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Party Radar: Save Esta Noche!

05.15.13 - 1:43 pm | Marke B. |
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Many of us barely remember growing up there, meeting our first hot papi, trying out our first cha cha heels on stage, and living the Selena dream. And some of us go back every week to relive those experiences! Now, that many-mirrored treasure trove of characters, Esta Noche, may have to close its doors -- forever.  

The city's only (official) Latin gay bar owes the city $7,000 and may be history if it can't cough it up in the next two weeks. But you know the fundraising party Sat/18 is gonna be fabuloso.

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More protests over Willits bypass project

05.15.13 - 11:25 am | Dylan Tokar |
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Controversy over the Willits Bypass continued Monday, as Willits protesters sought to block Caltrans contractors from continuing work on the highway construction project. Protester Robert Chevalier, 66, locked himself to a Caterpillar tractor used for hauling felled logs using a steel “lock box.” At another location, four other protesters unfurled a banner to block work trucks that were preparing for pile-driving tests. Read more »

Woods for you: Best redwood parks for family times, wowwing out-of-towners, quiet reflection

05.15.13 - 11:01 am | Caitlin Donohue |
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You have no reason not to explore California's freakishly gorgeous lands now. The treehuggers over at the Redwoods League (who have purchased more than 190,000 acres of the trees for conservation since the group's inception in 1918) have released their first-ever parent's guide to the behemoth old-growth beauties. This means day trips sensibly arranged and explained so that even the couch-bound and fresh air-phobic can figure out which woodses are best for them. Which redwood park operates a nursery? A science center? All in the guide, available for the price of your email address.

To aide you even further, Redwoods League director of outreach Jennifer Benito gave us her top picks for redwoods to take the parentals to, the most impressive stands to wow your out-of-towner babes, etc. Click through for the League's detailed info on visitor centers, trails, and hidden treasures in each of the parks on her list. Read more »

Can the tech boom solve our housing crisis? No, but it can make it worse

05.15.13 - 10:27 am | Steven T. Jones |
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 San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and San Francisco Magazine posed an intriguing question at a forum they sponsored last night in the W Hotel: “San Francisco’s Housing Crisis: Can the Tech Boom Help Us?” Unfortunately, it wasn’t a question they ever really addressed at an event of, by, and for developers and their most ardent supporters.Read more »

Just for kicks

It's co-ed pickup kickball season -- but watch out for "mesh monsters"

05.15.13 - 6:18 am | L.E. Leone |
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IN THE GAME It's not kickball; it's matball. Which looks a lot like kickball, with one big difference: You can have more than one runner at a time on any given base. You can have up to three, but if a fourth is incoming, someone's got to go.

You don't have to stop running, either, when you reach home, in some versions of the game. You can keep going — back to first, and around the bases again. In gym class, this was a way to make kids run laps without quite exactly knowing it.Read more »

Brown raids cap-and-trade funds, delaying action on climate change

05.14.13 - 4:21 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise to dangerous levels, but still our political leaders delay taking meaningful actions to address the looming crisis. The latest example: Gov. Jerry Brown is borrowing $500 million from the state’s new cap-and-trade program -- money designated specifically for efforts to address climate change -- to help balance the revised state budget proposal that he released today. Read more »

4 reasons that spending $150 on Janelle Monae tickets is not 100 percent ridiculous

05.14.13 - 3:47 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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1. Her Thu/16 show is at the symphony It is! The show is at Davies Symphony Hall and features actual symphony musicians playing actual orchestral arrangements to back up android-andro chic Ms. Monae, whose set will include material from her new album even. She's dropping through the Chicago Symphony later this month as a last-minute stand-in for Aretha Franklin, so you can go to her SF gig and chortle about the Windy City getting our original orchestral arrangement sloppy seconds. This will be a wonderful chance to see the Symphony dames approximate Rocky Horror Picture Show, if Thursday night's fashion scene is anything like this episode of 106th and Park: Read more »

Randy Shaw just loves Capitalism

05.14.13 - 3:30 pm | Tim Redmond |
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Well: We all know that Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and editor of BeyondChron, is a loyal, devoted fan of Mayor Ed Lee. We know that he pretty much sees no wrong in the Lee Administration. Read more »

Yo La Tengo plays the hits at the Fillmore, covers Black Flag

05.14.13 - 3:25 pm | Taylor Kaplan |
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The last time I saw Yo La Tengo, on its fabulously gimmicky Spinning Wheel tour, the trio delivered an abrasive, garage-y opening set under an alter-ego, Dump, and closed with a Jackson Browne cover. This past Friday, the band took the Fillmore stage with a loose, meditative acoustic set, before eventually closing with an incendiary rendition of a Black Flag song. There's no predicting the content, or structure of a Yo La Tengo show; yet, no matter how vigorously it flips from one genre to the next, it sounds unmistakably like Yo La Tengo.

From its yearly run of Hanukkah shows, to its infamously vast archive of cover songs, the Hoboken, NJ trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew has cultivated a rich mythology over nearly three decades as a band. It’s also maintained remarkable consistency and prolificacy within its recorded material, which, like Stereolab, has caused many a fan to take its casual greatness for granted. Alternating between insistently bouncy pop songs, blissfully droned-out jams, and cozy ballads to wear your autumn sweater by, Yo La Tengo has assembled a wildly eclectic back-catalogue that continues to pleasantly surprise, and occasionally confound live audiences. Read more »

The Performant: Forever young

05.14.13 - 3:17 pm | Nicole Gluckstern |
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Patricia Quin as Magenta in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Rory Davis and Gina Graziano in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Jason Brock in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Leigh Crow in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Manuel Caneri and Trixie Carr in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Peggy L'Eggs in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Rocky in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Ms. Peaches Christ in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Doing the Time Warp in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Jef Valentine in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Rocky Horror turns 40, still crazy after all these years.

Who doesn’t have fond memories of their first Rocky Horror Picture Show experience? Ok, mine are mixed since the first time I saw it was on an old black-and-white television with my father, avoiding eye contact and trying not to laugh too hard at the ribald bits. It wasn’t until I finally saw it on the big screen in the company of peers -- armed with rice, noisemakers, and snarky quips -- that the full potential of its subversive pleasures revealed themselves more fully.

Part of the fun of repeated viewings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is emulating the character you most want to be, and for a curly-haired, goth-inclined teenager, the clear choice was Magenta, whose stone-faced cool and extraterrestrial sensuality were so beyond the straitjacket of smalltown teenhood, that to walk an evening in her spike-heeled shoes was akin to a declaration of, well, something. Call it freedom. Peaches Christ does.

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Tech guru says Internet destroying middle class

05.14.13 - 2:55 pm | Tim Redmond |
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Jaron Lanier isn't a Luddite. He can't be dismissed as a crackpot, whiner critic who is jealous of the success of others. He virtually invented virtual reality; he was a tech guru when most of today's tech titans were still in diapers. So when he says that the Internet is destroying the middle class, maybe everyone ought to stop for a second and listen.Read more »

DPH: Unaffordable housing is bad for your health

05.14.13 - 2:55 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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To cover rent on a two-bedroom apartment at "fair market value" in SoMa, a San Francisco minimum-wage earner would have to work 7.4 full-time jobs. Read more »

Pick-up bball legends tell the tale of the game outside

05.14.13 - 1:18 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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We're talking about basketball, NYC pick-up announcer legend Bobbitio "Kool Bob Love" and I, but our conversation is hardly hinging on the Warriors-Spurs match-up or LeBron James' shot at MVP this year. Rather, we're discussing the power of the men and women ballers on the playground -- a culture that Garcia and French filmmaker Kevin Couliau painstakingly documented for their film Doin' it in the Park, which begins its Bay Area run at the Clay Theatre on Thu/16. 

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Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

05.14.13 - 9:39 am | Emily Savage |
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This video has been floating around of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield floating in space, slowly turning inside his vessel, playing the acoustic guitar and singing Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie (“Space Oddity,” naturally). It’s an arresting image, melding science, sound, nerd culture, and pop culture together in the coolest of ways. And it was his goodbye love letter to space, as he returned back down to earth yesterday.

Outside the spaceship, and also back here on earth (and playing San Francisco this week, naturally) there are bands that are grounded by gravity, though little else -- the celestial atmospheric head case of Kisses, larger-than-life Big Boi, otherworldly solo pounder Black Pus (Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt), cosmic soul duo Myron and E, and more invade our shores in the coming days. Maintain your curiosity, and greet them live in the flesh, eyes and ears wide with wonder. Read more »

Racism and homophobia east of the Rockies

05.13.13 - 1:27 pm | Tim Redmond |
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There are assholes everywhere, and there are people in San Francisco who use racist and homophobic slurs. But this interactive map (based on students at Humboldt State analyzing 150,000 nasty tweets (the academic life for you), suggests that the most concentrated jerkfaces are east of the Rocky Mountains. Either that or they use Twitter more.