sfbg Archives — Page 15 of 59 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Zombies! Blood! Theater!

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October 20, 2009

By Nicole Gluckstern

For reasons I shall never quite fathom, the majority of the year’s horror films will inevitably be released closer to Christmas than to All Hallows Eve, thwarting my autumnal desire to have the holy bejeebus scared out of me over popcorn and stale nachos. Fortunately for my seasonal predilection, a number of Bay Area theatre companies are staging live performances of creepshow classics, serving up shock, splatter, and suspense — though probably not nachos – for the rest of October (and beyond).

Zombie Town

Zombies run amok at the EXIT Theatre! “Zombie Town” and “Zombie: A New Musical”. SF Fringe favorites Sleepwalkers Theatre present “Zombie Town”—”a documentary play”—by Tim Bauer directly across the hall of the EXIT Theatreplex from Anthony R. Miller’s Heavy Metal Zombie musical extravaganza. How can you possible go wrong? Flip a coin, or heck, go two nights in a row. “Zombie Town” ($14-$20) plays through Nov 7, “Zombie: A New Musical” ($15) will close Halloween Night. It’s Zombieriffic! EXIT Theatre, 8 p.m., 156 Eddy, SF, www.sffringe.org.

Brain-Dead Alive

Primitive Screwheads: “Brain-Dead Alive.” Wear your oldest clothes to this performance, the Primitive Screwheads are firm believers in blood, lots and lots of blood. Buckets of it. All over the place, themselves, you. It’s a beautiful thing. This year’s adaptation of Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive” promises blood, flying limbs, horror, hilarity, more blood, and a bonus lineup of spooky opening bands, including a rare performance by Fringe Festival favorites and “Mortified” house band LIVE EVIL who play on Halloween Night. Now that’s entertainment! Through October 31, 7:30 p.m., Great Star Theatre, 636 Jackson, SF, $20, www.primitivescrewheads.com.

The Torture Garden

Thrillpeddler’s Shocktoberfest: “The Torture Garden”. Shockingly naturalistic, turn-of-the-previous-century, Grand Guignol theatre was the great-grandparent of slasher flicks and racy peepshow farces, and San Francisco’s premiere Grand Guignol devotees, the Thrillpeddlers, have been dishing up both every Halloween for ten years strong. This year they’re presenting a brand new translation of Grand Guignol master playwright Andre de Lorde’s “The Torture Garden,” plus another modern original, “The Phantom Limb,” penned by Thrillpeddler’s regular Rob O’Keefe. An up close and all too personal intermission demonstration of their working model of an 18’th century guillotine will give you more bang for your buck than any snoozy Friday the Thirteenth marathon ever will. Thursdays and Fridays through Nov 20. 8 p.m. The Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF. $25, www.thrillpeddlers.com

Auto-Tuning Stephen Hawking

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October 20, 2009

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By Marke B.

Dig those delicious vintage issues of Omni magazine out of your ma’s closet and crack back open that copy of Cosmos — from melodysheep on YouTube comes this lovely, trip-hoppy musical exploration of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking’s popular scientific output.

PS: I am starting a club called OMNI immediately:

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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October 20, 2009

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Leah, 19th Street and Mission

Tell us about your look: “Wear what you like. You don’t have to stick to just a certain
store’s clothes.”

Fernando and Greg are back…

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October 19, 2009

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…and you can listen to their podcast here

Happy belated Alaska Day

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October 19, 2009

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October 18 is Alaska Day, something I discovered while working on a piece about right wing nuts—which led me to wonder what people in the home state of one of the nuttiest right wing nuts think of their nut.

Yes, I know most folks on the left feel like they never want to hear from Sarah “moose-in-the headlights” Palin again, but that could be a mistake, according to a blog called The Mudflats: Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics, which is home to this piece about Palin’s waning popularity, full of cool charts with arrows pointing (sigh of relief) mostly downwards.

As Mudflats notes, “69 percent of 20 percent may be good enough to sell books, but good enough to get her elected to the highest office in the land? Not so much. Really, it should be every Democrat’s dream to see a Palin 2012 run for the White House. It would not only be enough to secure Obama a second term, but it might actually cause the complete destruction of the Republican Party.

Then, Eisenhower can quit rolling over in his grave.”

All of which is worth remembering when it’s raining outside and the healthcare debate is droning on and it feels like the Dems got stuck in a rut, with Palin kicking mud in their faces with the wheels of her Chevy Suburban. But while I admire Mudflats’ humor, I’m not sure I’m willing to go so far as to stick this bumper sticker on my beat-up black Anonomobile:

Gil Scott-Heron today

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October 16, 2009

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By Michael Krimper

I tried to curb my anticipation for Gil Scott-Heron’s performance at the recently made-over Regency Ballroom (10/2/200). But how could I? I wanted him to amaze, to enrapture with his musical poetics, and most secretly, to redeem my nebulous view of a ‘70s-era politicized soulfulness unrivaled by today’s musicianship. It’s an idealistic and surely ridiculous image we children of the ‘80s have cultivated of the decade before ours. But it’s one so ingrained and endlessly cited that we can’t seem to shake free of it.

While Los Angeles revival funk band Orgone grooved (peep their solid cover of “Funky Nassau”), singer Fanny Franklin expressed equal excitement about bearing witness to the legend. And when Scott-Heron finally stepped onto stage, strutting choppily to the microphone, the audience erupted in wailing applause and shouts. He looked older and moved with certain difficulty, his body appearing thin underneath his loose-fitting clothes. His face was angular and gaunt, with patches of gray hair pouring from the sides of his hat and from his chin. A lady sitting in front of me asked incredulously if that old man indeed was Gil. I nodded with certainty but really had no idea. After all, he’s hardly recognizable compared to his younger self clad with the iconic Afro and psychedelic garb.

Gil Scott-Heron. Photo from allaboutjazz.com

Gil Scott-Heron in the ’70s.

Today, it’s a rare occurrence to see Gil Scott-Heron. He has been in and out of prison for the past decade on drug and parole transgression charges. Scott-Heron perhaps indirectly addressed rumors about his well-being when he told the crowd at Regency that a media frenzy on the Internet continues to concoct all sorts of chimeras about his life.

Michael Pollan’s modest proposals

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October 16, 2009

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By Sarah Morrison

While down-to-earth food expert and journalist Michael Pollan might not quite have offered the definitive “Omnivore’s Solution” — to cite the title of his talk — when he kick-started the 2009/10 Strictly Speaking series at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall (9/30/2009), he did provide an entertaining and accessible critique of what he called America’s “unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.”

“We are lost, really lost in the supermarket,” said the author of three New York Times bestsellers, shortly after he took the stage humorously laden down with Safeway bags, and enough packets of Twinkies, Fruit Loops, Soda and Wonder Bread to make even the most gluttonous in the audience start to feel queasy. Promising to “connect the dots between diet and health in food systems as a whole,” Pollan guided the enthusiastic audience through his easy-to-follow theory of food politics – a theory that he summed up in seven words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

Michael Pollan

Satirising the nation’s obsession with “nutritionism,” a pseudo-science that Pollan compared to surgery in the 1650’s (“promising and fascinating to watch, but are you really ready to let them operate on your life?”), the lecture went on to critique the demonising of certain nutrients in American society (think trans fat, carbohydrates, sugars), and the intellectualising of food to the point where the regular American feels unable to eat anything without the help of an expert by their side.

Fernando and Greg threaten a comeback

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October 15, 2009

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Hope is not dead for all those of us who liked to deaden/enliven our brain cells by listening to Energy 92.7 FM’s unique mix of gay-friendly chatter and techno-pop-80s- whatever muzak.

Fernando and Greg just announced via Facebook, “Listen to Fernando and Greg beginning next week…find out where very soon!”

“Wild Things” makes everything … groovy

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October 15, 2009

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By Louis Peitzman

Like the book on which it’s based, Where the Wild Things Are is open to interpretation. There are no easy answers here, and don’t expect to get any help from the enigmatic filmmakers. When I interviewed director and co-writer Spike Jonze, co-writer Dave Eggers, and actor Catherine Keener in a roundtable at the Ritz-Carlton, one reporter asked, “Do you think the Wild Things are reflections of Max’s own personality, the people around Max, or just something else entirely?

To which Eggers replied, “Yes.”

It was stressed repeatedly that afternoon: Where the Wild Things Are is intentionally open-ended. Jonze’s goal is not to confound or frustrate his audience so much as to give them space to use their imaginations, much in the same way Max — the film’s pint-sized hero — creates a world into which he can escape.

Musings on fashion: dandyism as truism

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October 15, 2009

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By Jana Hsu

Far from late 18th century London or Paris, and in the times of Oscar Wilde, where dandyism and quaintrellism reigned supreme, we can now look back to the 90s, when Japanese signature street fashion was accountable for those nifty, eye-catching, and not to mention effeminate, Asiatic designs that made their way over to the states and onto our concrete runways. Are we talking about a mishmash of European sentimentality with American boldness wedded with the nomadic, controversial, metro-sexual men in tights high fashion street wear? No, not exactly. We now boldly regard these street trolling, noble fops donning coke-rimmed glasses and Asiatic wear as signature en vogue, or to coin the term, “dandy boi.” These winsome beings reflect the age we live in … boldly geeky, iconic, fleeting, and instantly arresting to the naked eye. Never an anomaly, these dudes run the show in all their elevated vulgarity. But they are straight. Huh?

The late Quentin Crisp: inspiration?

alt.sex.column: Perv 101

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October 13, 2009

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By Andrea Nemerson: andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here

Dear Andrea:

I guess this is pretty common, but it’s not something I have any experience with, so please bear with me.

I have a lot of fantasies about being tied up, humiliated, etc. and often think about them while my girlfriend and I are having sex. I’m sure you know where this is going, but I’d really like it if she did the tying up and humiliating — but I have no idea how I would bring it up or how to talk to her about it. It’s not like I even know that much about it myself. Should I just forget about it and stick with fantasies? Is it just a stupid idea?

Love,

Unsure

Dear Sure:

I’ll tell you one thing: what with all the "I’m sure you already know" and "I don’t know much about it myself" and "Do you think I’m stupid even to think about this? How stupid? Really stupid?", you are showing a certain natural talent for abjection that I’m sure will serve you well in your new career as a bottom.

This is a perennial topic, and in a way it has gotten easier to answer over time — when I started the column, I had to recommend books (can you imagine?) and about three Web sites I happened to know about (and you’d never find without me because Google didn’t exist). In another way, though, it’s, well, not harder, but more disheartening. A girlfriend who’d never heard anything about bondage and discipline except the phrases "whips and chains" and a few grim episodes of Law and Order in 1997 could conceivably just need a little education and just might jump right in as soon as she knew what you were talking about. A girlfriend who says "I don’t know what you’re talking about, and also, ew!" in 2009 is probably not going to be running down to the Dungeon Hole Gifte Shoppe for a black latex body-bag and a "Gates of Hell" penis cage in your size anytime soon.

Squeeze my box

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October 13, 2009

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By Dan Abbott

Skyler Fell, who performed at the SF Accordion Club’s September gathering.

In an age of accelerating cultural fusion and mutation, it should come as no surprise that the accordion has undergone something of a renaissance. A staple of musical traditions from as far afield as Eastern Europe, Mexico, and Italy, the various permutations of the squeezebox has resurfaced with renewed vigor. The San Francisco Bay Area has become something of a hub for this rebirth, aided by both its location at the hub of cultural ley lines and its rich history as – believe it or not – an accordion exporting powerhouse.

Frank Montoro, president of the, San Francisco Accordion Club has watched accordion culture wax and wane with the times. Until the middle of the 20th century, there were at least five accordion factories churning out instruments in North Beach alone, Montoro says, mostly by Italians who’d brought generations of craft knowledge over from the Old Country.

“I watched my accordion being built, back in the ‘40s,” he remembers fondly. The advent of rock’n’roll and mass culture swept much of the accordion’s prestige (and visibility) away, Montoro says, until it seemed an ethnic relic, the obscure province of nerds, wedding music and Weird Al Yankovic. “Times have changed,” the octogenarian Montoro says. “If you like Swedish music, where are you going to go?”

Dive In: Phone Booth’s a missed call

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October 13, 2009

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Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column. Check out her last installment here.

Before you all start squawking at me about how Phone Booth isn’t a dive – I know. But after reading reviews of the place that kept throwing around the term “dive” like confetti on New Year’s Eve, I figured it was my duty to check it out. (Tough life, I know.) So I threw myself on a bus and traveled over to the area in the city best known for having dives that are anything but dive-y – the Mission.

At first glance, Phone Booth looks promising. The place is tiny, cramped, and dark. Cigarette smoke floats through the air, further obscuring vision, and a chandelier comprised of naked Barbies looks like a dead baby joke waiting to happen. Furry fake spiders crawl over another light fixture, and a lone pool table hunkers in the corner, with barely enough space around it for a proper shot. The mixed drinks are poured with a heavy hand by a no-nonsense bartender who looks like she could just as easily shoot the shit with you as she could tear you a new one.

Unfortunately, while the atmosphere feels right, the touches that make Phone Booth unique are also ultimately the cause of its fall from grace (or is it an upward crawl?) away from classification as a dive bar. Kitschy décor, seasoned bartenders, and cheap drinks do not a dive bar make. However, they do attract a certain kind of crowd, especially in that area.

Tim Schafer: the brütally complete interview!

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October 13, 2009

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By Ben Richardson

Tim Schafer is the San Francisco-based game designer behind Brütal Legend, an epic action-adventure title set in the world of heavy metal. (Read our cover story here.) Reached by phone in New York City, where he was preparing to tape Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Schafer dispensed some wit and wisdom.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What was the moment in which you went from being Tim Schafer, man about town, to Tim Schafer, game designer about to go on the Jimmy Fallon show?

Tim Schafer: There was a moment when I was getting on a MUNI train, when someone yelled at me that they loved [the game]Day of the Tentacle. I was like “God, that’s so awesome! My own town! They love Day of the Tentacle!”

SFBG: Do you think the rise of game designers as public personalities — more along the lines of musicians, or movie directors or authors — is a good thing for gaming? Do you think it will make publishers more willing to put out products that are more risky, that are more bound up, like Brütal Legend is, in the dream of one talented designer?

TS: I think it’s good for games creatively, because a lot of times games can seem anonymous, they can seem like they were made by any studio or created by a committee — like no one’s really responsible for it. I would love to see games become more personal, and make you really feel like you’re playing a specific person’s, or a specific team’s game, like “this is a Double Fine game, this is a game only Double Fine could make.” That’s just something I hope for in the industry.

SFBG: What are the things that you would point to that define a Double Fine [Schafer’s company] game, or a Tim Schafer game?

Teens take over library, olds gasp

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October 13, 2009

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By Cailtin Donohue

Just when you thought you were safe… teens take over the library

Friday night at the library! Sure, when I was 17 you couldn’t have gotten me there with a sharp stick and an unmarked van, but back then I was doing more meaningful things like chugging Mike’s Hard Lemonade and straightening my hair.

Not so with the attendees of TeenQuake. This sucka-free event of which I speak is part of LitQuake’s mega lineup of all that is arty and eloquent. The west coast’s largest literary festival has somehow managed to convince the San Francisco Main Library to be peacefully taken over by the under-20 set, and dulcet tones of teen lit authors will be echoing off the walls all night. Look forward to readings by Frank PortmanFrank Portman, author of King Dork, whose title character wryly dismantles life as a baby boomer’s progeny:

“He must have read the notebook. Otherwise, how would he have reached the conclusion that my ‘relationship’ with ‘my girlfriend’ was undermining his generation’s sacred achievement of the institution of easygoing touchy-feely ouchless deodorant optional crunchy-granola Hair-soundtrack butterflies-and-unicorns sexuality?”

TeenQuake featured artist Tom Franco’s story illustration from his collaboration with Mom

Also featured are teen lit writers Ying Chang Compestine, Tom Dolby and mother-son team Betsy and Tom Franco who recently collaborated on Metamorphosis, a young adult novel whose narrator recasts his high school social milieu in the form of ancient Roman mythology. In addition to all the booky folk there will be an emcee battle, a scavenger hunt whose victor wins a Wii, a live art wall and performances by teen spoken word artists, dancers and musicians.

So find the coolest, most verbose teenager you know and give them a ride. And how about just drop them off there because (a) they want to do their own thing and (b) Teenquake’s for 13-19 year olds. Don’t be that guy.

TEENQUAKE
Fri/16, 6:30-9 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
(415) 750-1497 www.litquake.org

Twenty galleries in two hours

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October 13, 2009

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By Spencer Young

“First Thursday” is, you guessed it, the first Thursday of every month, but it’s also an open house art event where 30-plus galleries, mostly concentrated in downtown SF, invite you to look and hopefully buy their art things from around 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

But, what if — like me — you struggle making decisions that involve seemingly endless options and finite resources (time, money, stomach space)? If at restaurants you get overwhelmed by the menu’s dimensions, eventually narrow it down to the french toast and panini, but linger between the combinations tirelessly? You can choose at random, allowing chance to dictate your indecisiveness, or, you give in, exercising volition. Neither option, however, will erase the pangs of what was left out — what if the wild arugula salad would have been the one?

Oh the anguish of living in a liberal democracy! How does one make a decision and avoid the anxiety of absence? The answer: suicide. Not the act, but the drink. Filling a 64 ounce mug from every soda pop spout from Hawaiian Punch to Mountain Dew reconciles the dilemma at hand, because everything is chosen and nothing left out. Sure, the result tastes like shit, but at least you’ve experienced all there was to experience, albeit all at once.

This was my logic for “First Thursday.” There was just one problem: given that there’s over 30 participating galleries and only a two-hour window, that leaves less than four minutes per gallery, excluding commute time. Impossible.

The next best alternative? Hit the most concentrated area: 49 Geary St. With five floors and 20 galleries, two hours allow five minutes per gallery and 20 minutes in the hallways and stairs. Most galleries get boring after mere seconds anyways, so five minutes is plenty of time to drink a glass of wine, do a quick perusal, snap some photos, and jot down some impressions. In order to avoid another decision, these shotgun summaries are limited to 49 words each, constrained, like each gallery’s space, by the building. In order of viewing, here are 20 extremely hasty reviews of the 49 Geary St. galleries:

1. Bekris Gallery: “Common Ground” (continues through Nov. 21) www.bekrisgallery.com

Importantly dressed buyer-types regaling each other of trips to Africa and chanting, “Oh, how do you do?” “How do you do.” Broom-like statues of African subjects, and lively colored paintings with tricky ciphers fill the room. General, by William Kentridge, is the most attractive piece in the place.

General by William Kentridge. All photos by Spencer Young.

2. George Lawson Gallery: Clem Crosby, Tad Wiley, Transfocus (continues through Oct. 3) www.rfprfp.com

Eerily empty compared to Bekris Gallery. Clem Crosby: crude, ugly, drippy oil paintings seemingly painted with fingers, fists, and libidinal angst. Tad Wiley: solemn, yet inviting graphic arts balanced-shape paintings on paper. Transfocus: haunting photos of the abstract, awash in yummy colors. Uhh… where is the wine?

Art by Tad Wiley

Writers Issue: Along Telegraph

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October 13, 2009

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By Arisa White

East Bay Rats are across the street from Gold Coin Car Wash

Oaksterdam is across the street from Victory Stables

Greyhound is across the street from Social Services

The woman in sequins is across the street from EBT Cards Accepted

The cross on his chest made my body the more bare. Compelled to be a blanket, fur, however he would have me, he had me. His god was something to hang on to. A chain that made return possible. My reflection sullied the gold. It dimmed above or beneath me, a way a mother’s face turns off her love. She offers enough to guide you towards her but her withdrawal leaves a cold spot, hollowed earth after a stake’s been pulled.

The house we couldn’t build is across from the house I wouldn’t build

Makes miracles happen is across from when whiskey made my tongue thirsty for hers

Blue Bird Liquor is across the street from the bathroom whose orange walls could not muffle

Hotel California is across from Broaster’s Chicken coming soon

Men, when they do, cross their legs in the way of academics. Never in the way of churchwomen who keep the secret covered—there’s nothing to be implored, explored, discovered. In the way of academics, the whole body thinks. To the side, he shows a chin propped by a fist, between his cheeks thought is candy, eyes turn skyward. In the way of churchwomen their eyes look down, to their breast, beneath their shirt, to the source of much anxiety, a nipple, pleasured by the touch of rayon.

City Line is a hand hennaed and scarred

Retro the Victorian’s scaffolded face

Free Baby Jamaica from the bus’ accordion folds

Black & White the street for a frantic Dodge, a passenger lost

I cross my t’s and think men are dying. The bushes sing baritone and contralto, from someone’s gut a baby’s born. For every shattered platelet, men are folding into each other, bodies pressed like puzzles. There’s comfort knowing his edge has a home. In a t. In a cup or covering the chest, he values sunrise, for days to speed, for the soul to let go bone. He the more aware death’s a trespasser, and the heart will bark ’til a red meat turns it elsewhere—a man at the end of wait.

Rent-a-Relic is the fence that says this side, mine; this side, you stay

The rainbow an International Blvd where pussy is young and produce is wilted

The lake is the ocean whose skin is split by pirates who negotiate with corporations

The senior citizens home weeps willows in his and hers yards

Cross my heart and hope, a needle in the eye. The cross is an X, really. Is how to find a treasure. How to hug at an end of a letter. If you dig where I mark, what do you do with the gravel, the flesh that slips back into the hole? Mail it to my brother, he is the most poetic. He will blend it with oil-colors and spend nights on canvas, painting verse after verse, with the breathiest weather, a text you can prism.

Sexcipe: Mommy makes steak

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October 13, 2009

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By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF

If you’ve been following the last sexcipes, you now know how to prepare an eight hour pork spare rib meal with side of rubber gimp, and you also know how to make a hot sexy quicky with a burger and your lover.

Today’s sexcipe will focus on a meal that may not take any longer than the quicky but is so widely appreciated that it begs to be accompanied by a classic scenario from everybody’s favorite person and potential sex symbol, their Mommy. Now, I’m not talking about your actual mother. I’m talking about that feminine archetype who has held your hand when you were sick, spanked you when you peed the bed, and gave up the best cuts of meat to make sure you grow up big and strong. In other words, the maternal figure who cares for you, disciplines you, and also creates some of your initial sexual propensities in life. As a Mommy figure I find bringing my “children” into a primal state of no longer having to worry about who they are and what their place is in society gives me a great opportunity to contain them in that primal space while allowing their sexual fantasies to emerge.

Ingredients:

Truffle Steak

1 pound grass fed velvet steak (you may substitute skirt or bavette, but I prefer velvet)
2 cloves garlic
pinch of truffle salt
crushed black pepper
smidge of olive oil (truffle if you have it)
8-10 shitake mushrooms

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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October 13, 2009

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Anette, 19th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look: “I really like this coat. It’s from Buffalo in the Mission.
I like big hoods, they look mystical. I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan!”

Sweet Tooth: So Fraîche, so clean

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October 12, 2009

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By Megan Gordon

I know, I know. The last thing you want to hear about is a new frozen yogurt joint. Last year, it seemed like the neon Pinkberry imposters were popping up on every street corner. It wasn’t the Jane Fonda yogurt of the 80’s—it was fresh, tart, and had a clean, healthy aftertaste. It was good while it lasted, but I’m over it. There’s only so much mochi a girl can take down.

But the other day, I was cruising down Fillmore, trying to walk off a hearty brunch when I stumbled across Fraîche, a sweet little shop with a brilliantly designed interior (i.e. no neon), and really different yogurt. Trust me. Yes, I already ate brunch—and we’re talking biscuits, grits, a crab benedict, two cups of coffee, and a few bites of a warm beignet. So it wasn’t exactly a small meal, and I was far from hungry. But I couldn’t resist. I had to try a little cup.

West Fest Posters: Wendy Wright

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October 12, 2009

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As West Fest approaches, Noise is showcasing some of the 18 different concert posters created for the event, which takes place on Sunday, October 25 at Golden Gate Park.

Here’s a poster by Wendy Wright:

Live Take: Part Time Punks fest, 10/9/09

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October 12, 2009

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By Nicole Gluckstern

The Raincoats. All photos by Morlock E.

Punk rock will never die, but as the years go by, old school punks often do wind up slowing down a bit. They start families, work at software companies or film studios, pay for rent and food — all acts of respectable members of society. But just because you get a full-time job doesn’t mean you have to give up rock forever, you just have to cut back to part-time. At least that’s the premise that LA’s Part Time Punks club night founders Michael Stock and Benjamin White might have begun with when they threw their first party of late ’70s-early ’80s post-punk music in 2005.

Savage Republic

With time-tested acts such as the Slits, the Avengers, and Savage Republic and an impressive collection of URGH!-era rekkids to spin, the Part Time Punks have gained an eager following among older fans who were there to begin with, and younger ones who just wish they’d been. Both versions of fan were in broad attendance Friday at the Mezzanine, when the PTP crew and an impressive slew of live acts, including Joy Division peers Section 25, and the elusive, influential Raincoats, stormed the stage for the first-ever Part Time Punks mini-fest away from home.

Viv Albertine

We get there just as San Francisco-based Magic Bullets are wrapping up their set, and are treated instead to a sharp DJ set which barrels down post-punk memory lane with fierce momentum. Viv Albertine, formerly of the Slits, armed with just her guitar and a slew of Sid Vicious stories, takes the stage next. Her often-confessional lyrics about the unwelcome passage of time, orgasmic dysfunction, heroin needles, and the lonely artist’s life were no less unflinching than any Slits ode to self-destructive boys and shoplifting, though the sheer ferocity of the delivery has been taken down a notch.

Appetite: Whiskey wonderland and a Cool Black Ball

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October 12, 2009

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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.

Whiskeyfest events and tastings all week long. Sazerac cocktail photo by Daniel Stumpf

Through 10/17 – Whiskeyfest happenings all week long
I told you about Whiskeyfest happening this Friday in last week’s Appetite, but for those who either can’t afford the big blowout at the Marriott on Friday, or who want to keep the celebration (and tasting) going all week, pick from a stellar line-up and range of events happening through Saturday. Whiskeyfest’s Web site has a comprehensive listing, as does one of my favorite spirits’ blogs, Camper English’s Alcademics. There are tasting sessions from distillers and whiskey experts at restaurants and bars around town, like Elixir and 15 Romolo, roundtable tastings and a Glenfiddich & Cigars night at whiskey dive bar haven, Broken Record, Fifth Floor’s always classy Whiskey Wednesdays and other special happy hours, and even a whiskey dinner at the Alembic put on by K&L Wine Merchants. So many choices, (thankfully) all of them involving whiskey.
www.maltadvocate.com

10/17 – Lower Fillmore’s Cool Black Ball
Here’s sexy way to drink and dine… in a night that evokes the jazz glory days of Lower Fillmore, come out in your 1920’s-50’s dress for Cool Black Ball, darting in and out of Fillmore’s jazz clubs and restaurants, like 1300 on Fillmore, Yoshi’s, Rasselas, Sheba Piano Lounge. Each will feature special menu items, jazz bands and dancing till 2am, concerts included with the price of a ticket (or a free show at Bruno’s on Fillmore; note details on the website for getting half off your ticket if you dine at Yoshi’s or Rasselas). In the Fillmore Center Plaza from 7:30-8:30pm, there’s free swing lessons and open dancing in the plaza from 8:30-10pm. Think vintage clothing from any of those four decades, with emphasis on “cool, classy, sexy, hip and all black”. Certainly non-vintage black is welcome, and watching Fillmore come alive with finely dressed partiers should be a surreal experience. Come out for a little night music… and some food.
10/17, 7pm-2am
$30 Advance; $40 at door (Fillmore Center Plaza)
Lower Fillmore Street (between Post and Eddy)
www.coolblackball.com