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Vanishing city

Up against intense market pressure, longtime residents and community projects fade from SF

This Week's Paper

Evictions sweep the city. Plus, Björk, Black Watch, a guide to summer's best fairs and festivals, Southside Spirit House, community basketball, and more. Articles Online | Digital Edition

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From the Blogs

The truth conquers all

Will a 25-foot buffer zone keep anti-abortion protesters from freaking out Planned Parenthood patients? 

04.04.13 - 11:00 am | Caitlin Donohue |
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I was standing in front of what looked like a semi-vacant office building. I re-checked my maps app — it looked like I had the correct address for the Planned Parenthood clinic. If only this woman would stop shouting about killing babies, maybe I could think.Read more »

New life

Remembering SF psychedelic house pioneer Scott Hardkiss. Plus: Charlie Horse, Tensnake, V.I.V.E.K., Francois K., and more nightlife

04.04.13 - 10:30 am | Marke B. |
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SUPER EGO This one's for Scott Hardkiss — the actually legendary local-bred DJ and producer who in the early 1990s, along with his Hardkiss brothers in music Gavin and Robbie, helped put the psychedelic-ecstatic sounds of San Francisco house on the underground map. He passed away last week at 43 from what is presently believed to be an aneurysm, leaving behind his wife Stephanie, his two-year-old daughter — and legions of fans who revel in his sonic legacy. Read more »

Promo: Lecture and workshop with Joy DeGruy

04.04.13 - 10:28 am |
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Joy DeGruy, PhD, authored the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Enduring Legacy of Injury and Healing, which addresses the residual impacts of trauma on African descendants in the Americas. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome lays the groundwork for understanding how the past has influenced the present, and opens up the discussion of how we can use the strengths we have gained to heal.
  Read more »

politics

Obama greeted with anti-pipeline protesters

04.04.13 - 10:04 am | Rebecca Bowe |
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Hundreds of protesters gathered in San Francisco’s upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood on April 3 to greet President Barack Obama with signs and chants opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. Nationwide, environmentalists have been pressuring the president in recent months to reject construction permits for the oil infrastructure project, which would transport oil to U.S. refineries from Canada's Alberta tar sands.

The president was in San Francisco for a $32,500 per person Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) fundraiser at the mansion of San Francisco billionaires Gordon and Ann Getty, preceded by a $5,000 per person cocktail reception hosted at the Sea Cliff residence of Tom Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund manager, and his wife Kat Taylor. Steyer and Taylor are vocal critics of the pipeline and have donated to environmental causes.

Read more »

pixel_vision

The hawk and the rat: Hugh Leeman's artistic 'social experiments'

04.03.13 - 4:36 pm | Mia Sullivan |
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"Blue" one of Hugh Leeman's iconic portraits
"The hawk and the rat" in progress. Photo by Mia Sullivan
"The hawk and the rat" in progress. Photo by Mia Sullivan
"The hawk and the rat" in progress. Photo by Mia Sullivan
"The hawk and the rat" in progress. Photo by Mia Sullivan
Hugh spray-painting a piece for the show. Photo by Mia Sullivan

The artist talks about his upcoming exhibit, depictions of the homeless, and art-related capitalism
 
If you’ve walked through the Tenderloin, along Market Street, or around SoMa, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Hugh Leeman’s art. (He'll be showing new work Thu/4 at SOMArts Gallery as part of the "Dial Collect" show.) Leeman is best known for his drawings of the distinct and arresting faces of Sixth and Market’s homeless, which he used to wheatpaste onto billboards and buildings. His iconic work has been characterized as “street art,” but Leeman views his homeless art project through a more enterprising lens.

The power latent in billboards and marketing campaigns – both to make a statement and to expose vulnerabilities held by the viewer – inspired Leeman to plaster his friends’ faces around town. (Leeman met most of the homeless men he's depicted by engaging in street-side conversation, usually with the help of a trusty pack of Camel cigarettes.) He aimed to get as many eyes on his work as possible by giving away free posters of his drawings and by allowing people to download posters off his website for free. He also screen printed his drawings onto t-shirts and gave them away to men and women on the street to sell for a 100% profit.

Read more »

politics

No progress in condo conversion standoff, despite the Chron's spin

04.03.13 - 4:30 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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Perhaps it was just an unfunny April Fool's Day joke or some wishful political spin, but the San Francisco Chronicle's April 1 article about how tenancy-in-common owners and their political supporters are pushing legislation that would allow them to bypass the condo conversion lottery seriously misrepresented the city's biggest current political standoff.Read more »

sexsf

Standing on streetcorners naked, and this week's sexy events

04.03.13 - 3:55 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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Memories of a taxi driver desperately trying to flag Courtney Trouble into his cab popped up unexpectedly today upon hearing the BBW queer pornographer discuss how the Madonna-inspired Guardian cover shoot last year for my story following her and the rest of the queer porn clique down to Las Vegas for the AVN Awards has now inspired a movie of its own. Read more »

politics

Feds' use of spy tools under scrutiny due to privacy concerns

04.03.13 - 1:58 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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If the FBI is trying to pinpoint the location of a suspect in your neighborhood, investigators could sweep up information from your mobile device just because you happen to be in proximity to their target. Civil liberties advocates are concerned that the practice is a major invasion of privacy.Read more »

noise

Localized Appreesh: Sunbeam Rd.

04.03.13 - 11:23 am | Emily Savage |
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Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com

I'm a lover of past treasures. I like my music vinyl, and I like my mail snail. Sure, I download thousands (millions would be hyperbolic, right?) of tracks a year, send hundreds of emails a day, tweet with the rest of them, and then some. Technology is still my friend, but vintage pleasures will always be my lover. Hence, my delight with the arrival of a colorfully confetti'd physical postcard from psychedelia-minded local fuzz-pop trio Sunbeam Rd., announcing the group's 50th show. Read more »

politics

Norquist exposes tax avoiders

04.03.13 - 10:53 am | Tim Redmond |
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I'm not a big fan of Grover Norquist, who will be in town April 4 and who is so against taxes that he apparently would have refused to pay his share of the cost of World War II (back when the government actually asked taxpayers to pay for wars as they were being fought, instead of pretending they were free and borrowing money that future generations will have to repay). Read more »

Ennui and I

Pen-ek Ratanaruang's 'Thai Dreams' screen at YBCA

04.03.13 - 10:00 am | Cheryl Eddy |
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FILM Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang's international breakthrough, Last Life in the Universe, came out 10 years ago, but its themes of isolation and loneliness still feel very much of the moment. Eternally cool Japanese star Tadanobu Asano plays librarian Kenji, whose Better Off Dead-style existential turmoil leads him to attempt suicide, or at least think long and hard about it, multiple times. Read more »

Conflicted dictator

'The Madness of the Elephant' uses music and dance to chart Guinea's political history

04.02.13 - 5:58 pm | Rita Felciano |
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DANCE "Next door," you are told in the packed Senegalese restaurant in the heart of the Mission. "Back there," you hear, as a hand points in a very dark, very empty bar you enter through an unmarked door. What's "back there"? It's a large space, perhaps formerly used for storage, lit by blinking Christmas tree lights and two blinding spots. You wonder what a former African dictator would have thought about a celebration of his life being created in such circumstances. Read more »

politics

GOP 'dark wizard' and Occupy 'anti-leader' to speak in SF on the same day

04.02.13 - 4:32 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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This coming Thursday, a central intellectual figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement will give a talk on “Austerity and its Discontents.” And across the city, at the very same time, powerful anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist will mix it up with an elite group of San Francisco Republicans (yes, they really do exist).Read more »

politics

Tree-sitter shot, 70 feet up, by CHP rubber bullet

04.02.13 - 2:21 pm | Tim Redmond |
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Tree-sitting is nothing new. It's happened all over California, going back decades. It's a dangerous, but often effective protest tool that stops logging in its tracks.

Nobody with any official sanction is going to cut down a tree while there's a human perched in it -- and it's been notoriously difficult for the authorities to remove people from platforms high above the forest.

And now, in Mendocino County, police response has entered a new phase.Read more »

noise

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

04.02.13 - 12:47 pm | Emily Savage |
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Is everyone else emotionally and physically exhausted from the Easter/Passover-torrential hailing downpour-April Fool's Day (who can you trust on the Internet?) mess of the last few days? I certainly am, and I only participated in a few of those spiritual debacles.

No mind, I'm ready to strap on my wellies and/or sunglasses and embark on a week of Esben and the Witch, Mac DeMarco, Babysitter, Glam.I.Rock, Portland Cello Project, Future Twin, and Polkacide with Fuxedos.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end: Read more »