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Issue 319 |
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Your cultural event guide
Here's a snapshot of our favorite things to do in San Francisco this week. |
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San Francisco
Jun 10-16, 2008
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There's nothing like sweet, sweet nostalgia. Bloomsday marks the 104th anniversary of Leopold Bloom's long walk through James Joyce's Ulysses, and that's reason enough for literati to enjoy a pint. Or look back to a more recent historical moment, as Billy Bragg and Chicago 10 bring the 1960s back to life. A decade and a couple of zeitgeists later, San Francisco's nascent punk scene dug in at a Filipino restaurant called Mabuhay Gardens. The club's long gone, but Bruce Conner's documentary photographs carry its rebellious current.
- Max Goldberg
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SPECIAL FEATURE
Pierpaolo Campanini
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A graduate of Bologna's Accademia di Belle Arti, Pierpaolo Campanini has quickly become one of the most fascinating Italian artists working with paint. In his dominant style, Campanini constructs lyrical sculptural forms out of ordinary objects, which then become the subject of photorealistic, unconventional still-life paintings in oil and tempera.
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FILM
Medium Cool (1969)
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Tuesday June 10 (7:15 & 9:35pm)
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| where: |
Red Vic (1727 Haight St, 415.668.3994)
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| price: |
$8.50
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Haskell Wexler made Medium Cool during one of the most turbulent periods in American history. A rash of assassinations, escalating war in Vietnam, and violent crackdowns against outraged citizens form the backdrop for this critique of news-media complacency. Wexler fleshes out the spindly storyline (a cynical TV cameraman falls for a war widow) with actual news clips — a technique that pays off at the film's climax, which features footage of student demonstrations at Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention. It's an event that Wexler banked on coinciding with the script's final scene — talk about life, imitating art, imitating life.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Electronic
Crystal Castles w/ dd/mm/yy
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Tuesday June 10 (7:30pm)
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| where: |
The Independent (628 Divisadero St, 415.771.1422)
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$16
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In the age of MySpace, having a handful of limited-edition 7-inches to your name doesn't mean you're off the radar: Toronto duo Crystal Castles had hype knocking at their door even before they'd officially released their first song. A car accident necessitated that the duo postpone their earlier SF show, so that singer Alice Glass could heal up her two cracked ribs. She's all better now, so those craving the Castles' crunchy, bleepy scramble of new wave and Digital Hardcore-style techno have to wait no longer.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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PERFORMING ARTS: Comedy
Club Chuckles presents the Neil Hamburger Country Winners Revue
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Wednesday June 11 (9pm)
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| where: |
Great American Music Hall (859 O'Farrell St, 415.885.0750)
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| price: |
$15
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When Neil Hamburger bills himself as "America's $1 Funnyman," he's inviting audiences to stay away, knowing that they'll come back for more. Gregg Turkington's self-consciously pathetic stand-up persona pushes the same buttons that Andy Kaufman's alter-ego Tony Clifton did 30 years ago; both look like lounge singers and are prone to anxious bouts of belligerence. In recent years Hamburger has found favor among the twentysomething set, releasing several so-bad-it's-good comedy albums on Drag City. He tours with a full band behind his latest release, Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners, a surprisingly cohesive record that hijacks country music's tendency for bathos to hilarious effect.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Rock/Pop
Billy Bragg
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Wednesday June 11 (9pm)
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| where: |
The Fillmore (1805 Geary Blvd, 415.346.6000)
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| price: |
$26.50
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Billy Bragg is hardly the only bloke to think of bringing punk and politics to the pub, but his incisive lyrics and unaffected, deadpan drawl resonate with socially conscious listeners born long after protest music's supposed heyday. Despite releasing a string of acclaimed albums in the '80s, Bragg didn't strike a chord with many American listeners until the troubadour scored a surprise hit with his 1998 collaboration with Wilco, Mermaid Avenue, an album that set unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie to original tunes. Bragg may be a Brit, but he's a natural choice to channel Guthrie's mix of righteous anger and poetic reverie.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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READING
Chris Carlsson: Nowtopia
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Thursday June 12 (7pm)
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City Lights (261 Columbus Ave, 415.362.8193)
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FREE
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One of the mavericks who helped to launch the Critical Mass bike demonstrations, Chris Carlsson is in a unique position to show how outlaw technologies might underscore progressivism. As a teacher, writer, and editor, he examines social movements from the ground up. In his latest book, Nowtopia, he shows how San Francisco's rich culture of utopian hackers, Burning Man crafters, and urban gardeners fits in with a broader rubric of anti-capitalist theory. Given the subject, it makes sense that Carlsson would stage a reading at City Lights — itself a bastion of DIY spirit and radical tinkering.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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FILM
Bitter Pills: Michael Haneke Made-for-Television
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Thursday June 12 (7:30pm)
More times»
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| where: |
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission St, 415.978.2787)
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$8
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Michael Haneke's 2007 English-language remake of his notorious Funny Games (1997) hit US theaters with the unexpected wallop of a hard slap in the face. The film's Brechtian dissection of spectacular violence was probably lost on America's desensitized audiences, and those in need of further raps on the skull would do well to attend this retrospective of Haneke's early television films. Fraulein (1984) and the two-part Lemmings (1979) are bleak studies of post-WWII bourgeois family life, while The Rebellion (1993), influenced by Weimar cinema, focuses on a WWI vet's disillusionment with the causes for which he sacrificed his youth.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Electronic
Alan Braxe w/ Lifelike
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Friday June 13 (10pm)
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| where: |
Mezzanine (444 Jessie St, 415.625.8880)
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| price: |
$10
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All you bedroom Tecktonik dancers, listen up. School is in session courtesy of French electro icons Alan Braxe and Lifelike. Braxe — who has embraced eclecticism in the style of Daft Punk for the past decade — releases records on EMI and his own Vulture label, and contributes to comps like !K7's DJ-Kicks series. Parisian remixer Lifelike turns out poppy filter house that will have lovers of all things Modular and Kitsuné in freak-out mode. In a world where Justice have become the Pearl Jam of dance music, these two saviors may help bring back the fun side of French electro.
- Fred Miketa
[Info Source]
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PERFORMING ARTS: Theatre
Thrillpeddlers present Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival
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Friday June 13
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Hypnodrome (575 10th St, 415.377.4202)
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| price: |
Various prices
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Not to be confused with the Theater of the Absurd, the Theatre of the Ridiculous was the love child of Gay Lib and the '60s freak scene that counts playwrights Charles Ludlam and Harvey Fierstein, SF drag-hippie performance troupe the Cockettes, and a young John Waters among its godparents. Grand Guignol revivalists the Thrillpeddlers revisit this obscure but vital slice of queer history in two classic productions; Charles Busch's Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium is an imagined trip to fin-de-siècle actress Sarah Bernhardt's whorehouse, dripping in blood and diamonds (with costumes by original Cockette, Fayette Hauser), while Ludlam's Jack and the Beanstalk is a risqué retelling of the famous fairy tale.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Festival
Northern California Pirate Festival
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Saturday June 14 (10am–8:30pm)
More times»
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| where: |
Vallejo Waterfront
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| price: |
FREE
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In response to the Million Pirate March that marauded through this year's Bay to Breakers running race, the swashbucklers of the East Bay have assembled their own pirate party — albeit one that's more family-friendly and less dedicated to libation. Captain Jack Sparrow's doppelgänger (who apparently also works as a ventriloquist magician) makes an appearance, and the punk-rock yo-ho-ho-ers of Rum Rebellion jam out an all-ages set. For those lacking eye patches and peg legs, a flotilla of outfitters, including SF's custom-corset boutique Dark Garden, is on site to provide revelers with thematic accessories.
- Connie Hwong
[Info Source]
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READING
Writers with Drinks feat. Armistead Maupin, Sheerly Avni, and Naomi Hirahara
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Saturday June 14 (7:30pm)
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The Make-Out Room (3225 22nd St, 415.647.2888)
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$3 - 5
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This special edition of Charlie Anders' variety show and reading series coincides with the National Queer Arts Festival, and local literary grande dame Armistead Maupin couldn't be a more fitting headliner. His last book, Michael Tolliver Lives, tackles the experience of growing old as a gay man through the eyes of Tales of the City alum Michael "Mouse" Tolliver. Sheerly Avni is another chronicler of San Francisco; her Cinema by the Bay focuses on famous residents Zaentz, Eastwood, and Coppola. Naomi Hirahara's mysteries and nonfiction draw on her Japanese-American heritage and Californian upbringing, rounding out an evening of Golden State writers.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MUSIC: Jazz/Blues
Booker T. Jones w/ Bettye LaVette
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Sunday June 15 (2pm)
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Stern Grove (19th Ave & Sloat Blvd)
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FREE
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Stern Grove kicks off its free summer concert series with a powerful double shot of soul. Booker T. Jones is still probably best known for the wicked organ groove that snakes its way through his 1962 instrumental, "Green Onions," but his expansive resume encompasses everything from producing Willie Nelson to co-writing "Born Under a Bad Sign." His Memphis group, Booker T. & the MGs, provided the chemistry that held together many classic-soul sides on the Stax label. Bettye Lavette hails from farther north, in Detroit, but her hardworking R&B is no less incendiary. Long underrated, she's finally collecting dues thanks to several recently acclaimed albums.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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FILM
Where To and Back: The Axel Corti Trilogy
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Sunday June 15 (4pm)
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Pacific Film Archive Theater (2575 Bancroft Way, 510.642.0808)
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| price: |
$9.50
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A week after the last showing of R.W. Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, the PFA screens this lesser-known European epic, originally produced for television. Austrian director Axel Corti made the three films that comprise his Holocaust trilogy four decades after World War II, but the passage of time did not diminish the narrative's firm rooting in minute details. God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore (1982) focuses on the aftermath of Kristallnacht; after examining the émigré experience in Santa Fe (1985), Corti brings the trilogy full circle with Welcome in Vienna (1986), which surveys the ravaged Austrian city through the eyes of a Jewish-American GI.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Lecture
Sam Gosling: Snoop
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Monday June 16 (6:30pm)
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Commonwealth Club (595 Market St, 2nd Fl, 415.597.6700)
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$18
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When pressed, most people would probably agree that the music on their iPods or the clothes hanging in their closets communicate something about their personalities, however superficial. Psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how we create and communicate our identities through the spaces we inhabit — our bedrooms, bathrooms, offices, and beyond. In his new book, Snoop, Gosling boils down a decade's worth of lab research, revealing how we are always broadcasting ourselves, even in our most private places.
- Matt Sussman
[Info Source]
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MORE FLAVOR: Tribute
Biafra Five-O feat. Jello Biafra and the Melvins
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Monday June 16 (8pm)
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Great American Music Hall (859 O'Farrell St, 415.885.0750)
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$22 / $40 for both nights
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Mr. Jello Biafra is one of the Bay Area's most distinguished public gentlemen, and his 50th birthday deserves recognition of the most esteemed caliber. But how to honor the articulate mania of the Dead Kennedys' voice, the head honcho of Alternative Tentacles, the social critic, and subject of one of Wesley Willis' best songs? True to form, Jello has done himself proper with two shows at the Great American. Tonight, he plays with a new band, alongside openers and fellow punk veterans the Melvins. Their original lineup reunites for a few classics, and Drunk Injuns, Los Olvidados, Triclops!, and Akimbo also spew some noise for the occasion.
- Nicholas Nauman
[Info Source]
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ART
Amanda M. Smith: Candy Garden and Sparkling Sabers
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Tuesday June 10 (10:30am–5:30pm)
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Jack Fischer Gallery (49 Geary St, Suite 440, 415.956.1178)
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| price: |
FREE
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Little children run amok in Amanda M. Smith's series of exquisitely rendered ceramic reliefs. Set in a vivid world of flattened, skewed architecture, Candy Garden and Sparkling Sabers follows Smith's moody tots as they cavort in the bushes, wreak havoc upon a tree-dwelling community, and try to get a little more familiar with a kangaroo. The scenes — etched and painted onto clay slabs, surrounded by decorative floral motifs — recall the epic, whimsical mischief of Henry Darger's Vivian Girls, as described through medieval tableaux.
- Isaac Amala
[Info Source]
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ART: Photography
Bruce Conner: Mabuhay Gardens
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Wednesday June 11 (11am–5pm)
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Berkeley Art Museum (2626 Bancroft Way, 510.642.0808)
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| price: |
$9.50
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After he broke through as an underground filmmaker in 1958, Bruce Conner kept a close eye on the cultural zeitgeist. He worked on light shows in the mid '60s, and ten years later documented the first wave of San Francisco punk rock. The Berkeley Art Museum focuses on this latter, lesser-known period of Conner's work with a collection of his photographs from legendary punk venue Mabuhay Gardens. Conner was at least 20 years older than most of his subjects there, and his photographs benefit from the gap — Mabuhay Gardens is a fine appreciation of the punk scene's brief era of raw power.
- Max Goldberg
[Info Source]
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About Us |
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Cultural Partner
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Editors
MANAGING EDITOR
Matt Sussman
DEPUTY EDITOR
Max Goldberg
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Axel Anderson
SENIOR EDITORS
Anna Balkrishna
Doug Levy
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Lisa Rosman
Andrew Phillips
Nicholas Nauman
Connie Hwong
Seiji Carpenter
Annie Lo
IMAGE EDITORS
Adda Birnir
Sarah Steele
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