While the Performant is off hugging trees in Oregon, please enjoy this series of interviews with the curators of three innovative performance spaces

There’s nothing about the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in North Berkeley that particularly speaks of abstract performance, but that element of the unexpected is possibly what makes it the perfect venue for Karen Penley’s fledgling performance series, Retard. Inhabited by out-of-the-box, outré performers such as Dan Carbone, Edna Barron, Herb Heinz, and Catherine Debon, Retard is a low-key, all-inclusive, no-judgment sort of event where the weird get a chance to shine, and everybody gets to eat cake. After an evening spent nibbling clafoutis and ducking clowns, I caught up with Karen via the magic of the Interwebs to pick her brain about her brave new experimental showcase. Read more »

I think I embarrassed Emilia’s Pizzeria owner and chef Keith Freilich when I called him out as prominently featured in Sunset magazine’s recent Bay Area pizza roundup (one question on that, regarding the bit about Flour and Water being located on an abandoned, seedy stretch of the Mission -- did the writer ever notice the relatively new yup-scale lofts blossoming all around that block?). Hey, it’s worth noting since Emilia’s is likely the least showy pizzeria of the entire lot. Read more »