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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

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From the Blogs

Tribeca Film Festival wrap-up: the best of the rest!

05.02.13 - 10:49 am | Kimberly Chun |
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It was the best of sequesters: oh, Tribeca, how to wrap up the many, many days spent hidden away in the dark, watching flickering images dart across a screen? I can only try, as I speed through the best of the rest — and the notable not-so-muchs.

Kids these days: Poets and the young girls that love them are at the very funny heart of indie comedy Adult World, which is sure to make a star of Emma Roberts. She’s the shrill, just-graduated, wannabe-verse-slinger Amy, who’s moonlighting in an adult video store alongside hollow-eyed cutie Alex (American Horror Story’s Evan Peters) and hoping scuzzball genius will rub off if she “interns” (read: cleans house) for her favorite poet, Rat Billings (writ world-weary and hilariously cynical by John Cusack). First-time feature director Scott Coffrey (also, weirdly, a graduate of the same Honolulu high school where I did my own Amy impression) lets a few rough edges (i.e., edits) show, but it’s all good when the filmmaker winds up Roberts, playing the cringe-worthy Tracy Flick for the chapbook set, and lets her go.

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The Performant: The real weekend warriors

05.02.13 - 10:04 am | Nicole Gluckstern |
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From Dark Room Theater's "Ghostbusters: Live." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
From Dark Room Theater's "Ghostbusters: Live." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
From Dark Room Theater's "Ghostbusters: Live." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
From Dark Room Theater's "Ghostbusters: Live." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern
Har Mar Superstar, clothed.
Har Mar Superstar, unclothed.

Holding down the weekend of the weekend with the Dark Room Theatre's "Ghostbusters: Live" and Har Mar Superstar

Among the true creatures of the night, Saturday Night has always been passé, amateur night if you will, when even the most accommodating of dive bars or clubs are suddenly jammed tight with lightweight dilettantes, whose allegiance to the night life is as superficial as it is truncated. But the real weekend has always begun on Thursday, straddling the line between Wednesday’s hump and Saturday’s slump, a connoisseur’s indulgence.

Though San Francisco is happily full of those who understand that Thursday is when the party starts, any number of theatres can still attest that packing the house on that particular evening can be a tricky prospect, a trend I can attest to from the personal experience of having attended many a Thursday show where the actors outnumbered the oddience. Awkward. Which made entering the oversold, packed to the rafters performance of "Ghostbusters: Live"! at the Dark Room Theatre that much more refreshing. This is one Mission Street outpost that has thus far ably resisted the siren song of gentrification and co-option, and remains a place where silly good fun can be had for the price of cheap, with an additional calendar of ten p.m. comedy shows that caters specifically to the committed night owl crowd.

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Another attack on public-employee unions

05.02.13 - 9:33 am | Tim Redmond |
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Big-business and conservative interests have been trying to years to find a way to undermine the political clout of organized labor, particularly unions like the teachers and nurses, who have played a huge role in progressive campaigns. And now there's a new tactic.Read more »

Guest opinion: LGBT supporters of Bradley Manning

05.02.13 - 9:11 am | Tim Redmond |
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Editor's note: At least 24 LGBT community leaders and activists have signed on to the following statement in support of Bradley Manning as a Pride grand marshal.Read more »

Aquarius rising

Free your mind and surrender to 'The Source Family'

05.02.13 - 7:13 am | Cheryl Eddy |
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FILM Under the guidance of charismatic, luxuriously-bearded leader Father Yod (once named Jim Baker, later known as YaHoWha), the Source Family operated one of the country's first health food restaurants. They lived in a Hollywood Hills mansion, wore flowing robes, assumed dreamy new names, meditated, and studied Father Yod's custom blend of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism.Read more »

May Day rally for immigration reform in SF

05.01.13 - 6:41 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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Hundreds gathered for a rally outside San Francisco City Hall on May 1, capping off a march that drew activists into the streets to commemorate International Workers Day. The events were organized by a broad coalition of immigrant rights advocates to call for improvements to the recently unveiled proposal for federal immigration reform, which will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. [More photos after the jump] Read more »

SFMTA chief hopes to calm the parking meter furor at supervisorial hearing

05.01.13 - 4:27 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency director Ed Reiskin faces a tough challenge tomorrow (Thu/2) at the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety hearing that Sup. Mark Farrell has called on expanding parking meters into new neighborhoods, where Reiskin is expected to face a hornet's nest of SFMTA critics stirred up by the loss of free street parking and perceptions that the agency is mismanaging public spaces and transit. [UPDATE: Read what happened here.]Read more »

Assembly committee OKs moratorium on fracking in California

05.01.13 - 2:08 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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Three bills seeking to impose moratoriums on fracking in California won approval at the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee in Sacramento on April 29, an important milestone for environmentalists who ultimately plan to push for a permanent ban on the practice.Read more »

The most bitter Bradley Manning-Pride piece yet

05.01.13 - 12:46 pm | Tim Redmond |
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Lots of people angry about the Pride Committee's decision to fire Bradley Manning as a grand marshal. But the most savage, all-out assault comes from Steven W. Thrasher, a former Village Voice writer who has nothing good to say at all about Pride or the people who run it -- or for the more mainstream parts of the LGBT movement:Read more »

Teachers try to dis-accredit accreditation group

05.01.13 - 11:23 am |
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The union representing teachers at San Francisco City College have fired back at the accreditation commission that's threatened to shut the school down and forced dramatic changes in its mission. The California Federation of Teachers and AFT Local 2121 filed a legal complaint May 1 charging the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges with violating its own rules and federal law -- and the complaint asks the federal Department of Education Read more »

Facebook's Keystone Pipeline connection

05.01.13 - 10:53 am | Tim Redmond |
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When people who don't have a lot of experience in politics suddenly start throwing money around, dumb stuff happens. That's what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg and the ads he's helping pay for that support the Keystone Pipeline.Read more »

Calling all Latino photogs: Accion Latina wants your work on a wall

05.01.13 - 9:19 am | Caitlin Donohue |
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Somehow in the shiny blitz of new restaurants made out of stainless steel, you may have missed the arrival of the Eric Quezada Center for Politics and Culture right in the thick of the Mission. That'd be a shame -- the space where the Abandoned Planet bookstore stood until 2010 now hosts some of the most vibrant alternative events in the country. Last time I made it through, it was for a poster show of screenprinted calls for immigration justice. A theater group comprised of Filipina caretakers performed, and in the back you could buy homemade butterfly cookies and sangria.

Speaking of the Quezada Center, if you're a Latino photographer, you're in luck -- a local non-profit wants to put your snaps up the gallery walls.   Read more »

Get ready for May Day ruckus and revelry

04.30.13 - 6:55 pm | Rebecca Bowe |
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May 1 marks International Workers Day, so naturally Bay Area activists are gearing up for a host of marches, rallies, and celebrations. The weather forecast predicts sunny skies with a high of 78 degrees – expect them to come out in droves. Here’s your rundown of May Day festivities. Read more »

Hearing on event security as SFPD pushes police state

04.30.13 - 4:11 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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Just a few weeks ago, Sup. Scott Wiener, civil libertarians, and I were raising concerns here about the SFPD unilaterally expanding its video surveillance reach. Then came the bombings at the Boston Marathon, which the SFPD used to seriously up the ante in the police state pot, asking for real time video surveillance up and down Market Street and banning backpacks at Bay to Breakers.

Now, I'm not one to stand in the way of reasonable security precautions. But we shouldn't just defer to the SFPD on whatever it says it wants because then we'll have cameras on every corner, spy drones overhead, stop-and-frisk, and an ever-greater portion of our tax dollars going to expand the police state. Because the cops will always want more tools to police us, tools they will always say they need to protect us – it's just in their nature. But it's up to the rest of us to strike the right balance and not lose our heads every time some whack-job resorts to violence.

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You want scary? We've got an eviction map

04.30.13 - 1:19 pm | Tim Redmond |
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You want to see something frightening on a lovely afternoon? Check out this amazing interactive map of Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco put together by Brian Whitty.Read more »