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Down Dog break down

We rate the yogis -- which famous Bay Area yoga teacher is right for you?

This Week's Paper

 We rate the Bay's yoga gurus, Kevin Epps returns, indie rock history, Ice Cream Bar, SF housing, more. Flip through this week's digital issue

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From the Blogs

Whither indie?

As Noise Pop turns 20, tracing sound from Overwhelming Colorfast to Young Prisms

02.22.12 - 5:40 pm | Kimberly Chun |
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MUSIC How does one trace the warp and woof of Bay Area indie rock's silky, sick, multihued tapestry — with ticket stubs to long-ago shows, holey concert T's, or grainy snapshots of sweat-swathed guitar players, red eyes gleaming in a haze of smoke machine emissions? Perhaps one way is to chart SF indie's course from the first Noise Pop to the latest 20th anniversary edition, teasing out the tenuous connections between the first fest's headliner Overwhelming Colorfast, reunited this year, and newish local poobah Young Prisms.Read more »

politics

The 'ruination' of Peter Gleick

02.22.12 - 4:43 pm | Tim Redmond |
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Oooh, sfgate has dropped climate scientist Peter Gleick's column on the City Brights section of the site. Harsh, man; I guess that's enough to "damage, if not ruin" the reputation of one of the world's leading authorities on climate change. Fired by City Brights; I bet he feels as if he's been unfriended by Garrison Keillor.Read more »

noise

Spanning time with the Flaming Lips

02.22.12 - 4:42 pm | Ryan Prendiville |
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The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.
The Flaming Lips at Bimbo's. Photo by Ryan Prendiville.

I ran into a temporal anomaly while driving. My first warning sign was the police cruiser with one headline flashing its sirens behind me. Wrong place at the wrong time? Well, I was getting pulled over in Sebastopol on the way to Richmond from SF, but when the cop told me I was doing 78 in a 55, it suggested one thing —speeding. Read more »

Krushin' on

Party time with DJ Krush, Red Baraat, Black Rock Roller Disco benefit, Forest Green, and more

02.22.12 - 4:17 pm | Marke B. |
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SUPER EGO I've only a wee bit of space this week before I rush off back into the Mardi Gras of my mind, but I've got to three times diagonal-snap for local fashion designer Jeanette Au (jeanetteau.carbonmade.com) who tore it up for SF on the NY Fashion Week runways last week with her debut collection of 3-D knit fantasias. Ruling!

 Read more »

politics

Campaign cash roundup and questions about our sleeping watchdog

02.22.12 - 4:10 pm | Steven T. Jones |
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Oliver Luby – the last true public-spirited employee at the Ethics Commission (a campaign lapdog when it should be a watchdog) before being forced out in 2010 – has written an insightful and comprehensive analysis of spending by candidates and outside groups during last year's election. It's published by CitiReport.Read more »

politics

Occupy 4 Prisoners hits San Quentin

02.22.12 - 4:10 pm | Yael Chanoff |
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About 800 protesters marched to San Quentin’s East Gate in a day to protest what they called inhumane conditions in prison Feb. 20

Protesters called for an end to the practice of trying children as adults, three strikes laws, life sentences, life without the possibility of parole, and the death penalty.They did not call for the dismantling of the prison system or an end to the practice of incarceration, as Chip Johnson implies here. Read more »

pixel_vision

Ice Cream Bar's soda fountain revives the '30s jerk

02.22.12 - 2:16 pm | Virginia Miller |
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In this week's Appetite food and drink column in the paper, I relished the opportunity to return to a time of delicious handmade fountain drinks at Cole Valley's new Ice Cream Bar (albeit with some innovative contemporary flavor twists). In between sips of wild cherry phosphate, I got to talk to Russell Davis, the bartender who developed the fantastic soda fountain program, about the soda jerk revival -- and got him to share some of his sassafras secrets.

Read more »

noise

Snap Sounds: Young Magic

02.22.12 - 11:26 am | Frances Capell |
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YOUNG MAGIC
MELT
(CARPARK)

Hearing a band being described as "tribal electronic" gives me a headache, but Young Magic actually pulls it off on its debut full-length, Melt. This New York-via-Australia trio works irregular drum machine beats, swirling synths, and haunting vocals into dark, psychedelic pop songs. The sluggish, heavily reverbed "Night In The Ocean" is sensual and explosive. With its fluttering synths and repeated "I found love with you" vocals, "Jam Karet" is catchy and almost chant-like. "The Dancer" opens with a few creepy music box notes, and features what sounds like a shrieking tropical bird. Read more »

Compressing the press

What would a Bay Citizen merger with Center for Investigative Reporting mean for local journalism?

02.22.12 - 7:03 am | Steven T. Jones |
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Journalism in the Bay Area has been in decline for many years, with corporate consolidations, shrinking newsrooms, declining print readership, and struggles with how to pay full-time reporters when content is offered free-of-charge on the Internet. And with its waning institutional strength, the Fourth Estate has lost some of its ability to watchdog the powerful, creating a dangerous situation in a country founded on the belief that a free press is an essential safeguard of liberty and fairness.Read more »

bruce

Guardian editorial: The DA and mayoral corruption

02.21.12 - 11:20 pm |
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EDITORIAL The indictments of two executives of an airport shuttle company on charges of laundering campaign money are, in themselves, a rarity and something to celebrate: the district attorney of San Francisco is actually attempting to enforce the laws against political corruption. That's unusual in this city, and worthy of note.

But at this point, the entire sum total of prosecutions involving the scandal-ridden campaign of Mayor Ed Lee amounts to a pair of cases against people who made what appear to be illegal contributions. As of today, the message that's being sent is that nobody in the Lee campaign did anything wrong. And that seems a little bit curious.

Lee's late entry into the race — after he'd promised for months not to run — and his refusal to abide by the rules of public financing forced his supporters to raise a large amount of money very quickly. There were so-called independent expenditure committees collecting donations and running parallel campaigns that, by law, should have been entirely distinct from Lee and his official effort. We've always been dubious about the supposed lack of coordination. Read more »

politics

Will shutting down two businesses really 'clean up' the Tenderloin?

02.21.12 - 5:15 pm | Royce Kurmelovs |
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It was noon on the Jan. 30 when I broke the news to 24-year-old Amer Mousa that the City of San Francisco was filing a civil suit to shut down Walid Abdulrahman, his friend and owner of the Razan Deli on Ellis Street in the Tenderloin.

Two hours earlier, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr held a press conference out the front of the Azaal Market on the corner of Leavenworth and Turk streets in the Tenderloin to announce the dual lawsuits against the markets owners, Jaber A. Algahim and Walid Abdulrahman, for maintaining a public nuisance. Our efforts to get comments from Algahim and Abdulrahman were not successful, but Mousa spoke freely about the situation.

Read more »

pixel_vision

Justin Vivian Bond talks Occupy Wall Street, the power of language, and the politics behind the music

02.21.12 - 2:34 pm | Yael Chanoff |
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When Justin Vivian Bond was a little kid, v (more about that unique pronoun below) confidently wore Iced Watermelon lipstick to school and, inspired by feminist movements of the time, brandished a sign reading “Kids Lib!” Adults told the young Mx. Bond that these things were wrong, but v knew how right they felt, and represents for queer pride and radical poltics to this day. The writer, singer and activist is best known for v’s role as Kiki DuRane in Kiki and Herb, a drag cabaret show with partner Kenny Mellman. The show started in San Francisco and made it to Broadway, and was nominated for a 2007 Tony award. V's memoir Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels was released this year (wherein Bond tells the lipstick story and a lot more about growing up gender-free). Bond is still touring and will be back in San Francisco Feb. 23, performing from v’s new album, Dendrophile. I talked with v about the upcoming concert, v’s recent performance at Occupy Wall Street, and how music can bring people together. Read more »

noise

Localized Appreesh: Churches

02.21.12 - 12:45 pm | Emily Savage |
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Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.
 
There's a whole lot of religious imagery going on within new local guitar-and-drums superduo Churches. Most vivid, beyond the obvious, is the guilty, desperate strain in memorizing first single, “Save Me,” and its jittery remixes. The track and remixes (available on Bandcamp) are both pleading and sensual, evoking the classic good/evil ecstasy of sacred customs. Read more »

pixel_vision

The Performant: Rep flow

02.21.12 - 11:38 am | Nicole Gluckstern |
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Boxcar Theatre gets hardcore with Sam Shepard

Every year it feels like it’ll be impossible for the ever-inventive Boxcar Theatre company to top their last season, and somehow each year they pull it off. After launching an ultra-ambitious repertory program of four Sam Shepard plays, to be performed in two separate locations over the course of the next two-and-a-half months, artistic director Nick A. Olivero -- who isn’t just producing the festival, but also directing “Fool For Love,” and co-starring in “True West” -- still made time for an internet interview about “Sam Shep in Rep.”

Read more »

bruce

Dick Meister: Celebrating the Farmworkers' Filipino American Champion

02.20.12 - 9:44 pm |
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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former Labor Editor of SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. He's co-author of "A Long Time Coming: The Struggle To Unionize America's Farm Workers." Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

The birth date of Cesar Chavez, the late farm workers' leader, will be celebrated next month, and rightly so.  But it's well past time we also celebrated the life of probably the most important of the other leaders who played a major role in winning union rights for farm workers and otherwise helping them combat serious exploitation.

That's Larry Itliong. He died 35 years ago this month at age 63. Itliong got involved in the farm workers' struggle very early in life, not long after he arrived as a 15-year-old immigrant from the Philippine Islands. He was among some 31,000 Filipino men who came to California in the late 1920s. Read more »