Campaign to ban bottled water sales in national parks targets GGNRA

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UPDATED A national campaign to ban the sale of disposal plastic water and soda bottles in our national parks – which is being actively opposed by Coca-Cola and others who bottle and sell water, that most basic of life-sustaining resources – has arrived in San Francisco as it targets Yosemite and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.Read more »

The Performant: Life is but a dream...

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Bouffonery and W. Kamau Bell's stand-up at Stagewerx

Theater history is full of stories of legendary shows that caused riots at their opening night, difficult to imagine in these more apathetic times. We go to the theatre to be entertained, more rarely to be provoked, and more rarely yet, to be stirred to an action greater than the act of merely applauding at the end.

But the theater of Bouffon turns that theater-going complacency on its head. The entertainer in the room is not the curious creature onstage with exaggerated buttocks and an evil smile, but the squirming oddience stuck in the crosshairs of its merciless gaze. Read more »

Mike Shine's "Flotsam's Harvest" at White Walls

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By Molly Champlain

A promise that all our ailments will disappear and our wildest dreams will come true ... for a small price. Or for the price of your soul? Dr. Flotsam and his self-described "crew of carny bastards," sprung from the wild mind of San Francisco artist Mike Shine, ask us the worth of that exchange. The question is scattered through the paintings, performance, and graphic novel of his show, "Flotsam's Harvest," up now through April 6 at White Walls.

According to the show's press release:

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"It just gets different": Ali Liebegott on her third book 'Cha-Ching!'

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When you've spent long, smelly months in a bus traveling the world sharing words with pockets of alternative community, the issue of place takes the fore. As she releases her third book Cha-Ching!, and as her decades-old Sister Spit collective embarks upon yet another tour of spoken word, queer revelry, and cramped living conditions, author Ali Liebegott is getting academic about it. Read more »

Live Shots: LGBT Community Center celebrates 11 colorful years

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Photos by Bowerbird Photography

Last Saturday, the disco ball sparkled from above, while below on the dance floor, party-goers glittered in gold. There was much to celebrate, with the SF LGBT Community Center's annual gala "Soiree" celebrating 11 years of sercing the community -- and even more to drink, with bottomless bottles of champagne. There were also plenty of sights to drink in, including a few bottomless pairs of pants!Read more »

Behind the Chron's paywall

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I wish the Chronicle luck at its experiment with a “paywall.” Once upon a time, we used to call that a “subscription” -- that is, you pay money and someone delivers to you something worthwhile to read. Since nobody much likes to pay to read anything any more, it’s considered risky and a bit radical for a newspaper to charge money for access to the work that it pays a staff a fair amount of money to produce.Read more »

Nite Trax: Scott Hardkiss, RIP

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Sad news came down the pipe yesterday that truly essential Bay Area psychedelic house pioneer Scott Hardkiss of the Hardkiss Brothers passed away at age 43. The cause hasn't been announced, but he had been having medical trouble recently with an eye implant. His last Facebook post, dated March 20, quoted Whodini: "Friends, how many of us have them, ones you can depend on?"

Well, he certainly had a lot of admirers who loved his production and DJ work, me included. Along with "brothers" Gavin and Robbie, Scott helped put the funky, pagan native sound of SF on the underground map in the early 1990s -- unafraid to mix acid and deep techno sounds with psychedelic and prog rock effects to create a sublimely ecstatic noise.

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Willie Brown and Ammiano's pot bill

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Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s new medical marijuana bill seems pretty straightforward. Almost everyone in the medpot biz thinks there ought to be some sort of statewide regulations for a growing industry that operates in a mish-mash of local jurisdictions with no overall rules. If nothing else, consumer-protection policies ought to be in place. Read more »

Artists respond to hate-speech ads with “fabulous” alterations

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When it comes to countering hate speech, there's nothing like creative expression mixed with direct action. Activists affiliated with art collectives Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power (BAAQUP) and Street Cred declared yesterday to be “Hate Free Monday,” and celebrated by modifying hate speech ads recently plastered on Muni buses.Read more »

Vintage riffs: "Maiden England '88" on DVD

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Attention Iron Maiden fans: today, the seminal NWOBHM band releases a DVD version of Maiden England '88, a concert film shot on the seminal tour's stop in Birmingham, England (with never-before-seen encore footage to boot).

The two-disc set, which is full of stuff you've probably never seen at all unless you take really good care of your VHS tapes and still have a working VCR, also includes Twelve Wasted Years, a 1987 doc about Maiden's humble beginnings and rise to metal god status; The History of Iron Maiden Pt. 3, a 40-minute doc focusing on the band in the late 1980s; and promo videos of hits from that period, including "Can I Play With Madness" and "The Evil That Men Do."

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Downright 'Deviant' -- the sexy new video from Double Duchess

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See video

Feast your eyes on the latest offering from San Francisco electro-hop duo Double Duchess – a gritty, glammy, pulsing new video for the single, “Deviant,” off its forthcoming EP, due out this summer on Oakland's Le Heat Records. There may or may not be a purple dildo in there somewhere. Read more »

Rally and vigils for marriage equality in S.F. this week

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The U.S. Supreme Court will hold back-to-back hearings this week as justices consider Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), setting the stage for historic discussions concerning LGBT civil rights. Tonight, hundreds are expected to gather at Castro and Market streets for a 6:30 p.m. rally, followed by a march to City Hall. Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, passed in California with 52 percent of the vote in November of 2008. Read more »

Oddballs: The best in style from SXSW

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I arrived in Austin smack dab in the middle of the Interactive portion of SXSW, so I got to watch the music folks trickle in first-hand. Every day I'd put on a wig or glitter or some neon and head out, camera in hand, looking for adventure. As the skinny jeans and ripped t-shirts and plaid and beards began to take over from the jeans and button-downs, there were folks like these: colorful, dramatic, friendly, fun, and aesthetically remarkable (sorta like that whole Purple Cow thing marketing people love to talk about...) Read more »

Heads Up: 8 must-see concerts this week

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Sometimes, “world music” takes on an entirely different meaning. This week, the bands and musicians and producers will come from all over the (European) map: there's Grecian psych punk, UK goth pop, Irish deep house and space disco, plus one-half of the first all-female electronic DJ group of Chicago, a KUSF-in-Exile benefit, and a soul clap dance-off.

I'm exhausted just thinking about the travel time it'll take all those acts – Acid Baby Jesus, Veronica Falls, Mano Le Tough, Jonathan Toubin, Texas is the Reason, Colette and DJ Heather, and so many more – to arrive in our foggy city by the bay. Read more »

Internet Cat Video Festival pussyfoots its way to Oakland

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The druggish trip of a heavy Youtube session: you start out looking for that innovative new TED Talk and find yourself, hours later, fixated on a video of sloths in a bucket. How you got there you don’t know.

Sleepy sloths are dangerous to productivity but delve into the endless abyss of cat videos on the web and you might not see the sun for a week. This brings us to our next point of fact: The Internet Cat Video Festival is coming to Oakland May 11, and you can buy tickets starting today. Read more »