset bar is hosting a night of free snowboarding movies, free snacks, and muchos drink specials. Sponsored by SFO Snowboards, you might score some free gear in their bi-monthly raffle.

THURSDAY 30

Wizard of Oz Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl.; (510) 465-6400, www.paramounttheatre.com. 7Pm, $5. Honestly, five dollars just to tool around in the art deco splendor of the Paramount Theatre would be well worth your money – but once they throw in a screening of the uber-classic adventure in Weirdo Land (sorry Scarecrow, y’all are bizarre), you can hardly afford not to go. Don’t we all want to click together our ruby slippers and wish ourselves away to good, old-fashioned fun?

FRIDAY 31

Japanese New Year’s bell-ringing ceremony Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; (415) 581-3500, www.asianart.org. 10am-2pm, free with $12 museum admission. Guarantee luck and lovin’ in 2011 with this day of art activities and traditional community ceremony. Numbered tickets, assigned on a first-come-first-served basis will be on offer if you’d like to ring the museum’s 2,100 pound, 16th century bell from the Tajima province in Japan.

Roller Disco New Year’s Eve CellSpace, 2050 Bryant, SF; (415) 648-7562, www.cellspace.org. 9:30, $10. Black Rock Roller Disco, the purveyors of a thousand scraped knees over the past 10 years at Burning Man, truck out their well-loved rink for your countdown to 2011. Tire of wheeling yourself around? Dance slightly more agilely in the back room’s new wave lounge.

Jon Sugar’s all ages rock and comedy New Year’s Eve Tikka Masala, 1668 Haight, SF; gawksf@yahoo.com. 8pm-1am, free. The founder of Gay Artists and Writers Kollective (GAWK) Jon Sugar hosts a night of actors, DJs, and alternative art of all stripes at this welcoming party for the young and old.

Vampire Tour SF Corner of California and Taylor, SF; (650) 279-1840, www.sfvampiretour.com. 8-10pm, $20. The cold ones were not an invention of Stephanie Meyer, believe it or not. In fact, vamps have been amongst us for the longest, particularly if you believe Kitty Nasarow, who loves to bring us mortals around on her immortal historical tours and claims to have been turned frigid by none other than Count D himself. Learn about the blood-suckers’ role in the creation of SF.

SATURDAY 1

Kwanzaa imani ceremony Marcus Bookstore, 1712 Fillmore, SF; (415) 292-6172. 3pm, free. The culmination to SF’s holiday celebration of unity, self-determination, responsibility, purpose, and creativity takes places at the country’s longest-operating African-American owned bookstore. The imani rite focuses on faith in one’s people, parents, teachers, and the righteousness of struggle – happy thoughts for a new year of challenges.

Victorian 12th Night Ball Masonic Lodge, 100 N Ellsworth, San Mateo; www.peers.org. 7pm, $15-20. New Year’s Eve is over, so you’ve already let it all hang out – time to cinch it back in with this Dickens-era period ball. A 7pm dance lesson will teach you all you need to know about Viennese and rotary waltzes – come in your bustled, beauteous Victorian garb to enjoy a light English buffet and dancing with the Period Events and Entertainments Re-Creation Society.

MONDAY 3

Pilates to the People The Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck, Berk.; (510) 540-0751, www.eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com. 7-8:30pm, donations. Silly you – you thought pilates was just for MILFs who lunch and their yappy little bow-wows? The core strength-building workout can actually be a blessing for all those who are looking to build a firm center in their lives. You can check out the miracle of healthy muscles at this weekly East Bay Free Skool offering – and check out the anarcho lit at the Long Haul while you’re at it.

TUESDAY 4

“Feast of Words” literary potluck SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 863-1414, www.feastofwords.eventbrite.com. 7-9pm, $5-12. Just right to take the edge off of your holiday come down: a foodie-writer potluck to which you must bring edibles, readables, or both. The evening’s program includes a talk by writer Faith Adiele, snacks from Canvas Underground, and a quick write competition based around the theme of “blurred identity.”

Hot sexy events: December 29-January 4

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: December 29-January 4

“Scott and I wanted to create an adult playground that wasn’t just some hedonistic, narcissistic freefall into the apocalypse.” Co-founder Polly Superstar is ready to celebrate a decade of Mission Control‘s swingin’ good times at the play space (which she founded with hubby Baron Scott Levkoff)’s NYE party-ten year anniversary soiree Fri/31. 

But first, a look back. “We wanted a place where people could feel safe exploring their sexuality without the rigidity of the BDSM scene, and without the expectation and pressure of the swinger scene.” And so MC’s been throughout the aughts: a land where art, sex, and hell yeah, theme parties, have been coming together to the greater glory of SF’s freaky, funky pansexual scene.

Superstar’s pumped about her brand’s expansion into Austin and her hometown of London – and between her, me, and you, there’s more to come. Try club openings in New York, Copenhagen, and Krakow, a how-to book on throwing your own sex party – and at the SF location kinksters have grown to bone and love, a 2011 event that will focus on ritual and sexuality and be hosted by Francesca Gentile (who has led similar rituals at MC events in the past). So pop them bottles, SF – spend your midnight with the Mission Control freaks, or sample some of the other tasty sex events on the NYE buffet line. 

 

 

NYE at Mission Control 

This new year marks a decade of ooo’s and ah’s done pansexual style at Mission Control – so what better way to show your thanks for their sexy play space than by attending their NYE bash? Onstage lineup includes spoken word artists Baraka and We Are The Unreal, as well as burlesque (and boylesque) artists, DJs, and an appearance by the dreaded, orgasm-stealing Coq Blok! Party in the front, sexy time in the back (rooms).  

Fri/31 10 p.m.-3 a.m., $35-40 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Lusty New Year

Watch them balls drop! Your favorite unionized strip club is open for business as 2011 comes a’knockin’. And, unlike the rest of the NYE heap, they’re not charging a cover! Amazing, isn’t it – ladies who are respected on the job ready and waiting to show you their naughty bits, dance on your lap – they’re even down for a bit of foot worship. Wanna break (or make) some early resolutions?

Fri/31 11 p.m.- 3 a.m., free

Lusty Lady

1033 Kearny, SF

(415) 391-3991

www.lustyladysf.com


Steamworks New Year’s Toast

Bring NYE in with a bang! (How many puns can I wring out of this holiday? Let’s find out!) Yes indeed, Steamworks encourages you to put on your new year’s best, then strip it all off and shoot your (champagne!) spume across the room in celebration. The bath house is calling in the help of DJ Frank Wild, plus they’re showing the Times Square festivities on their mega 60-incher in the lounge. Wait, there’s a TV in the Steamworks lounge? Now you know.

Fri/31 10 p.m.- 1 a.m., 

Steamworks

2107 Fourth St., Berk.

(510) 845-8992

www.steamworksonline.com

 

Fuggedaboutit

Most of the strip clubs in town are investing in oversized martini glasses to stick their girls in, but Centerfolds has a slightly different take on NYE: why don’t get the patrons to dress up in ridiculous costumes this time? To that end, their Sopranos-themed evening, Fuggedaboutit. Discounts for wise guy costumes at the door, hourly giveways of TLC from the ladies onstage, and of course, free Italian all-you-can-eat courtesy of Pizelle Pizza.

Fri/31, $10 with mobster costume

Centerfolds

391 Broadway, SF

(415) 834-0662

www.centerfoldsf.com


Power Exchange New Year’s Eve Ball

A little flogging play with your bubbly, ma’am? ‘Tis the season to hook up with randoms – and lucky you, you’ve got the Power Exchange so that you don’t have to spend a moment with the teases and prudes at most of the city’s bars and clubs. Dust off your leather best, polish up your seduction game, and head to one of SF’s best known BDSM spaces.

Fri/31 8 p.m.-2 a.m., $20 single women and trans, $40 couples, $60 men

Power Exchange 

74 Otis, SF

(800) 916-2513

www.powerexchange.com

 

Arthur Szyk: beauty in fairy tale… and Stalin

Andrew Lam
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Nowadays, being up on the news can actually make us stupider (more stupid, damn!), but when cartoonist Arthur Szyk was sketching his dense, fantastically detailed news caricatures, politics were still in need of explication – and all the more better if it was beautiful to boot. How else can one explain why one of the most whimsical artists of the 1930s and ’40s became best known for his sketches of Hitler and Stalin playing poker?

Szyk’s jewel box of an exhibition is on view through March 2011 at that jewel box of a museum, the Legion of Honor. How lovely is the Legion of Honor? Though its offerings are often obscured by its big box fine art peers like the de Young and the SFMOMA, the Legion itself is a French neo-classic temple compared to the blatant modernism of its more centrally-located brethren. Where else, for pete’s sake, can one find a meticulously transposed Louis-whenever parlor room adjacent to a hall full of Rodin sculptures? 

A multi-media art experience, I reflected, passing under a mudejar ceiling from late 15th century Torrijos region of Spain, on my way to the museum’s corner hideaway gallery no. 1 that housed Szyk. Who was a firecracker, really. Born to a Jewish Polish family, Szyk was one of the first political caricaturist to sketch out against the Führer. His Haggadah series (1932-1938) correlated Hitler’s rise with the traditional story of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt. 

Though his original message was somewhat watered down by the drawings’ group publication in 1940 (the publishers erased all the swastikas from the drawings – que what?), it was still considered one of the most beautiful works of the time. Szyk was also outspoken about his adopted country’s lack of action in the face of evil – the US fell under the wrath of his pencil for its sluggish rise to action during World War II. 

The man’s drawings are pure, extravagant beauts. The drowsy, yet watchful eyes of the Legion security guards (legion guards! Drama!) prevented me from nosing in quite as close as I wanted to them – the sentries probably get sick of wiping off the glass – but even so. Even so, there were his illustrations for a deck of playing cards, his whip-smart rendering of a poker game between Hitler and Stalin — with the Angel of Death looking on intently. His sumptuous creations for the 1955 edition of Arabian Nights Entertainment. His faces are so detailed that they bely the fact that they are portraying fictional characters. His details are so extraordinary its no wonder that a lot of adult children will get a sense of time travel vertigo dipping into his stash of kid’s book illustrations. The flowers with faces Szyk brought into being for the 1945 edition of Andersen’s Fairy Tales — well Walt, you have some explaining to do about Alice’s rose garden buds.

You should be witness to all this, of course. While you’re there, check out the Legion’s marquee showing of Japanese and Californian and French-via-Japan prints in the basement (Japanesque, through Jan. 9). And the Legion cafe, of course, which is always crammed full of old people and is an excellent place to enjoy a cup of coffee or esoteric Asian soda pop. 

 

Arthur Szyk: Miniature Paintings and Modern Illuminations

Through March 2011

Legion of Honor

100 34th Ave., SF

(415) 750-3600

www.famsf.org

 

Hot sexy events December 22-28

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events December 22-28

Santa was a freak. Think on it: he gets around by whipping those reindeers’ tender flesh (hello, dom), sneaks in your house at night to kiss your mama, and has a bizarre obsession with whether you’ve been naughty or nice. To me, that sounds like… well someone who reads this column, that’s all. And it very much clears up Chaps’ much-heralded holiday hours (on Fri/24 and Sat/25 they’re open from 8 p.m.-late). Would you like to sit on Santa’s lap? Get cruisey, all you ho-ho-hoes — it’s Christmas time for the weekly sex events.

 

Good Vibes customer appreciation nights

So it’s… now, and you still haven’t touched that waiting list of those-to-be-gifted? Worry not, my like-minded friend, for Good Vibrations is encouraging your wacky, irresponsible ways with their last minute shopping events, which will put chocolates and wine into your holiday hands, as well as provide on-staff sex experts to counsel you on just the right vibrator for your sweet, self-lovin’ friends.

Weds/22 and Thurs/23 6-8 p.m., free

Good Vibrations

Various Bay Area locations

www.goodvibes.com


Kinky Knitters

‘Tis the season to knit something sexy! A Rosebud red crocheted teddy perhaps? Or maybe just a beanie large enough to pull over lover boy’s eyes for some sexy blindness play? The options are multitudinous at the weekly stitch and bitch at kinky coffee shop Wicked Grounds. Ideal topics for discussion: Tensile strength of various yarns and the hottest new adjustable harness sewing pattern.

Thurs/23 7-10 p.m., free

Wicked Grounds 

289 8th St., SF

(415) 503-0405

www.wickedgrounds.com


Center for Sex and Culture XXXmas Eve Film Night

Fun fact: in 2003, Moby made Alien Sex Party, a sex-positive, raunchy comedy starring the cast of a sex store who have got to keep it together through Christmas Eve, despite kooky customers and the occasional K-Y jelly eating alien. CSC shows the film at this time each year – trust, by the time the characters launch into the “You Can Have Sex With Whatever You Want” number, you’ll be singing along in fine Christmas spirit.

Fri/24 9:30-11 p.m., $5-20 sliding scale

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org


The movie Moby only made so that he could rock that floppy dildo headband

Dee’s Meander

Sure, that frosted sleighbell tastes fine now, but the next time you’re tied to the St. Andrews cross, you might be surprised at how you’re bulging out underneath the lovingly applied rope your partner just lashed all over you. Time to stretch those legs. This regular walk is geared towards giving the BDSM community a chance to get physically fit and have some uplifting convos about sex play while doing so.

Fri/24 4-5 p.m., free

Bestor Art Park

Bestor between 5th and 6th Sts., San Jose

www.erobay.org


Chaps Bar Escape

Like I said, this bar is proudly open through the holidays, so if you’re looking to flee the warmth and wackiness of the fam for a few hours, you could do worse than to don your hottest jock strap and head down to Chaps to lick some candy canes.

Fri/24 and Sat/25 8 p.m.-late, free

Chaps

1225 Folsom, SF

(415) 225-2427

www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

 

Chickpeas and kugel: two recipes for a very veggie Christmas

Andrew Lam
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Chickpeas and kugel: two recipes for a very veggie Christmas

I started seeing retail sales around town marked “last minute Christmas shopping events” a week and a half ago – who are these freakish people that think two weeks is not enough time to score trinkets for one’s loved ones? 

I hereby present to you two holiday recipes from the hottest new vegan and vegetarian on the market — with the explicit reminder that you have ample time to prepare them before a nice Friday night ‘neath the Christmas tree, clutching bowls of chickpea piccata and vegan kugel, and munching in time to a bangin’ holiday mix. Oh wait, I didn’t get a tree yet either. No matter baby — we got nothing but time.

And our favorite veggie Thanksgiving recipes can make the kitchen scene this weekend too! No one has to know that their stomach’s time continuum is being shifted… 

 

Vegan kugel with broccoli rabe and chanterelles

From Jenn Shagrin’s Veganize This! (Da Capo, 256 pages, $19) 

Hey goy! The Jews know what’s good when it comes to festive comfort food recipes. Kugel’s a big, sweet mess of noodles – perfect for your big, sweet mess of loved ones (or just for you if that’s the extent of your wolf pack).

Serves 6

1 (1-pound) package egg-less noodles

1⁄2 pound broccoli rabe

6 tablespoons (3⁄4 stick) vegan margarine

1 clove garlic, minced

1 large yellow onion, diced

1 cup chanterelle mushrooms, cleaned well

1 (12-ounce) package extra firm tofu

1 cup vegan sour cream

1 1⁄2 cups vegan scrambled eggs (page 27)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

Freshly cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350°F, and grease a 9 by 13-inch baking dish.

Cook the noodles in a large pot of salted water until just al dente, then rinse with cold water and toss with a touch of cooking oil to prevent sticking.

Prepare an ice bath (a large bowl of ice water), and set aside.

Bring a medium-size pot of salted water to a boil, drop in the rabe, and allow to cook for 2 minutes. Drain the rabe, then plunge immediately into the ice bath. Drain well again and set aside.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the margarine in a large skillet over medium-high heat, then add the garlic. Sauté for 30 seconds, then add the onion and sauté until almost translucent. Add the rabe and chanterelles and sauté for another 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.

In a food processor, blend the tofu and crème fraîche until mixed well. Don’t overprocess; there should still be tiny pieces of whole tofu visible.

Using a spatula, transfer the sautéed vegetables to a cutting board. Use a sharp knife to chop roughly. In a large bowl, combine the vegetables, tofu mixture, and all the rest of the ingredients except for the cooked noodles. Once mixed well, stir in the noodles and transfer to the prepared pan. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is browned and the center is firm.

 

 

Chickpea piccata

From Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite For Reduction (Da Capo, 336 pages, $19.95)

Another great vegan recipe that you only need a half hour to create from start to finish – heads up, procrastinators! Chickpea piccata looks fancy, is a great source of fiber, and the little peas are great at helping you detoxify sulfites (preservatives that are found in a lot of processed food, particularly salad dressings).

Serves 4 

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 scant cup thinly sliced shallots

6 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

2 cups vegetable broth

1/3 cup dry white wine

A few pinches of freshly ground black pepper

A generous pinch of dried thyme

1 (16-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/4 cup capers with a little brine

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 cups arugula

Preheat a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Sauté the shallots and garlic for about 5 minutes, until golden. Add the bread crumbs and toast them by stirring constantly for about 2 minutes. They should turn a few shades darker.

Add the vegetable broth, wine, salt, pepper, and thyme. Turn up the heat, bring the mixture to a rolling boil, and let the sauce reduce by half; it should take about 7 minutes.

Add the chickpeas and capers and let heat through, about 3 minutes. Add the lemon juice and turn off the heat.

If you’re serving the piccata with mashed potatoes, place the arugula in a wide bowl. Place the mashed potatoes on top of the arugula and ladle the piccata over the potatoes. The arugula will wilt and it will be lovely. If you are serving the piccata solo, just pour it right over the arugula.

Scrooge you can use

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Scrooge you can use

caitlin@sfbg.com

CULTURE/ALT-XMAS At some point this December, my holiday spirit failed to launch. It’s strange in a way — I love gluttony, formal wear, time with loved ones, and the Latino church procession I saw going down South Van Ness Avenue the other day gave me a little shiver of happiness (not to mention the purple lights bedecking kink.com’s Armory). But I just don’t want to do the tree, the presents, the pressure. Really, this list of Xmas week alternative activities is for me as much as anyone, which I hope means I still get to do the mistletoe thing.

 

OPTION ONE: HEAD FOR THE HILLS

You ain’t got shit to do, so why not take your melancholy and foist it on nature? The recent spate of rain may make for a wet winter wonderland, but that should suit misanthropes just fine. Wear your best raincoat and mittens and you’ll be snug as the baby JC in his manger.

Where to go? The No. 76 Muni bus can get you to the Marin Headlands Recreational Area (remember, the buses run on the holiday-Sunday schedule on the 25th , check www.511.org for times) where foul weather makes for thrilling, wind-whipping hikes about the hills to the north of Golden Gate Bridge. Or you can take advantage of the greenery within city limits. Glen Canyon Park’s many trails are an excellent place to wait out the tinsel and treacle, as are the startlingly beautiful red rocks jutting out over the city in Corona Heights Park and the idiosyncratic bison paddock in Golden Gate Park.

Bonus round: get your conservation on the day after Christmas in Muir Woods with a free hike called “Get Your Spawn On: Searching for Endangered Salmon.” The hike will take you on a hunt for salmonids and reveals how we can help the fishies swim their way back into species security. (Meets at Muir Woods Dipsea Trail Trailhead, Mill Valley. (415) 349-5787, www.wildequity.org. 10 a.m.–noon, free with $5 park entrance fee)

 

OPTION TWO: GET A LITTLE CULTCHA IN YA

Sure, many of our venerable cultural institutions stay away from organizing events over the holiday weekend. But with only a small amount of searching, you can dig up the brave souls who see no reason to halt their arty trot on account of jingle bells. These include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which will be celebrating Dec. 24 with part one of its two-part exhibition “Audience as Subject,” a multimedia exploration of crowd behavior. Filmmaker Stefan Constantinescu will screen Troleibuzul 92 (2009), an examination of reactions to a planted actor on a crowded bus making abusive phone calls to his “girlfriend,” and visual and video artists investigate variations on the theme. (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2700, www.ybca.org. Noon, $7.)

If self scrutiny’s not your jam, head to the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Christmas Day, where free admission all day means that you can save your bones for New Year Eve’s and still check out the work of H.A. Rey and Margret Rey, the husband and wife who created Curious George. The couple just barely managed to smuggle the early sketches of George (and themselves) in their escape from the Nazi invasion of Paris, which they accomplished by bicycle. The drama might explain George’s penchant for close calls and saving the day. Kind of makes that cycling slog through this week’s foul weather seem less onerous, no? (Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; (415) 655-7800, www.thecjm.org. Open 11 a.m.-5 p.m.)

 

OPTION THREE: GET IT ON FILM

Going to the movies on Christmas has long been the treasured territory of awkward family gatherings, and with the mega-release of Tron: Legacy (playing at various Bay Area theaters) you can take it to the third dimension! Why talk about each others’ lives when you can plop down in the Castro Theatre with a tub of popcorn, affix 3-D glasses to your face and zone … out … for two hours and seven minutes? Hell, you can even skip the fam-fam and bring your girl Mary Jane, because this is one flick that promises to look real cool with a side of herb — soundtrack, acting, and plot notwithstanding.

And there’s no need to be a lonely anime geek by the Christmas tree. Bebop Nights, the recurring get-together of cult classic TV show Cowboy Bebop fans is holding its sixth installment Dec. 25, a day stereotypically characterized by animated features with way, way less cooler characters. Sure, Rudolph and Frosty are bulbous and ebullient, but Spike, Vicious, and Julie are deep space bounty hunters with a penchant for dope background music. Which cast better characterizes your lump of coal attitude this yuletide? (Bridge Theatre, 3010 Geary, SF; (415) 668-6384, www.landmarktheaters.com. Midnight–3 a.m., suggested donation $4)

Other promising showings include Natalie Portman’s psycho-ballet thriller, Black Swan, camp of the year Burlesque, the Coen brothers’ remake of the western True Grit, and Naomi Watts as CIA agent Valerie Plame in Fair Game.

 

OPTION FOUR: DRINK

And when all else fails, raise a glass to (and of, see how that works?) booze. Many of your watering hole favorites will be open Christmas Eve and day, but why not try on a new barstool and pack of regulars for size? My pick for caroling into the bottom of your glass is Trad’r Sam (6150 Geary, SF; (415) 221-0733. Open noon–late), a kick-ass Outer Richmond tiki bar where I am cautioned that a solo scorpion bowl mission will result in the ability to see reindeers, unless that’s what you’re going for. To make your Christmas denial complete, keep one eye on the jukebox, and your clobbering stick handy for any poor schlub who opts for Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas.”

Nathan Habib keeps it kosher

Andrew Lam
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“I’m a really practical person. That limits me from driving out to a club the city and coming back in the morning to take a test.” Nathan Habib’s not living the rock star stand-up comedian life just yet. But that’s not to say that Habib (who will be performing at Kung Pao Kosher Comedy‘s holiday run Thurs/23-Sun/26) isn’t dedicated to making people laugh. He’s been performing for seven years – and he’s 21 years old.

Habib’s standard promotional copy calls him “confidently awkward,” and this is actually how he comes across when I meet with him at Farley’s coffee shop on Potrero Hill. I’m late, of course, and he’s begun to read from the rack of magazines besides him, but he quickly shelves the material to say a very polite hello as I approach.

Habib is from a strong Israeli-Latvian-Italian family with a big social network in Palo Alto. His mom is the lovingly pushy type of mother that approached Kung Pao founder Lisa Geduldig after her son fell in love with New York comedian Greg Rogell’s act that night. “Traditional Jewish mom, telling her I’m a comedian like I’ve been doing it forever or something,” Habib laughs.

Whether Geduldig took the endorsement with a grain or salt or not is questionable, but the fact remains that she listened to mom’s assertion that her 14 year old son was serious about stand up. She put Habib into the lineup of one of her shows before (this week’s run will be Habib’s second with the series), and provided support for the kid as he traversed the world of high school open mics and comedy clubs around the peninsula. “Lisa has been really good to me,” Habib says. Throughout high school, he says, he was known as the “stand up guy,” and didn’t know any one else his own age with the same motivation to grip mics and wax observational on stage. 

The reasonable tenor of conversation with Habib is kind of weird because I tend to think of stand-up comedians as messed-up individuals (in the best sense of the term). But here we have a young man who puts his double major in film and economics at UC Santa Cruz firmly at the top of his list of priorities. He’s got a girlfriend with whom “things are flowing well,” and who doesn’t mind that she makes regular appearances in Habib’s schtick, generally as part of stories highlighting his inability to set romantic scenes for her. He also gets a laugh out of his brothers, who find Habib’s venting about frustrating situations hilarious, and his dear old momma, who drove him all around town in the early days to get him to gigs. “My mom loves it when I make fun of her. I don’t know why – well, I think she likes the attention,” he smiles.

Wholesome as a glass of milk. Although, coming from Gunn High School, a competitive prep incubator in Palo Alto, the choice of stand up comedian as a career is a bit off the beaten path. “All my friends want to be doctors and lawyers, go to grad school or whatever.” But Habib can’t shake the pull of comedy “It’s my identity. Plus, I feel like I’m giving something to society.”

His general feel-good sunniness is appropriate, perhaps, for a Christmas gathering for people that don’t celebrate (or need a break from) Christmas. Kung Pao takes the old cliché of Jews eating at a Chinese restaurant over the holidays and puts a little sass on it: a lineup that this year includes creepy-cute Wendy Liebman, Vietnamese-Jewish Joe Nguyen, Habib, and Geduldig herself. A real nice place to take the fam if you’re ready for a break from “closed for the holidays” and canned expectations of world peace and fraternal love.

For Habib’s part, he’ll be following in the grand standup tradition of playing off the idiosyncrasies of his lovingly wacky life, which for him isn’t as easy as it sounds, really. “These things come so naturally to me that I don’t always see the funniness in it.” Kung Pao gives him a chance to play up the Jewish side of his routine, not something he usually focuses on. “I will say,” he says. “That it’s going to feel good to come back to my people.”

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy

Thurs/23 and Sun/26 dinner 5-6 p.m., comedy 6-7:30 p.m.

Fri/24-Sat/25 dinner 6-7 p.m., comedy 7-8:30 p.m.

All shows $42-62

New Asia Restaurant

772 Pacific, SF

(925) 275-9005

www.koshercomedy.com

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