Under the benevolent neon rainbow of Twin Peaks Tavern, a bearded man with a battered trunk strolls up and addresses a group of people seated at café tables in the little plaza tucked beside the F-Market turnaround at Castro and 17’th. It’s the sort of thing that happens a lot in San Francisco, the difference in this case being that the figure is none other than Walt Whitman (robustly channeled by No Nude Men’s Ryan Hayes), and the assembled crowd a diverse group of Fringe Festival patrons,

Castro habitués, and curious bystanders sucked in by the moment. Average of build yet bold of purpose, this is not the “Old Father Graybeard” of Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”—but rather a younger, lustier Whitman, who perambulates easily about the crowd and speaks desire to the bustle of passerby and impatient streetcars.

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Unfortunately for me, I’ll be unable to attend a whole plethora of sure-to-be-intriguing shows this weekend such as Right Brain Performancelab’s "The Elephant in the Room," The 11th Hour Ensemble’s "Alice," and The Offcenter’s “Waiting for Godot." But fortunately for me, it’s because I will be holed-up in the booth of the newest addition to the Exit Theatreplex -- The Studio -- where I’ve been running lights for a whole plethora of shows ranging from confessional monologues to sketch comedy to a whacked-out whodunit set in Super-Duper Mega-Marine Coaster World. Is that a bowl of free pretzels in my hand? It must be Fringe Festival season again in San Francisco.

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Radical self-expression takes a staycation with Zinefest and On Land ...

It was another Burning Man, er, Labor Day weekend, and like every year of the past dozen or so, those of us who stayed in the City spent it cracking wise about all the extra elbow room on MUNI and burner-free “Dolores Beach” real estate we get to ourselves through Tuesday morning. It’s becoming an old joke, a chestnut even, but it still manages to elicit a few wry chuckles from those of us committed to radically self-expressing without hauling it to Nevada in the back of a day-glo Winnebago.

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Scoping out the local arts and culture scene ...

So much fascinating shit is rooted in science -- from the way things work to the way they fall apart -- that it seems passing strange that more performance pieces aren’t written using scientific law as a unifying theme. Not that you’ll find a whole lot in your physics texts about Saturnade a spoofed drink mix with a long list of dire side-effects that belongs more properly in the frame of a John Kricfalusi cartoon. You probably won’t find mention in your astronomy handbooks about alien surveyors with invasion viability agendas either, but why split atoms over it?

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Scoping out the local arts and culture scene ...

Are you a nerd, or are you a geek? A geek, or a nerd? I like to think of myself as a word nerd. Doctor Popular claims to be a super nerd. The organizers of the next San Francisco-based BarCamp claim to be geeks -- though they do allow that one can “geek out” about almost anything, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.Read more »

Checking out the local arts and culture scene ...

There’s no doubt about it—San Franciscans love a rock opera. From the faux-real heavy metal anthems of “Live Evil” to the afterlife explorations of “Exit Sign,” the suicide art movement of “Thanatics” to the human sacrifices of “Wicker Man,” we like our rock operas loud, messy, and tinged with darkness and humor both. So an original rock opera about the Salem Witch Trials seems an obvious pairing between our love of the darkside plus power chords. Appropriately held at the Temple nightclub on Howard, “Abigail the Rock Opera” straddles the SF rock opera line between serious and silly.

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If the venerable San Francisco Fringe Festival is a full-on Circus Circus-style, all-you-can-eat-buffet, I like to think of its kid cousin the San Francisco Theatre Festival  -- which took place Sunday, August 8 -- as more of a pu-pu platter. Tasty little morsels of performance presented in manageable, bite-sized chunks designed to whet the appetite for the main courses (the full productions) to come. I don’t know about you, but when I’m confronted with the choice between dainty nibbling, or cleaning each plate as it comes, I tend to adapt the life-is-uncertain principle and gorge myself on all the available goodies in sight.

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Recent trends on the arts and culture scene

As long as there has been art, I imagine that the phrase “starving artist” has been in use. I like to imagine prehistoric cave painters stopping halfway through a particularly thrilling rendition of a successful buffalo hunt to halt operations and hold a fundraising party. “Grod, your donation of three chunks of limestone and a sharpened flint chip will help to fund the portraiture of no fewer than five renegade buffalo heading over the edge of the cliff.” But it helps put the sacrifices made in art’s name into perspective when confronted with art created on the very fringes, where “starving” can be more than just a catchphrase but a grim reality. Read more »

Reviews of recent arts and culture happenings

When asked by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade touring company last Friday what his motto in life was, the random guy onstage we’ll call Nick (because that’s what he called himself) said “abandon all hope ye who enter here,” which seemed a little heavy for an evening of comedy, but the UCB took it in stride. This influential improv group, hosted locally by Bay Area improvisers Pan Theater, plumbed the depths of Nick’s predilections and peccadilloes with gusto. Got hit by an SUV on your motorcycle, must be those preciously extended pinkies, dude. Got slapped down by a bio-bitch down the street—why don’t you stick with the steampunk tranny hos in your own backyard? Why not launch a string of rockets into the street and call it installation art? Why not make sandwiches with a block of cheese containing the cremated ashes of your loved ones?

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