Julian Mark

Tenderloin upstart Book & Job aims to level the art-gallery playing field

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Carson Lancaster is tired of the bullshit. He’s tired of watching the same handful of mainstream galleries hang the same artists and shun a majority of San Francisco’s young, talented artists. “It’s like that scene in Scanners. You know, the one where the guy’s head explodes? That’s what it feels like every time I walk into one of those places,” he said.

Lancaster is the owner of Book & Job, an art gallery that seeks to do exactly the opposite: make San Francisco’s art market accessible to both artists and consumers. Located on Geary and Hyde Streets, Book & Job blends into the grit of the Tenderloin and in no way resembles the blue-chip megaliths huddled toward Union Square. The space is tiny. There’s no team of attractive sales people standing at the entrance, no bubbly event photographers milling around, no tuxedos, and no free champagne.

However, it isn’t uncommon to see a small throng of young people spilling from the entrance on a given Saturday night, or passers-by (likely coming from galleries down the street) stopping in their tracks to gander at the commotion — looking for something, anything, that slightly resembles uncharted territory: candid photographs from inside of a ramshackle San Francisco mosque, say, or a couple of naked male performers feeding each other wedding cake while dancing to Celine Dion. That, Lancaster feels, is an art scene.

Which is why Lancaster is all ears if an artist wants to show work at Book & Job. Though it began mainly for photographers, in the past couple of years the small gallery has broadened its horizons to include just about anything — paintings, zines, and performances. “People come in all the time and say, ‘I like this place because it’s pure, because it’s real, because it’s no bullshit,” he continued. “It’s known in the community as the no bullshit gallery.”

Sat/13, Lancaster’s walls will feature work from an analog photography club called Find Rangers, which sent out an open call to artists around the world. Lancaster and a group of colleagues started the club for many of the same reasons he opened his gallery. “It’s a grassroots affair,” he said. 

As a former photography student at Academy of Art University, Lancaster wondered why many of the best students would flee San Francisco after graduating, but he eventually came to a realization: “The San Francisco art scene sucks. It is very close-minded, unfriendly, not open to interpretation, set in the same ways. And for young artists at CCA [California College of the Arts], SFAI [San Francisco Art Institute], and Academy of Art, to go to an art gallery in the city [and inquire about showing their work], they’re going to be told to go fuck themselves in so many words.”

Lancaster spoke of a disconnect between San Francisco’s relatively insular gallery scene and the high number of art students in the area. From 2002 to 2012, San Francisco received more art funding per capita than any another city in the nation, according to a 2014 study released by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. And yet, the city’s abundance of talented artists cannot break in and are thus forced to seek greener pastures, usually in New York or Los Angeles.

Lancaster believes that this is largely because art galleries in San Francisco have tight business models, and that giving artists a chance just doesn’t allow them to stay afloat. These galleries, he said, would rather show artists they know can sell. “They have their roster of artists,” he explained. “December is Ferris Plock, or September is Jay Howell or Mike Giant, and it’s the same names over and over again. It’s more like a meat factory. It’s the meat aisle.”

This is especially prevalent nowadays, Lancaster explained, as many of the higher-end galleries are struggling themselves with out-of-control rents and the city’s shifting cultural values. In the past year, particularly downtown, a rash of galleries have either relocated or completely shuttered.

But Lancaster isn’t worried about Book & Job. His lease is written such that his rent stays fixed — and relatively low — until 2022. For next eight years, Book & Job cannot be priced out, even as the neighborhood continues to transform around it. “This is place is blowing up,” he said, pointing out the new cafés and restaurants that are now sprouting up around the Tenderloin. All the same, in the coming years Book & Job will serve as a small preservation of what remains of city’s DIY ethos, a channel through which local artists can be discovered without having to flee the city. 

“It’s a really nervy thing to do,” Sarah Barsness, one of Lancaster’s former Academy of Art teachers, says of the gallery. She explained that it’s extremely difficult to open a successful art gallery in the city, let alone one as “subversive” as Book & Job. “He’s doing the thing that you’re never supposed to do, which is having a lot of work that he sells for nothing, and spreading it out to a different, broader population — younger people and fellow students,” she explained. 

She even compared Lancaster to Andy Warhol and other pioneers of the pop art movement, who sought to strip art of its “preciousness” and “elitism” by selling prints for pennies on the dollar. Ultimately, Barsness explained, this made art more democratic. “It’s really important right now because we’re at a high point of elitists,” she said. “It’s over the top.”

By making art more democratic, she explained, galleries like Book & Job “bring artists back into the conversation,” making art more about art and less about business. But Barsness believes many San Francisco galleries have always operated this way. “San Francisco collectors are notorious for not buying San Francisco art,” she said, explaining that galleries have had to survive by bringing in work from other cities. 

While Barsness feels that the economic cards are not stacked in Lancaster’s favor, she feels that Book & Job embodies much of what art stands for. “Art is not supposed to preach. It’s supposed to show you an alternative way of thinking, so that questions emerge,” she said. “[Book & Job] is a little work of art, in that sense, making you ask: Do galleries have to operate this way? Is it wrong to have galleries operate this way? And why is it wrong?”

For Lancaster, however, Book & Job’s place in the art world isn’t so much subversive as it is deeply personal. In March, Lancaster found his close friend, renowned San Francisco artist Shawn Whisenant, dead from a health issue in the back room of the gallery, where he had been sleeping. Whisenant was a San Francisco street artist and photographer and one of the last “true” San Francisco artists, according to KQED’s Kristin Farr, who remembered him fondly after his passing.

And for Lancaster, Whisenant’s artistic ethos of “no B.S.” will always shape how Book & Job is run. A day doesn’t go by in which Lancaster doesn’t think about what Whisenant would have done. “He’s the angel and devil on my shoulder,” he said.

The room in which Whisenant died has been converted into a dark room, and for now Lancaster plans to share it with other like-minded photographers and use it to hone his own skills. “If someone is checking their phone and they see my open call [for a Find Rangers Camera Club exhibit], and they dust off their camera and buy a roll of film, I’m doing something right,” he said. “That’s not just me selling a booklet to help pay rent, that’s helping someone’s creativity … and that’s really cool.”

Find Rangers Camera Club exhibit

Sat/13, 7-11pm

Book & Job Gallery

838 Geary, SF

www.book-job.com

Koch brothers and other right-wing outsiders challenge Bay Area minimum wage measures

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In recent months, San Francisco and Oakland have unveiled ballot measures that would raise minimum wage for workers currently struggling with the Bay Area’s rising cost of living. But as November draws closer, a network of right-wing organizations — with ties to the infamous Koch brothers — have been funding campaigns aimed at convincing workers that low wages are actually better for their livelihoods.

“Two of the richest men in the world are spending millions to hold down low-wage workers and that is just immoral,” said Roxanne Sanchez, President of Service Employee International Union Local 1021, who organized Raise the Bay, a series of efforts to raise minimum wage in cities around the Bay Area. 

SEIU leaders and local journalists have chided the Koch brothers and their right-wing ilk for funding campaigns aimed at dissuading the public from voting on higher minimum wages in the area. The Koch brothers are heirs to an oil fortune and are notorious for influencing national and state politics through so called “dark money” groups, which are not obligated to disclose financial information, including their donors.

An initial $200,000 campaign was launched by the Charles Koch Foundation in July. A well-produced advertisement, which ran in Wichita, Kansas, asserts that people earning $34,000 are already on the “road to economic freedom.” Charles Koch later told the Wichita Eagle newspaper that minimum wage is an obstacle preventing workers on limited income from “rising up.”

In the Bay Area, conservative media outlet CalWatchDog — which is funded by a group of right-wing investors, including the Koch Brothers — criticized Oakland politicians for voting down a diluted alternative to Oakland’s primary minimum wage initiative, Raise Up Oakland. CalWatchDog claimed the local leaders’ decisions were largely influenced by labor union contributions, which was later proven to be a case of political chicanery.

Similarly, in San Francisco, conservative lobby group Employment Policies Institute funded a billboard that reads: “With a new $15 minimum wage, employees will replaced by less costly, automated alternatives.” It also advertises a website called BadIdeaCA.com, which shares similar predictions.

Employment Policies Institute receives donations from Lynne & Harry Bradley Foundation, a Wisconsin nonprofit that also contributes to anti-abortion, anti-environment, and anti-LGBTQ campaigns. The Lynne & Harry Bradley Foundation also donates to CalWatchDog.

In San Francisco, income inequality is growing at an alarming rate, and San Francisco’s ballot initiative hopes to help workers survive in the changing economic landscape.

And leaders of SEIU Local 1021 say they will continue to challenge the Koch brothers and their campaigns to thwart Bay Area wage increases. “The Koch Brothers might be billionaires, but they don’t have enough money to hold us back,” said Pete Castelli, executive director of Local 1021. “We challenge them to crawl out from under their rock, shine a light on their plans, and publicly debate workers about raising the minimum wage.”

Catching up with David Kilgour

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A couple of years ago, on a warm summer evening in the city of Blue Lake, California, I stopped by my friend’s house after work. A man with a curly mop of hair was sitting in the front yard with his toes in the grass, strumming an acoustic guitar.

This isn’t unusual in Blue Lake. The unincorporated town hides among the Humboldt County redwoods and always seems to attract a steady flow of tone-deaf vagabonds. But it turned out the man was not at all tone-deaf and only partially transient. It turned out the guy on my friend’s lawn was David Kilgour of the New Zealand indie rock band The Clean.

The Clean is perhaps one of the most unsung legends of post-punk lo-fi in the ’80s and ’90s. The band is regularly cited as having influenced relatively more known titans, such as Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices, and Pavement (in his college days, Stephen Malkmus is said to have played the Clean on his radio show). At its core, however, the Clean pioneered a sound characterized by trebly psychedelia and strident nonchalance — often dubbed “Kiwi rock.”

That night in Blue Lake, David Kilgour — along a couple of his collaborators, Steven Schayer (of California band the Black Watch) and Tony de Raad (of the Heavy Eights) — had come to play a show. It wasn’t as part of a tour, or because Blue Lake was on Kilgour’s list of places to visit, but simply because my friend had sent him a shot-in-the-dark request that he come play a gig.

But why? I later asked him. “The whole music thing now is just sort of an adventure,” he said. “It’s not about selling records or making it anymore — it’s about making music…and sometimes that takes you to interesting parts of the world.”

“It’s a lot like being at sea,” he continued. “Sometimes we feel like we’re pirates. We come into bay and take their gold and maybe their women and jump back on the boat and get the fuck out of town and sail to the next port.”

All pirate imagery aside, the fact that Kilgour even responded to my friend’s email — and followed through — really says a lot about him as a person. Merge Records, the label that produces his current solo project, David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights, describes him as “a guitar god for guitar athiests..he’s worthy of worship, but neither expects nor demands it.” The band plays the Rickshaw Stop Friday, Aug. 1.

At the Old Logger Bar in Blue Lake that night, Kilgour played to a crowd of roughly 30 people, who seemed almost suspicious of his talent. “Who is this guy?” one craggy old barfly whispered to me as Kilgour strummed the opening chords to “Anything Could Happen,” one of the Clean’s most classic tunes.

But in our recent conversation, Kilgour expressed that the Clean (which he consistently referred to as “The Clean thing”) is a thing of the past for him. He explained that, these days, the band doesn’t come up with new material, or even rehearse. “It’s just sort of a hobby now,” he said. 

These days, rather, the self-described “hippie pagan with punk undertones” is more engaged with his solo project. The Heavy Eights showcase Kilgour’s journey away from the angsty celebrations of the Clean, toward a more feeling-based sound of psychedelic good will, which has always seemed present — even in his earliest work.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “I’ve always had a belief in the other-ness of life and I’ve had some incredible experiences with that other-ness…I just want to send out a good vibration, really, and I do want to help people, and if it does help people — bloody great — because it helps me.”

After the show, everyone went outside of the bar and watch Kilgour, Schayer, and de Raad roam the streets and jammed on old folk tunes outside. At one point the vibrations were so high, Schayer, still playing the guitar, splayed himself out in the middle of the street, causing a car to come to a screeching halt. These guys had the rock star mentality without the rock star pretension. That night, they were one of us, and that experience was truly “other.”

Kilgour is back is California, this time with a full band, and he will be release his new album, End Times Undone on Aug. 5. For those daring enough, he will return to the Logger Bar this Thursday, July 31 before heading to the Rickshaw Stop Friday, Aug. 1.

SF to consider joining Richmond in fighting banks over underwater mortgages

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Plans to ease San Francisco’s often overlooked home foreclosure crisis will have to wait a bit longer. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week delayed a resolution that would show the city’s “intent” to save underwater mortgages in favor of a resolution that might actually have begin to intervene in underwater mortgages.

“The idea of people losing their homes is very disheartening,” Sup. John Avalos told the Guardian. “I’m looking forward to an ordinance that would actually allow San Francisco to join a JPA [Joint Powers Authority] and enable us to have leverage over banks.”

The original proposal would have stated San Francisco’s “intention” to form a JPA with the City of Richmond in the obscure—and controversial—use of eminent domain to acquire and fix underwater mortgages for homeowners in working class neighborhoods. But Avalos said that the resolution was primarily aimed at supporting Richmond in defending its principal reduction program.

“The resolution in support of Richmond’s work is not as timely as it was and I want to make sure I can work with you colleagues about the relationship around how we can actually have an ordinance to join a JPA with the city of Richmond and have all of our questions answered as we’re going through that process,” he told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

Eminent domain is a law that allows the government to purchase private property for public use, including nontangible assets such as mortgages. The use of eminent domain to acquire underwater mortgages (when mortgage payments that exceed the value of homes) could be a godsend for homeowners who have been bamboozled by predatory lenders.

Yet Richmond, receiving national attention for the gutsy strategy, faced intense criticism—even federal lawsuits—from banks and financial institutions of late. Certain banks and financial institutions warned lending would halt if the strategy were attempted. Although Richmond recently braved attempts to quash its principal reduction plan, a JPA with San Francisco would allow both cities to leverage some power over banks.

“One city doesn’t have the resources to do it alone,” Sup. David Campos, who co-sponsored the resolution, told the Guardian. “Collectively joining forces can do it, and can be strengthened by taking a regional approach.”

Yet Avalos explained that he has already experienced disagreement from banks, including Well Fargo. “We are swimming against the tide—against the institutions of our banks that have a stronghold on how local loans and mortgages are kept at high interest rates, on the ability homeowners have to renegotiate loans, and on how we can improve the actual principal of our loans,” he told the Board of Supervisors, which was met by public applause.

“People don’t feel a sense of urgency about the housing crisis, and we need to convince them,” Avalos told the Guardian. “Overall we’re two years from the Occupy movement that challenged banks, and people have forgotten the feeling of the time where people questioned how much power banks had over the loan modification.”

In San Francisco, focus has indeed shifted toward out-of-control rents, though fallout from the mortgage crisis still persists. Over 300 underwater mortgages are concentrated in San Francisco’s working class communities, 90 percent of which contain predatory features, according to the Mortgage Resolution Partners, a company helping Richmond administer and finance their principal reduction plan.

Although roughly 64 percent of San Francisco residents are renters, some working class community member still own their homes, and some, like Carletta Jackson-Lane—who has lived in District 10 for 27 years and who spoke at this week’s meeting during public comment—feels that the African American community has been hit especially hard by foreclosures.

“Don’t forget that foreclosures are directly related to the outward migration of African American families out of San Francisco,” she said. “The reality is that in the Mission, there’s a different impact because they were mostly renters.

“The other impact in the African American community—especially in District 10—is that they were single family property owners, so when the foreclosure crisis happened, it knocked them out,” she explained. “And that’s multiple generations.”

Avalos sent the resolution back to committee for modification, and he expects a resolution to be voted on in August. “I don’t want San Francisco to be a place where only the wealthy can survive,” Avalos said.  “But in order to make serious changes we have to break a few eggs.”

When asked what those eggs were, he responded, “What currently is.”  

Will proposal to sell Hetch Hetchy power overshadow CleanPowerSF?

Supervisors Scott Wiener and London Breed have proposed an ordinance to allow the San Francisco Public Utilities Power Commission’s Power Enterprise to sell hydroelectric energy from the Hetch Hetchy dam to retail customers — particularly large real estate developments. Sup. Wiener and Breed say the ordinance would both generate revenue for the PUC and further the city’s overall goal of achieving a 100 percent greenhouse-gas free power mix. 

But how well does it fit into the city’s other clean energy goals? Some advocates of an existing citywide green energy plan worry that this new effort could cause a far more ambitious program to fall by the wayside.

For more than a decade, city government has been working toward implementing a clean energy plan through CleanPower SF, which aims to meet the city’s goal of 100 percent clean energy by allowing all San Francisco residents the choice of switching to a green power mix through the city-administered program, instead of remaining with PG&E. But CleanPower SF hangs in limbo, largely due to opposition from the SFPUC board, appointed by Mayor Ed Lee–whose regular meetings with PG&E officials have raised eyebrows.

The legislation proposing to broaden the sale of SFPUC’s hydroelectric power supply seeks to tackle some of the problems CleanPower SF might have addressed had it not been stalled. A press statement from Wiener noted that it aims to help build a large enough customer base for the SFPUC to generate sufficient revenues to maintain city infrastructure, as well as meeting the city’s overall target of 100 percent clean energy by 2030.

“My concern is that the Mayor’s office will say it’s something that will supplement CPSF [CleanPowerSF] and say that’s enough,” said Jason Fried, Executive Officer of the Local Agency Formation Commission. “I want to make it clear that it [proposed ordinance] is really meant to compliment CleanPower SF.”

But just exactly how—and how much—the proposal would complement CleanPower SF is still up for debate. Fried said Wiener’s new proposal complements CleanPower SF because it ultimately gives people more choices. “I don’t know how you can argue with giving people more choices,” he said.

But the legislation is targeted at large, private developments, rather than renewable energy options for community members. Which is why Fried emphasized that proposed ordinance shouldn’t been seen as a replacement to the city’s existing Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, CleanPower SF.

Eric Brooks, a long-time advocate of CleanPower SF, insists the legislation would complement CleanPowerSF only if, “CleanPowerSF was given first right to purchase Hetch Hetchy power from the PUC.” This would allow the ordinance to focus on community members rather than just large, private developments, he said.

“Being able to balance different types of power like solar, wind and hydro, and being able to furnish consistent hydro power during high usage together would also help keep rates lower so that the CleanPowerSF can deliver power at lower prices,” he added.

Officials from the Sierra Club echoed Brooks, saying that the Sierra Club “supports the legislation in concept,” but requests that the legislation incorporate the ability for CleanPower SF to purchase Hetch Hetchy power from the PUC Power Enterprise.  “You have to look at it as peeling customers away from PG&E,” said John Rizzo, Sierra Club’s political chair. “The more you do that, the greener we can become.”

Although Brooks said he plans to meet with Sup. Wiener regarding how the ordinance could work in tandem with CleanPower SF, officials from Sup. Wiener’s office indicated that the ordinance is inherently separate from CleanPower SF. “[The ordinance] doesn’t further or hinder CPSF [Clean Power SF],” said Andres Power, Wiener’s legislative aide, who was involved in drafting the legislation. “It’s neutral from that perspective.”

Responding to questions about the legislation’s relationship with Clean Power SF (and whether or not collaboration might be a good strategy), Jeff Cretan, another of Sup. Wiener’s legislative aides, said, “Innovative solutions can come from multiple directions.” He further explained that, if passed, the legislation “could prove how other clean power initiatives can be successful.”

Water bottle industry lauds law helping public water systems

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The International Water Bottle Association (IBWA) sent out a press release this week [Tues/10] “applauding” a new federal law aimed at improving public drinking water. Although some might consider this unusual, the bottled water industry sources almost half of its water from municipal supplies.

“We don’t oppose tap water,” IBWA spokesperson Chris Hogan told us. “From an industry standpoint, we, in general, want people to drink water, whether it’s bottled or tap.” 

In recent years, however, both consumers and anti-disposable water bottle activists have chided the industry as wateful and unnecessary bottling and shipping what is basically tap water. “It is really just ‘public water sources’ that they take and sell back to the public,” Tomás Bosque, a member of anti-water bottle advocacy group Ban the Bottle, told us. 

According to the IBWA, 49 percent of bottled water is drawn from public sources. But Hogan said that public water goes through a numerous treatments — reverse osmosis, distillation, micro-filtration, carbon filtration, ozonation, and/or ultraviolet (UV) light — before it’s bottled and sold. “FDA standards for the bottled water are so strict it’s irrelevant where it’s sourced,” Hogan said.

But Bosque is skeptical of the IBWA’s praise of the newly signed federal legislation, which is called the Water Resources Reform and Development Act.  “We would imagine that this act will help streamline the bottled water manufacturer’s ‘purifying’ process thereby providing them with more revenue opportunities,” Bosque wrote in an email. 

The legislation, which was signed by President Barrack Obama on Tuesday [6/10], will increase federal funding to improve public water systems infrastructure.  “Overall, we are eager to see how this act will benefit the tap water infrastructure,” Bosque wrote. “We hope that providing some level of update to the more than 70,000 water systems will increase public awareness of this awesome, free resource and thereby help change behaviors.”

In San Francisco, however, a change in behaviors is inevitable. In March, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban the sale of non-reusable water bottles on city property. The ban will take effect in October of this year. Hogan said the IBWA is “not pleased” with the ban. “It’s a false argument to make municipal water stronger by banning bottled water,” he said. “They’re really two different things.”

Hogan explained that Sup. David Chiu, the author of the water bottle ban, should have banned other, more sugary packaged beverages — an industry Hogan cited as the bottled water industry’s main competitors — instead of water. Chiu didn’t immediately return our calls, but we’ll update this post if and when we hear back.