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So many summertime festivals

Small town salsa, enviro-docs, artisan Jello shots, fun punk: warm weather celebrations abound in 2013. Here's our list

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

Listings

From the Blogs

Behold! Highlights of ArtPadSF and artMKT

05.16.13 - 2:27 pm | Matt Fisher |
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ArtPadSF: Scott Hove, "Chocolate Beast" detail 2012
ArtPadSF: Justine Frischmann, "Pink Series #1" 2012
ArtPadSF: David Hevel, "have you been up all night trying to get rich?" 2013
ArtPadSF: Jason Kalogiros, "Untitled Watch Ad (Cartier W7100009) Negative IV" 2012
ArtPadSF: Ed Loftus, "Untitled (Button)" 2012
ArtPadSF: Matt Momlichov, "Teenage Cavemen" 2013
ArtPadSF: Greg Renfrow, "Swoon" 2012
ArtPadSF: Jonathan Runcio, "Studio" 2013
artMKT: Carol Inez Charney, "NYC 14" 2013
artMKT: Amanda Curreri
artMRKT: Lauren DiCioccio, "America on Americans" 2012
artMRKT: Joshua Hagler, "Abduction of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians"
artMRKT: Claire Rojas, "Untitled (CR12011)," 2012
artMRKT: Diane Rosenblum, "This is so pretty I want to lick it"
artMRKT: Dana Hart-Stone, "My America" 2013
artMRKT: Esther Traugot, "Quail Egg" 2013

In this week's issue, Guardian visual arts Matt Fisher singled out some highlights of the big ArtPadSF and artMKT shows, which open tonight and run through Sun/19. Here's a slideshow that shows you what he was talking about. Artist descriptions after the jump: 

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Googlass: Gatecrashing Google I/O

05.16.13 - 1:41 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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It would be foolish to turn down the offer of cost-free Billy Idol on a Wednesday night, but I could have remembered that I live in San Francisco and high profile rock 'n' roll will like as not, come served with a side of goober. 

This is to say, that I went to the Google I/O developer’s conference last night. The buffet’s waffle fries were not great and I heard the mini-chicken pot pies were worse, but I did get a chance to watch DJ Steve Aoki give shout-outs to “technooooology!”, allowing a techie or two who promised to get him a Google bus to clamber on stage and flop about next to his set-up. Read more »

Is Larkin Street Youth Services using public funds to fight a union organizing drive?

05.16.13 - 12:03 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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Larkin Street Youth Services does great and important social work with homeless youth in San Francisco, for which it receives generous support from city taxpayers, as well as federal grants. That’s why its employees and some prominent local officials are questioning the organization’s aggressive, deceptive, and anti-union resistance to the request by a majority of its 88 employees to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021.Read more »

Cryin' wolf

05.16.13 - 10:56 am | Johnny Angel Wendell |
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This has been a wretched stretch of brutal press for Barack Obama lately. Battered over and over by revelations of IRS malfeasance, aggressive assaults on press freedom at the AP and Benghazi ad infinitum, the hits keep on coming, amplified by the dual forces of the "Conservative Entertainment Complex" (as exemplified by this great pundit) and a "liberal media" that has realized that Internet hits are their most likely saving grace and revenue stream. It has reached such fevered pitch that the media is making a chilling analogy commonplace! Read more »

Why is the SF housing market "positive?"

05.16.13 - 9:32 am | Tim Redmond |
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It's been a long, long time since anyone said that traffic is terrific. When there are too many cars on the road, it's considered bad, not healthy -- even if the boom in single-occupant auto travel is a sign of a recovering economy and lots of job creation.Read more »

Your 2013 Nasty Pig leather fetish club-streetwear lookbook is here

05.16.13 - 8:09 am | Marke B. |
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See video

Beloved former SF club denizen, fast-forward stylist, and king of fresh Frankie Sharp -- who basically won New York in March -- has teamed up with director Lil Internet and hot-hot-heat fetishwear producer Nasty Pig to melt our screens.Read more »

Campos to Pride: City funding requires transparency, meeting about Manning decision

05.15.13 - 4:23 pm | Marke B. |
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Over the weekend, Pride posted a Facebook note saying that, despite its promises, it would not be holding a public meeting to address its horrible handling of the Bradley Manning for Grand Marshal scandal until after Pride, and that "SF Pride’s decision concerning the election process of Bradley Manning as Grand Marshal being consistent with SF Pride’s long-standing Grand Marshal election policy is firm. Thus, the discussion of that matter is closed for this year."

People were not very happy about this. Last night a well-attended "mock Pride board meeting" protest was held, with a row of empty chairs symbolizing Pride's absence of leadership.

Now Supervisor David Campos has issued a stern letter to the Pride Board, citing Pride's status as a city-funded organization and its failure to operate with transparency, and advising them to meet with the public before the festival at the end of June.

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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 »