When it comes to the actors in the Twilight franchise, Kellan Lutz puts it best: “We didn’t quite know what we were getting ourselves into.” Not pictured: Kellan Lutz or Ashley Greene.
To be fair, Lutz — who plays beefcake vampire Emmett Cullen — was referring to the change in directors between films. After Catherine Hardwicke’s succinctly titled Twilight (2008), Chris Weitz took over for — brace yourself — The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
“We didn’t know, switching directors, if they were going to embrace us,” co-star Ashley Greene elaborates.
But Lutz’ comment could be applied to Twilight as a whole. This is a series that has consistently defied expectations, from the absurdly popular books to the fandom of the film series. When I participated in a recent roundtable interview with Lutz and Greene, both noted that they’re not exactly the stars of New Moon. Still, they’re part of the Twilight machine and thus, just as likely to get mauled by fans wearing plastic fangs.
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Come drink up at Heaven’s Dog
Heaven’s Dog $5 drinks during November
There’s only a couple weeks left to sip Heaven’s Dog’s cocktails for a mere $5. Any regular knows this is a steal for artisan, high-quality cocktails from a revolving list of specials… it could be Satan’s Whiskers (a gin, sweet and dry vermouth, orange concoction) or a Tiger’s Milk No. II (Spanish brandy, rum, sugar, cream, and nutmeg). By the way, it’s still worth coming at full price. Through Dec. 1, 4:30-6:30pm, Mon-Fri
1160 Mission, SF
415-863-6008 www.heavensdog.com
A view from St. George’s
11/21 – St. George Spirits Holiday Open House “A Winter Wonderland” – prom wear recommended!
Pull out your crazy, cheesy prom wear for a holiday open house at our beloved local distillery, St. George. If you’ve ever been to a St. George party, you know they’re a crazy bunch who rock out with attitude, music and world class spirits… all in a former naval air station hangar. With live music by John Clarke and Farewell Typewriter, take in distillation demos, photo booth, cocktail sipping and food from many of La Cocina‘s best (like Estrellitas Snacks, Botanas Felicitas, Kika’s Treats, Neo Cocoa), as well as El Huarache Loco, Pacific Fine Foods, Gelateria Naia and Recchiuti Confections. St. George does one better with a Cali Party Bus, transporting people for free from West Oakland Bart station 12:30-5pm (to and from the distillery every half hour), with stops at the Alameda Ferry Terminal around 1:30 and 4:05pm. 1-6pm
$40 advance/$50 at door
2601 Monarch, Alameda
510-864-0635 www.stgeorgespirits.com
A course from Chef Axelrod
11/22 – Navarro Winery Harvest Dinner California Table Sunday Supper throws a Sunday Supper Series from Chefs Liz Bills and Melissa Axelrod (who’s dinners I wrote about in an August The Perfect Spot issue), this time teaming with Sarah Bennett of Anderson Valley’s Navarro winery. Celebrating the end of harvest season with five to six Navarro wines (including some new releases) and a five-course meal from Bills and Axelrod. Yes, it’s a ‘pop-up dinner’, warm, communal and unique, like a friend’s dinner party but held in a Mexican cantina down a charming FiDi alley. The menu includes risotto cooked in a parmesan broth with Bellwether Farms Crescenza & wild mushrooms, slow-roasted leg of Sonoma lamb rubbed with lavender and honey, and a pine nut tart with baked apple ice cream. 11/22, 5pm, $85 (all inclusive) Mercedes Hair of the Dog Cantina, 653 Commercial, SF http://californiatable.net/events/index.html http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/88196
Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.
Mondays, frequently described as manic or met with a response of expletives, are seldom associated with happy thoughts of relaxation and general joviality. But it doesn’t have to be like that. A number of bars are doing their best to help you banish that beginning of the week gloom and give Mondays a better name. These are the best dives to grab a drink at the start of your week, when that first workday has you already asking, “is it Friday yet?”
The Saloon
This bar is older than dirt and looks the part. It may smell like piss, but no one will notice you reek of hangover from your previous weekend of debauchery, and neither will you after a few of their stiff drinks. If you can bear to part with your dear old friend Abe, hand over $5 on Mondays to drink away your blues to the sound of the blues and jazz band that plays.
1232 Grant, SF.
(415) 989-7666
Pop’s Bar
Let the bright neon glow of the sign outside transfix your eyeballs as your feet carry you into Pop’s for free Monday-night bacon. No, really. After bringing home the bacon, you can enjoy some real fried pork fat for free. You can even take your new bacon friend over to the graffiti covered photo booth and ham it up for a few snapshots. Just make sure to avoid the judgmental looks of the other patrons, who’d rather discuss sustainability and Bukowski poems with their pork pals.
Detail from collage by Bjorn Copeland at Jack Hanley Gallery. All photos by Spencer Young.
BlackDice member and visual artist Bjorn Copeland is currently showing a collage of found objects at Jack Hanley Gallery. “Hope It Works” is akin to the nauseating aesthetic of electronic collagists Paper Rad and Dan Deacon. The origins of this aesthetic are typically culled from the prepubescent technologies and pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s: cassette tapes, VCRs, CDs, TV, Nintendo, workout machines, leotards, too much hairspray, you name it. It’s nauseating because the color palette of this era was of a disastrous, fluorescent variety; the kind that disseminated through flashing TV sets across America, inducing both seizures and vomit the color of neon rainbows — a scenario that each of these artists’ music videos tries to hyperactively reenact.
Black Dice, “Kokomo”
Paper Rad, “the peace tape” (music by Extreme Animals)
Dan Deacon, “Ultimate Reality” (video by Jimmy Joe Roche)
While there are interesting differences between each video (Roche’s video at least is more paced, abstract, and artsy), all of them are equivalent to a 14-year-old spending his entire Saturday afternoon stuck in a frenzied, yet lazy, feedback loop of sugary cereals, TV, video games, and masturbation. And while this is hilarious and nostalgic for some (myself included), there are only so many times you can watch these videos before your brain goes numb — just as there are only so many bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch you can eat before you black out and so much repetitive A and B/ Up and Down button tapping your thumb can take before it blisters and so many hasty, non-lubricated jo sessions you can carry through before your penis falls off.
Punning and naughty Photoshopping can be extremely funny, extremely horrible, or both at the same time. A bad pun can empty a room, but a good bad pun always elicits a laugh. Similarly, while naughty Photoshopping is juvenile and distasteful, you can’t help but admire the cleverness of a really good digitally altered photograph, regardless of content.
Porn is an industry that fully embraces parallel punning — Muffy the Vampire Layer, Chitty Chitty Gang Bang, A Rear and Pleasant Danger, Romancing the Bone, etc. — and suffice it to say, some of these puns are pretty adroit. The meme-generating folks at B3ta asked people to post their own Photoshopped porn posters based off actual movies, and the slightly NSFW 30+ pages of puerility are a must see for those who like their humor lower than low-brow. Personally, I can’t get enough of these. Assablanca, The Crotchmen, Hymen Popper and the Chamber of Semen, Lawrence of a Labia, Metropenis, Iporkyalips Now… sexual punishment never felt so good!
Text by Sarah Phelan
For those brave folks who plan to read the newly released six-volume EIR for Lennar’s proposed redevelopment of the 770-acre Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Point site, the holiday season promises to be a busy time.
First, you need to actually find the report, which is buried over at the San Francisco Planning Commission’s site. To help you find your way there, click here.
Nex, you need to figure out when you’ll have time to read it before two public hearing which are scheduled for Dec. 15 & 17—just ten and eight shopping days before Christmas.
And then, if you plan to make a difference, you’ll also need to figure out when you’ll have time to write and submit public comments, which will be accepted until Dec. 28 (three days after Christmas, three days before New Year)
Now, maybe this timing will work marvelously, what with the economy in the shitter, and no one having money to spend on the holidays, and more and more people unemployed and therefore in possession of the time needed to read, digest and comment on all six of these crucial tomes.
Or could it be that most people won’t be doing any of this, and especially not during and in between the biggest celebrations –in terms of family gatherings and feasts?
To motivate y’all to sit up and start tracking this plan, which promises to majorly impact the city’s southeast, may I point you to a Nov. 5 presentation on the proposed plan that was made before the San Francisco Planning Commission last week, in anticipation of the EIR’s release.
(You can watch it or read the captions, depending on your mood). in anticipation of the EIR’s release, by clicking on the Nov. 5 links listed at the Planning Commission’s site.)
What struck me when I watched it was the overall vagueness, on the part of city officials, when it came to explaining the plans, and the desperation of community members, on the one hand, to get jobs, and, on the other, to get the shipyard thoroughly cleaned up (and not just cleaned up to Lennar’s “intended use”) and to get Lennar to keep its promises, be they to monitor the dust, or build 32 percent affordable housing, or create thousands of permanent jobs. Enjoy.
Sametová revoluce – předchozí demonstrace 1988-1989, záběry jednotlivců — scenes from demonstrations in Prague, 1988-1989
I spent many hours of my life standing in those crowds, in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague; their behavior was both inspiring and mysterious. What had moved these individual men and women to come out on the streets, especially in the early days, when it was not self-evidently safe to do so? What swayed them as a crowd? Who, in Prague, was the first to take a key ring out of his or her pocket, hold the keys aloft, and shake them—an action that, copied by 300,000 people, produced the most amazing sound, like massed Chinese bells?
So writes European historian Timothy Garton Ash in “1989!” — part one of his wonderfully cogent reckoning of the history of the so-called end of the cold war published in the New York Review of Books this month. (Part two, “Velvet Revolution: The Prospects,” to be published next month, just became available online.) It’s the 20th anniversary of those immense events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, so it’s time to size up what happened and how we think of it all, I guess.
Garton Ash takes a long and involved look at how scholars have weighed the events of 1988-1989 — and 1980-1981 in Poland — from the theory that a bankrupt East Germany had no choice but to dissolve itself, as it had become too much in debt to the West, to the hilariously ludicrous notion that Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall himself, brick by brick, shirtless, in jodhpurs and suspenders, the Brill Creme streaming in manly rivulets down his unvacillating brow. Of course, new archival information is becoming available all the time, revealing shocking new things. (In one stunning instance we’re reminded that Dick Cheney was a troglodyte long before Iraq. As President George H.W. Bush’s Defense Secretary he advised that all of Glasnost, then politically melting an entire continent of policies, “may be a temporary aberration in the behavior of our foremost adversary.” He needs enemies to live.)
In any case, Garton Ash’s major recommendation is that historians approach the “fall of communism” less from the top down, digging through acreages of bureaucratic documents, and more from the bottom up — a sort of historical revitalization of crowd psychology, paying closer attention to the participation of the people within the churning movement toward democracy itself. (I wonder what he thinks of this.) So I searched around and found the video above, which really does drive home the huge cajones and audacity of hope, not to mention the sheer higglety-piggletyness, among those Velvet Revolutionaries.
(I was in Berlin in the summer of 1988 — and was almost jailed on the Eastern side for importing homosexual pornography, i.e. a Damron Gay Europe travel guide with a picture of a tacky guy with a Speedo on the cover, until they realized I was under 18 and would have too many legal problems — and it really seemed like East Germans were roiling with angst that summer, maybe more than usual. At least, they weren’t the stony-faced apolitical drones that I’d been led to believe by the American media. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20 — something Garton Ash’s essays handily take on. Really, my main observation was probably that East German dudes were way hotter than the West German ones, who were undergoing some sort of ghastly hippie fashion revival at the time.)
One more money quote from “1989!”:
The end of communism in Europe brought the most paradoxical realization of a communist dream. Poland in 1980–1981 saw a workers’ revolution—but it was against a so-called workers’ state. Communists dreamed of proletarian internationalism spreading revolution from country to country; in 1989–1991, revolution did finally spread from country to country, with the effect of dismantling communism.
The Guardian‘s Adam Michon snapped these shots of the Best dress of the Bay 09, fashioned entirely out of this year’s Best of the Bay covers at Urbanity in Berkeley — winner of “Best Place to Sell the Clothes Off Your Back.” Truly, we are flattered! Better yet, it would look great on us! Anybody got a pair of bubblegum-pink pumps?
Abigail Trillin reads a letter from an immigrant mother who wants to meet Newsom in person and hear him explain why he supports a policy that has led to her son being needlessly placed in a federal detention facility in Oregon
As the father of a newborn, Mayor Gavin Newsom is doubtless having sleepless nights and tiring days, as he learns to change diapers, burp and even bathe his young daughter, in between his duties as San Francisco’s CEO.
Presumably, he’s already gained the fiercely protective perspective of a parent–a point of view that could help him realize why it would be humane to meet with the parents of immigrant teens who have been whisked out of the city and away to federal detention facilities in other states, thanks to a policy that Newsom ordered last year.
One such mother wrote a letter requesting a meeting with the mayor to discuss why her son is sitting in a federal detention facility in Oregon, even though the SF District Attorney has dismissed all the charges in his case.
Abigail Trillin, staff attorney with Legal Services for Children, read that letter aloud at City Hall this week, shortly after the Board voted to override Newsom’s veto of amendments to the sanctuary policy (and you can listen to it, by clicking on the video above.)
The Board’s amendments seek to ensure that teens who haven’t done anything wrong aren’t turned over to the feds for possible deportation. The amendments would therefore also ensure that families aren’t needlessly put through hell, just because someone accuses their kids of doing something they never did.
But Newsom has said- indirectly through his spokespeople–that he plans to ignore the Board’s amendments, claiming that his hands are tied by federal law.
The Board believes otherwise and currently a nasty legal battle seems eminent.
In the meantime, families of immigrant children in San Francisco are left worrying if their kid is going to be the next child to be referred to the feds and disappeared to a detention facility in Oregon or Miami or Indiana or wherever for deportation to a country they never knew for a crime they never did.
So if Newsom, as a mayor and a parent, believes in his policy, then surely he is willing to defend and explain it to those directly impacted by his decisions.
Because this isn’t a game, or another piece of political theater. It’s a case of immigrant parents desperately fighting to protect their kids from needless harm, which could include death at the border or being recruited into a gang.
Now, folks tell me stuff like, well, these parents should make sure their kids don’t get into trouble in the first place.
But the truth is that some of these kids didn’t get into trouble in the first place. Or not into trouble that was so serious that it warranted being referred to the feds. And that’s why their mothers have a problem with Newsom’s current policy and want him to amend it, as he has been directed, or at the very least explain it, as mayor of San Francisco, to them in person.
“Luxury Items” at ODC, starring Monique Jenkinson (aka female drag goddess Fauxnique, is a sparkling and often very funny and touching performance piece that explores the idea that beautiful objects have to show their worth. I spoke with Monique about her performance and she described it as the artist’s process of creating beauty through an imposed vow of poverty. The artist’s dilemma is to make things of priceless value, while struggling against the brutality of the profession, creating a socially conscious and frustrated aesthete. The character in the show is based more on Monique than Fauxnique, but drag is present and alive nonetheless. Monique told me that her performance is like an essay, using maps, video and movement to create each and every decadent story. Her complex and riveting vision is part of what snagged her a Guardian GOLDIE award this year. Monique says that “Luxury Items” will be repeated in February, so be on the look out!
A newly released forensic report suggests that Hugues de la Plaza (pictured above) was murdered in San Francisco two years ago.
Francois de la Plaza, the father of deceased French-American citizen Hugues de la Plaza, sent me a copy of a report today that forensic pathologist Michael Ferenc prepared for SFPD Deputy Chief David Shinn, concluding that Hugues’s death was a homicide, as his family and the French authorities have long claimed.
“In my opinion, the death of Mr. Hugues de la Plaza is a homicide,” Ferenc writes in his report, which was prepared nine months ago, (and not in Feb. 2008, as the Guardian initially claimed, thanks to a typo on the report itself). Curiously, the SFPD has never publicized Ferenc’s findings, even though it has divulged preliminary findings from an as yet unpublished LAPD report, which allegedly supports the SF Medical Examiner’s finding that the cause of death was “undeterminable.”
Ferenc notes that SFPD Inspector Casillas gave him, “an excellent overview of the case” when he met with him and his colleagues,” earlier this year.
” It was very thorough and detailed,” Ferenc writes.
In his report, he summarizes several key points that support his murder conclusion, (based on his review of the SFPD’s crime scene photos, video and autopsy report.), before inferring, Sherlock Holmes-style, the following sequence of events:
“Mr. De La Plaza returned home from nightclubbing around 0200 hours and entered his residence,” Ferenc states. “There he ate some food and apparently made phone calls and utilized his computer (approximately during the next half hour based upon Inspector Casillas’s investigation). For some reason(s) he exited his apartment ( or at least stepped outside to answered his door). Either upon exiting or at his subsequent return, an assailant(s), who was(were) most likely positioned on the lower landing of the stair case, stabbed Mr. De La Plaza while he was on the lower steps. The victim retreated inside the apartment and the assailant(s) probably did not follow inside. The victim went to the kitchen and returned to the front room bleeding profusely all the time. He soon collapsed from hemorrhagic shock in the front room where he was found.”
To support his conclusions, Ferenc highlights the following key points:
Not only did the ever-relevant green blog send up the 10 Best Condom Ads Banned in the US, but they pointed out the very real societal value in effectively publicizing contraception. Intellect, wit, and raunch — what more could you possibly ask for in a blog entry (or a Friday night)?
Author Brian Merchant points out that green living is about more than just composting and hybrid cars; overpopulation is straining the planet’s resources to an unsustainable level. Not only are Americans the world’s leading polluters, we also have an unusually high rate of unplanned pregnancies. And there are a lot of people that really loathe talking about contraception, much less see it advertised effectively.
It is unclear whether the ads were restricted by a regulatory agency or self-censored by marketers in the US (the article just says they were rejected for being “too sexually explicit”). Regardless, it’s pretty clear that our notoriously prudish compatriots would get more than a bit uppity at these exercises in tongue-in-cheek advertising.
Fortunately much of the rest of the world isn’t quite so unreasonable.
“What time is it? It’s polka time!” That’s right, it was polka time at Cafe Du Nord last Thursday night, as three different accordion bands took the stage to play not only polka, but also Broadway show tunes and even some country. The bands, which included Those Darn Accordions, Big Lou’s Polka Casserole and Ciao Bella, drew quite a diverse crowd.
Those Darn Accordions
Bella Ciao
There were some utilikilts, cowboy hats, lots of poofy skirts and in my friend L’s words “Aren’t their a lot of guys with ponytails in here?” We counted eight in total. But no matter what they were wearing, everyone seemed to be enjoying the music and several couples even took to the dance floor for a little polka dancing. And then there were all the lovely accordions, their shiny black and white keys gleaming, their bellows breathing in and out, keeping everyone in time and on time, all in the name of polka time!
Farewell, sweet punk ‘n drag apocalypse! Just in time for 2012, beloved five-year-old Friday weekly queer meltdown Charlie Horse at the Cinch has released its gin-soaked core neutrinos and called it quits. Charlie Horse hostess, deconstructed Courtney Love, and Guardian cover girl Anna Conda blames the influx of yuppie condo-dwellers and an increasingly anti-gay agenda overtaking the once queerific Polk district for the club’s demise. Apparently, noise complaints forced the Cinch to come before the Entertainment Commission and be threatened with fines or closure if the Polk bar didn’t tone it down. The Cinch asked Anna to take a break, but she decided it was time to move on from the hostile climate.
It’s a truly tragic state of affairs — one which points up even more the continuing War on Fun that the city seems to be raging against its own origins and spirit. No real problem with drunk bachelorettes in ridiculous heels and Ed Hardy-drenched dudes squealing and puking up and down the street, but some drag queens getting incredibly creative inside a gay bar? WELL, GASP!
Charlie Horse has been a bright spot in the City’s increasingly dreary weekend club scene for half a decade, one that made of family of disparate non-wealthy queers who gagged on Gaga and wanted people to know there were amazing blackout options that didn’t involve cologne and gay cockatoo hair. It will be sorely, Horsely missed. Anna Conda’s tearful letter of farewell — and rousing vow to carry on — after the jump. (And catch her Herr-A-Chick nights every first and third Wednesday of the month at the Eagle!)
By Andrea Nemerson. Email your questions to andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here.
Dear Andrea:
I get irritable with my boyfriend when he doesn’t want to have sex. This doesn’t happen that often — we’ve been together less than a year and have sex most times we’re together, which is about five days out of seven. But sometimes he’s tired or not in the mood. This should be OK, right? If I were the guy and he were the girl, everyone would say "Stop pressuring her!" But I can’t help feeling bad. What is wrong with me?
Love,
Moody
Dear Mood:
Indeed, what is wrong with you? Could it be that you are simply an irritable person, and if it were not this issue, you’d find something else about your interactions with Boyfriend Boy to make you cranky? No? Then you’re just a normal person who is acting kind of spoiled. You and BFB are occasionally out of synch. And even non-cranky people have a hard time wrapping their heads around this part, but it is nobody’s fault.
It would be a vast and silly oversimplification to say that everyone has a natural libido set-point, like the one that keeps your body-weight unsatisfactory (To you! I do not care!) no matter what changes you make to your ratio of calories-in to energy-out. People certainly do seem to have something of a tendency toward the high, middle, or low end of the libido scale, but life, moving on as it does, changes things. (Actually, body-weight set-points also shift, but shut up, it was a nice simile.) Things do calm down a bit post late-adolescence/young adulthood, and even for those who can honestly state that they feel just as driven as always by their own hormones, stuff gets in the way. And sometimes that stuff gets back out of the way eventually, the kids go to college, or a health issue resolves, or they start sleeping better, and a dampened libido can come roaring back to life. So no way am I positing that sex drive takes a long slow dispiriting slide toward oblivion as soon as we become grownups or anything, just that libido is dynamic. Even yours, sex-wanting girl, is subject to change.
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Digging into some Food for Thought
11/11-11/23 of the Mission’s best restaurants participate in "Food for Thought" to help Mission grads get to college
Do nothing but eat out at one of your favorite Mission restaurants this Wednesday night and you’ll be helping some of the neediest Mission high school grads get to college. With 23 of the ‘hood’s best restaurants participating, a portion of all dinner sales (restaurants have committed anywhere from 25-100% of that night’s sales) go to Food for Thought. In it for the long haul, Food for Thought offers, among other things, tutoring centers for elementary school kids, academic support groups in junior high, and college prep programs for high school students, working with them through each phase of schooling. There’s even raffle prizes at each restaurant, like a trip for two to Mexico. You don’t have to be told twice to eat out at Range, Mission Beach Cafe, Little Star Pizza, or Bar Bambino, do you? 11/11 regular hours at 23 Mission restaurants
List of participating restaurants: www.missiongraduates.org/foodforthought
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A Luce interior
11/11 – Luce celebrates its Michelin Star with the Frescobaldi family
It’s an honor for a chef to receive a Michelin star, especially a French chef like our own Dominique Crenn at Luce in the Intercontinental Hotel (she’s also on this season of The Next Iron Chef). Luce celebrates in a big way by cooking a 6-course Tuscan feast, Inspirations of Tuscany, with Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi’s wine estates’ executive chef, Donatella Zampoli. Frescobaldi, the legendary Italian family who even traded their wines with Michelangelo back in the day, will, naturally, be pairing their wines with dinner. Not only is this a rare, special night, but $10 of every 6-course dinner benefits CUESA, so the focus remains local as it is international. Courses include Thomas Family Farms potato gnocchi with bone marrow and lobster paired with a glass of 2006 Attems Cicinis, or sweetbread and beef tongue with potato espuma (foam to you), slow cooked egg and pancetta jus partnered with a 2005 Nipozzano Riserva Chianti Classico. Can’t make it out Wednesday? The party rolls on all month until November 21, with a 4-course Michelin Star prix-fixe menu available any night for $60 per person. $75; $30 for wine pairings 11/11 – make a reservation during regular hours, 5-11pm 888 Howard Street
415-616-6566 www.lucewinerestaurant.com
My editor Tim Redmond just asked why just every story about the city’s sanctuary ordinance seems to start with Ramos?
It’s a good question, especially since the Campos legislation would ensure that folks like Ramos would be deported, “not once, but twice,” as Campos puts it.
So why does the Ramos red herring keep popping up? Maybe it’s because anti-immigrant groups keep mentioning Ramos in an effort to keep the media focused on “security” issues, and not on “child welfare” arguments.
Most arguments around juvenile immigrant policy issues typically split into these two camps–the security camp and the child welfare camp– as noted in a 2009 Congressional Research Services report on juvenile immigrants by Chad C. Haddal.
In his 28-page report, Haddal observes that the debate over policy questions regarding unaccompanied alien children, or UAC, (as the federal government describes juvenile immigrants who appear to be here without family) “has polarized in recent years between two camps: child welfare advocates and immigration security advocates.”
As Haddal observes, tthe child welfare group “has for decades advocated a more refugee-oriented policy toward UAC, arguing that the UAC are largely victims of trafficking, abuse and economic circumstances. Security advocates, by contrast, advocate a more restrictive policy of deportation and repatriation, charging that unauthorized immigration is associated with increased community violence and illicit activities such as gang memberships. The UAC policy question is how to provide for the security of the United States while simultaneously safeguarding the rights and safe treatment of unaccompanied alien children.”
What’s interesting about Haddal’s analysis is that it poses the question of why the “child welfare” side of the argument fell by the wayside in San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s leadership.
Could it be because the mayor’s criminal justice department was dominated by Republican leaders who had Newsom’s ear last summer, just as he was making his doomed entry into the gubernatorial race? And that now that Newsom has let himself be backed into a policy corner, he doesn’t seem to be able to acknowledge the child welfare argument, let alone debate it with Campos in a public arena?
I shot this footage of driving across the Bay Bridge, the day after the bridge re-reopened the second time this fall.
I’d already filmed this stretch before, the day it reopened for the first time in September. At the time, I wanted to capture what the new approach to San Francisco looks like, and I was extra thankful for the renewed access, which was sorely missed by my family over Labor Day weekend, when my sister-in-law had to be taken by ambulance from Oakland to San Francisco via the San Mateo bridge.
When I shot the bridge the first time, my family was concerned that my sister-in-law didn’t have much time left on this planet, and sadly, they were right: she died Oct. 8, after a long battle with breast cancer.
But I little suspected that I would be filming the bridge re-reopening so soon, or that the newly installed S-curve would be the site of 44 accidents in the ensuing two months. Today’s accident, in which a man driving a truck full of pears lost control and plunged to his death in the Bay, in the wee morning hours, sounds particularly gruesome.
So, maybe it’s worth watching videos like this, just to familiarize yourself with the road before you get behind the wheel. Especially if you have a heavy load on board. (The other major major accident, so far, involved a guy who lost control of a Safeway big rig, scattering frozen pizzas across the top deck and jamming up traffic for hours.)
If you compare the two videos, you’ll see that flashing lights have now been installed, just before you hit the curve, which is serious enough that it makes me want to go, “Wheee!” each time I round it.
I’ve also shot the drive (this time at night) from San Francisco to Oakland, which so far has witnessed far less accidents, possibly because folks have to squeeze through a tunnel before they hit the curve on the lower deck of the bridge.
And please, excuse my music choices and/or background commentaries on these videos. Because as history shows, when you’re driving the bridge, you can’t afford to get distracted by anything else, including whatever’s playing on the radio of my music-challenged car.
But I guess you could watch these videos from the comfort and safety of your laptop, while listening to the music or commentary of your own choice. So enjoy–and keep your hands on the wheel, as the song goes, next time you drive the Bay Bridge, and slow down. It really could save your life.
Russell Blackwood as the Empress of Colma in Hypnodrome Head Trips
If you dare! Venture down a dark, spooky stretch of Tenth Street to the Hypnodrome, home of San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers. Before the show even starts, you’ll notice one or two or ten wonderful oddities. Like, what’s that head doing in that box behind the bar? (It’s a “cephalic vivarium,” a prop from a past production, Hypnodrome Head Trips.) What’s the story with that old-timey player piano? (It’s a family heirloom belonging to Thrillpeddlers director Russell Blackwood.) And yikes — is that box seat on the far right decorated to look like a padded cell? (Yes.)
Of course, this instant intrigue is exactly what Blackwood — who founded the company in 1991 with childhood pal Daniel Zilber — wants his audiences to feel. Thrillpeddlers are America’s preeminent producer of plays from the Grand Guignol, the infamous Parisian theater that peddled thrills (if you will) from 1897-1962.
“To get to the Grand Guignol, you would take the Metro to Montemartre, and walk past brothels and the Moulin Rouge, and turn down this dead-end alley to the [theater] at the very end. Going there was a whole experience on its own,” Blackwood explains. “I knew that [the Hypnodrome is] not in the best neighborhood here. But that’s part of the unusual experience, just getting to our theater.”
The company has had the Hypnodrome, which seats 45, for five years. One defining characteristic is the array of “shock boxes” that line the theater’s last row. Blackwood’s father, who is the Thrillpeddler’s set designer, recently redesigned the boxes to incorporate a variety of themes (Egyptian tomb, heaven and hell, the above-mentioned padded cell, etc.) Each box is tricked out with devices designed to lend an extra-sensational experience, with “spandex panels, compressed air, all kinds of glow-in-the-dark things, vibrator pads, and several different buzzers,” Blackwood discloses with devilish joy.
Still from Thrillpeddlers’ Titus Andronicus, 2006
There’s history involved here, and it goes back further than William Castle. “The Grand Guignol and many other Parisian theaters had private boxes with grillwork fronts, so you could see out, but you had to really look in to see in. The Grand Guignol was the last Parisian theater to still have those in the 1960s,” Blackwood says. “The idea of there being a theater where a housewife could have a midday tryst with a lover was just too charming for me. So all of the boxes have curtains that close, and as long as it’s brighter onstage than it is in the box, we can’t see in, but they can see out. And we have had things go on!”
