SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Joseph, Bartlett and 24th St.
Tell us about your look: “I get my clothes at thrift shops and from free boxes on the street. My favorite thrift shop is Thrift Town.”
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Hanna, Valencia and 21st St.
Tell us about your look: “I’m all about color.”
Photos and text by Ariel Soto
For the 11th annual Hip Hop DanceFest on November 22, eleven dance troupes graced the stage at the Palace of Fine Arts. The dance companies hailed from California, South Korea, Norway, Canada, London, and New York, showcasing a diverse definition of what hip hop dance means today. There was some tap dancing, classical music, and Michael Jackson tributes. The ages of the dancers ranged from kids to adults, but their skill and proficiency was perfectly cohesive and steeped full of energy. There was also a spectacular trio, the ILL-Abilities Crew, made up of three dancers with various disabilities who danced with such passion and talent that it brought the whole crowd to a standing ovation. It was obvious after seeing these dance companies perform that hip hop is a dance of all nations, where everyone speaks the universal language for getting your groove thang on.
By Susan White
Last month, an amalgamation of hipsters and art aficionados congregated at the Harlot Nightclub for a “hyperintellectual show-and-tell,” otherwise known as Pecha Kucha Night, a worldwide event created in Tokyo six years ago (and recently adapted for San Francisco Design Week).
Basically, Pecha Kucha (pronounced “pe-chak-cha” – Japanese for “chit chat”) is a function at which designers each have exactly six minutes and 40 seconds to present 20 slides of their work (giving them 20 seconds per slide). Having no control over the speed of the projector, speakers are forced to make their points quickly and effectively, moving on before the audience gets bored. Their work usually ranges from architecture to furniture – even the occasional science experiment. Anyone can sign up to speak in advance, and the events are usually free (with suggested donations).
ROBBIE BASHO
Bonn Ist Supreme
(Bo Weavil)
By Max Goldberg
Steel-string master Jack Rose emphasizes the gravity of Robbie Basho’s playing in a brief note introducing this second-generation recording of a late Basho performance: “For me, 12-string guitar begins and ends with Blind Willie McTell and Robbie Basho.”
Basho was loosely affiliated with the “American Primitive” movement centering around John Fahey’s Takoma label, but from early on he displayed a unique voraciousness for cross-cultural transfusions. Besides adapting his last name from the Japanese haiku poet, his extended “ragas” were as likely to veer into Moorish and Persian terrain as the typical Indian-blues hybrid.
Bonn Ist Supreme is a generous helping of Basho’s searching guitar spirals, and while 66 minutes worth of his immersed playing may be too much for one sitting, dipping in piece by piece makes for lovely swimming.
In spite of coming in the midst of Basho’s much-derided Windham Hill period, the 1980 concert shows the guitarist still hard at work at compositions he wrote 15 years earlier. Dewy epics like “Rocky Mountain Raga,” “The Girl and the Lotus,” and “California Raga” are all given energetic run-throughs, and though Basho’s occasional baritone wails make for an easy mark, they’re also a powerful indicator of the guitarist’s unembarrassed zeal.
Max, Broderick and Haight: “Dress differently.”
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Julia, Haight and Ashbury
Tell us about your look: “I like the soldier look, boots and big buttons.”
From Vallejo’s “Discover Vallejo” site.
Text by Sarah Phelan
“Due to the Company’s termination of its right to purchase certain LandSource assets, the Company recognized deferred profit of $101.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 (net of $31.8 million of write-offs of option deposits and pre-acquisition costs and other write-offs) related to the recapitalization of the Company’s LandSource joint venture in 2007.”
I’m no expert on investor relations, but it seems that the above paragraph, excerpted from Lennar’s December 18 2008 8-K report, means that by filing bankruptcy at Mare Island last summer, Lennar either spared its shareholders from further loss, or earned them a profit.
Either way, the financial calculation that lurks behind that deal feels like cold comfort to communities like San Francisco whose last pieces of undeveloped lands are caught up in Lennar’s shareholder-driven financial web.
By Laura Peach
A few years ago, single and sullen on a rainy Valentines Day, I was moping past the library on my way back to my apartment. A sandwich board sign for the “Book Lovers Library Discard Sale” caught my eye and enticed me inside. A small, closetish room on the first floor was bursting with books soon to be orphaned from the library shelves. I spent my time scanning several spines before settling on a cheery red art history text from the 1920s and a distinguished hardcover volume on Hanoi. Happily home I went with these beautiful books in my arms, decidedly less depressed.
Whether or not you have a Valentine this year, you’ll be sure to find literary love at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair this Saturday. Peruse the offerings of hundreds of rare booksellers, and pick up the tomes that turn on your inner bibliophile, from a first addition of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to a signed copy of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea.
LOCAL ARTIST Wayne Smith
TITLE Untitled (after GW) #1
BIO Wayne Smith is a visual and sound artist who lives and works in San Francisco. He received a BA in painting and MA in sculpture from San Jose State University. His work in a variety of media, including drawing, installation, and video, has been shown locally and nationally. In 2007, he collaborated with Berlin-based artist D-L Alvarez on a sound and video installation loosely based on Joan Didion’s The White Album, at New York’s Derek Eller Gallery. As Aero-Mic’d, he records music in SoundEdit 16, a now-defunct sound software, joined by an alternating group of musicians that has included Cliff Hengst, Scott Hewicker, William Fowler Collins, Cory Vilema, and Anne McGuire.
SHOW "Zen With a Lisp: David Enos, Frank Haines, Wayne Smith." Through Sun/11. Sun., noon–5 p.m. [2nd floor projects], call for address. (415) 824-2644
Total holiday comfort food coma on the Guardian staff menu last week:
(1) White trash Bundt cake and Martha Stewart roast beef
(2) Meat pie
(3) Domaine De Canton ginger liqueur
(4) Yule log cake
(5) Dungeness crab and single malt Scotch
The Guardian staff got frisky — and predictably hungover last week:
(1) Breakfast of Champions on New Year’s Day
(2) The Music Library, Jonny Trunk (Fuel Publishing)
(3) Scoping hot bears at the Lone Star Saloon
(4) Y: The Last Man (DC/Vertigo) comics binge
(5) Snorbot
By Sarah Phelan
With the next regularly-scheduled election not until November 2009 — that’s nearly halfway through the fiscal year and too late to address the City’s staggering $575.6 million projected deficit, which threatens to kill or maim just about every program and service that local citizens hold dear–termed-out Board President Aaron Peskin used his last day on the Board of Supervisors to call for a June 2 municipal election “for the purpose of submitting revenue and fiscal measures to the voters.”
But, as Peskin’s resolution notes, to conduct an election on such short notice, the City must modify certain election procedures and deadlines. And such modifications are permissible if the Board finds an emergency
“The Board of Supervisors therefore finds that an emergency exists,” Peskin’s resolution states.
“This emergency ordinance will ensure that the City is able to submit and the voters are able to consider revenue measures designed to avoid the impending deficit threatening the public health, safety and welfare.”
Suggested measures include
**A possible increase in sales tax “and a possible dedication of the proceeds of the tax increase to emergency health and human services and to public protection.”
**A possible increase in the payroll tax
**A possible new residential utilities users tax
**A possible increase in the commercial utilities users tax
**A possible new parcel tax
**A possible new gross receipts tax on residential rental income
**A possible new gross receipts tax on commercial rental income
**A possible new gross receipts tax on all commercial transactions
**A possible new surcharge on the parking tax
**A possible amendment to the City charter to allow the City to appropriate up to 100 percent of the current balance in the Rainy Day Reserve, not to exceed 20 percent of the projected deficit in years in which budgetary deficit of $250 million or more is projected
A possible new charter amendment that would cap all set-asides at their Fiscal Year 2008-2009 level, allow the City to reduce its contributions during budgetary shortfalls, and provide that year-end surpluses be returned to the General Fund.
Peskin is proposing to modify the election code so the Board can consider such measures fewer than 30 days after receiving drafts and legislative digests, if both are delivered to the Clerk of the Board at least 72 hours prior to committee hearings and made available to the public at that time.
Wow. Sounds like the incoming Board is going to be pretty darn busy.
On a related note, Sup. Sean Elsbernd introduced a charter amendment for the November 3, 2009 election, requiring that “one-time revenues be spent only for one-time uses, unless otherwise authorized by the Board.” In other words, not on salaries. Stay tuned.
Image from imdb.com’s archive for “American Pimp”.
Text by Sarah Phelan
Folks in Oakland—and those in the parallel universe that makes films about Oakland—are getting their knickers in a twist about a HBO drama that wants to focus on a 40something Oakland-based pimp’s attempts to get out of the world’s oldest profession.
In the right corner, we have Mayor Ron Dellums, who is worried about the impact of the show, called ‘Gentlemen of Leisure” and based on a 1999 documentary called “American Pimp”, on Oakland’s image as a “model city.”
In the left corner, we have folks who are worried about the impact of canceling the show, set to begin 2009, on Oakland’s already flailing economy.
And stuck in the middle, so it seems, are the folks at Oakland’s Film Office.
Reached by phone, Ami Sims, (oops, as one reader just pointed out, her name is Ami Zins, not Sims) Film Coordinator for Oakland’s Film office, told the Guardian that she had heard nothing, in terms of the show actually being nixed.
“The company doesn’t even have a script, so there’s really nothing to talk about,” Zins told me.
Pressed for details of how the City could stop HBO from filming and whether it has taken steps to do so, Zins said, “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
So, what in heck is going on in Oakland, a city made infamous by Too Short’s “No love from Oakland” which begins “Ain’t no love in Oakland, bitch/ Niggas always talkin bout ‘I love you’/But ain’t no love, bitch”?
Shortly before Christmas, the San Jose Mercury News reported that the HBO proposal had come under fire from Mayor Ron Dellums and other city officials before filming had even started.
‘It’s the mayor’s view that this project goes against our vision of Oakland as a ‘model city’ and does a disservice to residents and visitors alike,” Dellum’s chief of staff David Chai told the Merc. “The people of Oakland have come too far to have our city’s name trampled upon in the name of entertainment.”
Now, it’s true that folks nationwide hold a negative stereotype of Oakland, and that the City has spent a lot of time, money and effort to clean up its crime-plagued streets.
But that doesn’t take away from the reality the Oakland continues to be crime ridden and that pimps are no strangers to many of its less than pristine streets.
In 2008, Oakland witnessed 124 homicides. That’s three fewer than in 2007. But 25 more than in San Francisco, which saw 99 homicides (its highest since 1995) in 2008. And it’s a stunning 121 more than the city of Alameda, which saw three homicides in 2008 and is only separated from Oak town by a short underground tunnel.
It’s also true that Oakland is in a very dire financial predicament, one that Mayor Dellums predicts will only get worse over the next couple of years. The City’s $42 million deficit in 2008 could balloon to $113 million by 2012.
So, could ‘Gentlemen of Leisure” be Oakland’s financial salvation?
City officials argue that the $150-a-day cost of a film permit is chump change, given that the project would only reinforce the city’s criminal reputation.
But as a film industry source, who prefers to remain anonymous, points out, Oakland would also benefit from the jobs that the show would create, not to mention the trickle down effect of people spending their paychecks locally.
“These are jobs we could have had, that actors who live in the East Bay could have had” our source said, noting that the Emmy-award winning show Dexter “doesn’t mean that everybody who lives in Florida is a serial killer.”
AMP FIDDLER WITH SLY & ROBBIE
Inspiration Information
(Strut)
By Todd Lavoie
It’s a meet-up that, admittedly, came as a bit of a surprise, but ultimately makes a world of sense: Detroit retro-futurist funkmeister Joseph “Amp” Fiddler has joined forces with collaboration-loving riddim-machine Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (better known as Sly and Robbie) for an album’s worth of smooth, spaced-out soul and gravy-thick reggae rhythms.
Bestowed with the quite-appropriate moniker Inspiration Information – the title surely a nod to the great fellow traveler of righteous grooves, Shuggie Otis, whose 1974 album of the same name has seen its influence extended further with every passing year – the disc is the first in what is slated to be a series of releases from the consummate tastemakers at Strut Records built around an intriguing concept.
The idea? Take a few musicians who have never worked together before, stick them in the studio on a tight schedule, and see what happens – it’s a strategy that yielded fascinating results for the Dutch label Konkurrent, whose “In The Fishtank” series drummed up tasty pairings from Tortoise/the Ex and Low/Dirty Three, for example. I’m dead curious to hear what Strut comes up with next – how about a Tussle/ESG tête-à-tête, folks? – but for now, I’m more than content to float and bob along with the rumbling, churning head-music of this first installment.
Text by Sarah Phelan
Produced by First American CoreLogic, using the real estate industry’s home price index, this map is not a pretty sight, despite the pretty colors.
It shows that California remains the clear leader nationwide, in terms of highest home price depreciation.
Prices in California have declined 28.3 percent annually.
Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Rhode Island, Wyoming and Hawaii are the next top losers, in order of percentage loss.
Only three states show price increases: West Virginia, South Dakota and Texas.
These states account for only 13 percent of the US population.
Within California, the biggest losers are Salinas, Merced, Stockton, Riverside, San Bernadino, Ontario, Vallejo, Fairfield, Oakland, Fremont and Hayward, Modesto and Bakersfield (losses of around -29 and -28 percent.)
So, while it’s true that San Francisco home prices have not taken such a huge beating, so far– an average -16.28 percent loss, since last year–it’s worth remembering that much of the city’s workforce lives in the East Bay and the Central Valley.
In other words, the bigger regional hurt is probably a more accurate way of predicting and estimating the wider negative economic impacts that are still headed our way, like a tsunami, gathering offshore.
By Michael Harkin
“Why’d they have to do the concert on this day, when they knew it’d be rainin’?” You posed a good question, Mr. Passerby. I arrived at Great American Music Hall at 11:45 a.m. on this damp, overcast Sunday morning, Dec. 22, and 150 people were already lined up around the corner from the club. Mostly teenage girls around, but lots of parents toted umbrellas and blankets – what good sports! – knowing full well that they’d be out there another seven hours with their kids before doors.
My neighbors in line had variously traveled from Stockton, Mountain View, and San Jose, willing to pay far more than the $20 door price to see Fall Out Boy that night. Their health ‘neath those Decaydance hoodies wasn’t quite as important as the close proximity the venue would afford them.
I can’t readily provide a sufficient rationale for standing out in the rain this long, especially when the band in question is the embodiment of commercial rock’s absurdity – they headlined the Honda Civic Tour last year, for heaven’s sake – and regularly employ such overwrought, cumbersome song titles as “I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off (Me and You).” That said, I like ’em anyway – hard to say why. And this beats paying 60 bucks to see them with some terrible bands at the HP Pavilion next summer, right?
ISOBEL CAMPBELL AND MARK LANEGAN
Sunday at Devil Dirt
(Fontana International)
By Todd Lavoie
In this week’s new pop canon spread, I got a chance to hail hosannas upon the late great Lee Hazlewood, whose presence has been quite deeply felt in some of the finest music of 2008. Perhaps the stamp of influence was most deeply inked, however, with Sunday at Devil Dirt, the second collaboration between wispy-piped ingénue Isobel Campbell and croak-baritoned brooder Mark Lanegan.
Here, sad-eyed orchestral pop meets dusty country blues, frequently with dreamlike results – much like Hazlewood’s signature showdowns with duet-partner Nancy Sinatra. Pitching Lanegan’s growls and grumbles against Campbell’s decidedly sweeter murmurs makes for a fascinating update of the Lee ‘n’ Nancy blueprint, but there’s a twist.
Whereas Hazlewood played the Svengali to Sinatra – writing the songs and arrangements and often taking the second seat, vocally speaking, to his partner – here the roles are switched, with Campbell at the helm musically but sticking largely to the second mic in deference to Lanegan’s bellowing lead. Having written almost the entirety of the disc, as well as handling all arrangement and production duties, Campbell has worked some spine-tingling trickery from her place in the shadows: Lanegan gets the bigger boom in the mix, yes, but behind the whisper-thin sighs and coos, it is Campbell who is in control.
Guardian photog Ariel Soto continues her quest for San Francisco’s best street togs — this time with an spotlit eye on eveningwear.
Hanna and Alison, Dolores Park
Josh, Noe and Elizabeth
Say Ariel: “It was time to venture into the dark and see what stylish San Franciscans wear when they go out on the town. I was quite impressed, especially with some of the long coats and the assortment of unique boots. Even though it is winter, I was able to find great looks, despite the need for a few extra warm layers.”
Fancy Lady, 23rd St. and San Jose
By Ariel Soto
Tis the season to be jolly and this past weekend Santa popped up all over San Francisco to celebrate all that is red, white and green. There were three groups of Santas who gathered in different spots throughout the City. I met up with the group coined Mastrobation in the Mission, where everyone seemed happy to drink beer at 11am and celebrate in their matching velvet outfits. It’s like Bay to Breakers in December. Happy holidays San Francisco!
By Sarah Phelan
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 409 mid-year layoffs mostly target front line staff, who make under $70,000 a year. And that almost 70 percent of these lay-offs (285 positions) are in the Department of Health.
You can read the list here.
(Reader beware! The list is, in itself, fairly impenetrable. So it helps to go online to the City’s compensation manual. Here, you can enter the “class” of job, plus job “class title” to decipher each annual salary. For instance, a 923 Manager 11 makes between $91,000 and $116,000 a year, and we could only find a couple laid off. By contrast, a 1428 unit clerk makes between $45,000 and $55,000 a year–and 49 such clerks got pink slips last week.)
What’s worrisome about the Mayor’s lay-off decisions—aside from the obvious human pain and cost of losing one’s job in the middle of a nationwide recession—is that those left on the job are going to come under increasing physical, mental and employment pressure, as unemployment lines lengthen next year.
That at least was one of the primary concerns that San Francisco General Hospital worker Mike Dingle shared with me last week, outside the first public hearing into the Mayor’s proposed cuts–a hearing only made possible thanks to Board President Aaron Peskin, who folded the Mayor’s $118 million proposal (which up until then had been negotiated exclusively behind closed doors) and his own package of cuts into brand new legislation, so that all the proposed cuts can now be publicly reviewed
Dingle handles bodies, “both the living and dead” as he put it, as part of SFGH’s patient lift team. And from his position in the front line trenches, Dingle is predicting that one of the impacts of Newsom’s layoffs—scheduled to kick in on February 12, 2009– will be increased injuries all around.
By Sarah Phelan
It wasn’t pretty at Board President Aarom Peskin’s mid-year budget cuts hearing.
(For starters, there wasn’t enough room for all the people who showed up at today’s meeting. Apparently, months ago, long before “Financial Armageddon” was a nationwide buzz word, the California Coastal Commission booked the Board’s Chambers for today. Unfortunately, as a result, only a small percentage of folks managed to squeeze physically into today’s budget hearing, while a huge crowd was left lingering discontentedly outside. This led to chants of “Let us in! Let us in!” until some burly not-to-be-messed-with Sheriff’s Deputies shepherded them to a nearby “spill over” room.)
The meeting itself felt surreal, set yards away from the huge Tree of Hope on CIty Hall’s second floor.
(At various moments throughout the proceedings, as red faced Department heads tried to explain the rationale behind the Mayor’s proposed $118 million package of solutions, or defend themselves against cuts in Peskin’s competing proposal, we could hear angelic voices trilling, as choirs sang carols under the City’s rotunda. )
But for all the social unrest and financial gloom and doom, there were a few positive moments.
Peskin managed to pull off a beautifully finessed legislative move. (By combining the Mayor’s proposal with his own, he was able to introduce a piece of legislation that allows everyone impacted to voice comments publicly.)
This was not true under Newsom’s original proposal, which he introduced during a surprise Dec. 9 Board visit.
“But now there’s a de facto collaboration,” Peskin told me, during a brief recess, after which the hearing was relocated to the Board’s chambers for the remainder of today’s hearing.
By Jen Snyder
Last Saturday, Dec. 8, at El Rio marked the cementing of yet another dirty brick in the growing wall of West Coast punk. I could talk about the amazing performances by the Traditional Fools, who thankfully seem to be playing shows again after a short hiatus. Or I could talk about Hank IV, who were bad as hell – by which I mean good – but I’d much rather talk about the gnarliest show ever performed by the Mayyors hailing from our state capital of Sacramento.
The Mayyors certainly proved that Sacramento is a crazy, corrupt place. From the moment they played their first song, the entire room trembled with angst and energy. Vocalist John Pritchard pummeled through the crowd thrashing and screaming, stoking the fire in the crowd. Pritchard salivated endlessly while he sang, barking and demonically whipping around as strings of spit flew everywhere. It was undeniably awesome. All of my disdain for mosh pits and people knocking into me kind of melted away into a nostalgic appreciation for a reckless youth.
