Caitlin Donohue

More on what consent means for BDSM porn: A performer speaks out

Andrew Lam
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More on what consent means for BDSM porn: A performer speaks out

Having sex for money can change the dimensions of the kinds of acts you’re willing to explore. That’s a fact in a porno landscape that rewards greater physical punishment with greater paychecks (as it should.) But if BDSM porn performers aren’t doing it all purely for their own sexual gratification, how do we define consent? Where does pushing boundaries become abuse? The question seems really important, especially for those who would defend the existence of BDSM porn to dissenters of all stripes. 

My article in this week’s paper that explored the question of the definition of consent for for-profit BDSM porn (although really, the arguments are the same for all kinds of sex work) was too short. Hey, save trees and all that. But performer Maxine Holloway pushed beyond the limited ink I could give to her comments to expand on her thoughts in an essay posted to her blog last night.

It reads, in part (paragraph breaks my own): 

As models we want to perform well, we want to push our boundaries, we want to look sexy and desirable on film, we want to get paid, and we want to be hired again and again.

As a director you have deadlines, budgets, employees and profits that you are responsible for. Each party has their own pressures.

But it is important to recognize who has more power in the situation. You can be responsible with power and you can also abuse it. In a working environment the boss has more power.

This does not mean that models have no power, it just means that they have less. The boss has the funding, the ability to rehire you, give a good or bad reference, further your career and money making ability. And they often have a slew of other models that would love to take your place.

It is a models responsibility to learn about our boundaries and capabilities, to communicate our needs and use a safe word.

And is the production company/director’s responsibility to communicate expectations clearly and to create an environment where the models truly feel comfortable changing something, slowing down or saying no. 

And it goes. Definitely worth a read.

I would be remiss if I failed to point out this amazing poem by Bay Area sexworker and sometime Kink.com performer Coral Aorta, excerpted by Holloway at the end of her post (and double-excerpted here):

the priceless one

who is always

worth their price

Here, here

Andrew Lam
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Here, here

STREET SEEN As the author of a style column, I spend time trawling the city for innovative new local designers. Clothes that are made here, cute ones. Let me hear about them, I’ll put it in print, swear down.

But there’s not… that much of them. Speaking historically, of course. In the heyday of garment manufacturing, San Francisco churned out mountains of readywear — more than any other city in the country besides New York and Los Angeles.

Then we started to export our business overseas. You’ve heard about how Levi-Strauss used to have a factory on Valencia Street — not just the artsy pop-up shop they opened in 2010? Your jeans aren’t made here anymore guys, unless you’re copping from newbie “Kickstarter brand” Gustin (www.weargustin.com), Holy Stitch (www.juliandash.com), Self Edge (www.selfedge.com), or one of the other small local lines that have popped up in the denim giant’s wake.

These companies cater to locavore customers who “expect their clothing labels to read like restaurant menus,” as Modern Luxury put it in a 2011 article about the state of the SF garment industry. Making clothes locally means less turnaround time, less environmental impact — not to mention the sweet San Francisco cache that locally made palazzo pants hold.

Problem is, the garment factories that the industry needs have been greatly reduced in number.

In a Hayes Valley cafe, Gail Baugh sits at her laptop, shutting it with a morning-time, capable air when I sit at her table. Her outfit says boardroom, accented with exceptions. A beautifully-patterned scarf, and large brooch-like earrings suit this no-nonsense type with a degree in chemistry of textiles, 35 years of experience in the garment industry, and a byline on the book on fashion. Really, Baugh’s The Fashion Designer’s Textile Directory is a best-seller in its particular category on Amazon, she tells me.

She is the president and one of five founding members of PeopleWearSF (www.peoplewearsf.org), a Bay Area garment industry trade association that was formed in 2011 to fill the vacuum left by SF Fashion Industries, which played the role for 75 years before the garment industry collapse. PeopleWearSF’s members flip up to $25 million in yearly sales volume, though it also includes rank beginners in the clothes game.

“If you want a vibrant economy, you have to make stuff,” Baugh tells me matter-of-factly. Her organization — and SFMade (www.sfmade.org), the no-fee membership group who represents local producers and whose cheery stickers adorn a host of local retailers’ windows and product labels here in the city — provide networking opportunities to their members. These include 40-some brands, including outdoor label Triple Aught, longtime Mission District purveyor of pretty Weston Wear, and Babette, the flowing line of neutral-toned women’s wear based out of an Oakland warehouse. Those three manufacture locally, but not all PeopleWearSF members do.

Both trade associations work with public policy — specifically, through the Mayor’s FashionSF Economic Development Initiative — to provide more resources to the garment factories that were once much more prevalent in San Francisco. Efforts to keep the sew-shops open have to operate through a multi-pronged approach. It’s not just soaring rents that close the factories’ doors, but a dwindling high-skilled workforce pool that’s willing to work for the wages typically offered by the factories.

“Sharing resources, communicating issues — it’s a good business policy,” says Steven Pinksy, whose wife started Babette in 1968 and who was also a founding member of PeopleWearSF. Joiners, in other words, are welcome.

Those looking to jumpstart their Bay fashion career could do worse than attend tonight’s Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center’s panel discussion on starting small in fashion, featuring experts from PeopleWearSF, Apparel Wiz, Sheila Moon Apparel, and CBU Productions.

“Manufacturing Micro” Wed/27, 6-9pm, $20. Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, 275 Fifth St., SF. tinyurl.com/manufacturingmicro

Bombay Ice Cream closed, no forwarding address

Andrew Lam
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Perhaps it should have come as no surprise, given the ignominious location under the freeway where Mission favorite Bombay Ice Cream relocated in 2011, but this: I went by for icecream the other day to discover the place was totally vacant, with no clues as to where its cones of cardamom and chicku icrecream might reappear.

Old-timers (people who have lived here since 2011) will remember Bombay’s heyday as a counter-service Indian restaurant, icecream shop, and Indian bazaar, a one-stop shop for lassi mix, Ganesh decal stickers, bindis, and samosas to go. It was featured on a segment on the Food Channel, and at one point National Geographic named it one of the top 10 places to eat icecream in the god-damn world.

There’s no news on the website that would indicate that the business is no more, but the phone number of the Mission District standby has been disconnected and the contact email on the website deactivated, which would suggest that the rumors swirling on the Yelp page about a return to Valencia Street (perhaps started by early reports that the South Van Ness site was only temporary) may just be wishful thinking. 

Owners Bharti and Suresh Parmar in the Guardian’s 2004 Best of the Bay issue

Giving consent to capitalism

Andrew Lam
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Giving consent to capitalism

caitlin@sfbg.com

SEX “BDSM so quickly and easily gets painted with a broad brush,” said porn performer and author (her piece this week on Jezebel, “How I Became a Feminist Porn Star” is not to be missed) Dylan Ryan.

I’d called her in the wake of last week’s SF Weekly cover story (“Gag Order,” 2/20/13), which included some healthy critiques of Kink.com, the local porn company often held up as the standard when it comes to shooting kinky sex.

The piece also included testimony that was run without being fact-checked from certain ex-Kink employees — and that aside, the article was clearly timed to capitalize on controversy surrounding owner Peter Acworth’s recent drug and gun arrest. (ATTN: Weekly, you need not call into question the “strict code of ethical behavior and transparency” a pornographer is known for when it is discovered that said pornographer does cocaine, nor when he fires guns in the bowels of a building made for that purpose.)

The Weekly’s investigation continues. Hopefully it will help move conversation forward on how to make better porn.

As Ryan — who has shot for Kink.com for nearly 10 years — pointed out, the trouble with porn wars is that they can be skewed into a referendum on whether such-and-such porn (and often, by extension, the sexual desire it portrays) should exist.

So real quick, let’s use this moment to convene members of our occasionally dysfunctional, but forever-forward thinking sex work community. The question: can sexual consent exist when you’re doing it for the money? Who is in charge of making sure everyone’s needs are respected?

“When capitalism is involved, it makes the situation…interesting,” wrote performer Maxine Holloway [after protesting and ceasing to shoot for Kink.com when it removed base pay for web cam models, Holloway settled out of court with the company. Her voice appears in the Weekly article.] “As models we want to perform well, we want to push our boundaries, we want to get paid, and we want to be hired again and again.”

But, she continued, “money can be a perfectly legitimate reason to consent. Most people would not agree to show up at their nine-to-five job if they were not being paid an agreed amount of money.”

Ryan re-enforced the importance of the shoot’s producers stating clear run times, expectations, and other matters with performers before filming. After that point: “it’s a fine line, but so much of the onus is on the person to be their own agent.”

Locally, performer Kitty Stryker has examined these issues in her “Safe/Ward” consent workshops. And Holloway wrote she hopes to create an “industry standards” rating system that could guide performers to responsible producers. “Porn performers are not inherently victims and producers are not inherently exploitive,” she cautioned.

“These things can be positive, sexually healthy,” Ryan continued. “Every performance I do is about showing women how much fun I’m having.” Would that all debate on ethical porn started off with how its participants want to demystify, and excise shame from, sexuality — instead of drug charges.

THIS WEEK’S SEX EVENTS

“Bling My Vibe” Fri/1-March 31, free. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. tinyurl.com/blingmyvibe.

Who says no to creating a work of art with a $3 vibrating dildo? Not this writer — check out my handiwork, and that of other Bay Area artists and sexy local celebs at this sex toy art show on view ’til the end of the month.

The Great Church of Holy Fuck Fri/1-Sun/3, 8pm, $15. Counterpulse, 1310 Mission, SF. www.counterpulse.org. The name, the fact that this production is helmed by Annie Danger, queer trans utopia-seeker, the promise of nudity — surely these will add to a truly religious interactive theater experience.

International Sex Workers Rights Day picnic Sun/3, 11am-2pm, free. Dolores Park, 19th St. and Guerrero, SF. www.swopbay.org. The Sex Workers Outreach Project and St. James’ Infirmary are hosting this gathering of past and present sex workers and their allies in celebration of this day of commemoration, which started in 2001 at sex worker festival in Calcutta, India.

 

Watching models eat: On and off-runway shots at NY Fashion Week

Andrew Lam
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“New York inspires me to be more ambitious and to push my work to higher levels,” reflected Academy of Art University shutterbug Aldo Carrera on his recent trip to document his school’s Fashion Week runway collections.

“I also love watching models eat.”

Truly, that most elusive of NYFW moments.

As it turns out, AAU sends one of its own each year to document the proceedings on its NYFW. (Coincidentally, ur intern Jessica Wolfrom who was in NYC reporting for the Guardian on a few shows is a AAU student as well.) We checked in with Carrera upon his return to San Francisco to hear about what it was like to student-snap the shows. He told us he’s big into fashion photogs who push the limits of documenting lewks — Helmut Newton and Nick Knight among them. 

SFBG: Tell us about your degree program. How does school prepare you for fashion photojournalism?

Aldo Carrera: At the Academy of Art my focus is fine art and fashion photography. Mixing the two actually is what I enjoy most. As far as photojournalism, I would say it is something that comes as more of an instinct, I don’t think any school can teach a photographer how to be at the right place and right time with your camera. Especially now with our cell phones, anyone can be a great photojournalist. Although, being in school I have learned how to tell a story with my camera.

SFBG: What do you think fashion photojournalism is lacking these days?

AC: Sometimes it seems as though photographers these days care more about constantly clicking their shutter rather than reading into their subject.

SFBG: What was your favorite part of New York Fashion Week? Least favorite? How long were you out there?

AC: This was actually my first time being able to attend a show for NYFW, being around the amazing work of emerging artists and designers have their work recognized with such honor. It was truly inspiring to be around (and be able to photograph) that type of creative energy. The only negative moment I can think of the experience is how cold New York can get! Following the show, I stayed in the city for another week to do some of my own editorial shoots.

SFBG: How did it come about that you came to be shooting your school’s NYFW show?

AC: The PR department at the Academy invited me to shoot backstage. It was also an incredible experience to see some of my friends in the knitwear department throughout their processes and then able to see it go down the runway in a Mercedes-Benz NYFW show. 

 

FYI ‘Drag Race’, SF is still doing it better

Andrew Lam
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FYI ‘Drag Race’, SF is still doing it better

Now that our local darling Honey Mahogany is out of the RuPaul’s Drag Race due to being nice and enjoying actual fashion, we must say that Seattle drag queen Jinkx Monsoon‘s Little Edie from Grey Gardens blew away the Marilyn Monroes and Katy Perrys of last night’s celebrity impersonation challenge last night on the LOGO TV show.

But we take serious issue with Gawker’s headline proclaiming it the best Edie ever. Clearly politiqueen Anna Conda’s take, assumed for her housewarming party upon moving to a fixer-upper in the Excelsior last summer, was superior in both motivation and situation. Overturned hottubs > sparkly curtained TV sets, in this case (and many others.)

That being said, tip of the champagne flute to Monsoon for going with a celebrity impersonation slightly more challenging than Ke$ha. We cringed when the other queens gave Monsoon shade for expanding her cultural references beyond feather extensions (and then the queen doing Marilyn Monroe missed the politicians affairs reference??), but they were in turn schooled by RuPaul, who named Monsoon the winner of the night’s challenge. 

Last night’s ‘Drag Race’ challenge winner, our second-favorite Edie

Monsoon choose to watch the goings-on smack-dab in the Castro at Toad Hall last night. After Mahogany’s dismissal, San Francisco may be done with Drag Race, but Drag Race just won’t do without San Francisco. 

Staff of shut-down Mission dispensary opens SoMa’s newest cannabis club

Andrew Lam
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Staff of shut-down Mission dispensary opens SoMa’s newest cannabis club

Today was the grand opening for a new dispensary just steps from the front door of Mezzanine and right down the block from a rapidly-changing Sixth Street. Long-time medical marijuana patients may recognize some familiar faces — Bloom Room employs many of the staff and management from Medithrive, the Mission Street dispensary was was forced to close “for the children” back in November of 2011.

“I was the manager of a store, and then I was the manager of a delivery service,” Bloom Room manager Stephen Rechit tells me, sitting in the dispensary vaporizing lounge area. When federal government agencies informed the cannabis club that it was too close to Marshall Elementary School, Medithrive switched to a $50-minimum, delivery-only service that owners continue to operate. 

The Bloom Room’s open for business, with space for on-site vaporizing steps from the cash register

Did Rechit — who says he became Medithrive’s first employee as a new University of San Francisco graduate — consider a career change in the face of unyielding federal agents? Not for a second. 

“I know this is definitely what I want to do,” he reflects. “I just really — I don’t want to get cheesy, but I believe in the plant.”

>>THROUGH MARCH 1, NEW BLOOM ROOM PATIENTS GET A SAMPLER OF THREE MARIJUANA STRAINS WITH ANY PURCHASE OF $50

Bloom Room’s downtown design, with its exposed brick walls and translucent glass marijuana leaf panels reappropriated from the defunct Medithrive storefront, may be the perfect fit for a Sixth Street neighborhood that’s on a definite upward economic swing. Rechit points out the window to the corporate offices of Burning Man, perched atop a skyscraper alongside the rest of the Mid-Market buildings that tech tenants are filling up. Burning Man’s been an earlier contributor to Bloom Room’s “Community Corner,” a space for neighborhood fliers, business cards. 

Bloom Room plans to stock six to 10 strains each of indicas and sativa, and sells blackberry chocolate bars from Kiva, Auntie Dolores caramel corn, and oen of Rechit’s favorites, TerpX concentrates. 

Sticky: TerpX concentrate

“TerpX is like the Girl Scout Cookies of last year,” Rechit comments, unrolling a piece of waxed paper so I can check out the golden goo. 

As we chatted, Tenderloin resident Jim Murray (who, happily, bore a striking resemblance to Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic in his navy beanie) pulled up in the narrow, tall table to inquire about the availability of the clould of OG Kush pumping into the vaporizer bag between Rechit and I. 

I’d seen Murray complaining about the quality of Bloom Room bud he’d picked up previously, and now he was interested in the “toast,” the spent flower already used in the vaporizer that was sitting on a piece of paper in the ashtray. 

“The reason why I’m sensitive to this is because I am a senior living on a VA pension,” he informed me. “What compassionate care programs do you have here?” he asked Rechit. 

FYI, Rechit says the dispensary gives away free product to patient on holidays and keeps prices low in general. Back when Medithrive’s doors were open at its Mission Street location it made monthly donations to the school around the corner that was eventually used as the excuse by the federal government to shut it down. Let’s hope Bloom Room has more luck in its new SoMa spot. 

Bloom Room, 471 Jessie, SF. (415) 543-7666, www.bloomroomsf.com

The World’s Best Artist©: Getting weird with Mitch O’Connell

Andrew Lam
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Can you guess which of the 290 pages of Mitch Connell‘s jampacked new, puffy-covered-like-cheap-tablecloth art anthology he is most proud of? It is not the vaguely seedy Hanna Barbera art, commissions all for Warner Brothers that were never utilized commercially. It’s not the illustrations for porno mags, the public works benches in Chicago, several Newsweek covers, untold numbers of event flyers, or his late-1980s pop art aerial views of reclining women hoisting hot dogs.

It’s the crazy shit he drew after he discovered his wife had been chronically cheating on him. You thought the rest of it was wacky!

But hoist a copy of Mitch O’Connell: The World’s Best Artist — you should, it’s awesome — and there’s no telling where you’ll get lost amid the artist’s decades of work. The book is a (puffy-covered) homage to an insane career of drawing and illustration, accomplished by a man (PS, not this guy) who has managed to raise a family on his skills while steadfastly pushing the bounds of good taste. The Chicago-based artist is coming to the Bay Area tonight (Thu/21, Berkeley) and tomorrow (Fri/22, San Francisco) for book tour dates. If you like insane, and talent, and professionally insane talent, you’ll most likely be there. 

We email-interviewed him, to talk.

SFBG: You did a few series of drawings for Warner Bros., how on earth did that come about? What was your highest hope for that collaboration?

 Mitch O’Connell: After doing this drawing thing forever, it would be hard NOT to accumulate a long list of clients. If I hadn’t, I’d be writing this from my cardboard box estate situated on the sidewalk of Michigan Avenue.

I’ve done little bits and pieces for Warner Brothers over the years, working with art directors who must have just seen my art here and there, but the “Hanna Barbera” series was the most fun and involving. I think I pushed a few of the paintings into PG-13 territory, but they encouraged me to be irreverent. Which might not have been a good thing. Once they got the finished art and started pondering how it might look on a kid’s lunchbox it seems they rethought their initial enthusiasm and put the job on the shelf. Where it’s still collecting dust. But I still like ’em!

Your next lunchbox

SFBG: You’re favorite and/or most disturbing tattoo you’ve done?

MO: ALL the tattoos I actually tattooed into peoples flesh were disturbing. Mostly because the clients kept on squirming, screaming, and bleeding. How the hell am I supposed to get any work done with those type of folks?! Actually, now I’m just sticking with simply designing the tattoos, and leaving the actual permanent engraving to the professional tattooists. It was much too nerve-wracking trying to get the art right the first time. As for my best ones, I’m working on my fourth set off flash [ink newbs: “flash” refers to the 11″x14″ sheets of sample ink that hang in tattoo parlors] now, and I like how it’s turning out the best of all. But I’m biased. Tattoo shops, start clearing some room on the walls!

SFBG: How long did your “covering up the naughty bits” gig for Fox Magazine last?

MO: The Fox mascot will hopefully be on the cover blocking out nipples and vaginas as long as there’s a Fox magazine. I did the painting a dozen years ago, it’s all up to them where/when/how often it appears. The more the merrier!

SFBG: Besides its puffy cover (please explain that feature) what are you most proud about with this book?

MO: The graphic design work of my pal Joseph Allen Black (yes, that would be www.josephallenblack.com). He took my rough placement of where I wanted everything and made it look stunning. Think of me as the guy who delivers the 4000-pound block of marble to Michelangelo. As for the puffy glittery cover, a) I loved the look, and b) wanted my book to stand out from the millions of others. At least I’ll have a better chance of folks actually picking it up out of curiosity. Then, considering what’s inside, the better chance of them putting it back.

I kid! They’ll LOVE it!

SFBG: Advice for aspiring freelance illustrators?

MO: Try to be more creative, distinctive, easy to work with, and talented than anyone else. Sadly, you’ll never be able to be the best, because I’ve already copyrighted it.

SFBG: We must know: What does makes you the World’s Best Artist?

MO: One reason was that no matter who reviews it, they have to use the title [of the book]. That way if the opinion is “Mitch O’Connell the World’s Best Artist sucks!” I can turn that into “‘The world’s best artist!,’ raves the New York Times!”

Also, if you keep on repeating something, at some point folks might start falling for it. Think “weapons of mass destruction,” “trickle down economics,” and “guaranteed to add inches to your penis!”. And I’m STILL waiting for my money back!

Mitch O’Connell: The World’s Best Artist book tour

Thu/21, 7-9pm, free

Pegasus Books

2349 Shattuck, Berk. 

www.pegasusbookstore.com

 

Fri/22, 7-9pm, free

Mission Comics and Art

3520 20th St., SF

www.missioncomicsandart.com

Travels well

Andrew Lam
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0
Travels well

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN I was going to write this column about what it was like to be art star Kehinde Wiley’s model. It was supposed to be an eloquent reflection on musedom, and I’d locked down a post-performance chat with Ethiopian Israeli rapper Kalkidan, who stars in several of Wiley’s portraits in the current show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

But you know what, Tel Aviv to San Francisco is a long flight and I’ll wager that if you followed up the same journey with two hip-hop sets in front of the opening night Contemporary Jewish Museum hoi polloi — whose hosted-bar pink cocktails gave birth to some very art-world dance moves — you would wind up much the same way Kalkidan did for our chat. Call it jet lag. Our interview veered towards monosyllabic, though I did manage to gather he’d seen the Wiley paintings in which he stars two times before, when the exhibition toured LA and New York. And that he’s an Aquarius.

“Leviathan Zodiac”

… Leaving me to my own devices with you, dear reader. Well, not entirely. I did have a chance to ask Wiley about the direction he gives to his “painfully young and present models,” as he calls them, mere minutes after his flight touched down from New York. (Right before another journalist saw fit to ask him about Frank Ocean? Has a moratorium been decreed on talking to black queers, or anyone even tangentially related to hip-hop, about anything else?)

Insight into Wiley’s models seems central to his gorgeous “World Stage” series, for which he poses young men of color in classic historical poses, with ornate backgrounds and rarified postures mimicking 18th and 19th European portraiture, among other influences. The conceit started when the San Francisco Art Institute grad moved to New York, and he’s painted other chapters of “World Stage” starring men in India, Nigeria, Brazil, China, and elsewhere.

Kalkidan on “World Stage: Israel” opening night at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Photo by David Schnur

Coupled with his subjects’ vivid streetwear, which Wiley and his assistants (the artist is well-known for employing staff that contribute the pieces’ background, if not more) render faithfully, and region-specific background motif, the series is a gorgeous homage to modern brown and black manhood, with a swagger that is decidedly hip-hop.

“There is an aspect of black American creative culture that has become globalized. Every country finds their own response to this evolving reality,” reads a Wiley quote that greets visitors to the CJM exhibit. How has a culture that’s made its way everywhere still so vilified?

Wiley allowed to our group of arthounds at the preview that he does tend to capture men who are gorgeous — you won’t miss the fact once surrounded by his canvas gods — but that his choice has less to do with his own personal preferences. “You can’t know who’s zooming who,” he said. “Nor is it a particular interest of mine.” I overheard curator Karen Tsujimoto tell another reporter that she didn’t believe sexuality played a role in his work.

I guess I buy that. Wiley said that painting beautiful men is about highlighting factors rarely pulled out to the front in the art world. “Male beauty seems to be the elephant in the room when it comes to the history of painting,” he reflected.

“The World Stage: Israel” Through May 27. Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF. www.thecjm.org

BOYCHILD DOES BIG APPLE

I’d be wrong if I didn’t laserpoint out that drag (is that term adequate still?) babe boychild for bringing genderphucked Bay Area fierce to the runway for the Hood By Air-New York Fashion Week collection named, yeah, “boychild.” You know you’re the buzz when you’re overshadowing rapper A$AP Rocky, who also walked in the show. The look? Wetsuits and sportswear with glittering detail: canary yellow do-rags with blonde extensions, pearl-headphone earrings, French manicure. Strong, kinda freaky, hella pretty. Just like our child.

Girl Scouts versus Scott Weiner versus Naked Sword: Here’s your week in sexy events

Andrew Lam
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Girl Scouts versus Scott Weiner versus Naked Sword: Here’s your week in sexy events

There are few things that San Franciscans love more than Thin Mints, and local Girl Scouts found out what those were on Sunday when a troop conviniently posted up in front of the deceased Diesel store at Castro and Market. The whippersnappers paid witness not only to another nude-y demonstration against the city’s new ban on public nudity, but also to said demonstration’s infiltration by dapper members (ahem) of local porn outfit Naked Sword [as Castro Biscuit reported.] They’re making a send-up of the nudity ban starring an ambitious politician, surname: Cox. Wink.

The flick will star Guardian cover boy Leo Forte, Dale Cooper as Cox, Christian Wilde as Officer Dick — who, we will note, was the only “cop” making arrests at the porn shoot-protest. Though there were six members of SFPD there by Castro Biscuit’s count and many exposed sets of genitalia, not a single arrest was made. If you’re going to have a nudity ban, might as well be a selectively-enforced one — all the better for climate-of-fear creating, amiright?

Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention 

Perhaps you were unable to attend the AVN porn awards in Vegas this year, or last weekend’s transgender version, the Tranny Awards in Los Angeles. How will you supplant the opportunities you forewent to rub elbows with your favorite adult stars in a vast, drafty hotel conference room? Might we recommend this peculiar, multi-day event hosted by porn critics Xbiz and sex-only Second Life-esque world Red Light Social Center. Now in its second year, you can prowl the halls of the convention avatar-like, taking in a Q&A with James Deen (Sat/23, 10am), daily industry networking hours, and expert panels on social media and branding for adult brands (Wed/27, 2pm) and online possibilities for sex work (Fri/22, 2pm).

Wed/20-Sat/23, free with online registration. www.adultvirtualconvention.com

Bawdy Storytelling: “One Night Stand” slam

It’s another edition of this XXX storytelling series’ amateur hour — not in a bad way! We’re just trying to say the field is open to all comers. Come at 7:30pm to sign up for a five-minute slot, all for you to lay bare your tale of one-off sexual shenanigans. The winner gets to compete in an upcoming championship round of some sort. Good luck, truth teller. 

Thu/21, 8pm, $10. Cafe Royale, 800 Post, SF. www.bawdystorytelling.com

Antique vibrator talk with Rachel Maines

Rachel Maines was actually researching a different kind of poke entirely when she came across the world of vibrator history — the scholar, who is currently a visiting scientist at Cornell University’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, first saw mention of old school vibes in antique needlepoint magazines. Her interest piqued, Maines embarked on a study of the vibrator’s origins in private homes and as a tool used by doctors to treat “hysteria” among the female population. Today, she gives a talk surrounded by Good Vibrations founder Jodi Blanks’ formidable collection of vibrators throughout history — and of course, alongside some modern-day versions you can buy for your newly-educated self. 

Fri/22, 6:30pm, free. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com

Sex Worker Outreach Project meeting

Current and former sex workers are invited over to talk justice at SWOP’s regular meeting of the minds. The national organization fights for social justice for sex workers, working particularly on anti-violence issues. SWOP was behind a failed bid to decriminalize prostitution in 2004, and every year leads the way with the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers — check it out. 

Feb. 28, 6pm, free. Harm Reduction Coalition, 1440 Broadway, Suite 510, Oakl. www.swopbay.org

“Hard Day at the Office: Sex Workers on the Job”

… Speaking of SWOP, if you didn’t make it to that meeting — or aren’t a current or former sex worker, but still want to support the group’s work — or just like lit, get over to this evening of spoken word performances about the world’s oldest profession. Contributing to the program: Apaulo Hart, Carol Queen, Chad Litz, Cho Whoreingsly Prancypants, Daphne Gottlieb, Jacques LeFemme, Janetta Johnson, Miss Lola Sunshine, and Shelley “Muffie” Mays. 

Sat/23, 8pm, $10-20 sliding scale. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.sexandculture.org

SFMOMA reveals new look, it is sexy

Andrew Lam
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We were a bag of mixed artfan emotions when SFMOMA sent us a peek at what the museum will look like in early 2016, when the renovations that will shutter its doors in June are complete. The bad: our city’s preeminent modern art museum will be sorely missed — after all, who else would have let us bring Boychild, Lil Miss Hot Mess, and Lady Bear to run amok in the upstairs cafe on a Thursday night? (Memories.) But, the good: there is a lot of good. Read on for the highlights of what we can expect from the museum’s new incarnation, and what’s going to be happening while we wait.

– In the new building, designed by Oslo-NYC firm Snøhetta, gallery capacity expanded by 130,000 square feet. 

– That number up there includes a 15,000 ground floor that won’t have to pay to access, but which is nonetheless packed with exhibitions. For when the admisison price just isn’t stoking your creative fires.

– SF’s largest public native plant vertical garden, located on a brand-new seventh-floor outdoor terrace. The perfect place for checking out the expressive skyline that exists in those parts of downtown — two floors higher than the sculpture garden, two floors of view, baby. 

– A new all-white performance space that’ll be the spot for dance, sound, etc. in addition to the Phyllis Wattis Theater, which is also getting a facelift.

– More space designated for education — that means the amount of schoolchildren benefiting from programming will go up to 55,000 from 18,000. 

– “SFMOMA is more than just a building,” said SFMOMA director Neal Benezra in the press release. “We’re a set of intersecting cultural communities.” That’s good for us — it means the museum’s collections won’t be moldering in a basement somewhere (entirely) during the two-and-a-half years of renovations. First up: “100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art,” a multi-denominational show that opens June 27 that examines art inspired by faith, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. 2014 offerings will include a multimedia meditation on intimacy during apartheid in South Africa at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a look at what “gorgeous” means by divergent art pairings at the Asian Art Museum.

– Other things to look forward to include a Chrissy Field site-specific installation of Mark di Suvero sculptures, the largest exhibition of the work of that artist, who moved to SF from Shanghai and was constantly inspired by the same Golden Gate Bridge that’ll look over the exhibition, which’ll set up shop in June through May 2014. That’s the first of many SFMOMA outdoor exhibitions that’ll take place in Los Altos and elsewhere.

More details on the renovations available here and here

Beyond Frank Ocean: La Peña takes a deeper look at hip-hop inclusivity

Andrew Lam
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Beyond Frank Ocean: La Peña takes a deeper look at hip-hop inclusivity

If I hear another journalist ask anyone involved in hip-hop incredulously, reverently, portentously about Frank Ocean and that Tumblr post someone may lose their digital recorder. Frank I love you, I love your ambiguous Internet warblings, your endearingly awful Grammy performances — and kudos on Willy Carter, damn — but obvs you’re not the first queer person to be involved with your musical genre.

The Bay Area knows this — in 2007 the PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival, already six years old at that point, took over deFremery Park with Oakland’s Deep Dickollective and co. And like, Cazwell? Hey.

This list goes on — but this post is more about future, specifically the Hip-Hop: Beyond Gender event series that kicks off at La Peña Cultural Center on Fri/15 with “Here Me Roar”, a lineup of queer and feminist spoken word MCs set to wrecking speed. I caught up with a couple of the artists to talk about how hip-hop came to them, and where they want it to go.

Hopefully, their events in the La Peña series — which include concerts, panel discussions, and breakdance battles — will advance the conversation about hip-hop and gender-sexuality inclusivity that Le1f, Freedia, Nicky, Mykki, Double Duchess, Syd, YES Frank Ocean, and a bajillion other awesome artists are helping to create. 

CHINAKA HODGE

Photo by Bethanie Hines

A child of Oakland, this playwright, poet, and author of Girls With Hips will perform at “Hear Me Roar” at La Peña on Fri/15.

First hip-hop album: The Roots, Illadelph Halflife. Up until that point, I’d just stolen hip-hop music from my parents. The first album of any genre that I learned all of the words to was Arrested Development’s debut, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of… 

First hip hop concert/party: Tough. Hmmm. There’s an MC out of Oakland, originally from Queens, named Rico Pabon. When I was in high school, Rico was probably my favorite act. He used to headline a series of all-ages shows at La Peña called “Collective Soul”, alongside Company of Prophets, Lunar Heights, a bunch of the indie staples in hip-hop at the time. I think those were probably my first parties. Glad to see we’re coming full circle, and I’ll get to rock the stage at La Peña this Friday — I used to beg mom to let me attend back in the day.

First time I thought about what gender meant in hip-hop: Listening to Digable Planets. Everyone used to refer to Ladybug Mecca as “the girl” in the group. I saw that trope carry over as I listened to Blunted on Reality, the Fugees’ first album. To me, sonically, I just identified Ladybug and Lauryn as the best of the three. It wasn’t until older male relatives and friends pointed out gender that I first started to note and notice differences.

One question I’d like to see addressed “Hip-Hop: Beyond Gender”: I’d like to see us address the issue of why female-identified emcees are consistently asked to talk about gender and sex — both onstage and off — when our male identified counterparts are not.

INVINCIBLE 

Photo by B Fresh

In addition to having their own music label — Emergence Media — this Michigan MC is active with Detroit Summer, an intergenational inner-city group that links up community members in projects to change the future of their neighborhood. Invincible’s organizing the “Event Horizon” night on March 15, which promises “transcending the gender binary and entering parallel multiverses of holistic complex identities.” Ooo.

First hip-hop album: First vinyl, Paid In Full (Eric B and Rakim). First tape, Check The Rhime (maxi single!) followed by Low End Theory (A Tribe Called Quest). First CD (in the tall cardboard package): Sleeping With The Enemy (Paris).

First hip hop concert/party: When I was 15 I had a secret knock at the back door of a few local clubs where bouncers got me in to watch shows and get on the open mic. I got caught one too many times so that led to the first show I threw, which was at an abandoned hotel that me and my first DJ transformed into an all-ages venue, ’til the cops broke it up at our second event. I think the first time I actually bought a ticket was for Xzibit and Big Pun but that show sadly got shot up and shut down too soon. 

First time I thought about what gender meant in hip-hop: I remember when “Ladies First” by [Queen] Latifah came out. It made an impression on me, but I was too young to understand the power of it. I first fully saw the role gender justice plays in reviving hip-hop when I met and joined the anti-misogyny all-elements hip hop collective ANOMOLIES. They made me reflect on all the hardships i had witnessed and experienced, and realize how important it is to support each other as people whose voices are marginalized in this culture.

One question I’d like to see addressed “Hip-Hop: Beyond Gender”: How do we create space for more transgender and gender non-conforming hip-hop artists to develop skills, bring new perspectives, and be heard? How can gender justice in this music and culture benefit all marginalized voices in hip-hop?

TRU BLOO

Photo by Ruby Battacharya, logo by Maya el Helou

Tru Bloo started performing hip-hop when they were 11, played Angela Davis’ induction into the La Peña hall of fame in 2011, and has dabbled in classical guitar and piano among a million other projects. They’re curating the May 10 “Wo(MB) Manifest” night of breakdancing, graffiti, and performance at La Peña.

First hip-hop album: I found a 2 Live Crew rap tape on my school bus in fourth grade and memorized the entire album. Also danced a lot to Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock.

First hip hop concert/party: MC Hammer

First time I thought about what gender meant in hip-hop: When groups like TLC, Salt ‘N Pepa and Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y. anthem came out in late ’80s/early ’90s, I realized women had a different story to tell via hip-hop.

One question I’d like to see addressed “Hip-Hop: Beyond Gender”: Do female, trans, and gender non-conforming hip-hop artists have the power to change the social discourse around patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia within our communities and mainstream pop culture, if given a voice?

When Christeene Vale plays you in the film version: ‘Fourplay’ screens this weekend at ATA

Andrew Lam
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When Christeene Vale plays you in the film version: ‘Fourplay’ screens this weekend at ATA

She wears a Guess Collection spotted lynx coat, Manolo Blahnik boots, Isabel Marant dress, La Perla lingerie. She has to figure out how to have sex with a quadriplegic. She is gentle, the most sweet. The Christeene Vale that stars in the “San Francisco” segment of Fourplay, a collection of sex-themed shorts that will screen in part at Other Cinema’s “Eros” lineup at Artist’s Television Access on Sat/16 is not the same filthy drag-terror I remember slapping and dredging her sweaty stomach over the faces of other front row admirers at her Public Works appearance last year. 

In part, this is due to the fact that in Fourplay Vale (or rather, Paul Soileau, her real world alter ego) is interpreting the cross-dressing SF sex worker who is sitting across the table from me in a SoMa cafe. Her name is Chloe, and she is explaining to me why her job is a lot like being a therapist.

Here is the plot of Fourplay‘s “San Francisco”: Soileau’s Chloe is called out to North Bay house with an unusual challenge. The wife of a quadriplegic man wants a professional to give him his first experience with a biological man. He’s not gay, the wife explains upon Chloe’s arrival. It’s just something he wants to do. 

The ensuing scene between Soileau and the prone man will convince anyone of the need for experienced, compassionate sex workers. It will also introduce you to ways of sexual pleasure you perhaps had not previously considered (spoiler alert, but: toe.) 

The story is loosely based on an experience that real-life Chloe recounted to director Kyle Henry when they were introduced by a mutual friend in San Francisco. They changed a things about the plot to make it simpler for audiences to digest. It was actually the quadriplegic’s mother who called Chloe. In the film version of Fourplay the disabled man is older — in real life he was 23 years old, having had an awful motorcycle accident at 18. The real-deal sex took place in Post Street hotel, one with adequate handicapped access so that the mother could position the man in the room, leave the money in an envelope on the desk. The next time real-life Chloe heard from mom, it was three years later. She had called to let him know her son had passed away in his sleep.

“All I could think was ‘god, this woman loves her son so much,’” Chloe tells me over tea at the new 111 Minna cafe. In person, it is easy to see similarities between the queen in front of me and Soileau that may have lead to the casting of the Fourplay short. Both of them have big eyes that look at you — Vale’s through freaky contact lenses, but you imagine the spirit is the same behind the plastic. In person, Chloe affirms, Soileau is actually quite gentle and Southern. Christeene hadn’t yet been born when the short was filmed almost three years ago, or when the two drag queens spent time studying each other before the short was shot. 

Chloe remembers that she was insistent that the tenderness she felt for the disabled man be apparent on screen, that Soileau bring back to life the humility she felt in that moment. 

“It wasn’t about getting pleasure,” she says of the quadripligic man. “It was more about him giving pleasure.” Which makes sense – a man who has to be waited on 24/7 for his own survival would fantasize, one supposes, about the moment when he could give happiness to another. “It changed my definition of what sex could be.” 

Chloe’s career began when a drag queen named Chocolate who worked the door at Trannyshack Tuesdays at the Stud asked baby-drag Chloe what her “price” was. Chocolate became her teacher, learning her the best way to work with clients. Judging from the way Chloe divined, diagnosed, and prescribed a cure for my Valentine’s Day anxiety, she’s definitely attuned to the needs of others — one of those “givers.”

“Very quickly,” Chloe remembers “the fear subsided when I saw how powerful touching the skin of another person, having them touch yours – how remarkable and transformative that can be.” Through the power of drag, she was able to take charge of each rendezvous and, she feels, really help people. “We’re not criminals. We’re artists, we’re shamans,” she tells me. Chloe was active in 2008’s defeated Proposition K, which would have prohibited the SFPD from using resources to instigate and prosecute sex work. 

“We live in a lonely world. People can go for days without speaking [in real life] to anyone.” She saw lots of self-identified straight men during those days of the first dom com boom in San Francisco, the kind of guys desired by the same burly gay men who the slight, nerdy Chloe felt rejected by in bars before she started sex work (“tranny’s revenge,” she laughs.) But when I ask how it felt to be so intimate with people who were in the closet, Chloe bridles. 

“As I understand, there’s a big difference between sexual identity and sexual practice.” Let them be straight if they say they’re straight, she avers. “I believe everyone should have the power of self definition.” 

Her caretaking spirit is evident in the short that Henry and the rest of his Austin-based collective created (Henry’s partner is one of Vale’s back-up dancers — the making of the “San Francisco” segment was somewhat of a family affair.) The partial screening on Saturday will be the second for Fourplay in San Francisco after last year’s Frameline debut. Who know, maybe Christeene will make an appearance — she was just announced as a guest judge for Fri/15’s Trannyshack Star Search pageant. 

Chloe’s excited that more of her SF friends get a chance to see the piece that they put together so many years ago. “It was so easy because Paul is so sweet, so fearless, he understood the complexity of the piece. And he fit perfectly in my clothes.” 

Yep, that fuzzy feeling wasn’t the only thing Chloe contributed to Fourplay – lady offered up the clothes off her back. 

Fourplay shorts at Other Cinema’s Eros Show

Sat/16, 8:30pm, $7

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.othercinema.com

www.frameline.org

Suck on this: Guardian staff reviews aphrodisiac lollipops

Andrew Lam
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Suck on this: Guardian staff reviews aphrodisiac lollipops

Hey Valentines. Did you need a libido boost to buoy you through this week of boner-killing commercialized love-things? Meet Pandora’s Pops, then, a little venture headed up by Jena Chambers, a body worker who once ran a massage school and clinic in Asheville, North Carolina for six years. Chambers recently launched a Kickstarter to fund large-scale production of her pops, which are vegan, organic, herbal — all the things.

They also purport to give you feelings. Our focus was on Pandora’s aphrodisiac pops, since V-Day approaches and Chambers’ brand ambassador Mary Lollipoppins will be flitting about town distributing them. The line also includes mental stimulant pops, pops to help you quit smoking, pops to calm you down, and more.

How well do they work? The pops were thrust into the hands of Guardian staffers last weekend. Results are as follows: 

I’m going to give this one a solid “didn’t hurt.” Despite my bachelor’s degree in sociology I created a totally flawed sex pop experimental design: I ate my “Hot Professor” pop an hour before meeting a date for which no additional stimulant was needed. Did I giggle at his French dialetic thought jokes because of my pop’s unique herbal blend? Was Pandora responsible for the way I tolerated my companion’s meandering anecdotes or the effusiveness with which I cooed over his station wagon? Maybe? At any rate, unlike the other reviewers I thought my professor pop tasted dreamy (not too sweet, spicy, imparting the distinct sensation that I was eating something not free of nutritional value.) I’d do it again. Um, eat a Pandora Pop I mean. 

Maybe I’m biased because I met Chambers when she brought the pops by the office and she is adorable: 

See?

Anyway, onto the Guardian staff peanut gallery:

I had the “Nurse Ginger” pop, which tasted OK but mildly reminiscent of potpourri. It felt a bit tingly on the tongue, but didn’t seem to have any effect on my libido.

— Emily Savage, music editor

When I heard that Pandora’s Pops would “amplify [my] natural, magnetic pheromones,” I thought: goodie. I can smell even stronger. How sexy will that be? Will my partner even notice over the odor of the dog and the unwashed laundry and the teenagers who don’t seem to understand the meaning of “regular showers?” What the hell; can’t hurt.

Except that: Gross.

The website described my “Flight Attendant” lollipop as “cinammon and exotic/familiar spice.” Actually, tasted like stinky socks. And I can give you all a basic dating tip: Nobody wants to kiss you when your mouth tastes like stinky socks. Trust me — I tried.

— Tim Redmond, executive editor

To put it simply: whiskey trumps aphrodisiac lollipops. I took one lick of my “Juicy Rose” pop and and half expected to turn into a lovesick puppy –- heart-shaped pupils and all. Sadly it seems any potential fireworks were masked by the stronger effects of multiple whiskey sours. But not all was lost -– my heart-shaped treat was defeated by alcohol but it still worked great both as a breath mint and a conversation piece.

— Cortney Clift, editorial intern

So perhaps Pandora’s Pops were too delicately herbal to stoke the fires of hardened journalist-folks. Perhaps your sweetie is more easily-influenced? Or just really into sucking on hearts. 

Celebrate Black History Month with four days of sf|noir food and drink

Andrew Lam
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Celebrate Black History Month with four days of sf|noir food and drink

This month, you can observe Black History Month by attending a filmmaking discussion, a childrens dance class, by going to a lecture at USF — check out this and this event rundown for inspiration. And given how food-oriented we are as a region, it was only natural that eventually you’d be able to eat and drink while celebrating African American heritage, not to mention the black culinary geniuses that add to it here in the Bay. 

 

Sample wines poured by the Sterlings of Esterlina Vineyards (top) and bites made by Michele Wilson of Gussie’s Chicken & Waffles at sf|noir’s Feb. 23 gala

The organization that is sponsoring the four-day extravaganza was born one afternoon at North Beach Jazz Festival, the nine-day affair that Herve Ernest organized for eight years. He realized that the crowd in attendance was really, really white.

“There was an African American band on stage, but I could count on two hands the amount of black faces I saw,” he tells me in a phone interview. He realized that if African American culture was going to remain a presence in a city where black people were being rapidly displaced, concerted efforts would have to be made.

“That’s when the conceptual idea for what became sf|noir started happening,” Ernest continues. He started the organization, which sponsors read-ins, dance, and concerts, not only to get superlative cultural programming to black audiences, but also to “ensure the presentation of black arts and culture in San Francisco” — a city whose black population has dropped from 12 to less than three percent in the 19 years since Ernest first settled here. 

This year, his group is offering days of events that highlight some of the area’s most successful black food entrepreneurs. “It’s something that is very relevant here,” says Ernest. “It’s a foodie town, food events happen all the time. We thought it was high time to create a food and wine event that looks at African American cuisine.” 

So, belly up. Go here for more info: 

Remixology

Three mixologists — including Otis bartenders Phil Shell and Damon White — present cocktails found throughout the African diaspora. Entry is free, you have to pay for your own drinks though. 

Feb. 21, 6-9pm, free. Otis, 25 Maiden Lane, SF

Wine tasting with Omar White

After 15 years at Chez Panisse, believe that wine consultant White has some knowledge about local vinos. He’s lent his expertise to Pizzaolo and the East Bay’s Hibiscus and is here today to teach about the in’s and out’s of the wine tasting process. Register in advance for this one — participation is limited to 25 thirsty souls. 

Feb. 22, 6-9pm, $20. 18 Reasons, 3674 18th St., SF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U1eW77Pw4PQ

Wine and Food Gala

Food from nine restaurants well-versed in African American cuisine (Farmerbrown, Cedar Hill, and tomorrow’s brunch host Miss Ollie’s for starters), 20 local and international winemakers, and two dessert specialists — The Brown Sugar Lady and PieTisserie — are all serving up at this four-hour dinner party. 

Feb. 23, 7-11pm, $60. The Atrium, 101 Mission, SF

Oakland Jazz Brunch 

Hibiscus’ chef Sarah Minton has a new project in this Old Oakland corner restaurant. She’ll be offering up the place’s Carribean-toned menu for brunch today, while the Marcus Shelby Trio helps you finish the sf|noir series strong.

Feb. 24, 11am-3pm, free entrance, a la carte menu. Miss Ollie’s, 901 Washington, Oakl. 

Buy me love

Andrew Lam
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Buy me love

caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN You are welcome to spend Valentine’s Day as I will this year: corralled onto a dark dancefloor with 200 similar atheists in the face of the love goddess. But as many of you will be happily celebrating with partners (hiss!), I’ve assembled this four-pack of completely locally-made Valentine’s Day gifts. You’re welcome (pfft.)

TOURANCE FAKE FUR RABBIT ROBE, $178

You can’t get more luxe than this without killing something, and unless it’s vintage, I find artifacts of animal death incredibly unsexy. Tourance makes all its faux fur right here in the city, so if your Valentine isn’t much for Hef wear, check out the line’s vests in faux fox and mink, and its throw blankets modeled on chinchilla fuzz or inspired by mane of lion. Highly recommended for those of us too embarrassed by the word “snuggle” to ever ask to be embraced — nuzzling comes naturally when you just unwrapped the softest garment known to personkind.

www.tourance.com

 

RECCHIUTI’S CREATIVITY EXPLORED DOG ART CHOCOLATES, $21

 

Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

I am not a fan of gifting chocolates on V-Day to anyone but the most perfunctory recipient (the sweet woman who lives above you, the office manager, one’s priest.) That being said, it is possible to make a case for the originality of this four-pack of burnt caramel bites. The foursome is only available at Recchiuti’s Dogpatch shop, which is tucked into the flank of the factory where the chocolates are made (next to the company’s super-fly Chocolate Lab café, which is doing two dinner seatings for a special Feb. 14 menu.) The doggie designs were born as art made by developmentally-disabled adults at community gallery Creativity Explored, an echo of the for-sale exhibition you’ll find behind Recchiuti’s cash register. And in addition to all these things: doggies. People love those guys.

807 22nd St., SF. (415) 826-2868, www.recchiuti.com

VARIANCE OBJECTS HARNESS, PRICES START AT $240/SET

Why does BDSM fashion have to be so damn obvious? Everybody knows you’re there to be roughed up, do we really need to drop hundreds of dollars on the same industrially-accessorized black patent leather that everyone’s wearing? I love Variance Object’s founder Nicole Rimedio for making beaded bondage gear for your kinky-yet-discreet angel. “I love the idea that I may be wearing a rope to bind my lover’s body, but that most everyone else thinks is just an onyx necklace,” Rimedio told me in an email. The line includes pieces strung with super-strong cord that can be worn around the calves, looped underneath the crotch, or tied around wrists. Most everything is modular, for versatility/variety’s sake.

www.varianceobjects.com

SF BEER WEEK, PRICES VARY

 

Photo via Yelp

Although you will get side-eyed by many Valentines if you suggest that a bottle of Miller High Life is an adequate way to celebrate Cupid’s aim, warm fuzzies while boozing are still totally possible. Per usual, V-Day falls in the thick of the Bay Area’s marquee week for gourmet brew events, SF Beer Week. So take your low-key, suds-loving babe to Thirsty Bear’s $20-25 “Chocolate, Beer, and Cupid” night to sip coco-vanilla cask ale while making your own chocolates (feel free to bring your boo’s favorite aphrodisiac throw-in for xxxtra points.) Also happening on Feb. 14: sweet and sour beer pairings at The Monk’s Kettle, four limited release brews on tap, with sweet bites from Socola Chocolatier at Speakeasy Brewery’s newly-opened, Kelly Malone-designed tap room. Elixir, Noc Noc, the Sycamore, Rosamunde’s Mission location, La Trappe, and Blackbird are all doing V-Day Beer Week specials as well.

Various Bay Area locations, www.sfbeerweek.org

 

Salute new Hi Fructose boxed set at free YBCA party tomorrow

Andrew Lam
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You could practically hear the sharpening of claws in the Guardian office when the Last Gasp-published Hi Fructose Collected 3 boxed set arrived on our proverbial doorstep. For fans of quirky, dark arts, this was the motherload: a tidal wave of a book stuffed with visual artists from around the world, all accompanied by a sweet bear (sheep? I say sheep. There was debate) mask by Mark Ryden, ready to be fastened on one’s face with a lightly-colored ribbon. There was a velvet-flocked triptych by Martin Ontiveros, Skinner, and Junko Mizuno. A fantasy city on a poster. Stickers. All of it.Count on us then, to be lined up to have our copy signed at YBCA tomorrow (Tue/5) during the museum’s free day. Our fave freaky Bay Area cake artist Scott Hove and a host of others whose work is in this magical bundle will be signing books, all while Swiftumz plays a DJ set. We caught up with Collected 3‘s editors to gush and ask stupid questions.

Behold, the answers by Hi Fructose’s Annie Owens and Attaboy. And some pretty art thangs you’ll find in the boxed set.

Fuco Ueda

SFBG: I wonder what kind of language you use to describe the work Hi Fructose profiles? I know I’m seeing something distinctive, but dammit if I could put a genre on it. 

Annie Owens: ‘New contemporary’ seems to be a good catch-all umbrella for most things under the high art radar, but even high-art is a line we cross sometimes. 

Scott Hove

SFBG: Draw some lines for me — who are some artists who would never appear in Hi Fructose? Someone who you’ve never worked with that would be a fantastic inclusion. Living, dead, mythic beasts are all acceptable answers.

Attaboy: We’ve got some mythic folks lined up for the coming year, don’t want to ruin the surprise.

AO: Never say never. Even Thomas Kinkade has his appeal! [Artists we’d like to work with include] Hieronymus Bosch, Charles Addams. As for live ones, we’ve had the pleasure to have some of our favorite art legends, who we won’t mention here, say yes to an upcoming project so there’s that!

Gabriels

SFBG: Please recommend a usage for the mask enclosed in box set.

A: On someone’s else’s face. So you can poke fun of them.

Hi-Fructose Collected 3 launch party

Tue/5,5:30-7:30, free

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

Guerrero gallery bites Zero Graffiti convention

Andrew Lam
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Guerrero gallery bites Zero Graffiti convention

“The difference between art and vandalism is permission.” So said Dwight Waldo, retired San Bernadino cop, at the Zero Graffiti convention earlier this month in San Francisco. The event drew law enforcement officials from multiple countries, convening them for lectures on graffiti prevention, on street art’s connection to gangs and hate speech, and on ways to apprehend graffiti artists (“the Internet” figured prominently here, judging from the talks I managed to catch during the convention’s public portion.) In his talk, Waldo prided himself on shutting down a graffiti-inspired legal art show because it was being organized by an illegal graffiti artist. 

But it would appear that the art community isn’t satisfied with allowing those that hold the anti-graffiti wipes to be the arbiters of taste. The folks at Guerrero Gallery have branded their show opening Sat/2 with Zero Graffiti’s imagery to put scrutiny on San Francisco and other cities’ efforts to repress graffiti.

“As for stopping graffiti… we should nourish it,” wrote gallery owner Andres Guerrero to me in an email. “The city’s effort to rid us of graffiti is a concern but graffiti will always be around. It’s an inspiring form of creativity that all demographics have accepted and have supported. It’s a growing culture that should be embraced and developed with the help of local communities. It’s a leading contemporary movement.”

The convention’s program, including ad for “spraycan sensor” that SF DPW officials confirmed have been purchased by the city. It’s been announced that next year’s conference will take place in Phoenix

The exhibit’s artists, Tim Diet and Remio, are both established gallery artists who got their start doing illegal graffiti. “It’s an exciting show for all of us at the gallery and they also represent a progressive intelligent community,” wrote Guerrero.

Given the dire state of arts education in the San Francisco Unified School District, perhaps city officials should start looking at graffiti artists in a different light. After all, if young people can’t find canvases elsewhere, why shouldn’t they make their mark on their neighborhood?

Project One opens “Project One Walls,” an indoor mural show, on Feb. 7. It’ll feature the work of current and former street artists and looks real cool. 

Here’s the Guerrero Sat/2 opening’s featured artists, both of whom started developing their art on the street: 

Norweigan-born artist Remio’s cluster faces still drip — but they’re emblematic of his transition from street work to showing in galleries

Bay Area artist Tim Diet’s “Sorry I Party” still embodies the chaos of work born in public space

“Man In Transition” and “This is Me”: Remio and Tim Diet

Through Feb. 23

Opening reception: Sat/2, 7-11pm, free

Guerrero Gallery

(415) 400-5168

www.guerrerogallery.com

Nina Hartley mash notes, PETA gets naked, crafty vibes: Your week in sex events

Andrew Lam
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Nina Hartley mash notes, PETA gets naked, crafty vibes: Your week in sex events

Everyone survive the bused-in loads of pro-lifers prancing down Market Street last Saturday? Good. FYI, the Pope’s real happy with San Francisco right about now, so if you need to ask him for anything (to borrow clothes?) do it.

Real Talk forum: “Open Relationships”

Real talk: being happy in a polyamorous relationship doesn’t mean you don’t ever get jealous. Real Talk: a series of panel discussions organized by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation that explores the issues related to gay men having happy and healthy sexual lives. The last discussion focused on serosorting — this one’s for those interested in strengthening their open relationship by examining what makes us jealous, and how to work through the emotion. 

Wed/30, 6-8pm, free. LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF. www.sfaf.org

American Apparel casting call/”Shop It Like It’s Hot”

Look pretty, sullen, and emaciated at this mega discount shopping event — in addition to slashed sales prices on lewks from Crossroads Trading Co., RoyalMint, Covet Boutique, Meggie, Violet Boutique, Thrifted and Modern, Alyssa Nicole, and Acrimony, American Apparel will be hawking their solid color essentials and looking for models. Enter IMCHICSF in when you buy your online ticket and you’ll get $10 off. Also: there will be a food cart.

Wed/30, 6-9pm, $20. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

PETA jumps on Nude-In train

Really, the cwazy vegans over at PETA need little excuse to get naked, but we are glad that they chose this one: the cwazy nudiest are protesting cwazy Scott Weiner’s impending nudity ban (again), and they’re doing it on the steps of City Hall again, and PETA will be there drawing the correlation to the fur trade by hoisting protest signs in the buff. Of course! Insert some tounge-clicky, chuckling “only in San Francisco” condescension — then take your clothes off and join fray.  

Thu/31, noon, free. Outside City Hall, SF. www.peta.org

“Letters to a Porn Star: Nina Hartley Fan Mail”

First off, the Center for Sex and Culture has a Nina Hartley collection and that’s really exciting. Secondly, selections from said collection will be on display, in all their fawning/questioning/pervy glory, at the Center until mid-March. Tonight, take in the letters, gifts, and trinkets sent to the classically amazing pioneer feminist porn star — and check out a talk by Ingrid Olsen, a CSC fellow who has been elbow-deep in Nina land. 

Through March 18. Opening reception and talk: Fri/1, 7-10pm, free. Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF. www.sexandculture.org

Feelmore Fresh Fridays

Every last Friday, downtown Oakland adult store and sex culture hub Feelmore510 hosts an evening of naughty film at the recently-opened New Parkway. We guess tonight’s showing could be sexy, but in a deeply disturbing way: the film is 2010’s Venus Noire, a bio-pic of Saartjes Baartman, a woman from Southern Africa who was trotted about imperialist Britain billed as a Hottentot. Scientists examined her anatomy and proclaimed her the missing link between humans and apes, and she wound up dying from STDs and pnuemonia at 27. A valuble lesson about psuedo-science and sex, but you’ll probably be using that tissue to wipe away tears rather than any other bodily fluid.

Fri/25, 11:30pm, $10. New Parkway Theater, 474 24th St., Oakl. www.thenewparkway.com

Good Vibes vibrator bling contest

You’ve gotta buy a Good Vibes vibe to play the game (not end of world), but then with a little peacock feather, ornamental zipper, and g-l-i-t-t-e-r you can enter this Good Vibes sex toy crafting contest. The fancified vibrators will be on display at the Polk Street sex shop location during March, and winners of the competition will win gift certificates for the store. Deadline to enter your little friend (we assume they want them to be unused, but don’t let us impose our Puritanical values on your creativity)

Deadline to enter Feb. 28. Deliver by hand or mail to Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com

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