Caitlin Donohue

NSFR(estaurant): My dinner with Dixie

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All photos by Benjy Feen

I had a blind date with Dixie De La Tour, but I wasn’t nervous. If all else failed, at least she would bring stories to tell. And how – De La Tour is the founder and emcee of Bawdy Storytelling, a randy live series with two events next week (Wed/6 and Sat/9) that will bring writers, comedians, and normal folk-like to the stage to share corset-busting sexcapades with an audience of vicarious pervs.

“I don’t know how this got to be my life,” says Dixie, now installed across the restaurant table from me behind a glass of sweet tea, wearing a dashing fedora and magnetic waves of dyed red hair. Her blue eyes have the intent gaze in them that you can see on people that know how to hold the attention of the room. “I don’t have a degree in it like every other pervert in this town.”

It is true that De La Tour seems to have lucked out on the manner in which she makes her money. By day, she scouts scammers at Fling.com, a national dating site for casual hookups. Perhaps she’s a natural fraud-finder – the woman’s spent a life facilitating honest, fun sexual encounters. She’s also a contributor at She Loves Sex, a collection of blogs about all things sexual related to women, told in a knowledgeable women’s voice. For the site, De La Tour recently interviewed Rebecca, a soccer mom from Florida who has started a successful chain of swinger’s parties in between PTA meetings and classes towards her master’s in public relations. 

Bawdy Storytelling, started four years ago, runs through a different theme each month. Adderall Diaries writer Stephen Elliott and that webmaster savior of the perpetually broke gadabout, Johnny Funcheap will be spinning yarns at next week’s Litquake edition of Bawdy (Wed/6), which actually is not themed at all, but rather a collection of the all-star lineup’s “best true stories.”

Maybe she’s got no degree, but Dixie does have a history in the psychology of human sexual relations. Over her rum cake — and to the passing interest of our server — De La Tour tells me that she got the party started at the first Kinky Salon XXX edition. Well c’mon Dixie, story time. She obliges. 

Dixie De La Tour fires up the Bawdy crowd

Having transplanted from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and an unsatisfying heterosexual monogamous relationship with a bookie, De La Tour was in her element in late ’90s San Francisco. “You know that girl whose always down for the sex party? People would call me up and I’d be like, I’m there!” She became the doorperson for the original Kinky Salon parties at Mission Control, back in the days when the get-togethers were more “salon” and less “kinky” – there hadn’t been sex, at least as acknowledged by the party planners, for the first few Kinkys.

But one month, founders Polly and Scott decided to change the nature of their get-together. De La Tour recalls a woman arriving at the party who told her “I’m from New Hampshire and this is my first San Francisco sex party!” Well, by the time De La Tour had gotten off her shift and into the mix at Kinky, there was talking, there was certainly drinking, but at least explictly, no sex. 

“There was a bullhorn by the stage,” she remembers, fully in the swing of her tale. 

It is at this time that I should explain that Dixie has explained that she is herself, “not that big of an exhibitionist.” De La Tour is a facilitator, the person at the swinger’s party who loves nothing more to make introductions and get the fucking going… for others. That’s what she likes.

So back to the bullhorn. Having made the most of her time off door duty, she is a bit inebriated at this point. She takes the bullhorn and, having installed herself on stage in front of the party, booms to New Hampshire woman “Connecticut! Go have sex with that guy!” — or some such thing (having told me she is “much more interesting after two beers,” I am obliging her and my notes are a bit sparse from this point in the evening). She remembers them immediately going to have sex, although others from the night remember it differently. Good storytelling is all about the broad strokes.

But regardless, the rest is undisputed. Dixie soldiers on with the bullhorn, roaming about the club until she actually does encounter a couple copulating in the Pink Room and begins to shout very, very dirty things into the bullhorn at them. “Say my name, say you like my big dick” she shouts (“really, things that were not making very much sense,” she tells me, looking through that deadly scope of hindsight). Suddenly, couples rush into the Pink Room, and Dixie has officially started the orgy. Er, party. 

Later, she runs into the original fuckers in another room utilizing a fucking machine. She is stripped of her bullhorn, installed on said machine, and is chagrined (remember, not a big exhibitionist) when the tables are turned and the woman from this couple begins to yell her name into the bullhorn. “Yeah, you like my big dick, Dixie?” Partygoers rush into the room to see the performance, and aid in her enjoyment of machine. She is eventually brought to climax when a woman Eskimo kisses her. 

This is told with a smile, and by the end of it, we notice our server is frozen in her rounds of filling water glasses. “What on earth are you two talking about?” she says, giggling. But this is San Francisco, and as she is clearly intrigued, Dixie hands her a card that has all the Bawdy Storytelling events inscribed on its back. 

After our (professionally inclined) date, I feel as though I have met someone very special, someone who has the cojones to nurture a community that often stays behind closed doors. De La Tour tells me you can learn a lot from hearing a person talk for ten minutes, perhaps more than you can learn having a good time with them at a swinger’s party. 

And the connection is contagious. De La Tour started Bawdy Storytelling as a “coffee klatch for pervs,” where people would gather about the table and talk about how last night’s Kinky Salon went for them. Soon others wanted to sit in on the talks around the table, which led to Bawdy’s current public incarnation. And then everyone wanted to share a story, which led to Bawdy’s set program of four to six speakers a night, “so that people could see there was a set lineup and they weren’t on it,” De La Tour tells me. “Somebody’s always walking up to me and saying hey I got one for you!” This last line enunciated with a pointed finger and an intensification of that blue-eyed stare.

How nice to get sexuality out into the open. How nice to find meaning and simpatico in our sex. How nice to be Dixie De La Tour.

 

Bawdy Storytelling Graphic Confessions

Wed/6 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org


Lit Crawl: Bawdy in the Alley

Sat/9 8:30-9:30 p.m., free

Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th St., SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org

 

Crusader of the cables: Fannie Mae Barnes

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Whoever said a cable car couldn’t be operated on woman power alone clearly had never met the steam engine on this grandmother. Fannie Mae Barnes of Oakland, California was the first woman ever to operate a cable car grip – not because it was a higher paying position, or an easier gig, but because she was told that women didn’t have the strength to do the job right.

Barnes started pumping iron, passed the 25-day grip operator training program notorious for its 80 percent drop out rate, and became a source of civic pride. She even drove the Olympic torch up the Hyde Street hill en route to the 2002 Winter Olympics. A documentary about her achievement, “Getting a Grip,” will be shown tonight at Lunafest, a traveling film festival that screens movies made by and about women to benefit the Breast Cancer Fund. We caught up with Barnes for a phone interview about knocking down one of the city’s diehard gender divisions of labor.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What made you want to be a cable car operator?

Fannie Mae Barnes: It wasn’t about being a conductor, it was the grip up front, which is totally different from the conductor. In ’98 I went up front and became the first female ever to be certified as a grip. 

 

SFBG: What’s the difference?

FMB: The difference is this: on the cable car it takes two people to operate, you have the person in the rear that does the back break at any given time it’s needed and collect the fares. Up front you have the gripman that controls the cable car. There’s a huge device that weighs about 375 pounds and it’s called the grip and it grips the cable that’s underneath the ground that’s moving at nine and a half miles per cable speed. It’s a ITAL job. It’s very different from conducting.

 

SFBG: So you’re lifting a 375 pound weight to operate the cable car?

FMB: As far as pulling back, yeah. The cable car itself weighs eight tons, empty. It’s a miniature train. A lot of guys will try to muscle the grip, but it’s really more a finesse thing – you have to leverage it with your body weight. 

 

SFBG: How did you become the first woman to operate the grip?

FMB: Well they had said that they always need gripmen because it’s a difficult job. They had mentioned that it was a job that woman could not do because we lacked the upper body strength. So I said hey, come on now, you know, there’s absolutely nothing a woman can’t do. I mean if you can take care of a family, I mean, come on. This was in ’97 that this article came out. So in ’97 I decided I had to step up to the plate and be that woman, so I did it. I worked out extensively for six months to a year. I couldn’t let the year 2000 come into existence without a woman up front. So I did it, February 14th, 1997.

 

SFBG: What were you doing before you started working at the cable cars?

FMB: I was driving buses. I drove buses for 11 years. Some of my friends who had drove buses had left and were over in the cable cars division, so that’s what I did. And once I started working there I loved it. It’s a totally different scene, you know, you have a lot of tourists and they just want to ride and have fun.

 

SFBG: What kind of reaction did you get from the other cable car grips?

FMB: Well a lot of the guys were betting money against me that I would not make it. But then I had positive input too from some guys, so I went with the positive side. I knew that I was going to make it because I was training hard for it and it was something that I felt that I could do, and anytime you really apply yourself and it’s something that you want to do, you can do it.

 

SFBG: What gave you that conviction to know you could be that first woman? Is that something your family taught you?

FMB: Yeah, more or less. My mom always taught me growing up that whatever you want to do hon, you can do it, you just have to set your mind to it and go for it. 

 

SFBG: So what are you doing with your golden years of retirement?

FMB: I work with an organization, Ghana Women and Children of North America. We’ve only been existence for a year, we do non-profit work with organizations in Africa. We put electricity in a primary and secondary school, we bought them two computers, a printer, and we opened up the Internet for them. 

 

Lunafest

Featuring films Getting a Grip, Top Spin, and Tightly Knit

Thur/30 6 p.m., $20

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.lunafest.org

 

Hot sexy events Sept 29 – Oct 5

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With Folsom’s fumes still coming out of your pores thanks to this week’s weather’s surprise cameo by Death Valley, you are perhaps wondering the best spot to get hot and sweaty with your newfound best trick. We got you covered — as we do each week here in the schvitzy dungeon of the SFBG stables. Read on for porn parodies, artistic foreplay, and techno-free touching.

 

Naked Men’s Sketch

Eros’ website says that the NMS that takes over the community room in the sex club each Wednesday is all about fostering artistic development. But it’s not too many life drawing classes that require that all involved take a turn up on the nudie dais. Could it be that art here is not defined by the charcoal sketch on the pad in front of you? If you invite your favorite David to partake in the creative carnality on option in the rest of the club, you will probably be forgiven. 

Wed/29 7-9 p.m., free

Eros

2051 Market, SF

(415) 864-3767

www.erossf.com


Arse Elektronika

Sex in space. Space in sex. Sex in coffins, fucking machines, digital sex toys – Arse Elektronika is a three day festival of what it means to be human in this digital age. And if they want you to dress like a 1950s B-movie sci-fi character in which to do it all, so be it. The weekend kicks off with a parties, one featuring said coffin (in which couples can be “buried” and do what they like in front of the coffin’s installed night vision cam), and continues with lectures all day on topics from Creating Spaces for Sex, taught by Carol Queen, and Blowing Your Load: The Office Shooting Spree as Sexual Metaphor. Something for everyone!

Thur/30-Sun/3, $20 day pass – $50 weekend pass

Times and locations vary

www.monochrom.at


Kiss

An adult social club with nary a trace of techno is a rare event at Mission Control, where Burners often flock for some radical free love in the playa off-season. But not so at Kiss, where pre-screened women and couples get their play started on the dancefloor before they progress to one of the MC’s be-pillowed, bedazzled romper rooms.

Sat/2 10 p.m., RSVP required, see website for prices

Mission Control

2519 Mission, SF

www.clubkiss.us


Bent XXX Parody

Cue the over-exaggerated moans and overdone dialogue – this month’s BDSM young people play party, Bent, is taking on the parody. The theme for the party this weekend plays into the penchant for pornos to spoof – adding a little ribbing at Twilight or The Office‘s expense in with the sensual sexy play. To this end, hosts Stefanos and Chey will be holding a “Bent’s Got Talent!” face-off, where competitors are encourage to show off their deep-throating, to ribbon-dancing to zither-playing skills. 

Fri/1 9 p.m.-1 a.m., $20

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.stefanosandchey.com/bent.html


Ms. Leather SF 2010 Competition

Since 1987 when Shadow Morton took home the prize for best dyke in skins, the Ms. Leather SF Competition has been turning heads and cracking whips — in fact, three of those years, Ms. SF has gone on to win the International Ms. Leather sash (2009’s winner Mollena Williams among them). Who will be the lucky womyn this time around? The three contestants are all upstanding members of the SF sex community, so judges might have a tough time figuring out who comes out on top.

Sat/2 6:30 p.m., $10-20

Hotel Whitcomb

1231 Market, SF

www.mssfleather.org


OMG – Multiple Gushing G-Spot Orgasms

Tallulah Samis, somatic sexologist comes to tell you just how to achieve that Herbal Essence commercial look. Of course, it’s not just about great hair. She’s talking “exquisite Yoni (vagina) massage techniques,” for you and/or a friend!

Mon/4 6-8 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com

 

Lending art in the TL

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Throughout the course of writing my feature story about the Tenderloin this week, which looks at the role art is playing in the gradually changing neighborhood, a couple of questions kept cycling back into the forefront of my mind. What should be the role of art in community-building? What kinds of art benefit the residents of a neighborhood? It’s tough to categorically define the answers, but Rick Darnell and the North of Market Community Benefit District‘s plans for a TL art lending library come damn close to a perfect score.

The Tenderloin Art Lending Library (TALL)’s planned role in the community is double-fold: one, it will provide a boost to “outsider” artists in the Tenderloin, people who have never had their art displayed in a studio and may lack the career know how to make that happen, and two, their pieces wind up in the homes of people who otherwise would have few touches of beauty there — at least not original works by creative minds. “A lot of artists never get discovered,” Darnell tells me, sitting in the basement room that the NOM-CBD has allocated to housing the library. Donated paintings lean against the walls around us, and a table is stacked with interesting metal sculptures behind my chair. 

His goal is to get this art into the homes of the Tenderloin’s recently housed residents. The neighborhood is well known as a drop-off spot for released convicts, Darnell tells me, and has a high percentae of residents on parole and probation. Between the recently incarcerated and the participants of the City’s “Care Not Cash” transitional housing program, you have a lot of people who need help making their new rooms homey. 

Paintings for and by the community line the walls at the Tenderloin Art Lending Library

Every three months TALL participants will be allowed to take a different piece of art for their space. Not everyone’s used to having nice things though. Darnell anticipates the challenges that this will entail, and tells me that those hurdles are kind of the point.

“It’s based on trust and sharing and a celebration of those two things,” he says. He’s got a system worked out for participants that mess up their given canvass or sculpture: six months probation from the library if they sold it or destroyed it, but leniency if the damage was due to carelessness or misfortune. “If it’s something like the dog eats it, we’ll work with them to find another place in their house that would be better for the painting,” he says, adding that program volunteers will be prepared to make house visits to make this happen, or to involve less mobile residents. “We want to make this a good experience for them.”

Some of the pieces around us, Darnell tells me, were done by artists afraid to leave their own house, elderly artists, recovering addicts, current addicts. Many artists have volunteered their art – he shows me one small canvass covered in dynamic swooshes of primary colors that came from an artist in Colombia that saw his call for admissions online – but he gives priority to Tenderloin artists, who seem to be the ones that are most connected to the mission anyway. “The people who have the least to give, I’ve found, are the most generous,” he says.

Rick P. Lion’s fantastical creations will soon be sitting in the living room of a recently housed, newly initiated art connoisseur 

Darnell knows what helps people get better: in addition to his years spent working with society’s forgotten communities, he’s been a part of them himself. “I’ve dealt with addiction, I’ve dealt with being homeless,” he tells me straight-forwardly. 

He’s got no issue with recounting his story. An MFA recipient in dance and design from the integrative learning-based Bennington College, he traveled the country after graduation dancing with a troupe that performed in non-traditional venues and focused on social issues in their productions. 

But he fell into drug use, and in1989 tested positive for HIV. He moved directly into the Tenderloin when he got to San Francisco and hasn’t left since, finding the expansive gay community “astounding.” He’s been clean for years, and seems inordinately enthused for a guy that’s been through a lot. “I’m just really happy to be here and doing this.”

Perhaps it was a no-brainer that someday Darnell connect his love of helping others in a tight spot with his love of art, given the role that it plays in his own mental clarity. “I draw something everyday,” he says. “I’ve drawn thousands of bullets, thousands of popper bottles. The shapes are really calming to me.” 

Until recently a long time employee of the Hospitality House, a resource center for homeless individuals around the corner from the NOM CBD that includes a drop-in arts studio, employment help, and a men’s shelter, Darnell was hired at the Community Benefit District initially as a janitor. But the organization invested $15,000 in seed money so that he could flesh out his vision of a community enhancing arts program. Now he’s in charge of outreach and general operations of the project. 

“It seems frivolous, like maybe I should be doing a food drive – but these are all sides of a well rounded person,” he reflects. Darnell initially considered starting a tool lending library, but changed his mind when he considered that the art exchange would give TL artists a chance to work on their craft, as well as gain some valuable artistic experience – pieces will be displayed in the gallery that gracefully inhabits the current lobby and front hallway of the NOM CBD. 

Community through art: Rick Darnell in front of the frame that will constitute an altar he and some veteran friends are completing for SomARTS Cultural Center’s Dia de los Muertos exhibit

He envisions the library as a place where people can come and connect using the language of art. “You might come to have a salon community,” he suggests regarding residents’ use of the future space. It’ll be open Fridays and Saturdays from 12-3 p.m., starting with a kick-off party on Oct. 30. 

We chat briefly about some of the other recent arts development in the neighborhood. I first met Darnell at a fairly informal meeting of TL art types convened by the Tenderloin Economic Development Project’s Elvin Padilla. In addition to the Darnell’s presentation of his library, a representative of a well known theater discussed plans for expansion, possibly in the Tenderloin. Another performing arts organization announced they were looking for a TL address, and various art galleries discussed openings and future collaborations with each other. 

“A lot of people put endeavors in the Tenderloin because rent is cheap, and it’s slowly changing the area,” Darnell tells me of people he refers to as “carpet baggers.” We talk about a comment he overheard from a gallery owner in the area after Rick announced his plans for the lending library to the group. The individual had muttered “I’d never lend anything to anyone in the Tenderloin.” “For good reason,” Rick continues “people are wary of homeless folk.”

But Darnell doesn’t seem to be wary of the recently homeless folk he’s passing out TALL fliers to and still collecting donations of art for. In fact, he seems stoked on his continuing role in their lives, and stoked for the day the library’s circulation begins at the end of next month, when they’ll eat light snacks and start making connections through art. 

“If there’s anyplace that’s open to this stuff,” he tell me “it’s the Tenderloin.”

 

Tenderloin Art Lending Library Kick-Off Party

Oct. 30, 12-3 p.m., free

North of Market Community Benefit District

134A Golden Gate, SF

tenderloincommunityartprojects@gmail.com

 

Getting our rocks off: a historical perspective

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San Francisco is waiting for its Boogie Nights. Unbeknownst to Hollywood, our fair berg was the infant creche of hardcore pornography, spawning a subculture of porn theaters that thrived despite police harassment and political pressure.

We were number one! Luckily, a few brave men are resurrecting our porn golden age money shot – read on for a first look at documentary The Smut Capital of America and an interview with the director himself, Michael Stabile.


Smut Capital is by no means Stabile’s first porn rodeo. The co-editor of Gay Porn Blog, he and Smut Capital editor-cinematographer Ben Leon are both mainstays in the SF gay porn scene. The two were researching their upcoming doc on the life of gay smut powerhouse Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes when Stabile came across a New York Times article that inspired the title of their new project, which is a work in progress for which the team is fundraising in order to release the finished film in 2011.

“Until then I’d always thought of it as an industry that emerged from LA, but San Francisco was actually the city that birthed the porno theater. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution, and in a lot of ways these directors were documenting this newly found freedoms.” Stabile attributes the renaissance to hippie women “with really no hangups,” a progressive zeitgeist that had seized the city in the late sixties and early seventies, and film processing studios that were willing to develop sexually explicit material. By the era’s zenith in 1972, there were porno film theaters in neighborhoods across the city.

Not that everyone was down to get all that action on screen. Dianne Feinstein, first in her post as the city’s first female president of the Board of Supervisors and then as SF’s first female mayor, led a crusade focused on cleaning up the Tenderloin, which incidentally included sweeping the neighborhood free of its supply of adult movie houses. What ensued was an orchestrated harassment policy that different porn theaters dealt with in different ways.

Established theaters, Stabile says, actually benefited from the police and media persecution. “They’d come in with cameras, it’d be on the five o clock news and it would be great for them,” he says. “Advertising was very limited at the Chronicle. Feinstein would come in with her troops and would detail everything that was going on. Suddenly there was a way to talk about it, so people would flood into the theaters.” The Mitchell Brothers grew so adept at playing the cat and mouse game, he says, that they would post Feinstein’s office number on their marquee under the words “call for a good time.”

But not everyone prospered. Smaller theaters that depended on a few workers to operate, like Alex DeRenzy’s Screening Room, suffered when police would take key staffers on pointeless joyrides around town before booking them on charges of vice crime. Eventually factors like these, and more importantly the advent of video porn in the 1980s pulled the adult film business down to Los Angeles.

The move shifted the purpose of sex films away from their original role in the Sexual Revolution. Says Stabile “People were doing it here because they enjoyed it, because they wanted their own sexualities represented. It’s not like that in LA for the most part, where even a lot of the gay studios are owned by straight men looking to turn a profit.”

But don’t worry, the party’s not over. One of Stabile’s main goals with the film is not just to highlight good sex gone by, but that which cums and goes even today. When asked whether SF is still a presence in the world of porn, he had no equivocation. “Its one of the great untold stories in the local media – San Francisco has a huge porn presence. Raging Stallion, Falcon, Hot House – seven of the top ten gay porn studios are located up here, there’s Kink.com, porn writers like Violet Blue,” he says.

It appears that the tech savvy and sexual freedom that led to our capital crowning are still alive and well on these city streets. Phew! Now you may now go back to your regularly scheduled local porn browsing.

It’s raining yuks

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caitlin@sfbg.com

STAGE Ho there! You with the sad-face! Check out these whoop-whooping upcoming comedy events and turn that ;( onto a 🙂 right quick.

 

THE ENDGAMES

It’s no laughing matter. Twelve San Francisco improv teams will enter Kitchen Stadium — sorry, the Ninth Street Independent Film Center — but only one will rise to the top like clownin’ Mario Batalis. Not only does the winner score the honor of beating less funny peers in front of a crowd (and G-list celebrity judges — the author of this article included), but he or she also gets a four-week run at the venue. We hear the art of improv involves never saying “no” — how you gonna turn down the cutthroat crazy of The Endgames?

Thursdays through Nov. 11, 9 p.m., $10

Ninth Street Independent Film Center

145 Ninth St., SF

www.endgamesimprov.blogspot.com

 

KUNG PAO KOSHER PRESENTS: FUNNY GIRLZ

It ain’t easy being a woman in the stand-up biz. But you’ll never know it watching the four women who will be onstage for this long-running (11 years!) annual lineup from Kung Pao Kosher Comedy. Kung Pao began as a haven for Jews on Christmas and has expanded into a year-round lineup of multicultural, multi-hilarious events. This year’s Funny Girlz include Pakistani native Brit Shazia Mirza (“at least, that’s what it says on my pilot’s license,” she quips); San Franciscan Clara Clayy; Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, one of India’s rare female comedians; and Kung Pao founder Lisa Geduldig. Breaking boundaries, busting glass ceilings? Try being an intelligent, funny female stand-up. Unfortunately, that can be radical enough at times.

Weds/29, 8 p.m., $25

Brava Theater

2781 27th St., SF

(415) 522-3737

www.koshercomedy.com

 

WILL FRANKEN

So your stash ran out, or you’re detoxing, or you’re done with the hallucinogenics, or whatever. Page back through your neatly stacked Guardian Best of the Bay issues and there it is: “Best Alternative to Psychedelic Drugs”: comedian Will Franken. Shall we listen in on one of his absurdist rants? “Every 60 seconds in America, 60 seconds go by. For every one minute, there are 59 others just waiting to form an hour. By the time this sentence is over, I will have finished saying it.” Franken is one of SF’s glorious bizarros, spackling his acts with TV commercials that fold into dual-voiced skits that segue to celebrations of diversity … for profit! Just don’t freak when does his Antichrist voice.

Fri/1 and Sat/2 8 p.m., $20

The Purple Onion

140 Columbus, SF

(415) 956-1653

www.caffeemacaroni.com

 

IMPROVISED SHAKESPEARE

Improv is a strange beast. Improv comedians find more thrill from throwing body and soul into the dark abyss of audience suggestion and happenstance genius than they do from conventional stand-up’s hours in front of the mirror perfecting that ever-so-crucial eyebrow raise or purposefully awkward arm movement. But from the abyss, great rewards they reap. No company in San Francisco has learned this lesson more effectively than BATS Improv, which has been entertaining Bay Area audiences since 1986. This week’s offering? “Warp Speed” is an all-improvised take on Star Trek – no Kirk, no Spock but a flurry of new characters made up on the spot, as well as, we’re sure, some seriously kooky props and alien situations.

Fri/1 8 p.m., $17–$20

BATS Improv

B350 Fort Mason Center, SF

(415) 474-6776

www.improv.org

 

KRISTEN SCHAAL

It’s a tricky line, but one Kristen Schaal walks well: that fissure between cute and psycho. She’s gone and perfected the odd balance on TV’s “Flight of the Conchords” as Mel, the persistent stalker of the eponymous New Zealand folk-humor duo. But standup comedy is where she got her start and laid the groundwork for her nerdy suave. Her sets vary between dark and light — she wants to tell you about her dream! Her sex dream. Featuring Winston Churchill. (The sex wasn’t great.)

Thurs/7–Sun/10 8 p.m., $17.50–$20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

OUT LOUD COMEDY & ARTS FESTIVAL

It may not be the first comedy mélange devoted to our hilarious homos — Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s Valencia Rose Cabaret flounced off with that title in the 1980s — but the four-day Out Loud fest may be the brightest and most focused yet. Shall we lead with the high-wattage names? Castro Theatre will be packed for “An Evening with Sandra Bernhard,” whose Nancy Bartlett on Roseanne was the first recurring lesbian character on American TV. Film snark Frank Decaro from The Daily Show will also be out and about, sassing up a corner of The Lookout interviewing his fellow festivators and performing with a swath of TV feys at the Swedish-American Music Hall for an evening called “Rooftops and Bottoms.” But you don’t gotta be on TV to kick it. Local drag cutup Sasha Soprano has rousted six of the finest becoiffed and becoming spotlight stars for Saturday’s “The Drag Queens of Comedy” at the Castro Theater. How exactly will their shtick be different from the rest of the shows on our fall highlights list? We asked one of the night’s main acts, Miss Coco Peru, a classy redhead who has kept New York City audiences enthralled since the early 1990s with monologues that switch between the weighty and the witty. “Well, it takes us all a lot longer to get ready,” she said. Oh, and you don’t heckle a drag queen — unless you think a stiletto to the sacrum will straighten out your kinks down there.

Oct. 7–10

See website for times, locations, and prices

www.outloudcomedy.com

The test of the Tenderloin

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caitlin@sfbg.com

This is a story about love and money. Or a story about love, money, and location. — Rebecca Solnit, Hollow City (Verso 2000)

It’s a sunny day in the most maligned neighborhood in San Francisco. I’m walking down a busy sidewalk with an excited Randy Shaw, long-time housing advocate. He’s giving me a tour of his Tenderloin.

“There’s history everywhere you look here,” he notes as we rush about the dingy blocks of one of the city’s most densely populated, economically bereft communities. In a half-untucked navy button-down and square-frame glasses, Shaw reels off evidence of this legacy faster than I can write it down and still maintain our walking pace.

To our left, Hyde Street Studios, where the Grateful Dead recorded its 1970 album American Beauty. Across the street, a ramshackle building that once housed Guido Caccienti’s Black Hawk nightclub, where the sounds of jam-fests by the likes of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane would echo out onto the streets during its heyday in the 1950s. Throughout its history, the Tenderloin has been renowned for its nightlife: music, theater, sex work — and the social space that occurs between them.

Shaw came to the Tenderloin 30 years ago as a young law student and founded and built the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a nonprofit agency that is now one of the largest property owners in the neighborhood and employs more than 250 full-time workers. Shaw has spent the last few decades fighting to improve conditions in the single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, once notorious for malfunctioning heating systems and mail rooms that would dump the letters for their hundreds of low-income residents into a pile on the floor rather than fit them into personal lock boxes (which now line the walls of THC’s lobbies).

But that activism isn’t the reason for this tour. No, today Shaw is showing me why tourism can work in the Tenderloin. The heavy iron gate of an SRO is quickly buzzed open as the doorman recognizes him. Inside, working-class seniors mill about aided by walkers — this particular property is an old folks’ home — but over our heads, affixed to a majestically high ceiling, looms a triple-tiered glass and metal chandelier, evidence of the area’s architecturally important past.

“When I show people this,” Shaw smiles at my amazement at this bling in a nonprofit apartment building, “they’re amazed at the quality of the housing.” Further down the road, we peep in at a vividly Moorish geometric vaulted ceiling and a lobby that once housed a boxing gym where Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali liked to spar. Both are now home to the inner city’s poorest residents.

Of course, it’s not just tours that we’re talking when it comes to Shaw’s plans for the future. Shaw has acquired a 6,400-square-foot storefront in the Cadillac Hotel on the corner of Eddy and Leavenworth streets, where he plans to open the Uptown Tenderloin Museum in 2012. He says it will showcase the hood’s historical legacy as well as house a nighttime music venue in the basement. The increased foot traffic, he says, will do good things for public safety (a problem that has been identified as a high priority by the resident-run Tenderloin Neighborhood Association) and bring business to the neighborhood’s impressive collection of small ethnic restaurants.

An increased focus on the Tenderloin’s heritage and public image, Shaw says, will translate to more jobs and a better quality of life for the people who live here. “My goal is to have this be the first area in an American city where low income people have a high quality of life,” he says.

If Shaw is correct, it will indeed be a first. Many cities have attempted to transform low income areas with arts districts — and the end result has typically been the displacement of the poorer residents. Coalition on Homelessness director Jennifer Friedenbach described the process: “Gentrification follows a very specific path. First come police sweeps, then the arts, then the displacement. That’s the path that we’re seeing. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid the displacement part,” she says.

It’d be great if the Tenderloin took the road less traveled — but will it?

Shaw’s best-case scenario seems unlikely, according to Chester Hartman, a renowned urban planning scholar and author of the numerous studies of San Francisco history and the activist handbook Displacement: How to Fight It (National Housing Law Project 1982). Hartman doubts the Tenderloin will remain a housing option for the city’s poor, given its central location and market trends. “The question is, what proportion will move and what will stay?” he said in a phone interview.

Earlier this summer, the National Endowment of the Arts awarded the SF Arts Commission $250,000 toward an arts-based “revitalization of the mid-Market neighborhood.” The area, which is adjacent to the Tenderloin, is considered by many to be the more outwardly visible face of the TL. In truth, the two neighborhoods share many of the same issues and public characteristics, including high density living and prominent issues with drugs.

Amy Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of neighborhood business development, said the Newsom administration is using the money “to implement arts programming that would have an immediate impact on the street. These activities would then build momentum for the longer-term projects.” At this point, plans for that “immediate impact” have started with the installation of lights on Market Street between Sixth and Eighth streets. Two other projects are also in effect: a city-sponsored weekly arts market on United Nations Plaza and an al fresco public concert series.

It’s hard to distinguish these moves from a general trend toward rebranding the image of the Tenderloin. These streets have already seen Newsom announce a historic preservation initiative that put $15,000 worth of commemorative plaques on buildings; it was also announced they would be added to the National Register of Historic Places, a move that allows property owners deep tax cuts for building renovations.

Cohen said her office has spent time trying to attract a supermarket (something the neighborhood, although flush with corner stores, currently lacks), but efforts seem to be faltering. “Grocery store operators and other retailers perceive that the area is unsafe and have expressed concerns about the safety of their employees and customers,” Cohen said. “The arts strategy makes sense because it builds on the assets that are there. Cultivating the performing and visual arts uses that are already succeeding will ultimately enhance the neighborhood’s ability to attract restaurants, retail, and needed services like grocery stores.”

These days, many of the small businesses in the area have window signs hyping “Uptown Tenderloin: Walk, Dine, Enjoy” over graphics of jazzy, people-free high-rises. Looking skyward, one observes the recent deployment of tidy street banners funded by the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District that pay homage to the number of untouched historic buildings in the neighborhood. The banners read “409 historic buildings in 33 blocks. Yeah, we’re proud.”

Figuring out who benefits from these new bells and whistles can seem baffling at times. Even the museum plan, which Shaw says will draw inspiration in part from New York’s Tenement Museum, has drawn criticism. A July San Francisco Magazine blog post was subtitled “An indecent proposal that puzzled even the San Francisco Visitors Bureau” and likened Shaw’s attempts to the “reality tourism movement” that takes travelers through gang zones in L.A. and poverty-stricken townships in South Africa.

This seems to be a misconstruction of what he’s attempting. “You know what no one ever calls out? The Mission mural tours, the Chinatown tours,” Shaw says.

And Shaw scoffs when I bring up that PR bane of the urban renewer: gentrification. He takes me through a brief rundown of the strict zoning laws in the Tenderloin, adding that many people don’t believe that poor people have the right to live in a high-quality neighborhood: “I haven’t been down here for 30 years to create a neighborhood no one wants to live in.”

Indeed, thanks to the efforts of Shaw and others, it would be hard for even the most determined developers to get rid of the SRO housing in the Tenderloin.

In the 1980s, community activists struggled to change the zoning designation of the neighborhood, which lacked even a name on many city maps. The area was zoned for high-rise buildings and was being encroached on by the more expensive building projects of tourist-filled Union Square, Civic Center, and the wealthier Nob Hill neighborhood. Their success came in the form of 1990s Residential Hotel Anti-Conversion Ordinance, which placed strict limits on landlords flipping their SROs into more expensive housing.

Hartman remains unconvinced of the efficacy of the protective measures activists have won in years past; indeed, even SRO rental prices have soared. According to the Central City SRO Collaborative, in the decade after the Anti-Conversion Ordinance, rental prices increased by 150 percent, not only pricing residents out of the Tenderloin but out of the city. “Where do they move?” Hartman asked. “It’s probably the last bastion of low-income housing in the city. That changes the class composition of the city.”

“The neighborhood has been changing slowly but steadily,” says District Six Sup. Chris Daly when reached by e-mail for comment on the Tenderloin’s future. He writes that rents in the neighborhood have been consistently rising and that several condo development proposals have crossed his desk. Daly has been involved in negotiating “community benefits” and quotas for low income housing in past mid-Market housing projects, but has been disappointed by subsequent affordable housing levels in projects like Trinity Plaza on the corner of Sixth and Market streets. In terms of the Tenderloin, he said, “it is untrue to say that the neighborhood is immune from gentrifying forces. It is shielded, but not immune.”

But some see the influx of art-based attention to the area as a possible boon to residents. Debra Walker, a San Franciscan artist who is running for the District 6 supervisor post, said she believes arts can be used “organically to resolve some of the chronic problems in the Tenderloin, street safety being the primary one in my mind.”

Though most of her fellow candidates expressed similar views when contacted for this story, western SoMa neighborhood activist Jim Meko said he thinks artists in the area are being used to line the pockets of the real estate industry. “The idea of creating an arts district is an amenity that the real estate dealers want to see because it makes the neighborhood less scary for their upper class audience” he says.

The area clearly has a rich legacy of nightlife, arts, and theater. The Warfield is here, as is American Conservatory Theater, the Orpheum, and the Golden Gate. So is the unofficial center of SF’s “off-off Broadway district,” which includes Cutting Ball Theater and Exit Theater. The Exit has been located in the TL since its first performance in 1983, held in the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel, and sponsors the neighborhood’s yearly Fringe Festival. There are art galleries and soup kitchens, youth and age, and more shouted greetings on the streets than you’ll hear anywhere else in the city.

No one is more aware of this diversity of character than Machiko Saito, program director of Roaddawgz, a TL creative drop-in center and resource referral service for homeless youth. I met Saito in the Roaddawgz studio, which occupies a basement below Hospitality House, a homeless community center that also houses a drop-in self-help center, an employment program, men’s shelter and art studio for adults in transition.

Despite its being empty in the morning before the open hours that bring waves of youth to its stacks of paints and silk-screens, Roaddawgz is in a glorious state of bohemian dishevelment that implies a well-loved space. It could be a messy group studio if not for the load-bearing post in the center of the room covered with flyers for homelessness resource centers and a “missing” poster signed “your Mom loves you.”

We talk about how important it is that the kids Saito works with have a place like this, a spot where they can create “when all you want to do is your art and if you can’t you’ll die.” A career artist herself, she cuts a dramatic figure in black, safety pins, and deep red lipstick painted into a striking cupid’s bow. Her long fingernails tap the cluttered desk in front of her as she tells me stories from the high-risk lives that Roaddawgz youth come to escape: eviction, cop harassment, theft, rape.

The conversation moves to some of the recent developments in the area. Saito and I recently attended an arts advisory meeting convened by the Tenderloin Economic Development Corporation’s executive director, Elvin Padilla, who has received praise from many of the TL types I spoke with regarding his efforts to connect different factions of the community. Attendees ranged from a polished representative from ACT, which is considering building another theater, for students, in a space on Market and Mason streets, to heralded neighborhood newbies Grey Area Foundation, to Saito and longtime community art hub Luggage Store’s cofounder Darryl Smith. Talk centered on sweeping projects that could develop a more cohesive “identity” for the neighborhood.

I ask Saito how it felt for her to be involved with a group whose vision of the neighborhood might be focused on slightly different happenings than what she lives through Roaddawgz. She says she’s been to gatherings in the past where negative things about the Tenderloin were highlighted. Of Padilla’s arts advisory meeting, she says, “I think that one of the reasons I wanted to go was that it’s important [for attendees] to remember that there’s a community out there. Things can get really complicated. It’s hard to come up with decisions that affect everyone positively. If we’re going to say, ‘The homeless are bad; the drug addicts are bad; the business owners that don’t beautify their storefronts…” She trails off for a moment. “I don’t want to lose the heart of the Tenderloin.”

In yet another Tenderloin basement — this one housing the North of Market-Tenderloin CBD, an organization that is known for its work employing ex-addicts and adults in transition — Rick Darnell has created the Tenderloin Art Lending Library. The library accepts donated works from painters and makes them available for use by Tenderloin residents, many of whom have recently moved into their SRO housing and are in need of a homey touch.

Darnell is rightfully ecstatic at the inclusive nature of his library, but has been hurt over its reception at an arts advisory meeting he attended to publicize its creation. “Someone whispered under their breath ‘I would never lend anything to anyone in the Tenderloin,’ ” he tells me. The exclusion that Saito and Darnell sometimes feel highlights the reality that the definition of the Tenderloin might well vary, even among those who are set on making it “a better place.” The arts community appears to suffer from fractures that appear along the lines of where people live, their organizational affiliation, their housing status, and how they think art should play a role in community building.

Sammy Soun is one Tenderloin resident who would welcome an increased focus on art in the Tenderloin. Soun was born in a Thailand refugee camp to Cambodian parents fleeing the civil wars in their country. He grew up in the Tenderloin, where his family lived packed into small studios and apartments.

But he was part of a community, with plenty of support, and lives in the neighborhood to this day, as do one of his four siblings and his daughter. Soun paints, does graffiti, draws — he’s considering transferring from City College to the San Francisco Art Institute. He has worked at the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club for nine years, giving back to the kids he says “are the future. They’re going to be the ones that promote this place or keep it going — if they want to.” His sister, cousins, and uncles still live in the neighborhood. You might say he has a vested interest in the area’s future.

He finds the incoming resources for the Tenderloin arts scene to be a mixed bag. Soun has never been to the Luggage Store, although it’s one of the longtime community art hubs in the area. He can’t relate to the kinds of art done at the neighborhood’s recent digital arts center, Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, though he says the space has contacted him and friends to visit. His disconnect from the arts scene implies that future arts projects need to work harder on their community outreach — or even better, planning — with artists who call the Tenderloin home.

But Soun loves the new Mona Caron mural the CBD sponsored on the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue. Well-known for her panoramic bike path mural behind the Church Street Safeway, Caron painted “Windows into the Tenderloin” after dozens of interviews and tours of the neighborhood with community members. Its “before and after” panels are a dummies’ guide for anyone seeking input on ways to strengthen the Tenderloin community — though the “after” does show structural changes like roads converted into greenways and roof gardens sending tendrils down the sides of buildings, the focal point is the visibility of families. Where children were ushered through empty parking lots single-file in the “before” section, the second panel shows families strolling, children running, a space that belongs to them.

Our interview is probably the first time somebody has asked Soun where he thinks arts funding in the Tenderloin should go. “For projects by the kids in the community,he said.

Truth be told, more art of any kind can only make the Tenderloin a better place — but if you’re trying to improve quality life, focus needs to be on plans that positively affect residents of all ages — art can be a vital part of that, but it should be one part of a plan that ensures rent control, safe conditions, and access to services. After all, if you’re going to rebrand the Tenderloin, you might want to look at the painting on the wall.

A hardly strictly kind of guy

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It is not everyday that a San Francisco Bay Guardian culture writer finds herself going for an interview in the Financial District. Something about the fumes of avarice making poor atmosphere for the creative process. But high above the Starbucks and town cars is the banjo-packed office of a rich man who puts on the best free bluegrass festival of the year. And so, for Warren Hellman and his Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (Fri/1-Sun/3), I braved the world of name tags and extravagant corner offices.

Much has been written on the avuncular nature of Hellman. He is an ex-president of Lehmann Brothers, and as chairman of Hellman and Friedman and founding partner of his own venture capital firm, falls just shy of Forbes’ 400 Richest Americans list. He’s a born and bred adherent to a downtown-centric vision of the city, but counts among his buddies union activists and some of the city’s well-known liberal muckrakers. 

But I guess Hellman just likes what he likes. And after I’ve breached the security check-in that takes place in his megalithic office building’s lobby, traveled up to Hellman and Friedman’s well-appointed offices, chit-chatted with his amiable receptionist, and been installed in his office to wait for the man’s arrival from a meeting next door, I realize that central to this category is bluegrass music. His corner office is comfortably packed with stacks of banjos and guitars, a signed CD from Emmylou Harris that wishes him a happy birthday, a metal sculpture that wears aviator sunglasses and a white cowboy hat, thank you plaques from the Berkeley music venue Freight and Salvage, where Hellman is a keystone donor and acted as chairman for the club’s fundraising campaign in years past. It’s impossible to avoid the music in the room, indeed the music is the room

Hellman arrives shortly, limping slightly, but enthused at the prospect of our interview. I tell him it’s great to meet you, Mr. Hellman, an honorific he doesn’t cotton to – Warren it is. He’s wearing a long sleeve denim button down – a look he favors, judging from photos of him taken at different shows and events.

It comes as a shock to the system in this day and age, to meet a billionaire with progressive friends (or, in my case, a billionaire at all), an older man with tattoos who likes to talk glowingly of his trips to Burning Man ensconced in his skyscraper office above the downtown grid. “There’s no fights there!” he tells me of the desert art festival. “Sure, there’s lots of pot, but there’s no violence.” Warren perhaps falls into the eccentric rich guy archetype, but the philosophy inherent in his personal pastimes at times seep here and thre into his politics, at least sporadically. He’s the kind of guy that will endorse the installation of a massive underground parking lot in Golden Gate Park, yet still support closing down the streets that access said lot so that Sundays amongst the trees and museums can be car-free affairs.

So first for the obvious question: why bluegrass, Warren? “People like to ask these ethereal questions,” the man muses in response. I realize quickly that Hellman pulls few punches, answering questions quickly before detouring into favorite stories that more or less illustrate his point. He’s a good talker. “Why do you like bluegrass – why do you like smoked salmon?” 

Fair enough, but why choose to spend your birthday putting on three days of music for the riff-raff (besides the obvious PR bonanza it affords the businessman)? With this query, the billionaire’s eyes alight with a thoroughly unmonetized joy. “It’s the single most fulfilling thing – this is as close to heaven as I’m gonna get,” Hellman says. “To be able to give something that’s really fun to a lot a people that seem to have the same love it as I do… it’s just really fulfilling. And if I could hang out with anyone in my life, it would not be the president of Lehmann Brothers and Goldman Sachs.” 

Hardly Strictly seems to be at its a place that allows Hellman to mingle with people outside the financial business. He’s endowed the festival to continue at least 15 years after he dies. “I’d like it to go on more or less forever,” he says. His desire for meetings of minds across ideological, professional, and personal differences is evident even in the way he conducts our interview — which he treats as though he is meeting a friend for the first time. 

Hellman’s typical routine for this weekend? “You could say what are the peaks of ecstasy,” he chuckles. He worries all week leading up to the event about the weather – this weekend’s sweaty days have perhaps precluded this part — attends the Friday morning MC Hammer (yes, Hammer’s a regular performer at the event) concert for middle schoolers, and then zips around from stage to stage in his golf cart throughout Saturday and Sunday, reaping praise by the untold hundreds of thousands that come to the park to check out the six stages of tunes provided by Hellman each year. 

Oh, and there’s the matter of his band’s performance as well. Hellman plays banjo and sings for the Wronglers, who will be taking the stage at Hardly Strictly at 11 a.m. on Sun/3. They debuted at the festival, and now play gigs all over the country. His travels with the band bring him to bluegrass events year round – when he’s not racing horses, another hobby – and into contact with some great potential acts for Hardly Strictly.

One such group, Hardly Strictly newcomers the Ebony Hillbillies, an all African-American outfit from Jamaica Queens, are Hellman’s personal don’t-miss pick for this weekend. He’s also looking forward to perennial favorites Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Emmylou Harris.

Our time is up, and Hellman’s assistant enters the room to tell him that his next appointment is waiting in the lobby, which doesn’t seem to enthuse him in quite the same fashion that our interview did. Or maybe he’s just good at pretending.

“Oh crap. Well, that was the most fun I’m going to have all day,” he says. Hellman exhorts me to set up another appointment with assistant to talk (“I barely got to find out anything about you!”) and insists on playing me a song about Hardly Strictly that was sent to him by a woman impelled to compose it by her therapist but finally it is time for me to vamoose. We sit convivially, tapping our feet to the beat, Warren every so often blurting out “You have to listen to this part!” Soon, he escorts me to my journey back away from the skyscrapers of the Financial District and returns to his tightly regimented meeting schedule. Moments after our parting, I catch a flat on my bike and am forced to hail a cab to bring me to a neighborhood endowed with such pedestrian things as a bike store. It’s less infuriating than it would have been sans Hellman meet up — I’m still satisfied by our morning time brush between two worlds. 

 

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Fri/1 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m., 2 p.m.-7 p.m.; Sat/2 and Sun/3 11 a.m.- 7 p.m.

Speedway Meadows

Golden Gate Park, SF

www.strictlybluegrass.com

 

Hot sexy events Sept 22-28

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What’s going on in sexy San Francisco this week? Everything. End of column. Jokes! As a matter de facto, however, Folsom Street Fair has unfurled its chaps from its carry-on from Detroit and would already be generating some friction between its thighs (were they not a crotchless affair), the amount of sexy parties its been stirring up from SoMa to NoMa to Ma and beyond. After all, with all the fresh meat on the street this week, it seems a shame to relegate all the naughtiness to Sunday’s main event. Here’s a smattering of what’s going on in terms of pre-planned bacchanalia.

 

Lesbo Retro: A Dyke Porn Retrospective

Sexy founder of Harlem Shake Burlesque (and one of SFBG’s 2001 Sexiest People in the Bay Area ass pat) Simone de la Getto performs at this retrospective of films of lustful ladies, by lustful ladies. Shar and Jackie of S.I.R. Productions take you down this memory lane of film clips. Plus, free pizza!

Weds/22 8-9:30 p.m., $10

The Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

www.gv-ixff.org


Indie Erotic Film Festival

A whole Castro Theatre full of San Franciscans watching other San Franciscans get it on in homemade short films? And it’s the same week as Folsom? Sounds like a recipe for sweet, sweet trouble. Peaches Christ and her fab friends and Carol Queen will be on hand to add some levity to the goings-on – and to hand out the $1,500 for the best clip.

Thurs/23 7-8 p.m., $10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.gv-ixff.org


How To Eat a Peach: Pleasuring Her

Midori teaches the method for sucking out the sweetest juices (fruit props will be involved, natch) at this workshop for all those that love loving the ladies.

Sat/25 8- 10 p.m., $20

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Slut!

Dykey sluts, slutty dykes – you too deserve your own Folsom party! Host Oxana Olsen of Mall Madness hosts this hawt dance party, where prizes will be awarded for best uniform, leather outfit, and fetish wear.

Sat/25 9 p.m., free

The Lexington Club

3464 19th< St., SF

(415) 863-2052

www.lexingtonclub.com

 

Perverts Put Out

 

Oh how we love the words: as seen on Fox News! An onstage celebration of all things demonstrably slutty, this sporadic series will feature performances by Meliza Bañales, Greta Christina, Stephen Elliot, Robert Lawrence, Thomas Roche, Lori Selke, and horehound stillpoint. It may well be more than enough sexual confessional, monolouging, and live smut to satisfy for the evening.

Sat/25 7:30 p.m., $10-15 sliding scale

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 255-1155

www.simonsheppard.com/pervertsputout.html


Magnitude

Folsom Street’s official dance party – because why ever would you romp about in the sunshine? Hit the floor to work up a froth to the tunes of DJ Manny Letham. Stay later for the Aftershock party to ensure you’ll be a hot mess for the Fair the next day! ($30-40 www.thediscosf.com)

Sat/25 10 p.m.-4 a.m., $80

525 Harrison, SF

www.folsomstreetfair.org


Pussyfest

Here kitty, kitty, kitty! Kinky Salon’s cat-themed play party is here, so grab your partner (no singles allowed), fluff your whiskers, and swing over to the cat fight.

Sat/25 9 p.m., $25-30 (members only)

Mission Control

2519 Mission, SF

www.kinkysalon.com


Folsom Street Fair

The grandaddy of all public, streetside leather events assumes its five-block throne in SoMa, where leather bars have been located since The Tool Box’s grand arrival in 1961. Join the 400,000 strong who will be frolicking at the third largest street fair in Cali.

Sun/26 11 a.m.- 6 p.m., $7 suggested donation

Folsom between Seventh and 12th Sts., SF

www.folsomstreetfair.org

Fleur De Lis SF shares her spanks

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Sex blogger Fleur De Lis SF is the friend whose gossip makes you weak in the knees. We published excerpts of an interview with her in this week’s Hot Sluts! Sex Issue, but the full text frontal was so juicy, we giving it to you (hard), as well as some salacious shots from her first domantrix session with the magnetic Lady Ripplee Severin. Fleur is your girl who recounts (to your squeals) stories of meeting men at the grocery store salad bar, only to be ravished by them that night after a day of dirty emails exchanged at the office. The one who is up for any sexual frisson, pleasure, situation, from Craig’s List Casual Encounters to BDSM clubs. What – you don’t have one of those? Well lucky you, Fleur Di Lis SF likes to share. The mysterious online personality — who professes to be a white collar wage slave during the day — is posting her illustrated voyages throughout the city’s sexual underground on the regular.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: How long have you been writing the blog and what inspired you to start it?

Fleur De Lis SF: I posted my first blog on August 6, 2010, a Friday.  The inspiration came from this glorious sexy city.  I went to a sex club and realized that SF has a huge sexual subculture.  So, I just started to explore every aspect of it.  It evolved into a collection of true stories.  It is all non-fiction and yes it all really happened.  In essence SF inspired me and so Fleur De Lis SF was created.  

SFBG: Can you give me a brief description of yourself and how you got involved in sex writing?

FDLSF: I did not ever intend to write about sex.  I sort of stumbled upon it in a way. I am an educated, funny, smart and sexual woman  I have always had an active sex life and I used to entertain my friends with my sexcapade stories.  I am a story teller and so I started to write them down just the way I would tell them aloud.  I realized that my stories would probably entertain more people than just my friends.  Mainly, I want to educate people to embrace sex and sexuality.  I want people to accept who they are and who are we are sexually is a huge part of who we are as people.

SFBG: Do you think there are a lot of misconceptions about women and sex?  

FDLSF: Yes, because I think the misconception is that women don’t want to have sex as much as men.  Women are just as sexual as men and they should own it. 

SFBG: Do you feel that, by talking about sex so openly, you’re making a statement?

FDLSF: I talk about sex openly because it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Our society does not give people a platform to talk about sex.  Sex stories are always a secret, a taboo, something you hide.  Women should be proud about being sexual that is my statement  there is nothing wrong with being an independent, smart, sexual woman.  

SFBG: What are some of your favorite sexy things in the Bay Area right now?

FDLSF: That would encompass a lot of things.  To me SF is sexy in general.  The people, the vibration, the art and the sexual current that burns brightly throughout it.  SF welcomes every walk of life to be sexual and it provides you with a variety of venues to choose from. 

SFBG: As an observer of the local sex scene, what do you think overall? Is this a really sexy place to be right now? 

FDLSF: I think San Francisco is by far one of the sexiest cities in the world.  SF makes it ok for people to be different and doesn’t judge them along the way.  I think it is my great privilege to live in this beautiful city.  I have just scratched the sexual surface of San Francisco and I can’t wait to see more. 

Ammiano calls the Other Cafe’s record on gays not so funny

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“When people tell someone a history it’s always one side of it. What I know is a little darker.” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano had seen our post on this weekend’s Other Cafe reunion (Sat/25), and had a bone to pick with our description of the defunct Haight-Ashbury stand up club’s progressive approach to comedy. Namely, the Other’s attitude when it came to gay comics during its 1980s heyday – a view which club founder Bob Ayres vehemently disputes.

Ammiano should know – in addition to his early career as a special education teacher and current one as the political voice of the 13th Assembly District, he was a gay stand up comedian in a city that has been hollered at as the modern day creche of homo wisecracking. He founded the gay comedy night Valencia Rose Cabaret in 1980, thereby earning himself the grand distinction of “Mother of Gay Comedy.”

But he couldn’t get work just everywhere. “The interesting thing is that this was San Francisco – I can’t really think of a gayer city than that,” he told me on the phone today. “When we tried entry to the Other Cafe and Punchline [another club open to this day], we were denied access.” Ammiano said that club schedulers would tell them that due to the AIDS crisis, audiences weren’t comfortable with “gay material.” Or else that audiences just didn’t like listening to gay jokes, or they would be less direct but still firm on the fact that no gigs with them would be forthcoming. “It was really a bummer. We had our audiences and everything, but [club owners and schedulers] were homophobic.”

Ayres’ comments on the matter implies a bit of sour grapes on the part of Assemblyman Ammiano. Quoth he:

 “At the height of the comedy boom it was tough for many comedians to get gigs there. We were able to pick from among the very brightest of acts from around the country. It was the hardest thing about owning a high profile comedy room, saying no to deserving comics. The charge that we closeted comics or disallowed gay material is blatantly untrue nor is it supported by the facts. We had many gay comedians play and even headline the club. Must we list them? Tom as a beginning comedian back then may have felt he deserved more stage time and maybe he knows others that feel that way. But there are also hundreds of straight comedians who feel they deserved more gigs there. We simply tried to bring the funniest comedians we could find to our club every night. Their sexual preference was of no concern to us ever. It still isn’t. We would never have survived nor prospered as a comedy club had we told comedians what material to do.” 

When I read Ammiano a list that Ayres had sent me of gay comedians that had performed at the club, Ammiano said that most of the names were people that had performed there “in the ’90s” (note: the club had already closed by then), or had performed closeted, or hadn’t done explicitly “gay material.”

Which is not to negate all of Ammiano’s respect for the Other’s comedic legacy. “It was just amazing. People got their careers started, we had a lot of heavyweights get their start here, they’re absolutly right that way,” he said.

 

The Other kind of SF comedy makes a comeback

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“The stage used to be right here.” Bob Ayres, founding partner of the classic Haight-Ashbury stand up comedy club, The Other Café, is sitting in his old yuckster stomping grounds, now a neighborhood crepery. He’s gesturing to the corner of the restaurant, roughly where we’re sitting, and where his small stage used to host everyone from Robin Williams to Jerry Seinfeld. Now in its place it’s just me and Bob and a guy eating a sandwich two tables down. Could a desire for resurrection be driving Ayres’ Other Café reunion show this weekend (Sat/25)?

Ayres, fresh back from living in Nevada City (“I missed my peeps”) is now rocking an impressive Jew ‘fro and a distinctive pendant under a partially unbuttoned shirt.  Over a bottle of mineral water and a cup of coffee we chat about just what San Francisco misses about the scene at The Other, which he opened with partner Steve Zamek in 1977. It was initially a place for bluegrass shows as well as the comedy it eventually chose to specialize in. 

Located in a neighborhood known for its progressive values – “the Haight was ground zero for that,” Ayres tells me — the club gained a reputation for comedians that avoided berating their audience and using swear words or “take my wife” jokes as a cheap crutch for laughs. Eschewing liquor sales and smoking inside the club doors (perhaps the first venue in California to do so), the team cultivated an environment that was less a meat market, bar-like ambience, and more a place where people came to hear consistently good jokes. 

A generation of comedians with sitcoms built around their act would come up from L.A. to play the cafe, agents sent up their big name clients to practice their material for the Tonight Show in front of an audience that could appreciate clean jokes. When the club first opened, the glut of comedy now available on cable was merely a glimmer in the distance, long before the 1990 merger of the Ha! Channel and Comedy Central that brought stand up into living rooms from San Francisco to San Antonio. Clubs like these were where comedy lovers came to see everyone who was new and hot. “It became the hottest thing around for three to four years,” says Ayres.

A young Jay Leno holds the mic to his chin at the Other, circa 1980

With an official crowd capacity of 49, the Other would regularly squeeze in 180 comedy fans for local favorites like Dana Carvey, who pioneered his “Church Lady” character right where I’m sipping my cup of soy milk and medium roast. “Our doorman was always on the lookout for the fire marshall,” Ayres tells me. So you could squeeze everyone out the back door real quick if he came? “We didn’t have a back door. That was another problem,” he laughs.

A community of sorts formed around the Other, whose staff was dedicated to promoting unique, non-repetitive shows that they themselves would watch. Some employees were more passionate about punchlines than others – Paula Poundstone washed dishes in the Other Café’s kitchen before she made the leap to the stage, knowing the neighborhood well enough to even time comments about the perennially empty 10 p.m. #37 Corbett Muni bus, which would thunder past the club each evening when the headliner was onstage. 

One such night, Poundstone stopped her set, strode out the door and boarded the bus, leaving club staff to cover the mid-set interruption. Slightly uncomfortable for those left behind, yes, but indicative of a place where comedians felt comfortable experimenting with their act. “That was a time when it was more funny to tell the story later,” Ayres tells me. That said, he relished those moments when the stars would go off script into moments of improv. “That’s usually when they were the best.”

I ask him what makes good comedy, and he answers with a story about his “hero,” Steve Martin. Before shows, Ayres says, Martin would stuff baloney into his shoes “so if he didn’t get laughs he could always think of the baloney.” The point being that if you can make yourself laugh, you stand a good chance of making your audience laugh as well. “I think that plays out in every part of life,” Ayres counsels me.

So what does he miss most about the days of fire code violations and impromptu sets? “Knowing there’s a great comedian in your club that night, and inviting all your friends and family. After you see a good comedy show you are happy.” Ayres remembers standing at the front door on Cole and Carl after such a night’s performance, watching smiling faces leave the club. “Then you’re high. You’re, like, doing something good for the people.”

But when I ask Ayres what young comedians he recommends for a night on the town like the ones he’s reminiscing about, he demurs to name a single one, telling me that he’s not well enough acquainted with the scene today. Look for that coyness to change: Ayres is setting up young comedian showcases in Boston, Chicago, and New York over the next year. He says he’ll be checking out possible acts for upcoming shows he’ll be putting together in the Bay Area. 

“It’s clear to me that we have a following: an older crowd who wants a more focused, comfortable setting,” he tells me with an air of a man who knows that he knows what he knows. Look to his reunion show this weekend, then, not just for a look at once was, but possibly what will be for San Francisco comedy.

The Other Café reunion show

Sat/25 7:30 p.m., $70

Palace of Fine Arts

3601 Lyon, SF

(415) 563-6504

www.theothercafe.com

 

Music to cross the globe for

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If you hoisted up a park bench, cut the back off of it, removed the legs, placed it on top of cushion on a saw stand, and commenced to thrum on it with headless croquet mallets with a dear friend, you’d have created a bootleg version of the txalaparta, a traditional instrument from the Basque region of Spain. Two of the area’s most renowned musicians took this contraption on a trip to play with indigenous nomadic musicians the world over, creating Nomadak TX, a music documentary where notes are exchanged in culture-to-culture melodies.

Igor Otxoa is a member of the group, Oreka TX, that embarked on the project that took them to India, Mongolia, Lapland, and the Sahara. Days away from the group’s launch of their North American tour –and in the midst of a visa kerfuffle that threatened to derail the whole thing — Otxoa (who is staying in Spain while band members Mikel Ugarte and Harkaitz Martinez de San Vicente man the txalaparta in the States) answered our questions via email from San Sebastian. His group will be in town next week (Thurs/23) at the Basque Cultural Center for a live performance of the music in Nomadak TX.

Oh you say you like guttural rhythm? Do we have the trailer for you… 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Why do you play the txalaparta? 

Igor Otxoa: I saw it played in my neighborhood fiesta and I loved it. “Percussion and related to Basque culture, that’s for me!” I told myself. After that I saw it again at school played by the Artze brothers, some of the ones that brought back the instrument. After that, I started looking for somewhere I could learn it.

 

SFBG: The txalaparta almost disappeared at one point in the 20th century. Is there a well-documented tradition of how to play it, or have you developed your approach independently?

IO: The way to play it that we received was the one that the last of the old txalaparta players left to us. In the ’60s there were only two txalaparta player couples, the Zuaznabar brothers and the Goikoetxea brothers, and they left us the way of playing that they learned from their grandfathers. But after that there was a process in which the Beltran brothers and the Artze brothers started to develop the instrument in a more musical way. We are from the next generation — we learned from the Beltrans, and we developed the instrument in our own way.

 

SFBG: Why is it important that it be a two person instrument? 

IO: It was related to the work on the farms, and as in many percussion instrument that come from a tradition of work, it became an instrument. For us the txalaparta it is not the physical instrument itself — it is the way of playing it, sharing the rhythm between two people. That is why we don’t understand the txalaparta without two players. It’s its peculiarity, what makes it unique in the world, this way of sharing the rhythm between two players.

 

SFBG: Tell us about the motivation behind the film Nomadak TX. Why nomadic peoples?

IO: We choose the countries and peoples we wanted to meet for different reasons. One was the level of nomadity that they had. Another reason was the music of those cultures. We were very interested in the Khoomi singing in Mongolia. And the Bereber women´s singing. And the Indian rhythms. Another reason was the materials that condition the way of living in those parts of the world. The ice and snow that takes up many months in Saapmi, the sand and stones of in the Sahara dessert, the wood in India, and the air in Mongolia. We wanted to play txalaparta with those materials. And we got to!

 

SFBG: How did you locate the musicians that would be in the movie?

IO: Sometimes we made the arrangements before traveling. The musicians, we contacted them by different ways — the Internet helped a lot. Other times we didn’t contact any of them and it was just who we found on the trip. We think that like in music, on the trips the improvisation was the most interesting as we never knew what we would find. We had unforgettable musical surprises on all the trips. For us it had the same value: the music of a professional musician in a studio or old men singing in a yurt in the Mongolian steppe. 

 

SFBG: In Nomadak TX you make txalapartas out of everything from ice to stone — why the multi-media?

IO: That was one of the most marvelous moments of the project. We never expected to do a txalaparta with ice. Our idea was that we were going to play with the txalaparta of wood and the Terje Isungset “Iceman” in Saapmi would play with ice. But we tried it, and it was so nice to work with the ice. If you cut too much we would throw water on it and in few seconds it was frozen and the note was changed!

 

SFBG: Now that you’re doing the North America tour, inquiring minds want to know — when’s the Oreka TX hip hop remix coming out?

IO: Good question! I hope that during the USA Tour we will be able to contact good hip-hop musicians that can work on it. It is not our music style, so if we want to have a quality result, better if someone from USA makes it!

 

Oreka TX’s Nomadak TX live concert

Thurs/23 8 p.m., free

SF Basque Cultural Center

599 Railroad, SF

www.sfbcc.us

 

Hot sexy events Sept 15-21

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Enough of the silicon and studio lighting! Sex in San Francisco just isn’t that scripted – or is it? Good Vibrations put its yearly call out to amateur filmmakers to turn in their own seven minutes and under blue films. Straight, gay, perverted, vanilla, the rainbow of oohs and aahs will show you what’s really going on in your neighbor’s bedrooms (the hots ones, obviously). But wait, that’s next week. This week, you can attend the IXFF kick off party at El Rio, where clips of queer hipster porn will be showing and burlesque babies will shimmy and shake for your viewing pleasure. Look at it this way, if you’re going to be squirming in anticipation, you might as well have a cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon in hand.

 

Bawdy Storytelling: Cheapskate Sex & Cut-rate Coitus

He made you pay 25 cents for the bathroom vending machine condom? Jesus! Sometimes the sex is so cheap, you roll off the mattress and feel the urge to decry your date’s tightwad tentacles to the world at large. Oh girl. Lucky you, because monthly series Bawdy Storytelling is featuring nothing but the least-fine and dine at this week’s installation. Contact host Dixie De La Tour and wax on your tale of woe, she’ll grab you your moment in the spotlight.

Weds/15 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

(415) 920-0577

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Rough Sex

Wanna wrassle? Carol Queen and Robert Morgan Lawrence guide you through the times when you wanna reach out and choke someone (lovingly, and with consent). This females-only workshop will cover rape fantasies, ravishing, and unstylized BDSM play.

Fri/17 8-10 p.m., $10

The Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

(415) 431-1180

www.theexiles.org


Master’s Den: Casino

Female submissives and male dominants are invited to pony up to the table at this blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em event, where subs can work on their service-providing skills and doms have the chance to up their “Den Dollar” holdings. The night is part of a trio of events leading up to sex power couple Stefanos and Chey’s “Auction” night. 

Fri/17 7:15 p.m.- 1 a.m., $25-35

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Hubba Hubba Revue Four Year Anniversary

Four years of one of SF’s hottest troupe of betassled performers, monkey men, and wisecracks galore? My, they’re aging well. Celebrate Hubba Hubba’s commitment to sexy, strippy excellence by attending the show they’re purporting to be their biggest ever, starring all the sparkling sequins we’ve grown so fond of: Honey Lawless, Bunny Pistol, Alotta Boutte, and so, so much more. 

Fri/17 9 p.m.- 2 a.m., $12-15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.hubbahubbarevue.com


Hot Rods and Lube Jobs

Rev your engines, ladies and gentlemen. This fundraiser for the Center of Sex and Culture capitalizes on all the fantasies generated by those well greased photos in auto magazines – you know, the ones with boobies up on the hood and whatnot. Pole dancing performances by Kitty Me-OW, and an appearance by Jiz Lee are featured. Exhibitionists encouraged to drop the top and cruise through.

Sat/18 8 p.m.- 1 a.m., $40-50

Marty’s Motors

10929 San Pablo, El Cerrito

(415) 246-5477

www.sexandculture.org


Indie Erotic Film Festival Kick Off Party

Because you can’t just bam, start off with the main event! No, some one needs to ease you into it, give you some hipster queer porn as a tease, perhaps a couple of burlesque dancers stripping down to their pasties. Next week will be the actual IXFF, patience child. 

Sat/18 9 p.m., $7

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.gv-ixff.org

 

Eating Jonathan Safran Foer’s words

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Well, hell, I thought, shutting Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals after reading its last page. There goes that. I have been a vegetarian (careful omnivore, pescatarian) off and on for fifteen years now. But having read the author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close‘s latest offering, Safran Foer’s exploration of the horrific world and consequences of our current addiction to factory farming, I realized I could no straddle the fence. There would be, I realized, no more salmon on my plate, or “cage-free” eggs, or cheddar cheese. Why? Well besides the whole institutionalized torture thing in most slaughterhouses-dairy farms-egg factories today, here’s a fact to chew on: omnivores generate seven times more carbon emissions than vegan. And I can live without eggs and bacon. Call me Natalie Portman if you must. I chatted with Safran Foer over the phone about his lyrical horror story in anticipation of his SF appearances next week, including a benefit for 826 Valencia (Weds/22). He’s no activist, but I like him.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: This book made me reconsider the way I eat in a major way. But I felt like a lot of the arguments could be extended past meat to dairy products and eggs as well. Are you a vegan?

Jonathan Safran Foer: No, not exactly. I’m pretty close. I try to eat as little as possible and also only from sources that I know. I’m not by definition a vegan. I don’t think there’s any one line, I think that this is an important thing to acknowledge. There are certain things that come down to instincts that we have, how we were raised. There are people in this country that don’t have access to anything but fast food, not even a supermarket. The line for me will been shifting for the next couple years. I won’t eat meat, that’s a line that I’ve drawn.

 

SFBG: What do you think was the hardest part about quitting meat?

JSF: It’s a habit, it tastes good and you’re used to doing it. Habits are hard to change, especially since they’re so fundamental to your lifestyle. Anything you do twice a day is hard to change, especially when they’re so tied to your culture. 

 

SFBG: So what’s the good word for people that are considering going cold turkey [or rather, cold no-turkey]?

JSF: Be forgiving of yourself. If you slip up, it doesn’t have to signify the end of your experiment. I recommend to people that they phase it in. If I had done that from the beginning I would have had a much easier time with it. 

 

SFBG: The book has, understandably stirred up some healthy debate. Do you read your critics? Has anyone offered criticism that’s caused you to revisit your findings?

JSF: Not exactly. I was surprised by the responses, mostly that they were very generous. When I was writing the book, I couldn’t envision the person that would defend factory farming. Whenever I do a reading I always say that if you have a defense that I haven’t heard of, please, share it. I guess I’ve been surprised by the strange consensus on the subject. Obviously there are a lot of people that think eating meat is a fine thing to do. But I’ve never met the person that, once exposed to factory farming, thinks that factory farming is a good thing to do.

 

SFBG: The scenes you describe in the factory farms you visit, as well as their environmental impact that you describe, are horrifying. How is it that the facts about this topic aren’t more well-known?

JSF: For one thing, there are incentives for it not to be. We would just as soon not think about it. It makes our lives easier not to think about. Also the meat lobby is incredibly strong, incredibly powerful, and good at keeping information from consumers. Finally, we don’t have much exposure to what farming is really like. Most of the exposure that we have is stories that are told to us from the industry, labeling on packages. They encourage us to think of farms as places wheres there’s animals on the grass. For a lot of people, the problem is that there’s a distance between what we hold in our mind and the reality. And it’s hard to close that distance. 

 

SFBG: You say the impetus for writing Eating Animals was to figure out whether or not you should serve your newborn son meat. The book focuses mainly on animal welfare though, with a smattering of environmental concern. Were there other books you could have written on this subject focusing on labor issues or nutritional concerns, say?

JSF: I don’t think of the book as being about animal welfare, actually. It’s not comprehensive but it is as comprehensive as I could be in a book thats only 300 pages. 

 

SFBG: How many farms did you visit throughout the course of your research?

JSF: A lot. It depends on what you mean by visits. Some you could drive up and see by the side of the road, some I had to go to in the middle of the night. I don’t know – a dozen?

 

SFBG: You talk a lot in this book about the importance of meat in “table fellowship.” You focus, in particular on eating turkey at Thanksgiving. How should one approach the subject of vegetarianism with family that eats meat in those types of situations?

JSF: I think one of the most important things is to feel out the answer that the person wants. Some people are genuinely curious, some are just asking out of politeness. It can be a kind of vanity that makes you feel good to say it, but it’s not helping anything. I have found actually that conversations about this don’t really work. I don’t really try to persuade people in person, I mostly go about my business and do my thing. I think we’ve made a mistake, the people who care about this thinking that argument will win. I think conversation will. We have to be more humble. 

 

SFBG: Do you consider yourself an animal rights activist?

JSF: No. I don’t even think about animal rights. I think about animal welfare. It’s a piece of a puzzle.

 

SFBG: What’s the next project? Will your next book be back to fiction?

JSF: Yeah it is.

 

SFBG: Was it a strange process researching a non-fiction book?

JSF: It was very strange and at times difficult. I don’t know if I would do it again

 

SFBG: Why not?

JSF: I found it frustrating. The thing I value most about fiction is freedom, being able to pursue my imagination. Basically having nowhere to go is what I like about writing fiction, there is no referring to anything. But in this book, I’m referring to the world. I found it at times very difficult.

 

Jonathan Safran Foer’s upcoming SF appearances:

 

Q&A and Book Signing

Tues/21 1 p.m., free

Rosa Parks Room, Student Center

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway, SF

(415) 338-1111

www.sfsu.edu

 

In conversation with Vendela Vida

City Arts & Lectures Fall Literary Series

Weds/22 8 p.m., $20

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

www.cityarts.net

 

 

 

Sunny Sunday smile

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arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Michael Franti has definite ideas on the best manner in which to enjoy his music. "I wanna see you jumping!" the dreadlocked star of conscious pop music repeats numerous times throughout last weekend’s Power to the Peaceful concert in Golden Gate Park. But the crowd of 80,000 doesn’t mind — in fact, judging from the beaming faces in Speedway Meadow, Franti’s fervent messaging, mixed with liberal doses of dub sounds, reggae, hip-hop, and sunshine positivity, is the reason they came to the event in the first place.

Good thing, because Franti’s touch is everywhere. He started Power to the Peaceful in 1998 in Dolores Park to promote advocacy for death row prisoner-activist Mumia Abu Jamal. The concert’s date, Sept. 11, was chosen to highlight the urgency of Abu Jamal’s release, though now the event also honors victims of the World Trade Center attacks. Franti’s earnest odes to social justice attracted a crowd of 3,500 that first year, and twice that the next. Now Power to the Peaceful is a three-day event (Sept. 10-12) that includes mass yoga sessions, social justice organizations, and a weekend of benefit concerts at the Fillmore.

The vibe is feel-good to the point of theatrics. Throughout Saturday’s program, there was much turning to one’s neighbor and embracing. That many people wishing the world peace in synchronicity is heady, no doubt — but at one point during the yoga (while we are helping our partners, who are lying on their bellies, to "fly") I catch four face-painted Juggalos sniggering at the sheer compassion of it all.

"In order to sustain your activism, you have to have something inside you." Mid-interview, the six-foot, six-inch Franti is sitting cross-legged at my knee in a tapestried tent behind Saturday’s main stage. "It’s easy to get frustrated — you have to have something in your life to give you that fire." He smiles with the same easy grace he bestows throughout the weekend on everyone from toddlers to police officers. He likens PTTP to the battery recharging stations found in airport terminals.

This kind of spiritual activism and change through the shaking of hips hasn’t always been Franti’s modus operandi. At the start of his career, as an adopted kid in the Bay Area sick of hearing the n-word thrown at him (Franti’s birth father is Native American-black; his birth mother white), he called his first group the Beatnigs. Their hip-hop industrial punk songs railed against Ronald Reagan and the CIA.

But over the years, the anger behind Franti’s voice segued into something else. Sample lyric: "Even our worst enemies/ They deserve music." That music he slaps his guitar to, prances across the stage with, and compels us to jump in last weekend’s September sun is less "them" and more "us."

Which isn’t to say he’s given up on making a difference. Before his 2006 album Yell Fire (Anti) Franti, a staunch opponent of U.S. wars in the Middle East, took his show on the road to Iraq, Palestine, and Israel. He played for anyone who’d listen, from war zone families to American troops.

He’s still talking about the issues, just changing the approach. His most recent offering is The Sound of Sunshine (Capitol), whose album cover’s sweet scrawl of a boombox smiling bears the Franti signature. Live performances are ecstatic, infectious recitations of all things beautiful: multiculturalism, celebration, and the line "How ya feeeelin!" — a trademark he booms 11 times on Saturday.

By the family matinee concert Sunday at the Fillmore (a benefit for Hunter’s Point Family, a support center in the neighborhood that Franti has called home for 14 years), it’s clear that his appeal goes beyond the straightforward lyrics and infectious glee of his hits, which make a perfect fit for the little ones hoisted on their parents’ shoulders. He knows — as we do — the world’s got problems. But we do ourselves no favors if we don’t meet them with a smile.

Forrest Day: their drag needs help, but boy can they play

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“Last time I played a show with no shoes I had to get stitches between my little toe and the next big toe. It sucked.” And so commenced Forrest Day‘s show at Slim’s last Thursday Sept. 9, the group’s frontman (also named Forrest Day) clad in two mismatched gym socks for safety. He was also wearing a dress that most likely resulted from a trip to the big Goodwill on South Van Ness – a flowy number with an attached denim faux vest that Grandma had a hard time parting with after she lost all that weight. So there he was, head shaven, straight outta San Leandro, a man that hardly needs a dress to stand out musically. Oh, and the music? How about that music…

 

“So Forrest, how do you classify your music?” I ask. We’re on the other side of the weekend from the Slim’s show, and Day has fallen ill, answering my questions via phone from the comfort of bed. “I don’t,” he tells me. Or rather, he does: on a song to song basis. 

One is tempted to squeeze Day in under the “hip-hop plus” umbrella that is already occupied in the Bay Area by groups like Shotgun Wedding Quintet (who opened for Day at the show I saw) and on a national level by the Roots. All three groups are headed by charismatic frontmen eager to rap faster than you can say boo, sing, and occasionally cede the floor to a supporting cast of talented bass, drums, guitar, brass, etcetera, etcetera, to mammothly danceable effect. But the parallel minimizes the diverse influences all draw on, and in the case of Forrest Day, barely encompasses their show at all.

Because how many hip-hop artists bust out on the ska-rock tip? There are songs during the set at Slim’s that resemble hip-hop about as much as the Roots resemble the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Day throws his girth about in that dress like some sort of crazed Big Momma as his six-piece ensemble (comprised of sax, keyboard, drums, bass, violin, guitar). 

Forrest Day guitarist Terrel Liedstrand rawks. Photo by Erik Anderson 

And the crowd? Well it goes wild, duh. And then Day picks up a sax, and launches into some sort of psychedelic jam session, if such things can include saxes. Didn’t you know he got his start as a high school saxophonist, back before he was producing beats for backpack rappers and fronting rock-ska groups? 

It’s kind of an awesome thing to watch. And I found myself bobbing my head next to a guy that, though a bit older than the rest of the early-to-mid twenties crowd singing the words around, was clearly enjoying the show. He leans over. “Hey, I just wanted to tell you, I like the way you’re groovin’.” It’s Day’s dad. I ask him how he’s enjoying the show, and he tells me it’s great, and that he doesn’t get to see his son in a dress every day of the week.

So the dress isn’t part of the deal? Says Day, that was the first time he’s performed in a dress… in this current band configuration. He likes dress up, particularly in muu-muus. For comfort or style factor? “It’s both,” sayeth he. “They put me in a funny mood. It’s nice to have all the air circulation between my legs.”

And Shotgun Wedding Quintet, were they copping fashion tips before the show? And how! “Yeah,” says Day. “They’re my friends. They all seemed very attracted to me. Let’s just say I got some action. Backstage was super hot that night.” Offstage and on, it would seem.

 

Forrest Day’s got no scheduled upcoming shows in the Bay, but its eponymous first album came out earlier this year, if you’re so inclined.

 

The interview in which cute saves the world

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You are perhaps in the market for an accessory statement that mimics pink plastic unicorns jumping through your ears? Maybe a connected  tube top-tutu smattered with a happy orgy of babydolls and hair-bows in the shape of a heart? Fret not, little cream-puff – your kawaii savior, Sebastian Masuda of Harajuku brand 6% DOKIDOKI (it’s name is an onomatopoeia of a beating heart) will be making an appearance at New People’s J-Pop Summit (Weds/15) for a lecture on Tokyo’s “cute culture,” a fashion show featuring members of his store’s famously, fabulously saccharine staff, and a glitz-tastic 6%DOKIDOKI pop-up store. The brand’s focus on wide-eyed adorable and the shockingly juvenile has been termed “happy anarchy” by people that know about these things, so we shot Masuda some questions via email about what the hell he’s up to. His answers were vague — but they include the possibility of world salvation, so you might wanna check them out.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Sebastian, your shop is in the Harajuku district of Tokyo. What kind of influence does the neighborhood [famed for its innovative-freaky youth street culture] have on the 6% DOKIDOKI brand?

Sebastian Masuda: The girls of Harajuku girls have a sense of freedom, and they are challenging tradition or [sic] rules. That kind of attitude influenced 6% DOKIDOKI to become the store we are today.

 

Furry hats got nothing on the cuteness cataclysm Sebastian Masuda’s unleashed on this earth


SFBG: For our readers that are unfamiliar, what is kawaii culture? And is it true you once said “kawaii can save the world?”

SM: Kawaii makes happy, no matter what. One form of happiness. By “kawaii can save the world” I mean, and also hope, that the sense of “kawaii” makes people more happy and feel connected and this feeling will save the world from the grim and dark things that are happening right now. A lot of people are aware of such situations, and I have observed this from our world tour, Harajuku Kawaii Experience 2010. To this day, I strongly believe that “kawaii can save the world.” 

 

SFBG: How have your products sold in the United States? What is the response like that you get here?

SM: We are getting great response, usually because our items are really unique, and people see others wearing the items and ask “where did you get that?” The response is “oh, I got it in Harajuku”, so people are aware that our items came from Harajuku.

 

J-Pop Summit 2010: 6%DOKIDOKI Harajuku Kawaii Experience

Weds/15 7 p.m., $20 for lecture and fashion show

New People

1746 Post, SF

(415) 525-8630

www.newpeopleworld.com

 

 

 

 

 

Golden age remix: Bay graff gets its props

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Nate1’s business card is totally dope. It’s front depicts a Kry-lon paint can, the brand most used  for graffiti in the days he was coming up as a street writer in 1980s San Francisco. “Back then we used to have to make art with automotive paint,” he tells me at 1AM gallery, where his new show on the golden age of Bay tagging, “The Classics” opens today (Fri/10). “We’re talking about paint to paint red wagons and doors,” he remembers, smiling like a man that didn’t mind too much.

The card is striking because it evokes the sentiment behind this artist and the show he’s thrown up. “The Classics” is about those icons of SF’s early days on the graffiti scene, back before anyone with a few bucks could buy specialized Mammoth paint from 1AM’s retail section, cans specially designed for low pressure artistic liberty – but it’s also about where that art form stands today. 

1AM owner Anna says that before he came up with the inkling for this particular showing, Nate1 would bring around scrapbooks to street art openings, forcing heads to remember the days when. Finally, they hit upon the idea to base a show on these old masterpieces. On the gallery’s walls are seldom-seen photographs of the “Psycho City” wall in SoMa, the only place where young taggers could work on their art in public, in peace from police presence and neighborhood complaint. UB40’s ubiquitous-at-the-time scrawl is present, as is shots of trains painted by King 157, and Rigel’s game-changing robot piece. 

But the show’s no time capsule. What Nate1 wanted to do was pull these works into the present, juxtapose San Francisco relatively (to New York’s) unsung heroes with the realities of today. The artists are adults now, grown community members – Nate1, an original member of the graf crew Masterpiece Creators, has two kids, teaches graffiti art history at 1AM, and owns a clothing company – but they’ve still got skills. Most of the pieces at his show are not classics at all, but mature artists’ reimaginings of the culturally mega works they sprayed onto the sides of buildings and MUNI buses when they were in their teens. The show’s a celebration of where the art form’s been, but also how far it’s come.

“This show was put together by a writer, for a writer.” Nate1 is now addressing a crowd who has assembled the night for a sneak peek tour through the artwork that through months of searching and finding, he has deemed “The Classics.” In the audience are no small amount of writers from the ’80s scene: Rise is here, and Mike Bam. They’re among the artists Nate1 called on to create new pieces for the show. Throughout his tour, they pick up on Nate1’s more obscure points and chime in with clarifications, added bits of information.

“So dope!” Nate1 gets stoked on an original piece at his show “The Classics”

Some of the artists on display, like Rigel with his robot, re-imagined classic works from days of old and put them on canvass to grand affect. Others expanded on long dormant skills with new technology. Nate1 stops in front of a piece by Vogue entitled “Teenage Love.” It’s a painted closeup of Kry-lon cans, the glint of the metal popping in the bright, happy colors of everybody’s youth. “He did that with spray paint,” Nate1 announces to the assembled crowd, staggering backwards as if blown away by the technical mastery involved in this act. “Jesus!”

Still others made pieces of art that reflect the change in their lives, in everybody’s lives since those days of fat laces and “bus hopping” (which Nate1, in his best art history professor’s voice helpfully defines as when a graf artist boards a bus solo or en masse and “you take a tool of your choice to mark the surface”). Rise is called to the front when the corner that houses his work is introduced. A father himself, he has struggled with the “spiritual blackout” of alcoholism, only to finally see the light in a world with strange issues that dwarf running from the cops and fingers covered in aerosol paint. His intricate painting “Heaven Only Knows” shows a rising figure in Masonic imagery, surrounded by social ills, the seven deadly sins inscribed on paint cans, labyrinthine, interlocking words describing the scene, all of it framed by his son’s small hands on a video game controller. He talks about seeing names of military consultants in the credits of his offspring’s game manuals, explaining to his sons that though the games are fun to play, they’re still a tool of social conditioning. “Something that frustrates me is the condition of how things are going,” says Rise, a self-identified conspiracy theory enthusiast.

What may draw street art aficionados to “The Classics” is the promise of a look at the old school “OGs,” as Nate1 puts it. And that’s here: James Prigoff’s vast compendium of snapshots from 1980s taggers and their art has been selectively drawn from by Nate1. There’s a classic framed photo that shows a group of kids falling out the windows of a bus, adrenaline pumping in the aftermath of a writer’s party at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in honor of the first San Francisco book of street art. The shots serve as a tangible reminder of a time that wasn’t captured in graff mags, not endlessly cataloged on the Internet.

But what one walks away from “The Classics” with is the postmodern riffing images created for the show. It’s the fact that our local street art scene has become a school worthy of imitation, analysis, and homage that impresses. ’80s street artists – those night-crawling, fence-jumping, anti-social social crusaders, have finally and fully been embraced into the world of “art.” And they’ve got the business cards to prove it.

 

“The Classics”

Through Oct. 16

1AM gallery

1000 Howard, SF

(415) 861-5089

www.1amsf.com

Michael Franti’s bare feet

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Entering into its twelfth year of existence this weekend, Michael Franti’s Power to the Peaceful music and yoga festival doesn’t appear to pack quite the big name punch on (recycled, written on with hemp ink) paper – the Talib Kwelis and String Cheese Incidents that shared the bill with Franti in years past have been cycled out for Rupa and the April Fishes, SambaDa, and other relatively little known acts. But we caught up with Franti a few weeks ago to talk about this weekend’s (Fri/10-Sun/12) life-loving festivities while he was driving through the Nevadan desert, and he says there’s a method to the grooviness.

“It’s like being in a western movie out here,” Franti tells me after our call is dropped for lack of service. Reconnected, I ask: Michael, how’d you choose your supporting lineup for the concert you created to free Mumia, spread love, and perpetuate peace in Speedway Meadows?

“Last year we had Alanis Morrissette, lots of groups that we brought in from afar. This year we wanted to highlight Bay Area music,” says Franti, a Hunter’s Point resident himself. He took me through the lineup, which truth be told will probably make for a far more fun crowd than that of the year I had to throw bows to make it through the Indigo Girls crush. 

The patchouli-heavy roster includes the Santa Cruz capoeira crew SambaDa, bringing in a high-energy sound straight from the beach. All the acts involved have some smattering of multi-culturalism, including the Rupa and the April Fishes, of whose front lady Franti tells me “her family is Indian, but she grew up in America and sings in French and Spanish. She’s a M.D. half the year, and tours the other half of the year. I’ve always thought she was an amazing person.” We’ve got Rebelution to look forward to, surf-reggae boys from Santa Barbara, local emcee Sellassie, and… American Idol‘s Crystal Bowersox? She’s from Ohio, but hey she’s got dreadlocks – she’s in!

Most of the acts on the roster share the distinction for explicitly progressive social thinking, pretty key for a concert that Franti says he started to raise awareness of the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Black Panther sentenced to Death Row for his alleged murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Tied to the concert, which focuses on promoting peace on an institutional and personal level, will be a 9 a.m. “1,000 Yogis for Peace” mass sun salutation (Sat/10), and a variety of paid shows meant to raise funds for future PTTP events. Though the Saturday Golden Gate shows will be the only free events of the weekend, the Fillmore Theater will also play host to Franti’s vibe, starting on Friday night when he’ll perform his new album, The Sound of Sunshine, continuing with a Talking Heads tribute Saturday night, and yoga-Brazilian dance workshops during the day on Sunday.

But before I hung up with Franti we had another hard-soled issue to discuss. That being, his lack of them. Franti threw off the shackles of tounges and laces a decade ago – kinda. “It comes up quite regularly that I go into a restaurant or store and they’ll ask me to wear shoes. So I put on flip-flops.” Damn the man! Oh, and he wears them running as well. 

Must we ask why? We must. Franti tells me through the savannah-induced static that he had been playing a lot of shows in developing countries, and the kids there thought his fragile, callus-free feet hilarious. Once back in SF, he decided to go unshod for three days, and the rest is history. Ironically, he’s been pretty involved in getting those things back on the feet of people that need them – donations are being collected at the concert for one of his favorite charities, Souls 4 Souls. That group will join over 100 social justice organizations at the concert on Saturday, where they will be offering information on everything from environmental issues to gang intervention. So wait, we’re listening to propaganda here? “The idea is to plug people into serving,” Franti says. 

 

As a willing member of the liberal media, I’ll be at Power to the Peaceful all weekend, and how! Check out my take on the downward dogs and loosely cinched fisherman’s pants in next week’s print edition of the SFBG

 

Power to the Peaceful 

main concert: Sat/11  9 a.m.-5 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Speedway Meadows

Golden Gate Park, SF

other live events: Fri/10-Sun/11, times and prices vary

Fillmore Theater

1805 Geary, SF

www.powertothepeaceful.org

Portland’s Macro BrewFest cheers the chug

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“Are you noting the hints of coriander in your Rolling Rock?” my buddy wants to know. On a late summer afternoon, the couples and regulars scattered around us throughout a southeast Portland, Oregon neighborhood dive are taking a break from the microbrews their city is known for. For them, it was all about the tall cans. And for a damn good reason – the proud beginning of what may well be the world’s first Macro BrewFest, which went down this past weekend.

Not that Glen Wallace, owner of festival host O’Malley’s Saloon and Grill, isn’t into fancy suds. Wallace, who moved to Portland from his native Boston nine years ago, came up with the idea while at one of Beervana’s (as Portland, site of a national record 30 in-city craft breweries, has been colloquially termed) many micro brew fests. 

“Me and my buddy were sitting there with our little plastic cups and our beer nickels,” Wallace, an affable chap, tells us as we drink to his new festival’s health at one of O’Malley’s streetside picnic tables, the Southeast Foster Road traffic whizzing by a few feet from our bench seats. The two friends were reflecting on the bum hand that cheap beers are dealt in a town that often prizes hops over national ad campaigns. “The macro and domestic beers really seem to get shunned a little bit,” Wallace says, whose own draft pulls are evenly split between local stars like Eugene’s Ninkasi Brewery, and old school pulls of Coors and Pabst Blue Ribbon. “And I tend to think in contrarian terms.”

O’Malley’s Saloon and Grill owner Glen Wallace and his macros

Credit to this oppositional nature his next move: Wallace placed an order for an obscene amount of 16 different kinds of suds, the beers that we all drink, but aren’t necessarily stomping at the bit to stand up for. I take a break from sampling wares so that he can proudly escorts me into his walk-in refrigerator, which at the three day festival’s start was piled with cases of Coors Banquet, Steel Reserve, Olympia, Old German, and Natural Ice. “We were going to stock Iron City too, but they had a canning problem in Pennsylvania or something like that,” he reflects.

To truly give the much maligned macrobrew it’s due, Wallace went big with the concept: a bluegrass night, a comedy night that with the help of a stand-up connected staffer attracted sign-ups from 34 amateur yucksters. He sold “beer passes” for five bucks, which got you four tall cans of the Americana elixir of your choice, and in this manner got rid of 800 beers in three days – a big event for a small dive bar. To get people invested in the concept he offered a bonus feature: ballots to vote on O’Malley’s new house beer. His “dark horse” favorite, the white and red cans of Rainier, took home top honors from his discerning patrons, which he seemed to be happy about. “I’ve had a few long nights with Rainier,” he told me.

And such was the world’s first Macro BrewFest – which, judging from the way Wallace was talking, may not be the world’s last. He’s looking into trademarking the event’s name. After all, he says, people are beginning to return to their old standbys in these economic hard times. Miller High Life will always be there for its fans, an important fact in a Beervana where unemployment is currently standing at 10.2%. Chug!