“Is Steampunk the Next Big Fashion Trend?” asked Time today. LOL-choke. Let’s just tune up our corsets and revel all weekend in burner-tinged retro-futurism at the Edwardian Ball (Fri/18 and Sat/19 at the Regency).
To wet your steamwhistle, here are pics from last year and an interview with founder Justin Katz.
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO The vivacious, vocal, and sweeter-than-sweet Honey Mahogany (www.itshoney.com) has graced the cover of the Guardian, sang at my wedding reception, and scraped me off the sidewalk outside Safeway innumerable times. But now that she’s “MISS HONEY MAHOGANY OF RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE SEASON 5” (premiering Monday, January 28 on Logo TV), I had to apply two months in advance for a 15 minute phone interview via her Beverly Hills agent. OK, OK, I could have just ambushed her at her new weekly Mahogany Mondays drag show at the revamping Midnight Sun (8pm, free. 4067 18th St., SF. www.midnightsunsf.com), but I wanted her with her “fame” face on, for kicks.
“It’s seriously a more-than-fulltime job being Honey Mahogany right now,” the Bay beauty practically panted. “If I think about everything I’m doing I’ll get overwhelmed. But the response has been so incredible — a couple of times at parties I’ve felt I needed a bodyguard!” And what would her dream bodyguard look like? “I just want to live that whole movie The Bodyguard,” she laughs. Has all the attention — and working with a catty cast — changed her at all? “I’m still sweet me, but if a queen crossed the line and went for someone I loved, oh, there was some reading.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2hl5_aMH_E
Besides releasing a single called “It’s Honey,” shooting videos, working on an EP, maintaining a social media empire, throwing a weekly party, and guest-hosting practically every damn party in the city — whew! — the “everything else” she doing, and why she really deserves this moment, is her day job as youth director at the Rainbow Community Center in Contra Costa, which offers HIV tests, counseling, a food pantry, and much more for an oft-overshadowed queer population.
But social worker selflessness isn’t the only way Honey can proudly claim to be first queen from San Francisco to represent us on the Race. “I channeled so much of what I learned growing up gay in the Bay for the challenges,” she said. “When we had to make something out of nothing, I thought of [drag fashion genius] Mr. David. And whenever something called for a different style, I had no problem, since the scene in San Francisco embraces everything from avant-garde to more traditional lipsync performances, and I had always been around all that, because it’s all in this family.
“In fact — you’ll see in the first episode — Rupaul pokes fun at me about being from San Francisco. But I’m proud to be a little bit gritty and a lot glamorous!” Well, good luck to you, Honey.
“Weirdo house, outsider artists, and underground pioneers,” is how Ghosts on Tape, one-quarter of the feisty-eared Icee Hot party crew (www.facebook.com/iceehot) categorizes the slew of awesome guests that have graced its tables in the three years the unpredictable party has thrown down, mostly at Public Works. This sounds, of course, like my kind of party — and for what launched as a joint devoted to some of the newer UK bass permutations crossing the pond via Internet, Icee Hot has grown into something much more fascinating: a full-fledged vibe. No decorations, no bells and whistles, cute but hardly groundbreaking flyer design, no distinct genre profile, an irregular schedule. But then: a packed floor, much respect, and a jaw-dropping roster of guest artists backed by the musically unhindered Icees (also including Shawn Reynaldo, Low Limit, and Rollie Fingers).
Those guests? MK, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Anthony “Shake” Shakir, Stingray, Bok Bok, Hieroglyphic Being, MikeQ, Ramadanman, Martin Kemp, Kingdom, Brenmar, Falty DL, and many, many more of my secret boyfriends … And, um, when house god Todd Edwards unveils a surprise, specially-composed Icee Hot theme song at the start of his set, you know you’re the shit.
The Icees are blasting a two-part third anniversary party at Public Works (www.publicsf.com): Sat/19 sees dreamy R&B chopper Jacques Greene (yes from the Azaelia Banks video) and Dutch hyperdubber Martyn on deck. Part two on Sat/26 brings in alien techno soundscaper Space Dimension Controller and astral floor-pounder Basic Soul Unit. It’s gonna be a crazy couple weeks of great music — and if you hit this link before it’s too late, you can go to both parties for a mere $15: www.tinyurl.com/iceehot3.
An excellent prestidigitator. San Francisco man of many talents samples himself live, looping sounds he coaxes from soda bottles and tin cans into multi-genre journeys that lead you by the ear onto the dance floor, as if by musical magic.
Thu/17, 8:30pm, $20. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com
Caught this intense (and handsome, hubba hubba) Brit techno-dubber when he was here a few months ago, right before his Luxury Problems EP dropped and cemented his reputation as one of the smartest electronic musicmakers going. Deep and hypnotic, but totally danceable, with a focus on industrial textures and maximum throb — should be perfect on Mighty’s soundsystem.
Fri/18, 10pm, $15–$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com
The SF Dirtybirder delivered my favorite moody bass mixes of 2012 — and he just dropped an awesome Soundcloud set called “Winter Jungle Mix” that’s doing wonders in pushing ahead the nascent drum ‘n bass revival. He’ll be working downlow wonders with the great J.Phlip, Leroy Peppers (a.k.a. the goofier side of Justin’s brother Christian) and Worthy at the Dirtybird label’s 2013 Winter Quarterly party.
Fri/18, 9pm-4am, $5 before 11, $20 after. mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com
The happy, unholy house-techno coalition of the Dubalicious and Freeform crews celebrates a sixer, with the Odyssey party’s excellent Robin Simmons joining Jonboy, Floorcraft, and many other SF faves on deck.
Fri/18, 8pm, $10. 1192 Folsom, SF. www.tinyurl.com/freedub6
Dear gay hookup app Grindr,
Maybe it’s just an indication of the type of homosexual who uses your service, and who deigns to participate in surveys like your new “Best of 2012” attempt to broaden your reach into hyperlocalism (soooo 2k9, btw). Or maybe its merely very telling of how you’ve lost any edginess to rivals like Scruff — which, judging from a Scruff glance, is very sad indeed.
But thanks for the violent retch and terrified giggle yesterday when you unveiled the reader-selected wieners winners of your besties awards. You somehow managed to record every crap gay mainstream stereotype of San Francisco you could, sorry. Also, craaaazy. Scott Wiener as “best community advocate”? Is Pottery Barn a community?
Anyway, San Francisco itself won every local category of the national survey. Also telling! What uncruisable gym queen with expensive hair is sitting in Badlands right now, possibly Scott Wiener’s best friend, refreshing Grindr and voting wildly? Can someone call their alcoholic Rihanna fan roommate in embroidered jeans and wraparound Gucci shades and find out?
Below is the list of top vote-getters, with commentary.
National winners
Gay icon of the year: Anderson Cooper
Straight ally of the year: Barack Obama
Best TV show: “Modern Family”
Best TV host: Ellen DeGeneres
Best source for gossip: TMZ
TIE for best comedian: Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho
Best athlete: Orlando Cruz
Movie of the year: “Magic Mike”
Song of the year: “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen
Gadget of the year: iPhone 5
Every one of these things is the exact color of water, but somehow boringer.
Grindr users picked these local landmarks to come out on top:
Gym with the hottest guys:
Fitness SF (San Francisco)
It’s not the winner per se that horrifies — FitnessSF came into being when it cast off the shackles of its homophobic Gold’s Gym franchise early last year. It’s the category itself. Claim that shallowness!
Best place to get a haircut:
Salon Baobao (San Francisco)
Waxing available!
Best place to take a first date:
Castro (San Francisco)
… to steal their wallet and leave them there.
Best Sunday funday:
Jock Sundays at the Lookout (San Francisco)
Cute but meh.
Favorite gay bar/club:
Badlands (San Francisco)
Fuck noooooo.
Favorite bartender:
Mike at Lookout (San Francisco)
If they mean our cute and dear friend Michael — we wholeheartedly agree with Grindr on this point. He’s a great argument for why you should just stick to bars for your pickups, maybe.
Best gay night/party:
Beatbox (San Francisco)
This is neither a night nor a party.
Best DJ:
Haute Toddy (San Francisco)
OK they could have done a lot worse than this completely inoffensive fingerful of vanilla frosting.
Fiercest drag queen/nightlife personality:
Pollo Del Mar (San Francisco)
If anyone deserves the incredibly contemporary gay slang term “fiercest,” it is Pollo for sure.
Local hero/community advocate of the year:
Scott Wiener (San Francisco)
According to our new sister paper SF Weekly, Wiener said this win finally “put to rest the issue of whether the nudity ban was a gay thing.” That was never the issue. But Scott is the mayor of Grindr!
Best local gay news outlet:
The Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco)
I am so surprised that GLOSS Magazine did not win this!!!
Eh, maybe we’re not so surprised by this list after all
If you think you’re cool (or merely interesting) — please drop everything and watch this clubkid-packed 1981 video masterpiece by scene terror Timmy Spence. He’s being shamelessly and publicly roasted on the occasion of his 60th(!) birthday this Saturday, courtesy of some might big drag queens. After the jump, Trannyshack’s Heklina dishes the dirt and gives the deets.
Well, there’s a few things I thought would never happen!
First of all, I never thought we would be celebrating Timmy Spence’s 60th Birthday…if there was ever someone with nine (or more lives), it’s The Tammers. We’ve been through a lot together; thrown in jail together in Mexico, a cross country road trip where I got so mad at him we didn’t speak all the way through Texas, a near death experience while hiking in Nevada, cruising the Christopher St. Piers in drag in NYC together back when that was fun, the list goes on and on. And she’s still kicking. Even after countless trips to the hospital, she’s still here, shocking and offending everyone and really serving as an inspiration to countless young queens. Like an Auntie Mame from hell, every fiber in her body screams, live….LIVE!
Won’t you join me in honoring this queen of queens this Saturday?
Timmy Spence’s 60th Birthday Bash!
Saturday January 12- Join us as we pay tribute to this legendary drag fossil! Who would have thought she would live this long?
With your hosts Peaches Christ & Heklina, and appearances by Arturo Galster, Ethel Merman, Matthew Martin, Miss X, Laurie Bushman, Darlin’, Pippi Lovestocking, D’Arcy Drollinger, Deena Davenport, Sexitude, and more! With DJ’s Chicken and Dank.
Rebel, 1760 Market St. @ Octavia. 8pm. No cover, RSVP here
Rockin’ Kids Singalong
Licensed clinical social worker and former punk rock singer-guitarist Stephanie Pepitone leads this musical play group for kids of all ages. Stephanie “leads families in about an hour’s worth of singing, dancing, music-making, and fun/chaos” with original tunes and familiar favorites.
Fridays, 10:30-11:30am, $10 per family. La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. www.lapena.org
Haitian Folkloric Dance
Live drumming accompanies instructor Portsha Jefferson’s class for all levels, which promises that “you will experience the meditative Yanvalou, the fiery rhythms of Petwo, the playful and celebratory dances of Banda and Rara. Expect a high energy class in celebration of a rich, spiritual tradition. Bring a long, flowy skirt if you have one.”
1:30-3pm, $13. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. www.dancemission.com
Feeding Your Soul: Mindful Cooking and Eating in the New Year
Let the onslaught of New Year’s resolution-keeping commence. Kick off the year with an intro to mindful eating, and get away from psychologically compulsive, physically harming habits when it comes to nourishing yourself. Life coach Carley Hauck and chef Greg Lutes (known for his uni crème brulee!) team up deliver a lecture and cooking demo — aimed at helping you recognize wasteful food behaviors and reinvigorate your love for creating and enjoying healthful dishes.
$25 18 Reasons members, $35 others. 18 Reasons, 3674 18th St., SF. www.18reasons.org
Understanding Chinese Medicine
A six-week course at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine that will introduce you to the basic life force concept of Qi, and then broaden your knowledge into acupuncture, Chinese herbs, tongue and pulse diagnostics, yin and yang, five elements, and the Chinese concept of internal organs.
Thursdays, 6pm-8pm, $120. Pioneer Square and Shuji Goto Library, 555 De Haro, SF. www.actcm.edu
New Year, New Poems: Celebrate Your Muse!
“In our day together we’ll read and talk about an array of accessible, provocative poems by fine writers including current poet laureates Kathleen Flenniken, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Natasha Trethewey, and we’ll do some whimsical, illuminating writing exercises to bypass our inner critics and experiment with themes and tones, phrases and rhythms. We’ll listen closely and encouragingly to each other’s voices. By the end of the day we’ll have shaped a handful of budding poems and sharpened our vision for future writing projects,” says Writing Salon teacher Kathleen McClung.
10am-4pm, $95 Writing Salon members, $110 others. Writing Salon, 720 York, SF. www.writingsalons.com
Kongolese Contemporary Dance
Extremely charismatic instructor Byb Chanel Bibene revisits his Congolese roots, in which contemporary and traditional movements intertwined to produce a unique, exhilarating style. No experience in dance is necessary for this warm, fun, and inviting workshop.
10am-noon, $12-15 sliding scale. Also Jan. 20. Counterpulse, 1310 Mission, SF. www.counterpulse.org
Exploring San Francisco District Six
Sometimes education begins with looking more closely at your community. Supervisor Jane Kim leads a tour of her district — including South of Market, Mid-Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods — highlighting some of the recent successes and challenges affecting its residents’ quality of life.
3:30pm, $10. See www.spur.org/events for more info.
Bagel Making Workshop
Hole yes! You’ll never need complain about the state of West Coast bagelry again when the good folks of Sour Flour workshops lead you through the basics. You’ll begin by mixing flour, starter, salt, and water and then learning to develop the glutens through various techniques. Finally you’ll find out about boiling and baking techniques. Bring a plate to roll your creation home.
12:30-2:30pm, $80. La Victoria Bakery, 2937 24th St., SF. www.sourflour.org/workshops
Introduction to Coptic Bookbinding
The Coptic style of bookbinding allows a book to be laid open flat, making it ideal for sketchbooks and journals. Offered at Techshop, the epicenter of hands-on DIY yumminess, this seminar allows you to take home your own handmade journal! (To blog about?)
10am-4pm, $95 TechShop members, $110 others. TechShop, 926 Howard, SF. www.techshop.ws
Basic Mysteries
Revered Beat poet, former New College professor, and Guardian GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award-winner David Meltzer takes us on a uniquely persona tour of poetry and poetics, exploring “the roots of poetry, the invention and mythology of writing systems, divination, Kabbalah, and the page.” The four-week course (Tuesdays through February) will cover a lot of transcendent ground.
7:00-9:30pm, $200. Mythos, 930 Dwight Way #10, Berk. Contact julmind@mtashland.net for more info.
Career Toolbox with Suzanne Vega
The acclaimed neo-folk singer introduces us to her concept of the “career toolbox,” which “contains a unique mix of creative, strategic and marketing skills that helped her in the early stages of her career.” Honest self-reflection and an understanding of necessary skills to survive a competitive marketplace are key. Plus, hello, Suzanne Vega.
11am-2pm, $52 CIIS members, $65 others. California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission, SF. www.ciis.edu
Wild Oakland: Nature Photography Basics at Lake Merritt
Amid its passel of no-cost classes, including weekly courses on Eskrima, the Filipino combat system and herbal medicine, the East Bay Free Skool offers great one-off tutorials. Nature group Wild Oakland hosts a few of these that entail happy tromps about Lake Merritt. Today’s is a wildlife photography class taught by Damon Tighe, whose freelance shots appear in Bay Nature and other publications.
Noon, free. Meet in front of Rotary Nature Center, 600 Bellevue, Oakl. eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com
Introduction to Neon
Surely there are few among us who could not use a custom-made neon sign. Perhaps you would like it to be clear that you are open for business. Maybe your roommate could use a permanent reminder that please Buddha Christ our savior we don’t leave our coffee mugs on the dining room table (ahem.) At any rate, this is one of this West Oakland metal mecca’s entry-level courses — check its online course schedule for more offerings in blacksmithing, welding, jewelry, glass, and more.
Sundays through 10am-6pm, $400. The Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. www.thecrucible.org
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO So, there is a hipster church called Reality SF. (Not to be confused with the pretty great, all-singing, some-dancing hipster synagogue, the Kitchen — www.thekitchensf.com. “Slow down, Jew up.”) I’m not sure what all goes on there because Jesus is kind of mainstream. But I do know that every Sunday morning when I’m crawling home from whosever’s house, there’s this amazingly fly and fashion-forwardy crowd of young people on the sidewalk outside Swedish American Music Hall. The hot hair alone had me praising the Holy Spirit. I needed to know more.
Turns out the Reality church dealie — www.realitysf.com, founded in 2010 — comes with indie-flavored music (plus set lists and free downloads), slick videos and podcasts, roving locations, and a charismatic leader named Dave. And, for the month of January, the glamorous congregation is meeting at Everett High School for “slow church” Sundays, including food trucks and a climactic re-baptism using a giant kiddie pool. Paging Portlandia: our SF reality is basically writing your next season. In any case: yes, it’s gay-friendly, but it’s still a bit conservative, so you probably won’t get laid there. However, you may get some great tips for your 2k13 look.
Faith, now with food trucks. Can a super-twee mobile artisan church-truck, possibly called Holy Rollin’, be far behind? I’m still waiting for my mobile leather bar/sex club truck, Glory Holellujah.
The effervescent Housepitality weekly pairs two of SF’s international techno heavyweights, the now-Berlin-based Byallo and the globe-hopping Aju, for some juicy tag-team table collab. It’ll be a little bit wiggy, a lot dancey. With Craig Kuna, Joel Conway, and JP Soul.
Wed/9, $5 before 11pm, $10 after. Icon, 1192 Folsom, SF. www.housepitalitysf.com
Classic Cali house DJs Hipp-e and Halo, aka H-Foundation, are flying in fresh from Mexico’s heated BPM Festival with some major comeback tailwind. They’re appearing with premium Glaswegian techno duo Slam, bringing some great ’90s energy.
Fri/11, 9:30-3:30am, $15–$20. Public Works, 161 erie, SF. www.publicsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znxyO7nUbsE
Is minimal techno retro yet? Of course, the scintillatingly clean sound (once dubbed “Windex music” by our own Greg Bird of the Kontrol crew) never really went away. But essential minimal label Poker Flat was launched in 1999 (the same year Richie Hawtin dropped seminal Decks, EFX, & 909) — next in line, after a forthcoming drum and bass revival, on our retro creep up the ’90s. Poker Flat founder Steve Bug’s appearance should be a treat for those who want to revisit the sound — and see what tech-house-y things Bug’s been doing with it.
Fri/11, 10pm-4am, $12-$15. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.blasthaus.com
One of my musical high points of 2010 was seeing dreamy glitch-hop pioneer Prefuse 73 at Slim’s, engaging in a ear-blowing impromptu jam session with a live guitarist and gonzo future bass guru Gas Lamp Killer on drums. As the live opener for beloved Philly trippy-hopper RJD2 (also live), I’m sure more sparks will fly high.
Fri/11, 10pm-3am, $20–$25. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com
The party list this week is so full of dudes. We need some drag queens up in here, for sers. Happy third birthday to the weekly Some Thing party, put on by my favorite trio of theatrical gender clowns — Glamamore, VivvyAnne ForeverMore, and DJ Down-E — who really know how to put on shoooow. One of the best things in the city is Haute Gloo’s genius interactive craft table. I made a swan out of porn mags and pancake batter! DJs Stanley Frank and Robin Simmons play delightful tunes from all over.
Fri/11, 10pm-late, $8. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.tinyurl.com/something3
Two diabolical bass-bounce kids, bringing it down at the youthful, Angelfiery, green-screen-dream Y3K party. With Nanosaur, Joaquin Bartra, candy, bubbles, and lasers.
Fri/11, 10pm, $10 advance. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com
Really looking forward to some earhole mindfuckery from various experimental electronic crews at the bleeding edge Lab space. With Antimatter, Pulsating Cyst, Ebony Cubbyhole, Beast Nest, Moo Kao, Ribspace, and more. I made none of the above names up.
Sat/12, 8pm-11pm, $7–$20 sliding scale. The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. Facebook invite, www.thelab.org
marke@sfbg.com
POODLES ON PARADE Marriage, the military, nudity bans, Bravo TV: queople, why must we torture ourselves! It’s true that we are everywhere, lurking even in the aeries of stupid-headedness. But queen, please, put down that can of mentally challenged and back slowly away in your new cha-cha heels. Here I am once again to call my people out for their foibles of faggotry with the annual Lamebow Awards. Even in a banner year for LGBT wins, we still clutched a Gucci full of dumb.
The cliches write themselves: My Dearest Scott Wiener, I write this not as someone who disagrees profoundly with your “moderate” politics or your collection of Banana Republic v-neck sweaters. I write this because, this year, a supervisor named Wiener, representing the Castro, got so obsessed with a few naked guys that he rammed through a nudity ban (oh, and a bunch of other awful stuff, too) that made national news. I have to talk to my relatives back East about all this. My great-aunt-in-law almost choked to death on her turkey from laughter. Please stop.
Not helping: Mountain-out-of-molehill blogger Michael Petrelis in turn became obsessed with Wiener’s penis, attempting to snap a pic of the Supes’ member at a City Hall urinal. Not making this up. Nor this: it took too long for Petrelis’ camera from the ’90s to warm up, so he only managed a shot of Wiener brushing his teeth, post-pee. Petrelis is being sued by Wiener.
Seriously not helping though: In August, 28-year-old Floyd Corkins II, a former LGBT center volunteer, attempted to storm the Washington, DC headquarters of the Family Research Council (recently and correctly categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), shooting a security guard.
You just helped, actually: We never knew we should be boycotting Sodastream products because they are manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. But thanks to a widely viewed YouTube video — in which it appears a peaceful Code Pink protest inside Sodastream-carrying Cliff’s Variety in the Castro is violently broken up by hysterically screaming Cliff’s employees — we know! Troll is successful.
The fact is, you’re late: “The fact is, I’m gay,” Anderson Cooper wrote to blogger Andrew Sullivan by way of coming out. Anderson Cooper is the Clay Aiken of our generation.
The fact is you’re veeery late: As her 50th birthday approached, Kristy McNichol came out. “She hopes that coming out can help kids who need support,” said her publicist. There are no kids who know who Kristy McNichol is.
And you’re just trapped in a closet full of spray-on hair forever now: Many, many of John Travolta‘s male masseurs “opened up” about his happy endings. His response? A horrifying Christmas album reunion with Olivia Newton John full of the most awkward sexual metaphors ever. Greased lightning!
Freedom to fly, to fail: Director Lena Wachowski came out beautifully, vocally, and powerfully as a transgender person with deep thoughts about the nature of sexual identity. Too bad Cloud Atlas had me rolling my eyes to the high heavens.
Hide your buns, hide your wings: Reviving his meme career somewhat, Antoine Dodson said she was gonna eat Chik-fil-A anyway. Well-played.
I’m sorry: Castigating Log Cabin Republicans is easier than finding Anderson Cooper on Grindr, but watching them bend over backwards to justify supporting the Tea Party party when even our president had “evolved” on gay marriage was a real hoot. Especially because they had to say “fiscal” so many times.
All of us: While we were all arguing over gay shit (as usual), a young musical genius named Frank Ocean quietly erased the goalposts and went public with his generation’s sublime, amorphous “meh” about sexual labels. Let’s catch up.
Anybody can go out to any fabulous party on New Year’s Eve. But how long can you survive into the dawning of 2k13? Below are the best parties happening on Tuesday, New Year’s Day — how low can you go! (It’s kind sad that we now only have one day a year that’s like SF nightlife in the 90s, sigh.)
But first, here’s the exact chill-before-thrill mix I want to hear at 7am rolling up to the venue with my girls, blunt smoke pouring from the cracked window:
OK Lets Do This. Click in the names for Facebook invite link thingie.
Features: Hot queers, bedazzled club kids and dragged-out drag queens, leftover horny bears from the Bearracuda NYE party in the same venue, gorgeous early risers.
Music: Post-disco disco, acidy house, kiss-kiss techno with DJs Stanley Frank, Robert Jeffrey, Doc Sleep, Steve Fabus, Sergio Fedasz, P-Play, M*J*R, Trevor Sigler
4am-10am, $10. Beatbox, 314 11th St., SF.
Features: Supperclub’s athletic blend of acrobatic burlesquers, cool characters, old school partiers, and feather-bedecked smilers.
Music: Lovely, pumping soulful house and tech plus a dose of psychedelia with DJs David Harness, Galen, Rrooz, Andrew Phelan, Alain Octavo, Cosmic Selector, Michael Anthony, Meikee Magnetic, Marija Dunn
4am-?, $15-$20. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF.
Features: This party at Monarch was THE party last year, a blurred and delirious intersection of dancefloor mavens and fabulous personages (a few of whom had lost their shoes somewhere along the night’s way, ahem.) Good times.
Music: Straight up house-y (and disco edit) goodness from special NYC guest Justin Vandervolgen, Solar, Conor, 40 Thieves, James Glass, Junior, Dewey Chan, Jdisco, Soft Soil.
6am-?, $10-$20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF.
Features: Weekend mornings at the lovely Monroe in North Beach have become the new End Up for those of us into great music and meeting up with other adventurous souls. I was tickled pink to hear there’s a New Year’s Day party there — it’ll be cute-bananas.
Music: Techno! Lots of techno. I bet I know what huge name DJ will be the special surprise guest (ahem, Bee Lurridge?) — but that person will have great backing from DJs Nikita, Rooz, Bo, Nikola Baytala, MossMoss, Pete Fraiser, and Francesco Signorile.
Features: Tons and tons of Burning Man fun, including a lot of runny neon mascara and sequined cowboy hats — now even bigger since this party has moved to Mighty and taken over the whole block.
Music: Funky techno with a little acid-crunk craziness from the Space Cowboys camp DJs and friends.
6am-?, $15-$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF.
Features: Starts at 2pm, so you’ll get a bit of everything at this beloved party teaming up two legendary SF house crews at the well-patioed, great sounding Club Cocomo.
Music: Sooo yummy house with deep international flavor from special Mexican guest Daniel Maloso plus breakout local duo Tone of Arc and DJs Tasho, Solar, Deron, Galen, Sweet P, J-Bird
2pm-2am, $10-$20. Club Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF.
BRASS TAX: SUPPER OF SURVIVORS
Features: More kooky, cray-cray, superfunky Burning Man-based goodness from the infamous Brass Tax afterhours crew at this gonzo annual affair at Public Works.
Music: Funky house, alien techno, and straight-up funk from DJs JoeJoe, Ding Dong, Mace, Ernie Trevino, Haute Mess, Ethan Miller, MoPo, and TophOne
3pm-midnite, $5-$10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF.
If you are still party-functional and looking for some awesome parties to go to around 11pm, might I suggest the bass-head Icee Hott DJs guesting at the ever-amazing High Fantasy at Aunt Charlie’s and the friendly, dance-crazed future bass shenanigans of Soundpieces at Monarch.
YEAR IN FILM Welcome to “Shit Year-in-Film Writers Say”! This was a swag/YOLO year for video memes (vemes?): they helped take down a major presidential candidate (47 percent, baby), helped elect another presidential candidate (Obama hugging Sandy victims), made sure “Call Me Maybe” and “Somebody That I Used To Know” popped up in some form or other on our feeds all year. Also, if .GIFs count as videos — and 2012 was surely the year of the .GIF revival — then even McKayla Maroney is impressed. Forget Angelina Jolie’s leg, texting Hillary, botched Ecce Homo, and stingray photobomb. We are totally going to make it through this list of the big video memes of the year without a single “Ermahgerd.”
>>Read more from our Year in Film 2012 issue here.
Kony 2012 “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come — whose time is now.” So began the most epic viral tl;dw;po (too long; didn’t watch; porn’s on) videos of our time, in which Invisible Children, Inc. attempted to bring down a merciless Ugandan guerilla warlord by … asking you to put up posters on telephone poles around your neighborhood on April 20? Something like that, but mostly it was about how videogenic Invisible Children founder Jason Russell’s son was, and also how suddenly all of America understood what the Facebook “share” button was for. (Back then, people were actually confused over the difference between “like” and “share” — Kony trained us well.) The whole purpose was to make Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony famous, thus insuring his doom somehow. But it was all upstaged by Russell’s own fame-sealing incident, a TMZ-perfect naked masturbation meltdown on the streets of San Diego. “Exhaustion”? We think celebration. Break out the meth, we’re saving Uganda!
Innocence of Muslims The thing is, what happened in that compound in Benghazi really was weird. But we’re inundated with stereotypes of “Muslim Rage” on the one hand and concrete examples of the power of social media to radicalize the Arab world on the other. So, it was all too easy to believe a mob of incensed Muslims — exacerbated by some crappy YouTube video about Muhammed’s life that makes the seapunk aesthetic look positively Picasso-esque, which was produced by a slimy Muslim-baiting Egyptian ex-pat Coptic Christian, now in jail for violating probation — broke into an American consulate building and killed some cool people. That’s no more the true story than this video.
“Gangnam Style” One … billion … views. That is all. Oh, and the best dance craze since Chicken Noodle Soup. Suck it, Macarena.
Curiosity OK not a meme exactly — our much-feared mash-up with Wall-E and Short Circuit‘s Number 5 singing Katy Perry’s “E.T.” never materialized — but this Mars Rover surely was one of the most striking image-makers of, like, forever. Hey girl, exquisite NASA wanderer Curiosity Tweeted, Facebooked, apped, and even selfied live from the freaking red planet. Best of all, it provided brilliant stop-motion panoramic video footage of our beloved invaders’ homeland. Also, hot mohawk guy.
Year of the Cats Nothing will ever beat 2009 in terms of monumental years for Internet cat RULING. That was the year that Keyboard Cat, Maru, and “Kittens Inspired by Kittens,” along with ubiquitous feline parodies of Three Wolf Moon, all made their debuts. And we still adored Obama? Miss u, 2009. But look out, year that Animal Collective topped the Billboard charts — 2012 produced its own trifecta of power kitties: Tard, Lil Bub, and Colonel Meow (although we’re partial to klutzy, boa-bedecked, recently politically outspoken Luna the Fashion Kitty). Wall-eyed, tart-tongued Bub and fuzz-addled alien leader Colonel Meow got a bit derailed by infighting, leaving an opening that Tard the Grumpy Cat seized to become the indisputable, adorably cantankerous winner of mew-thousand-and-squeelve. All were featured on Good Morning America, countless audio-challenged YouTube videos, and fantasy airbrush artwork of the Mayan Apocalypse. We would give anything to snuggle Tard. Just saying.
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Buckethead is playing the Great American Music Hall on New Year’s Eve. Isn’t that all you need to know, really? But if you must shred your own final night of 2k12 with a lampshade, rather than a KFC bucket, on your head, here are some ragers I’d recommend. Check out this week’s music and stage listings for more.
And since it’s the end of another spectacular year of love on the dance floor, your humble (yet gorgeous) Super Ego says thanks and spanks for supporting her alternative, culture-forward nightlife writing. In a media landscape that’s rapidly tilting toward pay-to-play, I try my double-damndest to keep it real and write about the actual best things out there that are making nightlife better. I couldn’t do it without all your input and affection. (/wipes tear) (takes swig). Happy 2k13!
“A Very Cheap & Vulgar Tenderloin-Realness NYE!” Let’s kick off on a high note! DJ Bus Station John is offering a respite from the big-name (except his, of course), overpriced hoo-haw this year, with this super-affordable gay disco extravaganza, sure to melt the cockles of your hardened election-year heart. One of my favorite people, Donna Persona, hosts. Cock-tales!
9pm, $7–$10 sliding scale. Aunt Charlie’s lounge, 133 Turk, SF. www.auntcharlieslounge.com
Afrolicious NYE Who can deny the hotness and talent of the funky McGuire brothers, Senor Oz and Pleasuremaker? Their fantastic combination of live-accompanied Latin funk, afrobeat, old school gold and classic soul always make me and many smile ear-to-ear. This bash will have you shaking tail vigorously. With horn king Will Magid and DJ Lucio K.
9pm, $15–$30. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com
Bearracuda NYE This huge gay bear party is guaranteed to be the biggest. Physically. And we’re really into that. With DJs Matt Consola, Medic, and Freddie King of Pants, plus assorted furballs.
8pm-late, $20. Beatbox, 314 11th St., SF. www.bearracuda.com
Bootie SF: NYE 2013 Oh Bootie, you’ve given us so, so many years of mash-up joy — don’t stop believin’! Now you’re upping the ante by joining dark forces with one of the longest-running and best parties in the city, Death Guild (goth and gamer goodness!) for a Bootieful blowout. With A Plus D, Mykill, Adrian and Mimi, Vau de Vire Society, and more.
9pm-late, $30–$40. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. wwww.bootiesf.com
Club 1994 New Years Eve Ball I wasn’t even born until 1998, but I’m dying to know what color slap-on bracelets will be available at this cheeky flashback party. Possibly there will be Urkel balloons! DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Vin Sol take us all to TRL and TLC.
10pm, $50–$100. Vessel, 85 Campton Pl., SF. www.club1994.com
Dark Room NYE Fear not the future-past, Siouxsie Siouxes. This neo-goth and witchy punk hot house will feature dark live insanity and spooky dragness.
10pm, $5–$7. Hot Spot, 1414 Market, SF; www.facebook.com/DarkRoomSF
Extravaganza NYE Ball No, this is not a vogueing scene from Paris is Burning — it’s a great dose of homegrown house and techno, as beloved DJ Alland Byallo swings back in from Berlin to join Nikola Baytala, DJ Spun, M3, Omar, and a slew of hot rekkids kids.
9pm-late, $20–$45. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com
Futuropolis Broken bass and acid crunk galore! Soooo many DJs and performance at this one — standouts include an-ten-nae, the Polish Ambassador, Star Slinger, Holy Other, Mykki Blanco, Blackbird Blackbird. Twelve hours of music, goes until 9am when we look prettiest.
9pm-veeeery late, $50 advance. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com
Honey Sunset NYE Two of our biggest and best house parties team up once again to blaze. Co-headliner Manik is an expert at blending guitar pop into electronic sets that soar, while featured duo Still Going, one of my personal faves, keeps the dancefloor rolling into the wee hours with good ol’ fashioned massive vibes. There will also be SF-flavored personality galore.
9pm-late, $15–$30. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com
Lucky 13: Lexington Club NYE Bash Another rad dyke-a-palooza from the great folks at the Lex. DJ Jenna Riot stokes the lesbinsanity. Hottt girls and bois everywhere. Cans of Sophia Coppola Champagne only six bucks!
9pm, free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF. www.lexingtonclub.com
M.O.M. NYE Pretty much the nation’s most successful and cute Motown night, Motown on Mondays, is getting supreme with this wonder-ful party. “We’re gonna party like it’s 1959!”
8pm, $20. Madrone, 500 Divisadero, SF. www.momsf.com
NYE at THENWBLK Drag goddess Juanita More showers her party fabulosity down upon this new and fantastic showplace space in the Mission that feels like an underground rave hole. Blaksheep, comprised of DJs Ken Vulsion and Derek Bobus, supply the techno-ey tunes, while Voodoo Van provides the eats.
9pm-late, $45–$65. THENWBLK, 1999 Bryant, SF. nyenwblk.eventbrite.com
The People Can we all just move to Oakland and have the People throw parties all the time? That old-time house magic is alive and well at People parties, full of art, wonder, and a whole lot of “woo!”s from the dancefloor. Revered poet and decks master Rich Medina is in from Philly to set the new year off right.
9pm-late, $10–$20. New Parish, 579 18th St., Oakl. www.thenewparish.com
culture@sfbg.com
SHOPPING Dearest Christian and Christian-adjacent reader: it’s too late for the Internet. Unless you want to shell out Santa-sized bucks for overnight delivery, you’re gonna have to fill those loved-ones’ stocking IRL, with a good ol’ fashioned brick-and-mortar dash through the metaphorical snow.
We mean you’re going to have to go shopping, duh. And your flight leaves on Saturday, or their flight lands on Friday, or you’re actually on your way to a holiday house party tonight! You can do better than a gift card. Yet even though you seem surrounded by retail options every moment of your life, when you’re forced to suddenly think about what to get tea party maven Aunt Tilly or your nine-year-old second cousin who you think is named Erica (Caitlin? Amy? Danica?) or your drunk sort-of-friends, the mind blanks and the plan nogs.
So some of the options below may seem obvious any other time of year, but here they are to help kickstart your Christmas consumer creativity motors. get ready to fill your sack with goodies! (Don’t forget to bring your own sack.)
Calendars, calendars, calendars! No gift crisis cannot be solved by a glossy 2013 calendar featuring soft-focus lighthouses of Nova Scotia, baby baboons smearing ice cream in their hair, or various memes of yesteryear, repackaged helpfully for the Web-tardy. Oh, by the way, Green Apple is the largest bookstore in California, so there are books — and extremely helpful staff recommendations! — for everyone on your listicle.
506 Clement, SF. (415) 387-2272, www.greenapplebooks.com
Heartfelt is the very definition of a last-minute gift emporium, a place filled with low-cost creative items for all ages. Italian cookware, spandex log pillows, a hanging mobile you can customize with your own art … it’s an affordable world of creativity at your fingertips in Bernal Heights! Joke gifts (really creative ones), retro gifts, classic gifts, cool stuff you won’t see anywhere else .. you can cover almost everyone on your list in one heartfelt stop.
436 Cortland, SF. (415) 648-1380, www.heartfeltsf.com
OK, more than 200 artists are showing off their goods all weekend in Berkeley — pottery, jewelry, t-shirts, hats, wall art, candles, leatherwork — surely you can find something for your dad while enjoying all the colorful characters, groovy tunes, and interesting eats that Berkeley can bring? It’s a bargain bonanza.
Dec 22-24, 11am-6pm, free. Between Dwight Way and Bancroft Way, Berk. www.telegraphfair.com
There are handmade smores. There are marshmallows made of vanilla and Maker’s Mark. Adorable candy-filled Christmas tree ornaments? Yes ma’am. A cornucopia of season-perfect foil-wrapped chocolates; pre-wrapped “round of four” gift packs featuring four kinds of house made candy; large jars of gianduja, chocolate-hazelnut spread that puts Nutella to shame? What were we talking about again?
1507 Vallejo, SF. (415) 921-8000, www.thecandystoresf.com
Put a bird on them! Everyone needs a little twee under the tree, and this store — recently relocated to Divisadero in the place of our former butcher store — has lovely trinkets for all, in that naïve-sophisticate hipster style so popular with the kids these days. Everyone’s koo-koo for Rare’s impeccable jewelry collection and neato home decor and kitchenware collections — there are actually coffee mugs with birds on them, yasss. Unique kaleidoscopic printed blocks by Lisa Congdon will brighten anyone’s season, while festive Leah Duncan pillows add punch to every couch.
600 Divisadero, SF. (415) 863-3969, www.raredevice.net
What says love more than an exquisite aluminum egg timer, or cheer more than a fanciful cutting board shaped like a chicken? You’ll be ladling out the love (ladles available) and satisfying every cook and non-cook’s desire for kitchen accessories at this supercute Mission cupboard of culinary delights. This year, stick a whisk in their stocking and whip up some fun! (Sorry.) Or simply gift a unique recipe zine from P+P’s neat library. Great for everyone? Sparq stones — soapstone cubes you can use in hot or cold drinks to maintain temperature — and kicky colored salt cellars.
593 Guerrero, SF. (415) 206-1134, www.potandpantry.com
The venerable and much-loved Four Star Video rental shop in Bernal Heights found that its business model had run its course, so it morphed into Succulence, a yummy boutique plant store that features (of course) succulents but also a wide range of gardening supplies and cute classes for kids of all ages. Creative and artsy plants and planters, terrariums, hanging plants — plenty here for anyone who likes to fill their home with greenery. Plus: Really cool hand-carved ballpoint pens, which, in the $50 range, are cheap for one-of-a-kind writing instruments.
402 Cortland, SF. (415) 282-2212, www.thesucculence.com
We’ll take any gift you’d like to gift us from this liberal bastion of bookery on Market Street. A wonderfully curated selection of tomes focuses on history and social and environmental issues, with a generous sprinkling of poetry, theory, and California-centric items. (While researching for this article, we were compelled by joy to snag a set of dish towels with old-time maps of the Golden State printed on them.) You’ll find great stuff for out-of-towners, armchair prophets, and new San Francisco arrivals here, or anyone who loves this kooky-beautiful land of ours.
1680 Market, SF. (415) 431-6800. www.thegreenarcade.com
We have teenage boys in our life! Possibly you do in yours. They like to dress cool. Upper Playground has so many uniquely SF cool and boyish t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and related items that shopping for our cool teenage friends was so easy we began to suspect the whole enterprise. Is this reality? (There are also tasty items for women and walls as well.)
220 Fillmore, SF. (415) 861-1960, www.upperplayground.com
This Noe Valley treasure is billed as “San Francisco’s Original Chocolate Boutique” — but we call it Dr Coacoa-nassus’ Chocolatarium of Head-Explosion and Wonderment. There is every kind of fantasy chocolate bar combination to be found within its charming bounds — maple-coconut chocolate, blueberry chocolate, gingerbread chocolate, luscious vegan chocolate truffles, tiny bon bons with the face of Mrs. Claus sculpted upon them! People, they had Obama chocolates here during the election. The walls are lined with mystery cabinets labeled with street signs indicating the theme of the candy within, making for an adventurous shopping experience as well.
4069 24th St., SF. (415) 641-8123, www.chocolatecoveredsf.com
Seriously, there is so much of interest here you can’t go wrong. Insanely detailed, completely untranslatable magazines devoted to singular cats and manga insanity at Kinokuniya Books; novelty fruit and animal eraser sets at Mai Do Fine Stationery so full of squee you want to eat them; scary-good replica samurai swords at Katachi; exquisitely wrapped boxes of chocolate strawberry mochi at Nippon Ya … spend a couple hours wandering this mall and you’ll come out with some really unique presents. Plus you’ll be full of delicious sushi and hot tea.
For those of you who haven’t been listening: Ana Sia is kind of a big deal. One of those quaintly San Francisco nightlife things — you blink for a hot minute, and someone familiar on the scene blows up, their hard work rewarded with major festival gigs, a large and growing following, and DJ sets being featured on NPR. Heeeey.
I’ve been a fan of the poised yet energetic Ana for a long while, and I must say I’m pleased as punch for her continued success — and to see what she’s got in store for us as she plays again in SF. (She’s one of the headliners, along with the UK’s excellently house and techy Ben UFO, at Friday night’s As You Like It party at Beat Box.) Onstage, the local Frite Nite label head quickly pulls you into her zone, tempering a concentration born of pure appreciation of the music with some playful bouncing and disarming charm. “I’m having a shit-ton of fun!” you can hear her shouting from the decks.
Categorizing her actual sound, however, can prove challenging.
Ana’s been through a few transfomations. I first became aware of her as a member of the underground techno scene, then as a part of the crunk-meets-dubstep-meets-Burning Man Bassnectar touring juggernaut — at one point pimping herself with a wink as playing “global slut psy-hop,” a moniker which went well with the gaudy scene of the late ’00s. Then, as part of Frite Nite, she became a brainier glitch advocate, delving into more adventurous realms of broken bass. But she’s always been courageous, forceful, and fun — even now, when she’s adding full-on house and ravier techno to the mix, as you can hear below.
Love it. She took a minute to email me the answers to some questions in anticipation of her Friday gig. Welcome back, Ana.
SFBG You’ve been playing all over lately — how does it feel when you come back to San Francisco?
ANA SIAReturning home and playing shows with my peers and in front of what very much feels like family is the greatest part of my schedule. What makes San Francisco so tight is the diversity and multi-cultural melange of the people, and those acknowledgments certainly carry through to the art scene. Connecting with listeners is easier on the home court — I feel much more safe and secure introducing more challenging music and unfamiliar sounds because everyone is so open here, They genuinely understand and love music. Ask any touring artist this question and I bet they say the same about our community here!
SFBGYour sound has really evolved since you were playing here regularly. Can you tell me where you’re at now, and what we can expect?
ANA SIA I think the one thing that has not changed about my sound is that it’s always different than the last time — whether that’s a yay or nay thing is another issue though. But right now, people can expect the agenda i’ve been pushing for a minute now; classy yet ratchet bass music, stepping on the toes of techno-house. And yeah, i’ve always tried to stay ahead of the curve for DJ sets, but honestly all the latest trends and best music out right now is re-introducing fundamental dance music. It’s nothing really super-shiny and new. It’s all slightly more modernized revisions of classic sounds which i’m grateful for. Because for me, my young rave days began with house.
SFBG What equipment are you using lately — and can you tell us about some of your recent or upcoming releases?
ANA SIA Ableton Live is still my bandmate, but I have this new bossy future-midi controller, the QuNeo. I’m working on an EP right now, probably music that no ones’ expecting but all the tunes are in the territory of the above mentioned.
SFBG In my mind, your sound is always evolving, you’ve always been on the cutting edge — it’s hard for a writer like me to keep up with you! Who are you listening to now? And since you travel so much, do you have any good stories from the road?
ANA SIA Such a loaded question! Presently in my playlist of the last few months : Kendrick Lamar, Detroit Swindle, Bambounou, George Fitzgerald, Bach, 2 Chains, Dj Spinn, Lukid. And road stories? that’s classified information. Mostly because i fear self-incrimination. But i will say that it is shocking how many really great sushi restaurants there are in the most unsuspected of places in the middle of America.
AS YOU LIKE IT with ANA SIA and BEN UFO
Fri/14, 10pm-4am, $15, $10 before 10pm, $20 after
Beatbox
314 11th St., SF.
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Look, if I was doing my job properly, there’s no way in Hello Kitty I’d remember what happened on the club scene the past year. It’s all fuzzy shapes and drunk colors, like Barbara Bush in a bathhouse. Last February, it took me two whole pages of tiny type just to list my favorite weekly clubs, so I’m not gonna go into all that here. (I will say that parties like Housepitality, Honey Soundsystem, Lights Down Low, Icee Hot, Dub Mission, Non-Stop Bhangra, No Way Back, As You Like It, Forward, Deep, Base, and Sunset continued to introduce us to incredible DJs. And wasn’t there someone from Detroit here, like, every week?) Here are some things, however, I do recall
Loudest: Body and Soul at Mighty — my ears rang for a week, my feet for three.
Wowest: Amon Tobin’s giant tetris of digital video projections for his ISAM Live 2.0 tour at the Greek Theater.
Scary-Hottest: International leather techno entity Luther at Folsom Street Fair.
Coolest: Marco De La Vega, cross-genre promoter of the year, watching from the DJ booth as a kick-ass $3000 light falls on a table’s-worth of Balam Acab and Andy Stott’s live electronic equipment at Public Works. Then finishing his cocktail before handling the ensuing panic.
Wowest, part 2: The SF Symphony’s American Mavericks concert series (including a Kate Bush-referencing piece by DJ Masonic), SF Opera’s “Nixon in China,” the amazing Soundwave Festival, the hella robust Electronic Music festival.
Trippiest: Those immersive projections at Public Works, which turned Laurent Garnier’s live show into a cartoon-heart-filled rave aquarium and Jeff Mills’ into a star-map vortex.
Cutest: The tiny flashing lights on the ceiling of the remodeled, excellent 222 Hyde.
Latest: We got a trap club (Trap City), a new wave of cyber-horror drag performance artists (at Some Thing, Dark Room, High Fantasy), a packed gay sports bar (Hi Tops), a great-sounding new club (Monarch), a lunchtime dance party (Beats for Lunch, also at Monarch), an outbreak of vogueing (everywhere), a queer nu-hip-hop club (Swagger Like Us), a queer funk classics party (Love Will Fix It), and a weird “sparkling alcohol water” (Air). But we lost Club Six, which I loved. Also I think dubstep died.
Loveliest: Dancing in a church with 30 other people to hip-house legend Tyree Cooper, singing along to “Turn Up the Bass.” Watching real house parties like The People blow up in the East Bay. Sipping homemade sljivovica behind the decks with DJ Zeljko of Kafana Balkan. Doing the jerk ’til I melted at Hard French. DJing (eek!) Club Isis classics on vinyl at Go Bang. I think I almost made out with Kenny Dope at Red Bull Music Academy? Oh, and running into you.
>>Check the rest of our YEAR IN MUSIC 2012 issue.
1. Todd Terje, “Inspector Norse” This was a dance music year that sometimes seemed to vacillate among three primary moods — prim sophistication, moneyed “indulgence,” and too-broad jokes. But Norwegian Terje dared proffer the sweetest humor in this instant earworm’s worth of re-engineered nostalgia, embracing the cheery electronic toodles of early ’80s British and Scandinavian TV show themes (cf. especially “Grange Hill” and “Swap Shop,” though not “Inspector Morse”) and bringing smiles back to the dance floor.
2. John Talabot, FACT Mix 315 A spectacular year for the Spaniard, whose expansive take on the decades-old Balearic sound already had him pegged for a 2012 favorite, even before he dropped excellent album Fin, which toyed with melancholic UK bass sounds and yielded my second favorite tune of the year, hopelessly romantic “So Will Be Now” with Pional. But this mix for FACT showed that the dark underpinnings of witchy house and the sunstroked uplift of Ibiza could be reconciled via a tingly rush of subtle, brilliant psychedelia. Trippy, lovely, and the right little bit of creepy.
3. Plan B, “Ill Manors” I detested The Prodigy the first time around — they were goofy twats who had nothing to be angry about. No surprise “Firestarter” was played for the Queen at this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. So much for anarchy in the UK, although Azaelia Banks mashing it up with “212” at Coachella was fun. UK rapper-singer Plan B managed to weld the Prodigy (and nascent drum and bass) revival to the real world anarchic energy of last year’s UK riots, his Tchaikovsky-sampling tune shivering with council flat rage, ambivalent violence, Olympic protest, and youthful nihilism. Watch his self-directed, horrifically poignant shoestring video, then laugh at the Grammys as accolades rain down on Romain Gavras’ extravagant ripoff for “No Church in the Wild.”
4. Rrose, Smoke Machine Podcast 069 Electronic Body Music for our time, rippling with muscular textures and ethereal trap doors.
5. Justin Martin, Crackcast 019 For all the diversity of the local scene, the Dirtybird crew is still our major player on the global dance music stage. (Of our three big breakout acts this year, Safeword is rad, Poolside is cute, Pillow Talk leaves me cold so far.) Fine, I adore them. Nobody else sounds like they’re having more fun while slyly executing tricky, emotionally satisfying bass maneuvers like Claude VonStroke and his stable. This year was stellar for the fiendishly clever Justin in terms of addictive mixes (his album “Ghettos and Gardens” was good, too, but I took issue with the insensitive tone of some of the promotional materials). This podcast, along with his Fabric and Clash ones, never left my iRotation.
OTHERS: MK, Old School Classics Mix; Le1f, “Wut”; Azaelia Banks, “Fierce”; Fantastic Mr. Fox, “San’en”; Andy Stott, “Luxury Problems EP”; Dutch Uncles, “Fester”; Ripperton, “Let’s Hope”; Sailor & I, “Tough Love (Aril Brikha remix)”; Jessie Ware and Julio Bashmore, “110%,”; Disclosure, “Latch”; Prince Club and Steve Huerta, “Can’t Let Go”; Bwana, “Baby Let Me Finish (Black Orange Juice Remix)”; Stereogamous, “Feel Love Anew”; Little People, “Aldgate Patterns.”
Five years ago the local nightlife scene was broadening its scope in a multitude of awe-inspiring musical directions, from contemporary Afrobeat and baile funk to experimental global indie. In that atmosphere of diverse ferment, a couple of super-talented kids, recently returned from Argentina, started Tormenta Tropical (along with label Bersa Discos), a monthly at the Elbo Room dedicated to the electronic spin many Latin American artists were putting on the traditional cumbia sound.
The sound centered around club Zizek in Buenos Aires and its ZZK label — but it also found a home, strangely enough, in the tropical-hungry underground clubs of Montreal. Tormenta Tropical provided a third leg of the nu-cumbia triangle, and has been known ever since as a go-to for cutting edge global bass and electro-Latin tracks. There were also a lot of glowing Virgin Marys on the DJ booth and a taco truck parked outside.
This Saturday, oro11 and Shawn Reynaldo (formerly Disco Shawn), celebrate the fifth anniversary of the club, and it’s gonna be a humdinger, chicas.
Even though the party has become known for its insane roster of guest performers — including Buraka Som Sistema, El Guincho, Toy Selectah, DJ Rupture, Maluca, L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok, Matias Aguayo, Kingdom, Uproot Andy, South Rakkas Crew, Chancha Via Circuito, Sinden, Schlachthofbronx, Roska, Los Rakas, Very Be Careful, and my secret byfirend Ghislain Poirier — this party will feature Shawn and oro tag-teaming on the decks, giving us a full five years’ (and four hours’) worth of pure TT gold. I emailed oro11 and Shawn (who’s also one of the Bay’s best dance music writers) to give us a little update about it all.
SFBG In the past five years, and in the wake of moombahton, Diplo, and everything else Latin- and tropical-electronic obsessed — how has the nu-cumbia scene changed, are you finding new directions for the music? Will there be a trap hybrid soon? (I AM KIND OF KIDDING.)
TORMENTA TROPICAL When we started the party, there was definitely a sort of bloggy buzz around cumbia and the idea of tropical bass. Between Diplo, Mad Decent, and the attention our friends from ZZK in Buenos Aires were getting, it did feel like some of the crowd was coming out to check out this “new” sound, just because it was fashionable. Over time, that has totally changed. Five years later, it doesn’t feel like Tormenta Tropical is a party for the “cool” kids at all. At this point, it’s just for people who love the music and the vibe, and most importantly, want to dance. Also, it’s totally mixed, which is great, especially when so much of San Francisco nightlife is hopelessly segregated.
As for the music, we’ve seen so many trends and sounds come and go over the past five years, and the SoundCloud generation of producers is totally prone to hopping on whatever new sound they come across, only to abandon it just as quickly. It’s led to a lot of dodgy music, along with artists who fleetingly pass through the scene, but that’s why it’s our job to find the good stuff. Thankfully, even though cumbia and other sounds may not be as trendy as they once were, we still come across great music all the time. If anything, the most interesting producers are the ones operating out of their bedrooms in a virtual vacuum, just creating weird hybrids of Latin music or dancehall or African rhythms or whatever else because they have a passion for it, not because they’re trying to get posted on a blog.
And it’s funny that you mention trap. As cringe-inducing as that world has become, this kid DJ Quality in Chicago has been sending us some amazing cumbia and bachata tunes with trap beats. You never know…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLfNTztmSXU
SFBG How many people have you had to kick out due to over-cumbiaing?
TT Thankfully, the crowd at Tormenta Tropical has always been well-behaved. We’ve both been DJing and throwing parties for a long time, and it’s honestly hard to imagine another party where so many people are just dancing and having fun. There’s nothing pretentious about Tormenta Tropical, even when we’re playing totally obscure music or someone from South America is performing live on stage. That’s maybe the most amazing thing about Tormenta Tropical — the vast majority of the people don’t know the vast majority of the songs, but people still show up every month, pack the dancefloor, and get wild.
SFBG How’s the label doing? Any news?
TT Bersa Discos is still happening, although it’s admittedly been a little while since we’ve had a release. At this point, we’re just trying to promote quality over quantity, and it’s not like there’s any profit in putting out limited-run vinyl releases, so we’re just waiting for the right tunes to come in. It also doesn’t help that some of our favorite artists have a tendency to never finish their tracks. [There will be cool Bersa Discos t-shirts for sale at the party.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZOaSX1uT_A
SFBG Should I wear booty shorts to the anniversary and shower myself with cheap champagne?
TT Marke, that sounds fine to us. There has never been dress code at Tormenta Tropical, and we’re not going to start one now. Back in 2008, Buraka Som Sistema played their very first San Francisco show at our party. In the middle of the set, this girl hopped on stage, took her shirt off, and kept right on dancing with her boobs out and her sunglasses on. No one seemed to mind.
TOP 11 TORMENTA TROPICAL TRACKS OF ALL TIME
Casa de Leones “No Te Veo”
Chancha Via Circuito “Cumbia Malembe”
DJ Dus “Cuando Lo Negro Sea Bello”
DJ Negro “Sabor a Gaita Remix”
DJ Panik “Pintura de Nieve”
El Hijo de la Cumbia “La Mara Tomaza”
Erick Rincon “Cumbia de Nuevo Leon”
Los Rakas “Abrazame (Uproot Andy Remix)”
Mr. Vegas “Certain Law (Murlo Remix)”
Omega “Si Tú Queres, Tú No Queres (DJ K-Ber Extended Reggaeton Mix)”
Sabo and Cassady “La Curura”
TORMENTA TROPICAL 5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY
Sat/8, 10pm, $5 before 10pm, $10 after.
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF.
culture@sfbg.com
American Apparel’s appeal fades when we discovered this line of comfy basics made right here in the city. Marine Layer (2209 Chestnut, SF; 498 Hayes, SF. www.marinelayer.com) specializes in men’s and women’s tees, but we love its warm-yet-trendy cropped sweater, whose hemline dips low in the back.
Ditch the wet look and feel: wax your sneakers, jeans, and canvas or denim clothing. Seal in that fresh feeling — also available in heat-activated dressing form — at Voyager (365 Valencia, SF. www.thevoyagershop.com). Just rub it on and you’ll be fly and dry.
We swoon for this online brand’s (www.vautecouture.com) animal product-free — no itchy woolens or dead cow here! — fashion. Thanks to the Emily’s tie-front belt, winter-time no longer means you have to look like a shapeless sack of spuds.
Local cartoonist Madonna’s “All Over Coffee” comic and books are essential — his illustration of the Golden Gate Bridge one Crissy Field on this kicky bag is a sparkling example of his art, available at one of our favorite bookstores ever, Green Arcade (1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com)
These one-of-a-kind faux suede coats with vintage-inspired print lining make great cover-ups on milder winter days. Residents Apparel Gallery‘s (541 Octavia, SF. www.ragsf.com) selection of made-in-the-city pieces is a great one-stop shop for Bay Area gear.
We found you an everyday hat straight from the surfer-bros of San Franpsycho, whose shop (505 Divisadero, SF. www.sanfranpsycho.com) sells the makings of insta-cred among sporty, hip types in town.
These brass tack soles will power you down winter-wet sidewalks but honestly, you could rock Beneduci‘s (www.beneduci.com) Italian leather kicks year-round in style. Local cred: the brand makes everything right here in SF. The boots will be available at Firehouse 8 (1648 Pacific, SF) on Sat/15 and Sun/16 and on Dec. 21-22.
The perfect pair of pants, proudly produced in SF by Taylor Stitch (383 Valencia, SF. www.taylorstitch.com) for stylish gents? Possibly. Dig the local provenance — Taylor Stitch is bursting with hometown-made style. And the deep black will hide unsightly rain splashes.
Ultralightweight, breathable, packable, and insanely cute, these zip-ups, available at Market Street Cyclery (1592 Market, SF. www.marketstreetcyclescom) will keep the drops off your pop-a-wheelie while helping up your mist-shrouded visibility factor.
Yes, yes, we get the raining cats and dogs joke, but this is the purrfect shield against the storm: a sky-blue kitty cavorting on a midnight blue canvas, protecting you on this seriously sturdy yet lightweight piece from the San Francisco Umbrella Company (www.sfumbrella .com). Cats!
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Scene: Midnight, Tiara Sensation drag pageant, Rickshaw Stop, September. A naked, enormously white-and-purple-bewigged figure in two-foot-high Plexiglass heels, laid across three raised Plexiglass pillars, faces away from us. The pitched down strains of Frank Ocean’s “Pyramid,” his voice syrupped into a slo-mo Judy Garland phantasmagoria, drown us in waves of bass. Sheee’s wooorkiiing at the Pyyyramid toniiiight.
Awkwardly, riskily the figure rises almost to the rafters, its back still to us, spreads its legs, and begins to pull a tangled string of multicolored Christmas lights from her crotch. It performs this deliberately, turning the Rickshaw stage into a pressure cooker of strobe lights, sexual horror, and incipient danger — a strip club where no one can hear you scream. The atmosphere is so tense that when the figure finally turns around to reveal her eyeless, bloody-mouthed, death-pale self, as Ocean’s voice tweaks a level higher, shivers and gasps run right through the audience. Shiva the Great Destroyer, her tits bound with duct tape, a makeshift pouch at her crotch the source of her glittering lights.
It’s an out-of-body look that works. And it’s emblematic of a new glitchy-nightmare drag style (or the reboot of one) that’s bewitching clubgoers.
DIA DEAR
The performer was the amazing Dia Dear, one of a number of recent young arrivals who’ve zapped nightlife to another level by unselfconsciously — and quite organically — raiding the shelves of performance art, horror films, contemporary R&B, club kid history, and the Walgreen’s down the street to create striking personae for themselves, and electrify the city’s drag stages. They’re also so freaking smart it scares me, no Christmas crotch lights required.
Drag as confrontational, sometimes blood-spilling performance art has a long history here, of course, from the Cockettes in the 1970s, through the Popstitute and Club Uranus scenes in the early ’90s, through Trannyshack into the ’00s. It’s currently found a home at the Some Thing party every Friday at the Stud, High Fantasy every Tuesday at Aunt Charlie’s, and the Dark Room monthly party at Hot Spot. Iconic, sensibility-scrambling club kid styles like those of Michael Alig, Desi Monster, James St. James, our own Phatima Rude and Ggreg Taylor, and the ultimate drag inverter-perverter Leigh Bowery are all the rage in this retro-minded, post-Gaga moment. But something about this fresh wave, something about how it’s coming from people with no nightlife background at all, is different. Drag stages have become the affordable breeding ground for committed performance artists, expressing essential truths about our moment. Mere lipsyncing is so last century.
boychild
“I never even knew who Leigh Bowery was until people started mentioning his name this summer,” boychild, another of this new tribe, told me over the phone. (I live next door to boychild, and it’s not rare to find a neon-yellow spray-painted birdcage, a chandelier made of wigs, or an entire store display case sitting outside, waiting to become part of a perspective-shattering outfit or brandished onstage in a cyber-Wiccan, dystopian android ritual.) Like Dia, boychild just started going out to clubs very recently — pretty much arriving out of nowhere, both of them declining to share their pasts — and when she did she was almost fully formed as a stage presence, with a genius sense of makeup and a cerebral agenda.
http://www.vimeo.com/49244470
“Everything I do is a reaction to being categorized: as a person of color, as a female-bodied queer,” she said. “It’s really bad right now, because it’s so hip to be black, “urban culture” is being fetishized to an enormous extent. I feel I encounter so much that makes me angry just existing in this world as a queer creature. My performance and look ties everything to my experience through my body. That’s where I express myself most fluidly, more acutely and vividly than through language.”
“Horror is where I’m coming from and where I exist,” Vain Hein, another performer, told me. Unlike Boy Child and Dia Dear, Vain Hein is open about his past: raised as a Born Again Christian in both Puget Sound and Phoenix, Arizona — “My childhood consisted of traveling between extremes” — he eventually found his way to the San Francisco Art Institute to study New Genres (this is actually a program there!) Vain Hein, who also performs to music he chops and screws at home, most explicitly ties sex to horror in his work — it’s chockful of surprise lactations, menstrual blood, live births, prosthetic triple breasts, and weird asses.
VAIN HEIN (Photo by Eric Harvieux)
“I think a lot about the apocalypse, it’s how I filter and understand the world. Decay, destruction — everything I wear is just what’s at hand around my house, held together with scotch tape and nail glue, the shitty, shitty, shittest things ever that just fall apart during the night, even when I’m not performing. I literally shed my skin.”
Yet even as a queer art student in San Francisco, liberated from fundamentalism, he never went out until last year. “I just had preconceived notions about what going to a gay club involved. Then my friend dragged me to a drag show in the spring, and I was like, ‘I can do this.’ I had studied mostly performance art and video so it was a good fit.”
Being a young queer and not going to the clubs is incomprehensible to me — but of course these 20-somethings grew up with the Internet, where you can be gay by yourself, and which looms like a Poltergeist vortex over their work.
“Oh, the vast blessing of the Internet,” boychild half-laughs. “I wish I was better at it. We’re so bombarded with information and images, just so much shit. That can be great because my generation has all of the past available. But we’ve been drowning in this stream of complete crap, too. I can define myself as a freaky-freak just by how I navigate it. But the power of live performance is channeling all that into immediate emotion, a moment when everyone’s together, something that can’t and should never be documented as just images.”
The charming and soft-spoken Dia Dear, who has become kind of a mother the nascent phantasmic drag scene — even though she, like boychild and Vain Hein, operates mostly outside traditional drag house family structures — says, “I haven’t quite figured out my relationship to the Internet. I feel like it’s a positive tool because it can connect us to the spirit of people who are dead. But it’s also this kind of dark rectangle in the corner that can suck out all your energy. It exists for its own sake. But to be on the Internet now, you have to have a certain level of narcissism and self-interest. A lot like you have to have as a performer. Performance and the Internet should be natural lovers, in a sense. Twisted together …entwined.”
This live experimental music concert at the Luggage Store Gallery is the brainchild of one of the brainiest yet approachable people I know, Marc Weidenbaum, who started his fascinating daily music site, Disquiet.com, 15 years ago — way before blogs were invented. His project Disquiet Junto challenges Soundcloud members to respond to a prompt with unique compositions. This round: field recordings of Hurricane Sandy, with Cullen Miller, Subnaught, Jared Smith, and more.
Thu/6, 8pm-10pm, $6–$10 sliding scale. Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF. www.luggagestoregallery.org
Over the past year we’ve been treated to some tasty South African contemporary dance music flavor, from Black Coffee to Die Antewoord. (Somebody please get the Tshetsha Boys out here!) DJ Dee-toy, of Sebokeng Township continues this great microtrend with deep, deep house vibes and off-your-seat Afrofunk jams.
Fri/7, 10pm-4am, $15–$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. afrofunk.eventbrite.com
Yeah, yeah, the phenomenally successful Minneapolitan remixes pop hits into slick little machines of hummable electro-disco bliss. He is also very, very fun.
Fri/7, 10pm-3am, $15–$20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com
This monthly party launched the nu-cumbia sound in SF, splashing some much-needed Latin electronica onto our shores, while introducing global bass to a new generation of underground-minded clubgoers. Some major players have stomped the floor here, and quite a few sonic permutations of TT’s sound have found more mainstream success — but founders Shawn Reynaldo and oro11, who brought their inspiration directly from Argentina, are keeping it crazy and real with a marathon tag-team set in celebration.
Sat/8, 10pm, $5 before 10pm, $10 after. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com
Gay people won’t stop rapping and blogging, and that’s OK! Our favorite local blogger (and perpetual crush) Mike “Accidental Bear” Enders covers way too much ground online. Now the super-enthusiastic cutie is celebrating two years of cybergossip by hosting a cartoon-colored gay rapstravaganza with Big Dipper, Rica Shay, and MC Crumbsnatcher, plus singer Tim Carr and DJs Medic and Dav-O of Double Duchess. There’ll be a lot of cute gay guys with beards.
Sat/8, 9pm, $3. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. www.accidentalbear.com
Writer, drinker, arts-minded political activist, and bon vivant Hiya Swanhuyser is combining her interests in this neato, monthly, potentially wonderfully absurd thingie. Come to the Makeout Room, grab a drink, and then bang out a letter to any politician you have beef with. “One letter = 100 votes,” she says. Cocktails and truth to power, yasss. She’ll bring the actual, clickety-clackety typewriters! You bring the drink-fueled rage!
Tue/11, 6pm-8pm, free. Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.tinyurl.com/typeattack
SUPER EGO If, by some miracle, I manage to make it through this entire column about a new gay sports bar in the Castro without dropping a single awful double entendre, then I totally deserve a Stanley cup, a Heisman trophy, and a Super Bowl ring. IMPOSSIBLE! Why does everything jocky sound so dirty when you sprinkle a little fairy dust on it?
“Well, our barbacks will be wearing jockstraps pretty frequently,” Jesse Woodward told me of new venture Hi Tops (2247 Market, SF. www.hitopssf.com), set to launch with a big free shindig Sat/1, 6pm-2am.* Woodward, who’s opening Hi Tops with former QBar manager Dana Gleim and Matt Kajiwara, knows the value of a good double-wordplay: “Cold pitchers, hot catchers” is his bar’s motto, and a handmade Buster Posey dreamcatcher recently adorned its Facebook page.
But other than a few ironic touches (“No, we won’t be playing that Huey Lewis Sports album,” the painfully lithe and hip Woodward assures me), Hi Tops will be all about the gayme: 15 screens, including a video wall and hanging Jumbotron configuration will pump out local tourneys, while the kitchen, headed by former Top Chef contestant Jamie Lauren, turns out gourmet takes on “stadium food,” including warm pretzels, chicken wings, beef-bacon burgers, Cobb salads, and pork chops on a stick.
“The pork chop on a stick is a pork chop we put on a stick,” Woodward clarifies.
No worries about this being an overcompensative no fats no femmes dude-bro move: Woodward, who’s no stranger to underground alternaqueer dancefloors, merely wants to complement SF nightlife with some unique flavor. “What inspired me to do this was the lack of any place to go with my teammates after a basketball game where we could hang out and talk, but not have to shout over music. I also think that, looking at the Castro, the neighborhood could use something like this to make it exciting. A lot of bars offering something different have closed, and the scene here has become really one note.” Yes, Jesse, and that one note is Rihanna shrieking at us through her tiny, alien nose.
Hi Tops takes the place of fuschia-tinted hetero barf puddle Lime, where I used to go through purses. Anything would be an improvement, but a totally gay (and lesbian!) sports bar that plans to sponsor local queer teams and host fundraisers sounds pretty neato. Plus, barbacks in jockstraps hello. This place will totally be my new Hooters.
I haven’t always fallen for his post-modern, Scion-sponsored Blaxploitation schtick — skinny white DJs in Europe still think it buys them instant street cred to sample him; annoyingly they’re often right. But Kenny Dixon Jr., known to the world as the mercurial Moodymann, sure knows how to pump out the classics, foretelling the current wave of re-edit mania by about a decade and representing the Detroit house scene with a soulful flair for experiment and a thrilling rage against the obstacles that still stand in the way of international recognition for many African American dance music artists. He’s a talker on the decks and often anarchic: last time he was here, he got bounced from his own party. Buckle up and work it out, finally some danger. With UK deep techno martialist Untold and the Icee Hot crew.
Fri/30, 9:30pm-late, $20 advance. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com
Are you even ready for Finnish acid? Of course you are: Tin Man’s hypnotic, energetic yet urbane tracks have been staples on quality dance floors for well-nigh half a decade. Johannes Auvinen was actually raised in Cali, thus the extra bit of sunshine peaking out of his peaks and polishing his deeps. On 222 Hyde’s great soundsystem, he should have the basement walls swaying in no time for his SF debut.
Fri/30, 9pm, $20 advance. 222 Hyde, SF. www.ayli-sf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMAgi_d77w
House purists took a moment to warm to Dyed: he seemed to leap fully formed from the Paris club scene and land too perfectly near the top of the Ibiza favorites list. But in the past few years, he’s delivered some incredibly lovely and historically-eared mixes and remixes (many coproduced or inspired by the European scene’s exceptional female cohort) that have everyone convinced. He’s the real deal. And so smiley!
Sat/1, 9pm-4am, $10 advance. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com
Um, in case you missed it, 90s house is back. But rarely do we get a chance to hear the story of that interesting and incredibly varied decade from the San Francisco DJs and producers who made it all happen. (When Doc Martin plays a retro set here, it’s a main event.) So having Fred Everything, David Harness, Jay-J, Solar, and Jayvi Velasco hit the decks on Mighty’s big-room rave-worthy system, for free, all night long is an education no young neophyte should pass up.
Sat/1, 9pm-late, free. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com
How much does SF adore this British-Italian disco mage, 1/4 of the wildly popular Horse Meat Disco crew? Find out in a sweat on Honey Soundsystem’s dancefloor as he tours in support of a new compilation of his favorite tracks (including some local faves) on Classic Records. Love!
Sun/2, 9pm, $5. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. www.honeysoundsystem.com
*The original party, as listed in the print version of this article, was set for Thu/29. This version has been corrected.
Honey Soundsystem, that handsome group of techno and disco rarety-loving DJs and purveyors of one of the best weekly parties in SF (Sundays at Holy Cow), has gone through a few changes this year, parting ways with a couple members — perhaps temporarily — to side projects and expanding their reach greatly with several international appearances.
But the honeycomb hasn’t stopped pumping out great tunes, and it looks like Honey’s latest record label, HNYTRX, has launched with an expansive, uplifting new house tune, “Face Love Anew” by Australian favorites Stereogamous featuring singer Shaun J. Wright, formerly of Hercules and Love Affair. It’s a keeper.
If you’ve been to Honey Sundays lately, you know that they’ve been absolutely off the hook, one of the country’s true Sunday night party treasures. But this Sun/25 will be extra special — it’s a release party for the new track, and many favorite Honey patrons will be in the house. Have a listen to a few preview clips below (there are also some tasty remixes by the likes of Discodromo, Jason Kendig, Horse Meat Disco, and Kim Ann Foxman) and then meet me on the dancefloor.
http://www.sfbg.com/noise/2012/11/21/nite-trax-honey-soundsystem-feels-love-anew
HNYTRX RELEASE PARTY FOR “FACE LOVE ANEW”
Sun/25, 9pm, $5
Holy Cow
1535 Folsom, SF.
marke@sfbg.com
Poop log, log of Christmas,
don’t poop herrings, which are too salty,
poop sweet almond cakes, which are much better!
if you don’t poop well, I’ll hit you with a stick,
Poop log!
HOLIDAY GUIDE Despite its media image, Detroit is a vastly diverse place, full of Hmong, Arabs, Christian Lebanese, Chicanos, Jews, Greeks …. but very few Spaniards, at least that I know of.
So it may seem a bit out of place for my family to be kneeling each year around a blanket-covered log that we’ve drawn a smiley face on, beating it until it “poops” out presents — an ancient Catalonian tradition known as tió de Nadal, or the “Christmas poop log.”
We call him by his more informal name, Caga Tió, and he comes to stay with us every year, bringing us a kind of exotic, slightly malicious delight. (Much better we beat up a log than each other.) About two or three weeks before Christmas, we set him out on our hearth and cover him with a small blanket. Each night, just like for Rudolph and friends, we lay a plate of treats and some milk for him. The treats are gone by morning, and Caga Tió starts to swell underneath the blanket. Soon, Caga Tió is one fat, smiling log!
Then, on Christmas morning, we gather around him with sticks and sing a slightly different Spanish version of the song above. (How slightly different depends on how much spiked eggnog we Anglophones have imbibed.) Then we beat him vociferously with the sticks.
We’ve literally beaten the shit out of him! And the shit is presents. We reach under and see what Caga Tió has been kind enough to poop out. One year the gifts were tiny windup toys that we raced down the kitchen table. Another, it was fake mustaches for a hilarious family portrait. And another it was various plastic animal noses, and 3-D puzzles, and chocolates. No sweet almond cakes (a.k.a. turrón) yet, however.
How did my family embrace this strange practice? In January of 2006, I’d just gotten back from attending my friends’ wedding in Madrid, one of the first legal same-sex weddings under Spanish law, performed by the member of parliament who sponsored the bill. In Bush’s America, this was unimaginable. So I brought back an obsession with all things Spanish. The Catalan region lies east and north of Madrid, but one night I fell into a Spanish history Youtube hole (a Yubehole, if you will) and came out with the poop log on the other end. I was determined to try it when visiting my parents for the holidays. They loved it — it was something different we could share as a far-flung family — and we’ve continued ever since. Once he’s pooped out your gifts, you’re supposed to burn the log like a yule log. But we’ve kept the same one: he’s almost part of the family!
Why poop for Christmas? Let’s just say the wonderful people of Catalonia are big on holiday shit. Besides the tió de Nadal, derived from medieval Catalan mythology and beaten for centuries, they’re also keen on exquisitely hilarious caganers, tiny porcelain figurines of well-known personages that they place in the background of nativity scenes. And what are these personages doing? Why taking a dump with their pants around their ankles, of course. Darth Vader, Justin Bieber, Spongebob, Obama, the Queen of England, the Pope — all are fair scatological game. It’s a good-natured note of vulgarity that reinforces the immediacy of life amid all the theological pomp and mysticism.
Caga Tió isn’t so strange to Americans: South Park‘s Mr. Hanky, the Christmas Poo, is a famous manifestation. Soon, maybe, you’ll be beating a poop log for the holidays, too. And you thought you wouldn’t get shit for Christmas.
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO What’s the biggest, actually good DJ gig you can think of? Festivals, of course: Glastonbury, Sonar, Mutek, those insane-looking events inside that arena in Amsterdam with the indoor fireworks.
But how about being able to drop some serious soul classics for a crowd of 80,000 at a party that will go down in history, one being broadcast on pretty much every TV station in the world? Right about the time Shalamar’s “Second Time Around” ignited a field of tiny waving flags and old school hustle at Chicago’s McCormick Place on the night of Nov. 6, I and many others were blasting out tweets like producer Mark Ronson’s: “Seriously, who is DJing OBAMA HQ? incredible. Teena Marie, MAZE etc….every global news station is blastin’ Frankie Crocker classics.”
The legendary DJ Frankie Crocker rode a white stallion into Studio 54 in the 1970s. On TV in 2012, DJ Mel (www.djmel.com) was soundtracking Obama’s ride into a second presidential term. And Mel wasn’t holding back on the sexy slow jams and up-to-the-minute re-edits, either, waybacking a gloriously colorful Chi-Town crowd — and some teary-eyed people watching at home, anxiously awaiting election results while retracing some old school dance steps. (When it comes to politics, I apply my nightlife philosophy: why stop at two parties when you can have seven? Still, to see and hear the “real America” that I grew up with put forth to the world was something else.) As for the Romney party, sad trombone: left with only the rights to Kid Rock and Toby Keith, they chose to just blast Fox News instead, honk honk.
“This sounds ridiculous, but I really didn’t realize the enormity of what was actually happening until I got home and watched the whole thing on YouTube. I’m still wrapping my head around it,” DJ Mel told me on the phone a couple days after the election from his home in Austin. (Mel’s friend, supercute local DJ Jeffrey Tice, had hooked us up for an interview.) “For me, I had to focus on it like it was a regular gig: get my accommodations and travel set, which they took care of, check my equipment, get to the venue on time, be a professional. I did get kind of an idea of everything once we did the soundcheck in this huge venue, and then when the crowd was piling in. But I was too busy concentrating on keeping the vibe going.
“I mean, the pressure was on, too — if I played a bad song, it wouldn’t just clear the dance floor, it would actually reflect on the President of the United States,” Mel laughed.
“There was one moment of revelation, though. When the results were announced, I was jumping up and down. I was nervous he would lose — in the beginning I thought, ‘Woah, this isn’t looking good, and the recount may go on for weeks.’ But then they said he won. And there I was with the entire world’s press corps behind me …. and no idea what I was going to play. I looked down at my computer and thought, ‘this song is awesome.’ It was the Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout.’
“As soon as that song came on, the production guys around me started breaking into these huge grins. Then this ginormous, incredibly diverse crowd went bananas, singing along. That was a really special moment for me. There I was in Chicago, recreating this iconic moment from Ferris Bueller. I took a look around and thought, ‘ho-lee … this is kind of huge.'”
The rest of the playlist that night was mostly Mel’s own. “They gave me a list of 30 or so songs, but I went through them pretty quickly and dove into my own playlist of songs I love, that I thought were uplifting and fun. I didn’t prepare at all, just went with my instincts to turn this thing into a party. You’ve gotta just pick songs that are relevant to the event and trust what you’ve got.”
OK, so here’s a question: What would Mel have played if Obama had lost? “Oh man, I didn’t even want to think or ask about that!”
The young Mel, one of the most down-to-earth DJs I’ve ever spoken with, has plenty of experience and has already experienced a couple cycles of fame, with gigs at Lollapalooza (a clip he posted of the crowd from 2009 makes me giddy with joy), Austin’s ACL fest, and several world tours. “I’ve been through every phase of music, from crazy industrial and acid house to indie rock and freestyle, so I’m confident enough to know I can move the crowd in different situations. But I was traveling so much, I just got tired of touring, of not knowing anyone personally where I was playing. So I kind of dialed back.”
That dialing back took the unexpected turn of becoming the house DJ for huge Democratic Party events — first the California convention earlier this year in Sacramento, then the national convention in Charlotte, and now this (no word yet on inauguration dance floor plans, however.) “I have a friend who’s really involved in the planning who hooked me up,” Mel told me. “I think they realized that the music was becoming a big aspect of these events, especially when there so much waiting around for things to happen, or moments in-between to fill. It’s a good way to keep things going and relate to people.”
He may have to dial it back up now, though. “There was zero cell phone coverage in the venue at all, because it was overloaded. But as soon as I got out, my phone literally exploded with texts and notifications. My Twitter count jumped a couple 1000. I think people were genuinely shocked that it was an actual DJ at the event. I think beyond what came to me from it, this was a major thing for DJing in general. Turning an event like this into a party, that’s kind of a big deal.”
I remember it as if it were yesterday’s Instagram. Five years ago tonight, drag goddess Juanita More and club promoter Joshua J. took one look at the LCD mess the Castro party scene had devolved into and went, “meh!“
They decided to kick it up with some real glamour on the dance floor and some real house music (not the same 20-minute-long GaGa mixes from the gym) in the DJ booth. Who would have thunk this would fly in the Castro, where Affliction Ts were just then catching on. They took a risk, hunty.
Thus was the fab Booty Call Wednesdays born (the name was based on a series of cheeky ass-flash photos Juanita was then producing). The weekly party took over QBar and, for the scandalously low price of $4, brought in internationally recognized underground DJs, a crowd of the gorgeously mobile, and trippy performance art go-go dancers with nothing left to lose. There are a lot of cute pansexual beings and young gay guys there and you will probably get laid.
On top of that, they recognized the importance of social media: every week a cutting-edge artist decorates the backroom and photographer Isaac snaps the delighted and sometimes bewildered partygoers, who then post and share the pic … and thus promote the party! It was new then. And it still works.
For the fifth anniversary blowout, they’re bringing in killer tech-house DJ Christy Love of House of Stank in NYC, one of my favorite people, and are featuring VivvyAnne Forevermore and Dia Dear on the go-go boxes. Artists Jesse Lee Oberst designs the backroom, and Emi Photo shoots the crowd. It’s a beauty call!
BOOTY CALL WEDNESDAYS FIFTH ANNIVERSARY
Wed/14, 9pm, $4
456 Castro
GOLDIES Nymphs of the Internet forest, rejoice. The multidirectional musical entity known as 5kinandbone5 (www.5kinandbone5.com) is here to soundtrack your perverse festivals with the latest sonic plug ‘n plays. “Fearless psychic shaman” production duo Matrixxman (Charlie McCloud) and Earthman (Paavo Steinkamp) have been behind many of the year’s most exciting electronic dance music developments, transmitting digital wizardry and analog obsession from a virtual basement laboratory/development platform/ecstasy zone embedded in the cybersphere.
“We forged a pact at a rave once way back in high school in Virginia,” Matrixxman told me over email. “We promised to be friends forever and make the most futuristic shit known to mankind.”
That futuristic shit-pact has yielded a pixellated spectrum of tracks ranging from swaggy rap to acid house flashbacks, on a roster of labels including Fool’s Gold, UTTU, Grizzly, and Unknown to the Unknown. Collaborators include the cream of the alternate Internet: Mykki Blanco, Riff Raff, Sinden, Le1f, Kid Sister, Babe Rainbow. Just as striking is the duo’s breathtaking Tumblr-squared visual and media aesthetic, which takes their love of MS Paint graphics, download glitches, anime porn, antiquated Unicode, and anonymous trollspeak to gnarly heights. (“I don’t care for Bay music artists,” Matrxxman said gently, “because they mostly really and truly suck but I dig Sly and the Family Stone if I had to say.” Later he posted on Facebook, “x-files sexual fantasy roleplay mood.”) Their shit is on Angelfire.
The optimal keys to 5kinandbone5′ success have been versatility and unpredictability. In 2012, the fruitful marriage of hip-hop and dub techno continued to demolish the boundaries between “pop” and “underground,” generating a trippy aural world of minimal flourishes, big bass atmospherics, and heady experiments. 5kinandbone5 had come up in the East Coast’s hardcore drum and bass scenes and revered hip-hop producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes — but also connected deeply to early Detroit techno, ’90s house, psy-trance, UK bass, grime, and gamer and vogue beats. With that deep knowledge and willingness to cross genre (and sexual, racial, and regional) boundaries in pursuit of something unearthly yet deliciously perverse, they were perfectly positioned to vault trendy sounds like trap and dubstep toward more unique dance floor environments.
So far the 5kinandbone5 vision quest has produced at least one masterpiece, “Wut” by the New York raper Le1f. The track — a 3-D aural aquarium swimming with infectious horn loops, staccato bass bumps, crowd-chant samples, and hyperreal, unabashedly gay lyrics — blew away critics and, with the help of its entrancing video, quickly went viral and invaded clubs last summer. True to 5kinandbone5 form, the whole production was done through the magic of the Internet. Le1f didn’t physically meet the producers of his hit until the second time he performed it in San Francisco.
“The Internet is cool,” Matrixxman said of the collab. “It allows people to scope out each others’ vibes and stuff. It allows for the sending of nude photos to remote locations. In some cases, it facilitates collaborative efforts in music and art.”
As for the artistic process itself, Matrixxman weighs in on how he generates inspiration: “Usually incense or candles are lit initially. An ambiance is created. Auras are projected and a distinct presence is asserted. Prior to actually making any music, I like to visualize myself styling on hoes viciously, and that tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.”
5kinandbone5 recently launched its own label, Soo Wavey, with local DJ Vin Sol, that concentrates on more house-oriented releases. And Matrixxman recently released a jack-jam with another local DJ, Robert Jeffrey, called “Penis Power,” that’s been burning things up. As for the future of 5kinandbones and everything?
“The future/paradise as I see it would be a post-corporeal society in which we live freely as data and can inhabit disposable cyborg bodies at will. Gender and class will not be of any concern and we’ll be traveling the far reaches of the galaxy in search of other intelligent life. Artificial intelligence will have emerged and present some interesting paradigm shifts. Cybersex will be utterly amazing and enter a new evolutionary era in how we touch each other as humans.”
Probably there’ll be pixies, and music, too.
GOLDIES During my phone interview with Oakland artist Brett Amory, I kept thinking he said “emotion” when he was in fact saying “motion.”
“It’s my Southern drawl,” Amory said with a soft, apologetic chuckle. And it’s true that he retains a charming trace of his Virginia upbringing in his talk — as well as the open, forthcoming manner associated with Southern hospitality — despite the fact that he’s lived here for the better part of two decades.
But in Amory’s oil paintings, especially the epic “Waiting” series, which he began in 2001 and which has earned him several shows around the country, emotion (at least in this viewer’s case) does often sub in for actual motion. Anonymous figures, frozen in isolation or depicted as numbed-out duos or trios, are invoked with expressionistic brushwork against mostly non-descript yet formally impressive everyday urban backgrounds. Motion through time is expressed through whiteout slabs of sunlight (or, in night versions, rushes of darkness) washing over, and sometimes through, the figures, threatening to extinguish them in negative space: a snow-blind, existential embrace.
“In 2000, 2001 I was living in San Francisco, in the Tenderloin — I lived there for years. I had a job doing IT, tech support in Emeryville. So every day I would ride the bus and the BART to and from work. I’d see people waiting for their buses or trains on platforms, mostly BART. Some of them looked hungover, like I usually was. They were there, but they seemed like they weren’t. I started taking pictures. Hundreds of pictures. And at first my paintings of them were about their relationship to their environment. Putting them up front in the painting and then bringing in the negative space around them.
“But I left that series for a while, and then I came back to it six years later. My own life had gone through a lot of changes. And I started thinking more about what the people waiting were thinking about: shopping for dinner, updating their Facebook page, maybe reviewing their lives. How they were just thinking about what we all think about, but were still really disconnected from the other people around them. So painting them for me became more about that disconnect — from the landscape, from each other — that they all had in common as life and the light moved around them.”
Amory’s investigation of stillness in motion might be traced back to his aspirations toward a decidedly different career path: he trained to be a professional skateboarder and was well on his way when he was sidetracked by an injury he was too eager and young, he says, to let heal properly. Undeterred, he moved to Colorado to try his hand at pro snowboarding — until injuries again derailed his dreams. So he drew on his deep well of boarding connections and started making quality skate films.
But he wanted something more. “When I was in Colorado, I remembered this videotape I had got in the mail from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, so I asked my dad back in Virginia to send it to me. I watched it again and decided to apply. Once I got accepted though, I realized I needed a lot of help, with drawing in particular. I just wasn’t good at it. One of my teachers told me to start going to the afterschool seminars on campus for help. It was in those seminars that I met the people at the Academy who actually had a passion for art, particularly for painting, and that passion inspired me to start being obsessed with paint, to really push myself to see what I could so with it.”
The emphasis on urban stasis and washes of light in his paintings usually set off knee-jerk critical comparisons to Edward Hopper — but Amory aligns himself more with modern figurative painters like David Hockney, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Nathan Oliveira. “Everybody kept talking about Hopper when they first started seeing my paintings, but he was honestly off my radar,” Amory told me. “I didn’t really see anything by him in person until a few years ago.” Instead, his biggest influence is John Singer Sargent. “I can’t get enough of him. What he could conjure with just a touch of paint. My goal in life is to work towards getting at least one-tenth as good as him.”
This year, Amory showed “24 in SF” at the Sandra Lee Gallery, a series of 24 paintings with accompanying time-stamped videos that chronicled a full day of the city’s life. Each work distills in a single image an hour spent videotaping and observing the goings-on at historically and personally relevant spots like Portsmouth Square, outside Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre, or a spot in the Tenderloin where a friend was killed. “I wanted to explore how the city itself moved through time, including historical time and my own timeline,” Amory said. Exhibited with each painting was a vitrine of street detritus gathered by Amory as he videotaped each location, displaying with archeological intensity another dimension of its time-space look and feel.
The “24 in SF” paintings — strikingly familiar, emotionally precise, beautifully executed, philosophically effuse — aren’t far removed form the “Waiting” series, even though their genesis came about by intriguing means.
“I’ve been working for years on a huge mural where I find a house in San Francisco of every color, and arrange them, dozens or even hundreds of them, in a spectrum across a wall. So I spent days walking around the city looking for the perfect houses. I kept coming back to certain spots, the spots in ’24’. So I did that series while waiting for this other, giant project to be finished.”
marke@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO OK, first of all, there is now the first all-night whipped cream supply delivery service in the world right here in SF — the evocatively named Hippie Gap. “We do NOT condone ANY MISS use [sic] of our products!!!” says the About. “Whip-it! Original N2O” it then goes on, before linking to the Wikipedia entry for nitrous oxide. 10pm-10am, y’all. The best parts of rave may have been the stroboscopic aneurysms (and the bisexual Smart Drinks vendors): when the nitrous tank arrived the carnival truly began. But I’ll really sit up if someone bikes a gasmask greased with Vick’s VapoRub to my stoop. Screw your Backstreet Boys crap, that’s when the ’90s really will be back.
Also, right now there is a gang of kick-ass, stiletto-heeled Estonian girls in Miami getting vulnerable rich businessmen drunk at “Russian-style” bars and tricking them into buy extravagantly tacky things like Dom Perignon and boatloads of caviar. They are known as the B-Girls and they grifted one poor slob out of $48,000. They are kind of my girl-gang heroes? Well, right after Pussy Riot, Foxfire, Steel Magnolias, the Mi Vida Loca cholas, and the Sisterhood of the Transgender Pants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMAgi_d77w
Young Brit phenom has been on an unstoppable tear the past few years, and while the hype has cooled somewhat, the skills have stayed white hot. Jazz-eared, soulful tech-house and killer bass augmentation swing wonderfully wide across a variety of moods, and always hit the spot. With local favorites Moniker and Brian Bejarano.
Thu/8, 9pm, $20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com
Ethereal Philly street bass hero bangs the floor out with his futuristic swoops and sticky-starlight arpeggios — get a preview of new album Orbits, dropping in December, at new beats ‘n bass party Sway. Soulful fellow bass-face Kastle, of San Francisco and awfully good looking, dubs it up to open.
Thu/8, 9pm, $10–$15. 330 Ritch, SF. starkeyandkastle.eventbrite.com
A sweet night of thoughtful techno that doesn’t shy away from rippling drum and bass ecstasy from this grown-up veteran of the UK hardcore scene. Local smarties Ghosts on Tape, Bells and Whistles, and Mossmoss jumpstart the sophisticated, super-danceable aural vibes at the monthly As You Like It party.
Fri/9, 10pm-late, $10–$20. Beatbox, 314 11th St., SF. www.ayli-sf.com
A lineup to make cerebral bassheads’ hearts go boom. Transcendent UK duo Mount Kimbie aren’t afraid to take you off the rails and down a winding trail with their live sets. Gorgeous Floridian tech-dubber XXYYXX also appears, with SF electronic dreamer Giraffage (“Feels” is one of my fave 2012 tracks), D33J, Dials, and the Lights Down Low nutters.
Fri/9, 10pm-3am, $17–$20. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com
One of the cutest little secrets of nightlife music nerds has been this wildly eclectic night of, well, rare bits of sonic loveliness and genius off-kilter projections, put on by three cute bearish guys and tucked away in gay bar Truck. For this anniversary free-for-all, they’ve invited 16 DJs (including residents Chicken, Bearno Kardashian, and Bobby Please) to spin 20-minute sets of yummy, weird stuff. Plus there’ll be pop-up food from Two Tarts and a Stove. Delish.
Fri/9, 6pm-2am, free. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. rarebits.tumblr.com
If you’ve just moved here from another planet, or know a friend who really needs to catch up, witnessing classic DJ Garth take the decks for a fabuloso marathon five-and-a-half hour set in the Public Works loft — well, that’s the perfect crash course in 20 years of San Francisco dance music.
His titillatingly wicked blend of psychedelic rock, cosmic disco, acid house, and pagan grooves will have you howling at the moon right quickly, friend.
Sat/10, 10pm-3:30am, $7. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com
Meanwhile, downstairs at Public Works, one of my favorite monthly parties celebrates the Indian festival of lights, Diwali, with a bhangra-riffic blowout, with the dholrythms dancers, live dhol drummers, and DJs Jimmy Love, rav-E, Santero, and Harvi Bhachu. It all kicks off with a seriously great bhangra flashmob and procession at 16th Street and Valencia at 9pm. Bring a light and let it shine!
Sat/10, 9pm-3am, $10–$15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com
