Caitlin Donohue

Hot sexy events Aug 18-24

Andrew Lam
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Two words to understand why sex at Burning Man requires some amount of pre-playa study: alkaline dust. You do not want the stuff getting in while you do, lemme tell ya. So it is a very, very nice thing that Pink, one of Mission Control’s pansexy sex parties, is providing a primer on playa pussy (Fri/20). Subjects covered in the course? How to look for sexy in the barely clothed insta-city, tips for romping through the heat and psychedelia, and the importance of spray bottles when you’re getting with that neon fur-clad bunny you met by the ice stand.

 

Queer, Poly, and Under 30

So, what’s that like? Apparently, enough are interested in the successful maneuverings in the world of polyamory by the under-30 set that the Center for Sex and Culture planned a panel on the subject. Your experts? Among others, Jiz Lee, genderqueer porn star; Allison Moon, former mayor of Burning Man’s Camp Beaverton’s Home for Wayward Girls, and moderator Reid Mihalko, sex-help web guru. 

Thurs/19 7-9 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Center for Sex and Culture

1519 Mission, SF

(415) 255-1155 

www.sexandculture.org


Spunk

You know us youngsters, always listening to them iPod contraptions. Well now there’s a way for the gay men among us to shuffle up the tunes and their partners at the same time. I’m talking about Spunk, the weekly party for 18-29 year old members at Eros, which promises that the evening’s soundtrack will be comprised of “music most often heard on ipods, and swapped among friends.” Mmmm racy vagueness… 

every Thursday 4 p.m.- 12 a.m., $8

Eros 

2051 Market, SF

(415) 255-4921 

www.erossf.com


Pre-Pink Playa Sex Playshop

Pay good attention to your teachers – Doctor Friendly and Miss Pringle know what they’re talking about when it comes to Black Rock booty. Stay after the course for a little pre-fest warmup: the Pink party is on directly after. Come gussied up in next week’s costume to inject an extra hit of playa pizazz.

Fri/20 9-10:15 p.m., $20-30 members only

Mission Control 

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org


The Mystery and Seduction of Electro Play

Lady Ripplee Severin has this to say about her first, electrifying BDSM experience: “I found myself seduced and lured to the sound, sent and feel of this visceral form of BDSM play. The first time that violet wand touched my skin, I knew then I was hooked.” She sure sells the shock, no? Bring your electrical device if you’re well-versed in this kind of play – and curious bottoms, come prepared to be turned on. 

Sat/21 6-8 p.m.

Email BigPinkHouseSF@gmail.com for location and price

www.soj.org/calendar

 

Keeping It Hot in an LTR

It sounds like a sexy sportscar, no? But Lisa Skye Carle is actually using “LTR” to refer to a “long term relationship” – shhh don’t let the secret get out! Sometimes, the fact that you and your sweetie have been together forever can seem like a fact you want to forget in the bedroom. But it just doesn’t have to be like that. This course promises to show you lust and laviciousness, even in eyes you know as well as your own. 

Tues/24 6-8 p.m., $25-30

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com

 

The Eyes Have It/Swap It Out!

So you’ve got your Folsom Street Fair outfit picked out, but that black eyeliner is hard to apply! And come to think of it, the black platforms you have aren’t quite the same black as your bustier and cape… man, something just isn’t right. No worries, my leather love, the Citadel’s got you covered. Bethie Bee is presenting a two part course on makeup and fashion this week. Makeup is Tues, when basic looks are covered, and on Wednesday a clothing swap is being held to make sure you’re fly for the Fair.

Tues/24 8-10 p.m., $20

Weds/25 7:30-9:30 p.m., free if you bring 5 items or more

SF Citadel 

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org

 

Huffing Internet

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Huffing Internet

caitlin@sfbg.com

DRUGS Remember those elementary school sleepovers when you’d pin your friend’s throat against the wall so they could experience a few moments of sweet, sweet asphyxiation? The heady realization that you could easily make yourself feel really weird, in an almost-good way? Well, that brilliant brand of adolescent inanity is back, and this time, it’s on the Internet! Enter I-dosing — binaural beats stripped from the Enya, trance, and Pearl Jam albums (sometimes accompanied by tacky Op art visuals) so that nerdy teens can pretend they’re doing something bad.

Bubble-headed hyperventilators on the local evening news have already declared a new drug menace. “Kelly, parents really need to listen up on this one,” warned one lushly coiffed correspondent recently on Oklahoma City’s News9, opening a sequence that cobbled together hilarious footage those crazy I-dosers posted of themselves. Headphone-clad teens — in blindfolds! — curling into balls, spastically clenching their muscles in the rec room. It doesn’t look like much fun, but when has that ever stopped anyone from trying to get high on the cheap?

Subsequent studies have shown that these tracks, basically a pair of tones played simultaneously at slightly different frequencies, aren’t really melting your face. No detectable variance in brainwaves was detected while listeners were I-dosing into insanity. But long-term experiments are turning up interesting results — daily use of the tracks (which start around 99 cents on Amazon), which have names like “Demerol,” “Peyote,” “Orgasm,” and the more benign “Quick Happy,” “Confidence,” and “Brain+,” can produce overall reductions in anxiety and other slightly positive effects.

That, and my parents are afraid of it? No brainer! For the sake of Guardian readers, who obviously don’t do drugs of any bandwidth, I dove into the search engine to try.

The bad: there’s a bewildering array of I-dose options. I went straight for the free stuff, the files that have been converted to YouTube video. Granted, these aren’t at the same sound quality as the $200 I-dosing tracks you can buy on such sites as www.i-doser.com — but no one’s footing that bill, lemme tell ya.

“Gates of Hades” seems to be the most downloaded of the bunch. And while I didn’t quite witness the “death and destruction” promised by its creators, I did rip out my headphones when the sounds, which began with a steady, grinding noise that made me want to vomit, then switched jarringly into a key more apt to rupture my ear drums. If we’re going to be faking trips, can we at least choose a good trip? You’d think the nervous Nellies out there would want kids to think drugs were like this.

The good: Some of the more mellow I-doses produced a pleasantly confusing buzz — like being happy at a sober rave. The free ones accompanied by visuals got me slightly out of my head, at least, with whirling circles, throbbing triangles, and jouncing animated penguins. I may not have experienced Timothy Leary-esque cosmic transcendence, but after a couple minutes of staring at my pulsating screen, my pupils got nice and Google-y. No dramatic seizures, though.

Conclusion: buy a Magic Eye book.

Reading Hef for the articles

Andrew Lam
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“Did you see the film? Are you one of the ones who thinks it was biased?” So begins my phone interview with Briggitte Berman, director of the new documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel. Her movie, (which Dennis Harvey will review in this week’s SFBG) has been criticized for being an overly laudatory look at the life of the man who’s sparked a thousand sexual hegemonies, though few would deny that Berman’s put together an entertaining ride. But enough about cinematic merits. Did she get loose at the Playboy mansion while filming? What are those things like for a woman actually wearing clothes?

Wrong question. “I don’t like big parties. I don’t go to big parties. I am a film maker,” Bergman replies, stiffly. 

Now, were I composing a piece on the Sultan of Smut, Hefner’s bacchanals would be one of the first places I’d hit to get background — even if that film, as Berman is quick to specify, seeks to examine not “merely” Hef’s personal life so much as the social legacy he’s created. 

And let’s be real, the man is a walking reality TV show: his personal excesses are the social legacy. Perhaps therein lies the key to the way the film shies away from the meaty dilemma at the heart of Hef. Berman just doesn’t care for the naughty bits.

After all, she clearly prefers Hef’s famously couth intellectual side. The filmmaker first came into contact with the icon via his admiration for her film on the jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke. Their acquaintance has taken place not in the grotto, but in the well-appointed Mansion dens where Hefner stages his regular film nights, screening old classics for an audience of similarly ancient chums. 

Couth Hef, gettin’ things done. Photo courtesy of Playboy Archives

This is the Hefner one reads for the articles, and it’s the one that Playboy, Activist, and Rebel makes the most of. We get to hear much about the man’s pro-integration stance (his Playboy clubs were the first mixed-race venues to host Black stand-up comedians), his crusade for women’s reproductive rights, and his battles with governmental persecution – his persistence in hiring black-listed artists for his TV shows was truly admirable. Berman catches Jesse Jackson on-screen calling Hef an activist, for chrissakes.

It’s all, like I said, really interesting, and will probably teach viewers a thing or three about the civil rights movement and precursors to the Sexual Revolution. But the key word here is precursors. When we look back on the magazine’s heyday from our queasy 21st century enlightenment, it’s plain to see all was not groovy in the land of rabbit ears. 

Which brings us to the bunny suits, the corset, heels, and floppy ear ensemble sported by the female employees of Hef’s infamous string of nightclubs. It always comes back to the bunny suits. Now, I’m not one to cry foul on the basis of corset alone – I know many a woman who gets off on having a cinched waist and four-inch spikes on her hind paws. There’s a moment in the film where Hefner is called out on a talk show by two feminists. They ask him, if the bunny suits aren’t meant to be demeaning and reductive, why doesn’t Hef strap on one of those cotton tails himself? 

His answer is unconvincing, and the women have a valid point. If Hefner was so into being more open about our sex lives, why were men never shown cavorting through the debaucherous scenes of his pictorials? “What I was trying to say quite frankly,” he shares in one of his many lengthy on-screen interviews in Playboy, Activist, and Rebel “is that sex is okay and nice girls like sex too.” Well, we all know what Hef’s “nice girl” looks like. Leaving aside all issues of body type normativity on the pages of Playboy, (we shouldn’t) is/was this really a vision of sexual freedom, or the freedom of one man to be sexual in his one, very particular way?

Berman didn’t look at this, and she should have. “I have made several documentaries about complex individuals and he is a very complex man. I didn’t make a film about dolphins. I leave that to other filmmakers,” she tells me (oh snap, The Cove, you Lisa Frank binder, you – Berman’s calling you out!). But the Hefner film differs from Berman’s other depictions of complex figures in that we already know how the person in question has colored our lives. Hef is a pop culture powerhouse, unlike Bix Beiderbecke or Artie Shaw, some of Berman’s previous targets.

So it’s not enough to give token opposition air time to one or two Boomer feminist thinkers who will merely tell us the same things we already know about disrespectful imagery and the like. For me, they didn’t come close to countering Gene Simmons telling the camera that women are “more sexually disconnected” because our genitals aren’t rubbing against our pants leg 24/7. Scenes with Dr. Ruth notwithstanding, it was time for Berman to roll out someone who understands the value of what Hef did, but also someone who could critique his methods in a way that’s constructive to the generations that are not scandalized by that Marilyn Monroe centerfold in Playboy’s debut issue. 

Before we hung up, I had one more query for Berman. “Does Hef get it when people called him misogynistic? Does he see what they taking issue with?” 

“If you ask me whether he has a sense,” she began. “I suggest you ask him that. The totality of who Mr. Hefner is – no film can ever reveal that. Sometimes the person him or herself doesn’t know that.”

But at the ripe old age of 84, one would like to think Mr. Hefner would be working on it. Berman could have spent her time on this film getting her hands a little dirty. She could have asked Hef to consider how he might have constructed the imagery of his empire – gasp! — differently. Now that would be some good reality TV. 

 

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel starts Fri/20 at Lumiere Theatre and Shattuck Cinemas

 

Veterans of discrimination

Andrew Lam
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So you’re a gung-ho Hawaiian high schooler who wants to protect your country back in the early ’40s. You join the ROTC, which leads to a spin through the Territorial Guard. You’re then kicked out of service, because of where your family’s from. In fact, you’re now considered an enemy alien! Fancy. Such was the plight of the protagonists of Junichi Suzuki’s 442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity (which starts Fri/13 at Viz Cinema), Japanese-Americans who went on to become one of the most decorated squadrons in U.S. military history.

How would you react in a similar situation? In anger, disgust, maybe by sewing a maple leaf on your rucksack and thumbing for passage to points north on passing ocean liners? Oddly, the young men from the film did the opposite. They reinvested in their home, forming a club that reflected the closest thing to service in the military they could still rope down and jumping in flat bed trucks to help their peers still in the armed forces out with construction projects around Honolulu (in Hawaii, it was deemed “not practicable” to export the vast Japanese immigrant to internment camps and instead strict curfew laws and energy blackouts were enacted). The Varsity Victory Volunteers, they called themselves. 

Junichi Suzuki’s 442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity

Eventually, the army realized the guys weren’t terrorists and put them to work, stationing them on the front lines of WWII’s most dangerous conflicts. They done real good in battles – but paid for it, suffering 93% casulty rates by the military’s conservative counts (9,486 Purple Hearts were awarded and the company started out with only 3,000 soldiers!), all while many of their family members on the mainland were imprisoned in massive U.S. detention centers. 

It’s a compelling story about racism in our country, and I’m glad Suzuki tracked it down. But at its heart, 442 is still a war movie: grainy original footage and those slow zoom-ins on photos that the History Channel so dearly wishes was an appropriate stand-in for action. The most vivid scenes are those of the surviving members of the company that the filmmaker tracked down for an interview. They’re men who move slow, play golf, farm plots of land with their families. Veterans, dig? Doing what they wanted to do all along: be a legitimate, unconditional citizen of our country. 

The film is being shown as part of Viz Cinema’s multi-movie look at the work of Junichi Suzuki, whose been kicking around in director’s chairs forI over 27 years. Previously, the theater showed Suziki’s Toyo’s Camera, which includes footage from a camera that Toyo Miyatake snuck into the internment camp where he was sent during the war. From whence does Suzuki’s motivation spring to make such exhaustively well-researched looks at our country’s past and the history of his people? You can as him yourself — he’ll be at every screening of 442 on Fri/13 and Sat/14 at Viz.

 

442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity

opens Fri/13 (through Thurs/19) 2:50, 7 p.m., $10

Viz Cinema

New People

1746 Post, SF

(415) 525-8600

www.newpeopleworld.com

 

Te Vaka paddles up with news from the South Pacific

Andrew Lam
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Opetaia Foa’i’s mother’s ancestral home is sinking into the ocean. And he’s not supposed to talk about it. Tuvalu, comprised of four South Pacific Islands whose combined mass comes to a grand total of ten square miles, has its own language, a distinct cultural heritage like many of its neighbors. But what struck Foa’i (who was born on Samoa and raised in an islander community on New Zealand) saw when he went back was that rising ocean levels had reached up the air strip his plane landed on. So he wrote a song about it. His music and dance group, Te Vaka (which comes to Great American Music Hall Fri/13) plays music that evokes not only the ancient tales of those faraway seas, but also the fact that they matter, here and now.

“I was in the bad books of my parents,” Foa’i tells me. We’re sitting with his wife, band manager Julie Foa’i, at a table in the courtyard of the Phoenix Hotel on Eddy Street. At the start of a whirlwind two year tour, the band is a bit boggled by their first view of the U.S. on this pass through. “We’re like, is the rest of our American tour going to look like this?” Julie tells me of the group’s quick trip out for supplies in the textured Civic Center-Tenderloin area before today’s drive to Santa Cruz. Her bewilderment is fetching, but it belies the fact the band has been touring the world for the last 15 years, during which time they’ve performed in Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD world music concert series, and in a whole passel of festivals the world over.

But back, for a moment, to the whole ocean taking over ancestral home thing. Opetaia wasn’t supposed to talk about it because in Tuvalu culture to speak of the rising waters, attributed scientifically to the dissipation of the polar ice caps, was to give them power. Simply not done. But Opetaia is a man who wanted a voice. One doesn’t go from doing covers in New Zealand bars to assembling a ten-piece ensemble of talented young island musicians, touring the world with them, and even recording with Peter Gabriel without a desire to be heard.

Not that he did it alone — there is a much loved story in the group of Julie quietly writing on a piece of scrap paper at a meeting “Take this music to the world”: she continues to be a driving force behind the group’s conquests. Te Vaka’s name comes from the word for “canoe,” paying tribute to the ancients that Opetaia says “sailed the ocean in a simple canoe using the environment to guide them. These guys, they populated the islands and they carried on — that’s why there’s this thread of culture connecting all the islands.” One senses the group thrives on that connection between cultures, cannot believe their luck when a new city is picking up what they’re putting down.

The song about the rising waters, “Toko Matua,” went on “Nukukehe,” Te Vaka’s third album. Subsequent releases have turned a gaze on AIDS, over fishing in the South Pacific — as well as the joys of island life. In addition to traditional music, Opetaia cites the artists that impressed him when he first went to the New Zealand mainland as a child with his parents for formal education: Jimi Hendrix, Joan Armatrang, Joni Mitchell. The band’s repertoire is now vast enough that they can tailor shows to their audience, upbeat for dancing crowds, slowed down for the times when a more traditional sound is appropriate.

And oh, those joys of island life. 

I mention an observation from many a review I’ve read of Te Vaka’s stage show: that it is undeniably, hip-thrustingly sensual. Is that a conscious effort on the part of the band? “We actually underdo everything!” laughs Opetaia. “If they call that sensual… If you want something sexy, go to Tahiti and the Cook Islands. The ritual of shaking hips, it has sexual connotations. That’s the original meaning, courting.” He smiles. “It’s not done on purpose.” “Although the girls do wear coconut bras,” Julie tells me. Apparently, the band has a boatload of costume changes at a typical show.

Which tends to confounds customs. Between the skins and feathers of the costumes to the backbone of the group’s percussion, the traditional log drums, they tend to get hassled a bit in the airport. Not to mention those drums are heavy. “We can’t do without them,” muses Opetaia. “But I can understand why other bands have ditched them.”

That’s not all that other groups from their region have ditched, either. The couple can’t name a single other band who has successfully brought the traditional sounds to the rest of world. “We’re the first that delivered it more South Pacific than any other group,” Opetaia says. Julie adds “we’re not vaguely related to what’s happening in Australia and New Zealand, most groups are doing reggae.” “It’s really sad,” Opetaia chimes in “I thought a lot of people would follow, there’s a lot of great musicians out there — but you’ve got to have patience” to make it big on the international scene “I think that’s what they need.” Of those who have turned to the fallback of modern island cultures everywhere, reggae, he says “they make more money than we do, but we don’t do this to be rock stars.”

But that patience that he was talking about is beginning to pay off for Te Vaka. Earlier this week, the group was selected to play the after-party for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, a packed, high energy affair in a cavernous hotel ballroom. They were under the impression they’d be background music to the crowd, but were surprised when the floor started shaking beneath them. “You see that at rock parties — but people were jumping!” says Opetaia, aglow with the way the South Pacific’s sounds are resonating far beyond the reach of even the most intrepid canoe paddler.

Te Vaka

Fri/13 9 p.m., $26

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

Si se puede, making a difference: El Tecolote turns 40

Andrew Lam
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It was with relish that I awaited my interviews with El Tecolote’s managing editor, Roberto Daza, and its founding editor Juan Gonzales on a homey couch in the paper’s modest office on 24th Street. Being a community journalist, it isn’t every day that you are able to check out the digs of another community newspaper – particularly one with as storied a history as the Mission’s bilingual go-to for news on social issues that affect the historically Latino and working class neighborhood. El Tecolote is celebrating forty years of activist journalism this month, kicking off with an opening reception tonight (Wed/11) at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts of an exhibit featuring their extensive photo archives. 

I’m stoked to be there, so I chill and savor the feeling that good work is being done around me. Reporter-advertising manager Francisco Barradas’ computer keys are nearly the only sounds in the office, though passing staff assure me that this is a deadline day in the office. He answers the phone and speaks alternately in Spanish and English, most often a genial mixture of the two. Calendar editor Alfonso Texidor stalks past me multiple times, his distinctive hat and cane combo instantly marking him as one of the driving forces of last week’s popular literary review issue as identified by Eva Martinez, executive director of Accion Latina, the organization which houses Tecolote. 

The office itself reads – as many of the headquarters of these rags will do – like desks and computers framed by a collection of events past. Owls (the newspaper’s namesake) stare at me wide-eyed from the corners. An owl cuckoo clock here, a mascot originally meant to frighten birds away from property perched on a potted tree next to the couch there, a kite on the back wall, the reception desk lined with a cache of ceramic hooters. The walls have a bright collection of silk-screened posters announcing EL Tecolote fundraisers going back through the history of the paper, some which announce that proceeds will also go “for Chile democratico.”  

Later, after it is determined that rush hour traffic and recent hip replacement surgery have held up Daza and Gonzales, respectively, we settle on phone interviews all around. Still sitting on the couch in the office, I ask Gonzalez which stories he is most proud of looking back on the past forty years. His three examples are all moments in which his paper made a difference in the lives of Missionites. In the ’70s, a woman came to them who had recently lost a child. She had gone to SF General Hospital complaining of stomach pains and bleeding, but with no Spanish translators on hand, staff sent her home, told her to lay down. When she returned with her English-speaking son later that day they admitted her, but it was too late: she miscarried soon thereafter.

“We jumped on it,” Gonzales tells me. The newspaper discovered woefully inadequate translator staffing levels at General, and impelled their readers to act. “We mobilized the community,” says Juan. The hospital was forced to sign an agreement with activists from the neighborhood to guarantee translators on duty – the first such accord between a hospital and a community group. El Tecolote pursued similar campaigns with telephone emergency services in the ’80s, and more recently has supported tenants in a fight against Mission Housing Development when they attempted to raise rents in one of their apartment buildings.

“It’s one thing to make people see a newspaper around all the time. It’s another one to speak to the heart of the community,” Gonzales reflects.

From the get, the creation of El Tecolote was meant to give voice to those whom it was elusive. Gonzales started the paper as an off-shoot to his work in SF State’s fledgling Ethnic Studies program, itself born of the Alcatraz occupation and its own student strikes. A recent journalism graduate from the university himself, Gonzales was tapped by the administration to put together a course syllabus that analyzed media coverage of Latinos and taught ways to talk about issues that affected the population. He called it La Raza Journalism, but also craved a place where his students could get on the job experience.

So he held a series of fund-raising events, including an amateur talent show which drummed up the necessary $300 to publish the first El Tecolote on August 24th 1970. And then some. “At that time $50 was enough to publish 500 copies,” Gonzalez muses. His team chose to locate its office in the Mission, in a space donated by non-profit organization Centro Latino on 25th Street and Potrero to avoid reliance on university funding, which they felt could be pulled at any time. Already known to the community from his efforts in covering the area for the SF State paper, Gonzales and his paper were off and running.

“The bottom line is, the paper had to reflect the neighborhood,” he tells me. In those early days, the issues weren’t that much different than now: housing, tensions with the police, immigration, bilingual services and education, schools. They took care to represent all the facts of the controversies. “Don’t be afraid to ask the other side their reaction,” Gonzales says. “They could say things that help the cause.” El Tecolote, running as it does today 90-95% on the efforts of dedicated volunteers, also published pieces on young artists, many of which were at the center of an exciting new push for Latino-centric art forms. “We had to reflect how the cultural movement was really expanding,” its founder tells me. 

Nowadays, the paper experiences its share of the challenges to adapt that are facing most print publications. “We’ve had to make concessions: the quality of the paper we print on, the number of pages,” says Daza, who at a chipper 25 years old comes to the paper as another recent SF State grad. He first entered the Tecolote offices two years ago on a field trip as part of a technical writing class, and tells me the paper’s website upgrade earlier this year was much needed. “The running joke prior to that was that we didn’t want to tell people we even had a website.” 

Which is not to say that they are moving past the paper page. “For us,” Daza says “the print edition represents something completely different. It’s for people that don’t have an iPhone, don’t spend a good percentage of their lives online. That’s the kind of people we want to provide for.” Many community members still use El Tecolote to learn a language – initially, scanning the English articles for new vocabulary words, but more recently, with changes in the neighborhood’s demographics, checking out the Spanish pieces to develop new skills in español.

Daza makes it in after the majority of our interview, in time before his staff meeting to escort me through the paper’s recently organized binders of historic photos (from which we selected this piece’s graphic of Cesar Chavez’s visit to the paper’s office for a press conference on a UFW boycott). We flip to it past shots of a struggle immortalized. Demonstrations in the playgrounds of schools, under murals who this week I will recognize as I fly past them on my bicycle. Fists raised, hands extended, changes wrought – and it’s all there in El Tecolote, typed down in two different languages so that we can remember that this neighborhood has a past (and present, and future) worth remembering. 

“El Tecolote is all about making a difference in the struggle for social change,” says Gonzales, who will reassume the managing editor position when Daza heads across the Bay to pursue a graduate degree at UC Berkeley this fall, tells me. Safe to say the paper has, and will continue to do so, si se puede.

 

Imagining the Mission: El Tecolote’s 40th anniversary

Wed/11 6:30-9:30 p.m., $5

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

2868 Mission, SF

(415) 643-2785

www.missionculturalcenter.org 

 

Hot sexy events August 11-17

Andrew Lam
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It’s nice to see a couple of homegrown boys cinching their ties to their community. Dan and JD of Two Knotty Boys make some of the city’s more evocative bondage scenes – scroll through the galleries on their website for various visions of unrestrained restrained beauty, like two Manic Panic red heads impelled by the boys’ handiwork to assume an intimate “cuddle.” It’s this kind of imaginative use of ropes – they also do a series of “decorative bondage” in which corsets, bras, panties, and even dresses are crafted onto models by tightly pulled knots and loops – that make them the perfect teachers of the art. Couples especially are invited to their class at Good Vibrations this week (Wed/11): just remember to bring your ropes and you’re bound for inspiration.

 

 

Sex Bondage

Learn how to tie in furniture, vibrators, and more to your rope bondage play in this two hour workshop by SF’s good old boys, Dan and JD. The class is meant to be a serious, but humorous look at how you can aspire to the Two Knotty Boys’ level of corded mastery.

Wed/11 6-8 p.m., $25-30

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com


Sex Tapes for Seniors

Finally, a stage show about how those hot feelings south of of your control top don’t cease when you hit 60. Mario Cossa’s world premier plot takes us to Shambala Springs retirement home, where a group of sexually diverse couples are filming hot, wrinkly scenes of lust – to the chagrin of their peers and adult offspring. Not explicit by any means, the show is nonetheless a comic exploration of the bump and grind in the golden years.

Fri/13 (through Sun/22) 8 p.m., $25-40

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St., SF

(800) 838-3006

www.stfsproductions.com


San Fran Sexy Zine Launch

Before Kinky Salon takes a well deserved six week break, won’t you grab your partner (or single girlfriends) and head to the party for their new printed smut, San Fran Sexy? Here’s hoping it’s as successful as the city’s last licentious launch, the trans mag Original Plumbing. The first hour of the night celebrates the zealous zine and afterwards all the carnal cavorting the party is known for takes center stage. Ah, illiteration… 

Sat/14 9 p.m., $25 members only

Mission Control

2519 Mission, SF

www.kinkysalon.com


Iron Dom Contest (Updated: Correction! The Iron Dom competition is actually scheduled for Sat/20)

We’ve all played this game before. You’re stuck on a desert island – what three things would you need to create the bondage scene of your dreams? If you’re a candidate for top honors in Domina’s contest this Saturday, you won’t be picky – the point is to craft the best possible BDSM situation you can from what you’re given in terms of props (DIY castoffs) and partner (enthusiastic, yes. Your gender/sexual proclivity of choice, possibly not). Do you have what it takes to be the next Iron Dom? Kitchen Stadium – er, the Citadel is waiting to see. All proceeds go to the Somona County AIDS Food Bank.

Sat/14 doors 2:30 p.m., contest starts 5 p.m., $20-25

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Big

Stroke your hand seductively over your load of love – that belly’s getting you laid tonight! Particularly if you lope over to The Stud, where South Bay’s hottest chubby chase session is relocating for the evening. Skinny minnies out there? Remember, the bigger they come, the harder they come. Get you a fattie, stat.

Sun/15 6 p.m.-12 a.m., 

The Stud

399 Ninth St., SF

(415) 863-6623

www.studsf.com


Use Your Words: Hot and Sexy Talk

Can Tina Horn talk you into sexy time? The queer BDSM porn star would sure like to try. And it’s only right to let her – after all, Horn is facilitating this workshop so that you beatimous self can grab their reins of your voicebox to take your love making to new heights. It’s called dirty talk, y’all: get some.

Tues/17 6-8 p.m., $25-30

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

Get that paper

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Get that paper

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Our fair state gives out the most postsecondary degrees in the country. We’re so smart! But we rank somewhere around 43rd when you convert that number to a per capita figure — and of course there’s a budget kerfuffle afoot. Shucks. Still, there are a passel of innovative, unique degree programs available now to suit your unique self and give your career a boost. Consider these.

 

NATIVE STUDIES

Inspired by the Alcatraz takeover and the university’s late 1960s student strike, SF State’s Native studies was the nation’s first degree program of its kind. Students focus on how Native American populations are affected by everything from environmental justice issues to health practices.

San Francisco State, 1600 Holloway, SF. (415) 338-1111, www.sfsu.ca

 

HUMAN SEXUALITY

The institution that awarded the world’s first PhD to a porn star (Annie Sprinkle took home a diploma from IASHS) certainly has what it takes in this field. The school offers legit advanced degrees in that most delicate of our instruments.

Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, 1523 Franklin, SF. (415) 928-1133, www.iashs.edu

 

DOCTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY

It’s hard to say no to a psychologist with more field experience. The PsyD program at CIIS takes a relatively new approach to the advanced psychology degree, focusing less on lab and library research and more on clinical opportunities.

Center for the Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission, SF. (415) 575-6100, www.ciis.edu

 

TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Yup, looks like Sarah Palin’s rearing her aspirational highlights again — that trip overseas is looking more attractive all the time. A TEFL certificate makes you eligible to teach English abroad, a perfect gig for the wannabe expat.

Teach English Abroad, www.onlinetefl.com

 

MUSIC FOR VISUAL MEDIA

Jingle writers, hum-along gamers, and stock characters in middling comedies like Three and a Half Men, Last Chance Harvey, and The Good Night: up your musical game to professional levels. Academy of Art offers a flexible schedule to help you reach your earworming goals.

Academy of Art University, SF. (800) 544-2787, www.academyart.edu

 

FIBER AND POLYMER SCIENCE

Sure, your Etsy store is kicking ass, but when it’s time to move to the next level, this program can deepen your understanding of the hang of that skirt. And how. Study physics, chemistry, and consumer science on this fashion-spelunking expedition.

UC Davis, Davis. (530) 752-2580, www.ucdavis.edu 

 

Selective electives

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Selective electives

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED Heed we now Mark Twain: “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Holler, MT — that degree on your wall don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Why not finish out your coldest winter with an unexpected course in a new — and maybe even marketable — skill?

 

INTRODUCTION TO FIELD ORNITHOLOGY

“Isn’t that a magnificent sulfur-bellied flycatcher!” Joe Morlan has been teaching this City College course for more than 30 years, and his weekend field trips are sure to increase your feathered friend-spotting wingspan.

Sept 14–Oct 26, 7–9:30 p.m., $130–$140. Marina Middle School, 3500 Fillmore, SF. (415) 561-1860, www.ccsf.edu

 

INTRODUCTION TO ANIMATION

What kid doesn’t live in her own cartoon strip? Sirron Norris (painter of sardonic blue bears and “Victorion,” the gentrification bot) empowers young people to give birth to their illustrated worlds at his Mission District studio and gallery.

Aug 26–Sept. 16, 4–5 p.m. $100. Sirron Norris Studio and Gallery, 1406 Valencia, SF. (415) 648-4191, www.sirronnorris.com

 

VIDEO ACTION SKILLSHARE

Calling all activists: up the evocation of your iPhone captures, share production tips with camerapeople-in-arms, even make your footage into an episode of Berkeley’s BeTV at this East Bay Free Skool offering.

Third Thursdays, 7–8:30 p.m., free. Berkeley Community Media, 2238 Martin Luther King, Berk. eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com

 

BELLY DANCE FUNDAMENTALS

Grab your zils (scientific name: handheld clicky-clackers) and turn your paunch to power in this six-week course, which starts at hand floreos and undulates up to the shimmy step.

Tues and Fri 6:30–-7:30 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.–12 p.m., $10 drop-in, $48 for six classes. Fat Chance Belly Dance, 670 South Van Ness, SF. (415) 431-4322, www.fcbd.com

 

YOUTH SUPER SCULPTURE

The perfect class for young’uns to get started on their fire arts career — eight to eleven-year-olds can enjoy this Crucible primer on the joy of creative building.

Sept 20- Oct 26, 4–6 p.m. $240. The Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. (510) 444-0919, www.thecrucible.org

 

HONEYBEE BASICS

Their hives were recently the victims of a distressing insecticide attack — but the urban agriculturists at Hayes Valley Farm soldier on in their mission to educate peeps on the beauty of urban beekeeping.

Sept 20, 10 a.m.- 12 p.m. $20–$40 sliding scale. Hayes Valley Farm, 450 Laguna, SF. www.hayesvalleyfarm.com

 

EXTREME STRETCHING

It’s the fast track to that contortionist career you’ve always dreamed about! A crash course in control, stability, and limber limbs at SF’s premier spot for circus learnin’.

Sept.8–Dec 8, 5:30–7:30 p.m., $480. Circus Center, 755 Frederick, SF. (415) 759-8123, www.circuscenter.org

A different lit: Another kind of Castro sex store

Andrew Lam
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“It’s really one of the only places in the Castro that isn’t focused on drinking or shopping,” says events coordinator Oscar Raymundo of his book nook on the neighborhood’s main drag, A Different Light. Ambling down Castro Street, one really doesn’t see too much geared towards the intellectual pursuit – punnily-named beauty salons, cheap bars, and spendy restaurants are far more evocative of the enclave’s milieu. Raymundo would be the first to admit, however, that the bookstore where he works deals in a theme that plays a central role in Castro life: sexuality, and the varying ways in which the LGBT community lives the theme.

Inside the Light, you see the true meaning of this last sentence. A bin of DVDs cheerfully promising vivid anal sex scenes at quite reasonable prices. Evocative postcards, prints on the wall – and for the more literary minded among us, the books themselves. Raymundo says that A Different Light attempts to find “the stories that aren’t told as often. A lot of books fall into this Chelsea, West Hollywood kind of scene – we want to find the stories that are more off the beaten track.”

So for those that are looking for a less mainstream version of gay sex, there is a chapter here for you. Tales of love in the urban rural south, the vagaries of a more-or-less polygamous marriage. There is lesbian lit as well, how-tos for a healthy, sex-positive life like The Ethical Slut and The Bottoming Book. Hell, should everything in A Different Light be considered fodder for lust and liaison, the store has tales for even the most esoteric of arousals: a volume of Harry Potter, captured on audio for to make possible the most effusive sort of literary enjoyment. 

Raymundo says that the store wants to be considered a sort of “community hub,” a sentiment that is fostered by a steady stream of authors that make their way to the small store for readings and signings of books by grateful fans. America’s favorite drag queen appeared here earlier in the year to promote Workin’ It: RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style (sans “face,” to the consternation of fans who had lined up around the block to bask in her bleached blonde light), and recent appearances have included Axel Ironrod, creator of Tarquin and Paul, the studly protagonists of Ironrod’s series Leather Masters and Slaves, as well as David Jedeikin, who talked about his book Wander the Rainbow, a self published account of the author’s foray through the sex tourism capitals of the world (sort of like Eat, Pray, Love without the womenfolk or aestheticism.)

A favorite event of the event coordinator himself? Raymundo harkens back to the day when Aiden Shaw, “the most highly paid male porn star of the ’90s,” lent his spark to A Different Light upon the release of the actor’s fourth memoir. “He was surprising, really eloquent,” Raymundo says. 

Johnnie Waters ups the freaky celeb factor at his A Different Light author signing

Of course, reality TV hosts and porn stars do not a “community hub” make. To this end, A Different Light is partnering with the Magnet, the SF AIDS Foundation gallery-lounge around the corner from the bookstore whose lobby offers free Internet access and a chance for neighborhood gay men to connect on matters besides $2 well drinks and $200 designer denim. The two organizations have created a bi-monthly book club (second and fourth Tuesdays of the month 7:30 p.m. at the Magnet) to dish on the stories that come to life within the walls of A Different Light. Again, still sexy. Most of the selections to date have been from authors making stops in the bookstore: John Waters, dashing through with his odd little ode to those that made him how he be, Role Models, made a stop through, and next week the gang’ll be discussing Insignificant Others, a novel of the unraveling of a polygamous Boston couple (those exist?) by Stephen McCauley.

 

Upcoming author appearance:

Del Shores and the cast of TV’s Sordid Lives

Fri/13 7 p.m., free

A Different Light

489 Castro, SF

(415) 431-0891

www.adol-books.blogspot.com

 

A good day for germaphobes

Andrew Lam
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0

Good god, y’all! If you parents out there (yeah, I know this is San Francisco, but I’m house-sitting up in Bernal for the week, I know the childrens still exist) have successfully protected your family from the dangers of I dosing, you now have a new challenge on your hands: making sure your loved ones are harboring enough bacteria.

Such is the message of a one Larry Weiss, who has been contracted under the illustrious moniker of “chief technology officer” by a one manufacturer of naturalish hygiene products known in certain circles as Cleanwell, to make you even more aware of the microscopic dangers that lurk in every damp sponge. And the microscopic wonders in every bite of Dannon’s! There’s good bacteria as well, which his product helpfully allows to survive another day in your epidermis and eventually, gut. He’ll be presenting the findings of his doctoral search for the truth today, Thurs/5, at an organic children’s store in the Marina named Sprout. Sounds like it’ll make a bangin’ pre-funk for our Best of the Bay Rock Party tonight.

Some sneak preview tips gleaned from the Cleanwell site:

-Eating yogurt or probiotic products help you to get that belly bacteria back in balance after a round of the antibiotics. Listen up you chronic infection people!

-76% of all liquid soaps include Triclosan, a devil juice that disrupts endochrins and makes teenage girls get their periods disturbingly early. Guess what soap has no Triclosan!

-Viral YouTube videos do not actually cause a single virus, or more than one virus! On a related note, did you know there is some debate as to whether the word ‘virus’ has a correct pluralization?!

Cleanwell appears to have caught wind of the SFBG staff’s penchant for rolling around in pungent “Free” boxes we find on the sidewalk curb, because they generously sent us no less than five spray bottles of their original flavor all-natural hand sanitizer. A question that perhaps Cleanwell can answer: why aren’t we calling the first ingredient on your list “aloe” instead of the slightly more processed sounding “aloe barbadensis?” To me, this suggests you’re not throwing plants in a pot and stirring, which is how we hippie typically prefer our toiletries to be made. One of my counterparts suggested your formal language was due to the fact that Cleanwell ingredients are so natural, one must use their Latin names to describe them. 

Anyways, I got everybody to spritz their hands at the office, thereby putting off yet another pink eye epidemic. Thanks, Cleanwell!


Healthy Hygiene Tips from Dr. Larry Weiss

Thurs/5 6:30 p.m., free

Sprout

1828 Union, SF

(415) 359-9205

www.cleanwelltoday.com

www.sproutsanfrancisco.com

 

A rainbow plays tug of war: East Oakland photo contest winners

Andrew Lam
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East Oakland: beautiful, isn’t it? Deep in the Flickrs of its residents, the truth is out. Streets plagued by media images of gang violence and poverty are fodder for shots of kid’s games and preternatural beauty — and artists out there that care enough to capture it. Rene Yung, an artist who is heading the Our Oakland project, took issue with the way the community was being portrayed on TV: all the stories she saw were either crime or “rise above” tales of success. “I think so much of people’s everyday lives deserve to be celebrated.” The website she created for Our Oakland, meant to be a pride pump for this much maligned area of the Bay, sponsored a photography contest to find the photos they knew were out there. They received 22 entries, but this has gotta be due to the vagaries of Internet awareness and less a reflection of the material they sought, cuz they came up with some real pretty pictures. Care for an intro to the civic aesthetes who took the prizes? Wish granted. Check out this week’s SFBG for more stellar shots by Bay shutterbugs.

Oacia Williams has lived in East Oakland off and on since 2002. But she hasn’t seen too many rainbows there — at least skyward. The diversity on her street is part of the reason why she loves where she lives. “All the different colors and nationalities, everyone coming together. It is gorgeous,” Williams told us during the round of phone interviews we conducted with the Our Oakland winners. She took People’s Choice photo “See!! There is a Pot of Gold” (the same shot we picked out as an early favorite in the contest — see, who says community media isn’t influential?) on a day at home playing with her and her boyfriend’s kids. “The kids were tripping off the rainbow – first it was one rainbow and then the double. We were able to see it real well, which I was surprised because it was so dark out,” Williams remembered. Out came her Samsung. “Im always snapping it because you never know what you can do with it or who needs it.” She found out that Our Oakland needed it. Done and done.

“Tug of War” by Pauline Russell-Silva

“It’s just an authentic picture – I didn’t plan it. It’s from the perspective I have as an elementary school teacher, and of the kids in the area where I work,” says Pauline Russell-Silva of her first place shot. Russell Silva, a K-5 teacher at Encompass Elementary, Russell-Silva works with children on their English language development and reading skills. Her dynamic shot was taken on field day at Encompass. “We believe in educating the whole child, developing healthy body, mind and spirit,” she says. The days outside always end in a tug of war match, and the teacher’s Nikon D40 captured the shifting demographics in the East Oakland community. Russell-Silva finds it an apt photo of her neighborhood. “Sometimes there’s conflict and strife, sometimes there’s people working together.” She heard of the contest through the public library adjoining her school.

“Fanea” by Fanea Easterling

“We were so pleased by range of ages of winners in the contest,” Yung says. Taking the organization’s second place prize (and a Ipod shuffle in the bargain) was young person Fanae Clark, a student at the East Oakland Boxing Association who snapped her winning photo when Our Oakland hosted a photography workshop at the athletic center where she spars. In her artist’s statement, she said of her shot. “I also think this image shows hard work, which can get you where you want to be in life.” Yung found her shot appealing for the distinct perspective it offers. “As a young person she was being thoughtful relating to her life.”

Hot sexy events Aug 4-10

Andrew Lam
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1

The ocean breezes toss your hair haphazardly, whipping it from side to side for that perfect Saturday morning tousled look. Man that wind –  or is that actually from all the mid-air flogging? At thiis peer workshop, you better watch out for the safety of your earlobes. A feller named Jonathan Eros (who often goes by his Burning Man Ranger name of Grizzly) puts on public bimonthly get-togethers and sweet bear that he is he’ll have loaner whips on hand for newbies. Grizzly also publishes a list of appropriate and accessible flogging devices on his website – truth be told, he’s quite comprehensive. Check out his al fresco flaying if you’re interested in jumping into the whip scene, or even if you’ve got a special flick of the wrist you’d care to share with some new friends.


Ask the Doctor: Anal Sex

Should the thought of the city’s unofficial sexpert Carol Queen explaining the ins and outs of anal sex not be enough motivation for you to ease your way into this talk, heed this: they’re giving away tickets to the new Giovanni Rebisi flick about the adult Internet website business, Middle Men.

Wed/4 6:30-7:30 p.m., free

Good Vibrations

603 Valencia, SF

(415) 522-5460

www.goodvibes.com


Steamworks DJ Night

My god – did you know $5 gets you a month’s entry to the steamiest spot in the East Bay (where SF’s prude “no closed doors” rules don’t apply – be safe out there, folks!). Get your heart pumping tonight to DJ Tristan Jaxx’s sweaty beats.

Sat/7 11 p.m., $5

Steamworks

2107 Fourth St., Berk.

(510) 845-8992

www.steamworksonline.com


Bullwhips by the Bay

Like I said – outdoor whippery in the park. Protective earwear recommended.

Sun/8 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., free

Golden Gate Park, southeast of Polo Field (see website for exact location)

www.laughingbear.com


“The Real L” Word Viewing Party

Bartenders Amy and Donny serve up cheap beer and strong drinks at the dyke dive’s weekly party to watch Showtime’s series about the hijinx of a bunch of lovely ladies in La-La Land.

Sun/8 10 p.m.-11 p.m.

Lexington Club

3464 19th St., SF

(415) 863-2052

www.lexingtonclub.com


Erotic Needlepoint Workshop

Oh my! Drop (stich) into Amy Leonard’s class to make your sweetie the gosh darn most exciting dish towel they’ve ever laid eyes on. Perhaps you’ll embroider a scene from those hot thirty minutes in the Sur La Table elevator? Who can say: the choice is yours.  

Sun/8 3 p.m., $10

Femina Potens

2199 Market, SF

(415) 864-1558

www.feminapotens.org


The Art of Feminine Dominance

Mistress Midori, who performs a mean Japanese bondage scene, elaborates on how to find your dom within – the science, politics, practices, and fashion of the game. Are you ready for the upper hand?

Tues/10 6-8 p.m., $25-30

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0400

www.goodvibes.com

 

The curve of the lens

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The curve of the lens

arts@sfbg.com

PHOTO ISSUE It wasn’t until Julian ArtPorn (www.ArtPorn.com) was taping the back hem of my red and white polka dot dress up over the seat of my Nishiki road bike that I realized the Coppertone dog-girl duo of yore is, in fact, one of our most visible illustrative renditions of boudoir photography. Then, my derriere suitably exposed to his basement studio — the most revealing shot of our session — and he had arranged my hips just so, and coached me on the appropriate pin up “surprised” face, ArtPorn resumed with the flash bulbs.

“So cute!” he giggled sweetly. I vamped to his praise. A girl could get used to this.

And it would appear that many have. Boudoir photography, that classic art form old as photography itself, is a growing market, burgeoning alongside its onstage cousin, burlesque. Many wedding shutterbugs are now including a clothing-off (or clothing artfully draped over favorably lighted curves) session with the bride to value-add to their package promotions. It’s a version of risqué that newbie subjects can control completely: a good way to be bad, a cute way to be sexy?

Photo by Julian ArtPorn

But for the photographers I spoke with for this article, boudoir photography was more than a means to a paycheck. ArtPorn, who in his bohemian upbringing was “hitch-hiking alone and smoking pot at the age of five,” finds the preservation of his subjects’ sexuality a precious task. He shoots almost exclusively on a bright white background, gleeful captures of countless freaky people he’s photographed both on the Burning Man playa and his basement studio in Excelsior.

Julian’s into people’s natural sexiness — whether it takes the form of one of my “cute” booty-baring bike photos, or something rather kinkier. He’s shot ecosexual porn stars, randy leather couples, women hanging by ropes from the ceiling. Whatever gets you hot, dig? Sexuality is “one of the most magical things about anybody,” he tells me after our shoot. “It’s an amazing, powerful, and wonderful thing. The media doesn’t do a great job of representing that.”

Michelle Athanasiades, whom I meet sipping white wine in a Moroccan lounge next to Dollhouse Bettie, her Haight Street lingerie shop (www.dollhousebettie.com), would concur. “The standards that are set for beauty — they seem so unattainable in so many ways that the idea of giving yourself the freedom to express your own sexuality and beauty is a gift.” Athanasiades got into the boudoir photog game by necessity, shooting models in her retro silk and satin whispers back when her undie trade was conducted solely on the Internet.

Photo by Michelle Athanasiades

New to photography, she’s never shot outside her third floor Edwardian flat, decorated only with her romantic aesthetic and the “best diffuser ever,” San Francisco fog outside the windows. Customers began to come to her to look like her catalog of Mae Wests and Bettie Pages. “People are captivated by the elegance and sexuality of the pre-women’s liberation era,” Athanasiades tells me between sips. “There were women back then who embodied that pioneering spirit and also that sexuality.” Still a side gig to Dollhouse Bettie, her clients want photos for wedding/engagement presents, a fun thing to do with their girlfriends, or just to have ravishing, seductive photos of themselves.

As for the bike shoot — well sure, it was for the article, of course! But now that the vital background research is accessibly located in my computer hard drive, I click open the photos when I want a reminder of beauty. It was massively fun to pick out which frilly panties I wanted to sport, to bring my beloved bike along for the ride when he suggested I come up with a fun prop (even if it lacked the star quality, perhaps, of his other subjects’ interlocking nipple rings and patent leather corsets). And if I look particularly fetching, comfortable, happy in my skin — well gosh, you’re too kind! — we must consider it a reflection of the photographers themselves.

(A rhythmic series of) slaps on the back for the Body Music Festival artists

Andrew Lam
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Slap a belly, claps them hands, shake your head side to side and buzz through your lips like a motorboat. It’s called body music, mon cheri – and since 2008 the Bay Area’s been the yearly gathering spot for all manner of the diverse artistes that call this noise home at the International Body Music Festival. This year, the festie’s moving down south to Sao Paolo, Brazil – but before it does, festival founder and primo tap dancer Keith Terry has organized a benefit show (Sat/7 La Peña Cultural Center) that features his group, Slammin, along with sometimes-clown and presently hambone performer Derique McGee. The show will fund Bay performers trips down south – and more presently, out to NYC where they will perform at the Lincoln Center (Thurs/12). We spoke with the mastermind behind this convergence of natural noisemakers over the phone, and found him to be more than happy to explain his unusual passion for playing with one’s self. Keith, what’s all this noise about?

 

Keith Terry on the ones and two-legs 

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Now then. Body music. I must admit, I wasn’t previously familiar with the art from. How’d you get turned on to it?

Keith Terry: I came to it 30 years ago – I’m a drummer, and I was in a rehearsal with tap dancers, and I had this thought that I could displace everything I was playing on my drums onto my body. And it became a career.

 

SFBG: Did you start out by researching the background of body music? It’s been around for quite some time, hasn’t it?

KT: I was really into tap dancers, people like Charles “Honi” Coles, Eddie Brown, Steve Condos. I’m really drawn to dance that has its own inherent soundtrack, or music that has a visual component. I’ve been fascinated by that for a long time. I was aware of hambone for a long time, that it grew out of slavery, of drums being taken away from slaves to suppress rebellion. There are a lot of traditional styles of body music. I’m a student of world music. But the style that I do is a contemporary style. 

 

SFBG: Tell me about it?

KT: I do solo and group shows, but for the festival my group is called Slammin’; 3 singers: beatboxer, and body music – eight in the ensemble. It’s very urban music: we draw from jazz, hip hop, R&B. There’s usually five of us, but for the Lincoln Center show we’re adding three additional body musicians, so this is the enhanced Slammin’.

 

SFBG: The Body Music Festival has been doing great the past few years in SF. Why are you moving the event to Sao Paolo?

KT: We’ve always had performers come to the festival from all over – we’ve had people from Indonesia, Turkey, Polynesia, France, Brazil, Spain. One thought I had in 2008 when I started the festival was that it would be great if the festival itself became international. I had asked Barbatuques, a group from Sao Paolo of 12 performers, I asked if they would host, and they accepted. Next year the full festival will be back in the Bay Area, then the next year in Istanbul. 

 

SFBG: Do audience members ever call foul on you and say that what you do is actually dance, not music?

KT: It’s hard to categorize and put it in a box. But people find it really accessible.


Body Music Festival Benefit Send-off Concert

Sat/7 8 p.m., $20-100

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 849-2568

www.lapena.org

www.internationalbodymusicfestival.com

 

Bondassage gets at that kink in your back

Andrew Lam
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1
Bondassage gets at that kink in your back

Headphones pump cool, slow beats into your ears as hands wander over your back’s knots. Assured, soothing touch works its way down your spine. A feather tickles your lumbar. Is that a whip running over your ass? Relax, you’re in the hands of professionals. “I wanted to make it accessible to quote-unquote newbies,” Jaeleen Bennis says of her S&M-massage hybrid, Bondassage. “It’s great for people who are afraid to take that first step of going to see a dominatrix.”

It was a simple equation for Bennis, a certified massage therapist with 20 years of experience and a professional dominatrix with five years under her latex belt, to (spike-heeled) boot. Why not handcuff together the two things that brought her joy? The fruit of her joyful union combines the soothing touch of therapeutic body work with something a little darker. 

Here’s a table side view: Bondassage customers are blindfolded, a collar placed on their neck, and cuffs on their wrists and ankles. “You’re lightly tied to the table,” Bennis told me over the phone. “There’s no crazy positions or anything.” Those headphones block out all noise from the room so what comes next can’t be anticipated by happy victims. Hint: prop play may figure even more prominently in Bondassage than realignment of that tricksy vertebrae from last week’s soccer game.

The formula appears to have found its audience in health-hungry Bay Area kinksters. “Everything is moving so fast for me!” Bennis told me, happy as hell with the way her passion has taken off. Though the lady herself is based out of Capitola, you have lots of options if you’d like to get caned (therapeutically) up here in the Bay. To date she’s trained 14 sex positive body workers in the art of Bondassage, including a phalanx around SF, Oakland, and Berkeley, and one outlier in the sexy slums of Indiana. Bennis and partner Mistress Montaine are taking the act to the road this fall, when they’ll be teaching workshops on the form around the country. Get in while the getting’s good people, it’s not every day that a new form of sensual touch comes around (but if you know of one, give a girl a shout, willya?).

 

For appointments, contact one of the practicioners listed at www.bondassage.com

My buddy and meme: Winnebago Man’s unlikely star turn

Andrew Lam
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An irascible ex-TV news anchor shoots a promo video for Winnebago in Iowa in the summer of 1988. It’s hot out, the crew isn’t giving him what he needs, and he swears. A lot. Fast forward 20 years, and the video that damn crew complied of his least flattering outtakes has garnered over 20 million hits on YouTube. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer hired a detective to find out what happened to the star of his favorite viral video, and the ensuing film, Winnebago Man (which starts Fri/30), turns up some surprising conclusions about the notion of, as Steinbauer put it to me in our recent interview at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, “accidental notoriety.” Some people are calling the film an exploitation of the alternately crude and eloquent Jack Rebney, a new media naïf – but my half hour with the pair raised questions in my eyes of who was using who to tell what story.   

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: So Jack, tell me about the last time you were in San Francisco. That’s the climax of the film.

Jack Rebney: Well of course, just when we were finishing the movie we had the opportunity to be up in the Haight playing [at the 2008 Found Footage Festival at Red Vic Movie House] and that was the first opportunity for Ben and I to do our dog and pony show. We had just an incredible time.

Ben Steinbauer: You’l l never guess who the pony is.

JR: The people were just, it was electric. It was just quite unusual. I was enormously taken with it. You could feel the vibes between the people and Ben and I. 

 

SFBG: That’s Haight-Ashbury for you. Ben, I have a question for you. Did your intent and motivation for this film change throughout filming it?

BS: No question. I started out making the movie because I was a big fan of the clip. I got the VHS tape in 2001, my friends and I would all quote it. Cut to four years later when YouTube was popping up and there was this idea of accidental celebrity, or unwanted notoriety. I thought, I wonder how the star of my favorite clip is dealing with this same thing? It just started from there with me as a fan wanting to meet Jack and understand this new technological and cultural phenomenon.

 

SFBG: Jack, do you remember the original Winnebago shoot?

JR: Like a boil. It was horrible, it was a violent, violent moment in my life. I was used to operating with camera crews, and audio people, and grips, ecetera who were at the highest levels of media. I never had to do a damn thing. All I had to do was babble, do my patented babble. As it was the middle of the summer in Iowa it was 100 degrees or more. The humidity was 98%. There were billions upon billions of flies. There’s a quote that always amuses me, apparently a lot of other people too: God in his infinite wisdom created the fly and they’re all in Iowa. But you have to keep in mind that there was never any of what today we categorize as anger. Its been said I’m the angriest man on earth — that’s actually not true at all. The Winnebago corporation had hired me to do the very best possible marketing film I could do, they percieved that I would be able to do a good film for them. So when it didn’t work right, I swear. Because I think it’s marvelously expressive. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you don’t say golly wompers.

BS: Jack worked in media at a time when the news was shot on 16mm film. The concept that you could leave the cameras rolling to capture outtakes was foreign, let alone the idea that you could rapidly share video like this and 20 plus years later people in Japan could be laughing – it’s literally science fiction.

 

SFBG: Jack, did you know the cameras were rolling?

JR: No! Because I would say “cap it!” which in the vernacular means shut it down, stop rolling. 

 

SFBG: Do you guys think after going through this process that it’s important for people these days to be aware of what’s going on with the Internet?

BS: My interest in this was the realization that we all have digital reputations. That’s a new concept.

JR: Harry Truman made the comment, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It is for me a total absence of interest. I get a lot of film shot at me, I’ve shot a lot of film at people, stuck a lot of microphones in the face of a lot of people who are actually of some consequence. This was an irrelevancy. But now it’s taken on something else, a life unto itself. 

 

SFBG: When did you become vested in this film, Jack?

JR: After the first time Ben came up to my little cabin. As is explained in the film, I was on my best behavior, Mary Poppin-esque.

BS: He basically fooled me.

JR: There are two things that are terribly important here. One, this kid knows what he’s doing: he teaches media at the University of Texas. Could this be an adjunct at the beginning of what is possibly his film career? Could this help him? Could this be something? I have people that when I was a youngster make it possible  for me to get positions that normally I could never have attained. On the other hand, for years and years I’ve been a socio-political commentator and I’ve attacked very nearly everything, and I love it because it strikes that the vast majority of people are not thinking, they’re not given anything in media. They’re given milk and honey. Well there’s no more milk and honey! It’s over. It’s time to either fall into a very deep abyss or we’re going to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and I thought wait a minute, I can enunciate this. I thought well, okay, this kid wants to shoot me? He wants to turn the camera on? I’ll give him something to think about.

 

SFBG: Are you having a good time traveling together? You’re spending a lot of time together.

BS: Well we just had the best lunch I think I’ve ever eaten –

JR: Years ago when I had the opportunity to come to SF, I would eat lunch or dinner at Scoma’s [random note: this year’s Best of the Bay seafood restaurant!]. It is absolutely nonpareil.

BS: We tried to order that on the menu.

JR: Shut up Ben. In any event, it was absolutely magnificent. San Francisco is a city that has – there is nothing lacking here. There’s an enormous number of absolute nutcases running around, but that what gives it it’s vitality. 

 

Winnebago Man 

Starts Fri/30 2:25, 4:45, 7:15, and 9:45 p.m.

 With introduction by the Dead Kennedys East Bay Ray and post show Q&A with Jack Rebney and Ben Steinbauer at Fri/30 and Sat/31’s 7:15 and 9:45 shows

Landmark Lumiere Theatre

1572 California, SF

(415) 267-4893

www.landmarktheatres.com

 

also playing at Shattuck Cinemas (2230 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 464-5980, www.landmarktheatres.com)

Mid season huddle: roller derby’s Bay Bombers talk track

Andrew Lam
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Oh Bay Bombers, won’t you stop in your roller derby tracks and tell us how you’ve been? San Francisco’s famed co-ed blocking, pivoting, jamming squadron has been packing ever-increasing crowds into Kezar Pavilion, their historical home this year – and no wonder, they’re killing it on track. To tell us by just how much, we wrangled a phone interview with general manager Jim Fitzpatrick, who we last checked in with shortly before his home opening match with league Lucifer Georgia Hase’s Brooklyn Red Devils.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Jim you old so-and-so! We hear you’ve been hit with a typhoon of reality TV shows [this year Bombers have been featured on both Jerry Seinfeld’s Marriage Ref and TLC’s Ultimate Cake-Off] What’s up with that? Is derby just the larger than life kind of visuals those shows look for?

Jim Fitzpatrick: We’ve been hit with a lot of great media coverage. We even have the German version of Borat coming to film the tournament next month and there’s another potential project – that’s what’s so bizarre about this. Years ago I skated, I blew out my shoulder, roller derby ended. Then I became a firefighter, got hurt, that ended. My doctor is actually working on a reality show about dealing with people with chronic pain, and I was so successful in that, I’ll be on of the first people they profile on the show.

 

SFBG: Damn, superstar. So how’s the actual season been going?

JF: It’s been going great. The crowds have dramatically increased. It’s bizarre, but if you look back and trace the history of the sport from the Depression on up, during bad economic times and times of war — it’s one of those things, it’s an outlet for people that they can get their aggressions out and root for somebody that reminds them of themselves. Some of our skaters are kind of small, they wouldn’t be able to compete in traditional sports like football and basketball. But put them on skates and they’re amazing athletes! If you look at the crowd you see anything there from grandmas to little kids.

A man that just screams reality TV: Bombers general manager Jim Fitzpatrick. Photo by Tim Figueras

SFBG: What’s the Bombers’ record right now?

JF: We’ve won all four of our regular season games. 

 

SFBG: Nice. What’s your secret?

JF: Me. [laughs] It’s one of those things, roller derby has so many diverse people that get into it. Our group is so diverse, but we really get along – it’s the camaraderie. 

 

SFBG: You have a lot of history with some of the team managers you’ve been going head to head with. Does it change a game for you when you’re competing against someone you’re acquainted with?

JF: I don’t let it get to me. Dave [“Wildman”] Marez was a guy I broke in with, trained with — we both started out with the Bay Bombers, but he left the team and we skated against each other for most of our years in the league. We get together off the track and get along great — but on the track it’s an intense rivalry.

Kezar Stadium cradles those that throw the bows. Photo by Tim Figueras

SFBG: A favorite on track moment from the season so far?

JF: Theres a couple. I have a girl on my team, Lisa Hartmayer, that blows me away. She’s a registered nurse and she was one of the Olympic torch bearers in San Francisco for the Beijing Olympics. She’s taken off this year, scoring a lot of points. Very physical. She’s got an advantage because she’s an ice hockey skater, so she loves the physical. 

 

SFBG: Prediction for your upcoming tournament?

JF: I’m predicting we’re going to be in the finals against the Red Devils. The last few championship games we’ve ended up facing them. It’s been close, but we’ve beat them both times. They’re one of the best teams out there. 

 

The Bombers will be one of the top four teams in the league playing in next month’s Calvello Cup (Fri/27-Sat/28). You can also catch recordings of past games on  KFTY TV50 digital 199.  They’ll air Aug 15 and Aug 22, 11 a.m.- 12 p.m. 

 

The Calvello Cup

Fri/27 and Sat/28 7:30 p.m., $5-20

Kezar Pavilion

755 Stanyan, SF

www.arsdbombers.com

 

 

 

 

Bug love: Paxton Gate’s insect mounting class

Andrew Lam
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Say that this morning, as you swept aside your window-sash, eager to let in the “warm” summer breezes that are so characteristic of late July in San Francisco, you saw there on your sill a fuzzy little bumblebee – dead, but for all the world looking like the embodiment of the grassy field and sunflower days of your youth. Now. Have you the instinct to preserve the furry fella in, say a diorama also featuring a map of your childhood favorite municipal park and a cut out image of you at eight, perhaps attired in a swatch of that kitty cat dress you couldn’t bear to be apart from at the time? (Just sayin’.) If that sounds apt, have the local horticulture-taxidermy enthusiasts down at Paxton Gate got a class for you!

In fact, they’ve had a class for you for awhile now – at least as long as teacher Zenaida Sengo has been teaching the store’s weekly insect spreading courses. “People love the class,” she told me over the phone. “Not only do they take away a skill they want to use for their art, but they really seem to bond with each other. You’re sharing a very obscure fascination — you don’t meet people that often that have that fascination for spreading insects.”

Indeed. But Sengo says she’s approached on a regular basis by customers in the store – which, among rare plants and stones, sells taxidermied mice in papal costumes and an impressive rainbow of bugs winged and not winged — who want to immortalize a pretty bee they found on their windowsill, or a creepy crawly that caught their eye hiking.

She’s found that these encounters have happened more and more over the past few years, corresponding with a rise in Paxton Gate’s popularity that she attributes to increased awareness about the environment and natural world. When a particularly inquistive patron comes her way, she points them to the classes, which have the dual benefit of saving insect enthusiasts some cash on professional mounting (ha!), and involving participants more deeply in the nature around them.

It’s a rarefied setting, these courses. Take one, and you will be supplied with all the supplies needed to mount two new friends: a butterfly and a beetle, both of which are introduced to your care for the price of the class. Paxton Gate hopes to debut more subjects in their catalog shortly in response to customer questions about horticulture – orchid mounting and terrarium building are two that come to Sengo’s mind as possible future educational adventures. 

Sengo herself came to Paxton Gate with horticulture experience alone but grew into the store’s unique creature comforts over time, appreciative of the intensively technical, detailed work that is incurred in the spreading, mounting, and pinning of insects. She’s even integrated the buggies into her art outside the store. Peruse her artist website and what surfaces are lucid dreamy, half-finished portraiture and half-animal, half-human forms – but she’s also soaked insects in water to make them pliable enough to pose in domestic settings. 

Throughout the Valencia Street store Sengo’s sets are in evidence – beetles clinging to sticks encased in sheltering belljars, seemingly about to take off in flight. She hopes that this sort of visual stimulation brings more bug fans to the store’s classes. “Insects are beautiful animals. There’s not a large percentage of people that see that, but for the ones that do they’re very special.”


Insect Mounting Class

Every last Thursday through Aug 26 4-7 p.m., $60

Advance registration required

Paxton Gate

824 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-1872

www.paxtongate.com

 

Local ‘bucha bottlers rise effervescently over booze content controversy

Andrew Lam
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At first, we were frightened. My god, they’re taking our kombucha! But though distribution of our liquid love has drastically slowed, there’s one good thing about the ‘bucha alcohol labeling debacle: it’s been great for local businesses. That’s because while bigger companies are halting production, the small scale of the Bay Area’s local kombucha operations are allowing them to dodge the labeling problems of national chains.

In mid-June the hammer dropped. Trashy media found a way to link the sudden dearth of kombucha on shelves to Lindsey Lohan’s hot mess, but the official verdict was that the alcohol content in the live-fermentation tea drinks had tested at levels above the .5% legal limit for non-alcoholic beverages, causing a nationwide forehead slapping Eureka moment who all those who use the stuff as holistic hangover cure. Bay Area distributor UNFI stopped delivering the stuff. Whole Foods and Rainbow Grocery nearly emptied their shelves of our liquid love. GT’s, the country’s largest kombucha producer, halted production of its lines, its current voicemail stating “We are working quickly to identify the possible causes and which lot codes and or regions are being potentially affected. We are trying our best to have product back on the shelves of stores as soon as possible.”

But a few kombuchas remained serene in their squat little bottles. SoMa’s House Kombucha, which has been selling its wares in farmers markets since the fall of 2009 and bottling for stores since early this year, was one of them. “Rather than it sitting on a shelf for six months in a warehouse somewhere, we get our product to our customers pretty fast,” says founder Rana Chang. “We’re not distributing to Michigan.” The problem of heightened alcohol levels has been shown to be caused by the continued fermentation that takes place after kombucha has been bottled, usually after it has left company facilities. In other words, the longer your bottle of ‘bucha sits and waits to be shipped to you or yet another warehouse, the more boozy it will be.

So small outfits, which distribute to their local retail sources a few times a week, have a leg up on the competition. For once! “It’s about time,” says Chris Campagna of Bay Area-based Rejuvenation Company, who says his company ran “a gamut of tests” on its kombucha, but did not pull their bottles from shelves because no labeling disreprencies were found. “It’s becoming apparent the benefit of small local companies. We have to fight for the small amount of shelf space we get, but now we’re seeing an increase in volume, better presence in accounts, and new accounts on the horizon.” 

Chang also noted a considerable uptick in business and said that House is now looking for expanded facilities and to hire new staff to keep up with demand. “It’s been an extraordinary opportunity to get into some stores where [before the voluntary recalls] shelves were so crowded with other products we couldn’t get in,” she told SFBG. A full list of stores selling both Rejunevation and House are available on their websites (including health food standards Rainbow, Other Avenues, and Berkeley Bowl), so dry your eyes, hop on your trike, and head out for some pro-biotic lovin’.

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