Category: san francisco

Items having to do with my current homeland, the San Francisco Bay Area.

Art / Richard Misrach slays 49 Geary

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 5 March 2006

First Thursdays at 49 Geary can be overwhelming, people-wise, and underwhelming, art-wise, and this month was different only in that the overwhelmingness was crammed into one place: the Fraenkel Gallery. Packed with people, it also displayed a face-melting collection of Richard Misrach photos.

When I first saw Misrach's photos, I thought immediately of Sebastiao Salgado. Both guys address big themes — civilizations, seasons, landscapes, human endeavors — but they do so in vastly different ways. Salgado frames his work around human action; his subjects are migrants, activitists, laborers. Misrach works with earth, light, space; he works with dunes, strangers, cars, power plants. Salgado's work is tied to current events, political movements, regimes, definable moments and recognizable things; Misrach works with more anonymous objects and landscapes. There are much more significant differences between them, but they share a social awareness that invests the best of their work with real intrigue and importance.

inside art reviews san francisco visual

Art / Oakland is special in other ways

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 5 March 2006

Last night we checked out the Oakland Art Murmur. Actually, we didn't even know that such a thing existed, and drove over the Bridge intending to see Jason Munn's opening at Bloom Screen Printing. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that little stretch of Telegraph goin off when we got there. Jason's stuff was the best of the art stuff, by far, but the action on the street was out front of Rock Paper Scissors.That's where we saw a guy burn an American flag. It took him roughly 10 minutes of false starts to light it with a Bic, but just after I took this picture, an ambulance raced up the street, sirens blaring, on its way to some emergency, but it abruptly slowed down when the driver saw the burning flag, and we could see the faces of the other paramedics staring at the guy as they crawled by. It was one of those only-in-Oakland moments. Holla!

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Art / Marcel Dzama, bats, root beer, Canada

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 20 January 2006

The Royal Art Lodge snuck up on me. I wandered into a show of theirs at the Power Plant, a gallery in Toronto in 2003. In a fairly small space, they'd crammed a wall full of collaborative paintings, Polaroids, homemade musical instruments, and many paintings by Marcel Dzama and Neil Farber. It was all very … hard to describe: thrown together, primitive, whimsical, charming, dark, strange, hilarious. A painting of debutantes sitting in a row on the back of an alligator, smoking cigarettes. Bats. Root beer syrup. A grid of Polaroids, each of which was composed of a person in a strange, homemade mask poking his/her head out of a window of an institutional building.I couldn't quite believe it and I loved it. It would be hard for any art show to rival serendipitous discovery like that, but last week, I checked out Yerba Buena's show of some newer Royal Art Lodge stuff: Peer Pleasures 1. Worth seeing, like many recent YBCA shows. Not spectacular, but solid.See also:

Lists of interesting stuff that Neil Farber and Michael Duomontier will swap paintings for (Neil: Micronauts from the 70's. Michael: self-released Joanna Newsom albums).
Marcel Dzama interview with Sarah Vowell: "If there is a Canadian factor in our togetherness, perhaps it is borne out of the isolation of living in a small city like Winnipeg, and the cold weather. We are not able to go outside too often because right now your skin will freeze within minutes."

music reviews san francisco

Music / Konono #1 lights it up

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 7 November 2005

Last night, Konono #1 played the Palace of Fine Arts. Before the show, I was a little worried that their scruffy, off-kilter sound may get washed-out by the fancy sound-system of the PoFA, and that they may end up sounding like lame-ass Ashkenaz-style "world music."But from the first moment, they totally ruled, and their signature sound — with homemade electric pick-ups for their ikembes (thumb pianos), dented metal discs serving as cymbals, and MASH-style megaphones as a PA — was faithfully recreated. The PoFA is a chamber-music-style venue with cushy seats and little room to boogie, but most of the crowd was standing and dancing by the third song, and groups crowded at the sides of the stage to improvise a little dance floor. Their final song was an epic, 45-minutes trance-inducing jam that had everyone clapping and chanting along with the track-suit-clad front man.Most remarkable was the vitality of it all, the sense that there was something essential and healthy and real being created. Each band member's intense, insistent presence was spell-binding, especially the older guy in the blue baseball hat who traded off with Mingiedi (the leader, pictured) on the thumb piano and percussion. He was locked into a serious groove the whole night, banging out precise rhythms, and belting out crisp, deep monotone harmonies that were jarring but somehow perfect. It's not often that San Francisco crowds get up and shake their asses, so it was especially impressive that Konono #1 made dancing in a concert hall on Sunday night seem totally natural.

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Art / Muhammad Ali likes soul food

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 4 November 2005

One of my favorite neighborhood art spots is called Creativity Explored, "a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art." Or so it says on its website.At first, I felt conflicted about Creativity Explored. Much of the art is geniunely impressive, and a few of the artists are quite talented and produce truly beautiful work. But the greatness is complicated by the artists' disabilities. So many works seem truly unique, yet you can't shake the feeling that you're admiring the product of the very thing that prevents the artist from living a "normal" life.The fact is that I really like a lot of it, especially the handwriting/drawings of John Patrick McKenzie. John's handwriting is bold and jaunty in a way that, at first, makes it look like a cross between graffiti and first-grade. But then beyond the initial impression, it becomes clear that the page is often organized very precisely. As he tends to color in the enclosed areas of each letter — the interior of an R, D, P, etc — the page takes on a heavier graphic dimension.Content-wise, each work of John's works is thematic, though "thematic" may be too fancy a term for it. Each contains a set of words or phrases that is shuffled in a variety of ways throughout the work, though some others just contain seemingly random individual words written again and again. Humor (probably unintentional) often arises from his selection of the names of stars of the 60's and 70's in his work, as well as fellow Creativity Explored artists.Generally, he'll pick a subject — for instance, the 1964 Chevy Impala — and he'll write a series of statements about how certain people feel about the subject. "Bruce Lee likes the 1964 Chevy Impala. Doris Tokuda likes the 1964 Chevy Impala," etc. The work above has a slightly different arrangement: "Sylvester Stallone likes Chef Boyardee … Muhammad Ali likes soul food."Sometimes, the subject of the work veers away from the literal. John has developed a sort of code for referring to all sorts of subjects, so you'll see phrases like "redneck pizza sheriff," "spring chicken," "cold turkey," "avocado ice cream," and many others used in strange contexts. Sometimes they're code, sometimes they're just what they are. Someone once told me that "avocado ice cream" is code, but recently a teacher at CE theorized that John had recently eaten at Mitchell's.Like much outsider art, John's work is exotic — the and it's hard to admire and discuss it without fetishizing the condition that contributes to it. But you could also say that John's work makes this less of an issue because it is so visually appealing, and often so poetic.The SF Weekly wrote an article about John in 2002: "Osama bin Laden dislikes kelloggs frosted mini wheats"

law & order san francisco

Good time on a California jury

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 3 November 2005

For the last three days, I served on a jury in a civil trial in San Francisco Superior Court. It was a personal injury case stemming from an auto accident on the Bay Bridge in 2002. The plaintiff sought cash for physical and mental suffering, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life, and about six other things. I had some idea of how totally jacked California personal injury law is. After seeing the way that this case played out, I am shocked and depressed by it.The facts. There was no question that the defendant (a round-ish kid from outside Sacramento) rear-ended the plaintiff (an Asian lady from El Cerrito). The question was: Was there enough evidence of actual harm to award some kind of money? The plaintiff's car was unharmed by the collision. She drove home immediately afterward. An expert witness argued that the collision could not have been more than a slight bump. In my opinion, the plaintiff offered no evidence to support her argument. She claimed various types of harm: 18 months of back problems, inability to have intimate relations with her husband (ouch), general family dissolution. But her tearful testimony was the only evidence of her suffering. There was no testimony or deposition from her doctor, no medical records, no police report, no testimony from her husband or kids; moreover, she continued to work immediately after the accident and admitted that she missed no work — including business trips to China and Seattle — as a result.Our task. We had a total of four questions to answer; but if we ruled "no" on any of the first three, our work was done. Case closed. The first question: Was the defendant was negligent? If we agreed he was negligent, question two: Was the plaintiff harmed? If so, question three: Was the defendant a substantial factor in the harm? Finally, if he was: How much money should be awarded for the harm?1. Was the defendant negligent? Umm, yeah. The guy rear-ended her. Hard to say he wasn't. Still, you had to feel bad for him. He was working at a pizza place at the time of the accident, and you had to know that he was fearing some kind of huge verdict. Nevertheless, his testimony was unconvincing. A "reasonably careful" person would not rear-end a car in that situation, even if he was sneezing, as he claimed. About half the jury initially wanted to say that he was not negligent, but the rest of us had a hard time ruling that he wasn't. He wasn't paying attention. A reasonably careful person would have been paying attention. After 10 minutes of discussion, we came to a decision: 12 yes, 0 no.2. Was the plaintiff harmed? This is where it got testy. I personally believed that if we said "yes" to this, we were going to have to award damages. So I argued (at length) that she wasn't harmed, and at first 7 other jurors agreed. We only needed one more to turn to our side to win — in California, you only need 9 out of 12 jurors to agree on a point to come to a decision. Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of harm was "inconvenience." The minority argued — persuasively enough, as it turned out — that the fact that she had to stop on the Bay Bridge during crazy weekend traffic was enough to say that she was harmed. Eventually, they had the required 9, including three other young guys who I thought were going to be faithful allies (they were from the Mission, Upper Haight, and Potrero Hill). Interestingly, the other two who believed that she wasn't harmed were women: one was an older Asian lady (Sunset), and another was a young woman from the Marina. Final score: 9 yes, 3 no.3. Was the defendant a substantial cause of the harm? It was really hard to say "no" to this if you said "yes" to the above question because of inconvenience. I started to get really nervous that we were going down a path where we were going to award her some money because she got bumped on the Bay Bridge, and claimed to have incurred all sorts of hardship. Again: 9 yes, 3 no.Aside: It was pretty clear that the accident was traumatic to the plaintiff; she cried throughout the trial, and her rendition of the accident made it sound pretty scary. It happened over the weekend, so the traffic was crazy, and the defendant handled himself badly. BUT, she didn't file a suit until two years later, didn't keep receipts for medical treatment, didn't have any testimony from doctors or family members. Without any of this, it seemed insane, really, to say with any certainty that she was harmed. It's not like it's hard to produce this evidence. C'mon!4. How much is the plaintiff entitled to for her mental/physical suffering? At this point, the foreman used the whiteboard to write out each element of physical and mental suffering (loss of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, etc), laying out a framework where we would agree on a value for each thing. In California, juries are given no guidelines for determining the award; we're left to our own devices.The foreman said, "I'm just going to throw out a figure. $5000." Upper Haight guy said, "$3000." Another two women chimed in with $3000. Immediately, there were four people who wanted to award money for her unsupported claims. Luckily, Potrero Hill and Mission guys were even more passionate than me about this, and they immediately articulated an argument that I hadn't expected: that inconvenience on the Bay Bridge has a monetary value of ZERO dollars. The three Asian ladies immediately agreed, as did the Marina lady.The foreman kept proposing figures — "Okay, how about $2000?" — but Potrero Hill guy interjected: "Hey, we've got 8 people who believe that she shouldn't get anything. You're in the minority. You need to come to us." Eventually, we were arguing about whether or not to award $250. Finally, a little after 4pm, the foreman cracked: "Okay, fine. Zero dollars." And justice was served: 9 $0, 3 $250.But the depressing thing was how easy it was to assign monetary damages, how much the logic of the law seemed destined to lead to it. Upper Haight guy was brainwashed by it. Even though he could never articulate a pragmatic reason why she should get any money, he kept referring to the jury instructions and saying, "I'm just following these rules. She was inconvenienced, and now we have to assign a value to that." The foreman was sympathetic — he had family members who had been in a much worse position and got no money — which he acknowledged was not a valid legal reason, but it took him an hour before he abandoned this. As the verdict was read — negligent, harmed, substantial cause of harm — the defendant looked scared, and his attorney looked depressed. Then, the big fat $0 of damages, and everything changed. The plaintiff's attorney slumped, and the plaintiff began crying again. The defendant was relieved, and the judge actually looked relieved as well. Justice was served. Barely.

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Photos / Underwater buildings

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 6 October 2005

Sometimes, the crappy lens on my Motorola v220 produces interesting effects. Recently, it has started compressing the depth of field, and at the same time, arbitrarily fuzzing out objects. When directed at buildings in full late-afternoon light, it actually makes things look like they're in an aquarium.

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Burgers in SF

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 27 September 2005

After a chill afternoon at China Beach, we checked out some burgers at Bill's Place, which made me think about all of the good burgers to be found in San Francisco:

Bill's Place (pictured) grinds its own, and names its burger platters after local celebrities. Extra credit for the chandeliers and non-mayo cole slaw. On the downside, it's unjustifiably pricey. $10 for a burger? Maybe at Zuni, but it seems weird to pay this much at a diner.
If you're interested in diner-style ambiance more than good-tasting burgers, you can check out Joe's Cable Car. I really wish that the burgers tasted good there, but the reality is that they don't.
For fake retro ambiance, high tourist quotient and really mediocre burgers, Mel's is your place. There are at least three very unconvenient Mel's locations, if you're Mission/Lower-Haight based.
Slow Club has (or used to have) a good yuppie burger — sprouts and fancy aioli, on some kind of Euro roll. Being from the Midwest, I dislike froofy interpretations of burgers, but in weaker moments I have been known to order this burger. And enjoy it.
Speaking of froofy, Zuni serves a burger amidst its generally tasty Cali cuisine. In 1996-ish, I could not bring myself to admit that it was good; in 2005, I can.
On cold nights, Zeitgeist can ring your chimes with a good char-burger. On warm, busy nights, expect extra char.
BurgerMeister and Burger Joint are all about happy cows (Niman Ranch beef), sterile, fluorescent-lit dining rooms (creepy) and, in the end, similar burgers. Hipsters split hairs about which is better. I call it a tie. (But the Meiser has Mitchell's ice cream.)
I'm a recent convert to the virtues of Big Mouth in the Mission. Quality control is in full effect on both fries and burgers, plus greasy-spoon atmosphere distinguishes it from the sterile environs of the BJs and BMs of the world.
Everyone talks about Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers but I personally don't see what the fuss is about. It's not that I dislike white people, but it annoys me that the owners avoid all but the whitest of white neighborhoods — North Berkeley, North Oakland, Noe Valley. Dude, next stop: Mill Valley.
There are lots more. I'll update soon.

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Photos / July chills

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 3 July 2005

I snapped this photo after watching Me & You & Everyone We Know at the Lumiere. I was riding down Polk Street, and the sky seemed nice and sunny. But there was a chilly little bite in the air. Ahh, summer. A half hour later, the city was enshrouded in fog.

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Photos / Window kitty

Post author By Doug LeMoine
Post date 1 July 2005

This kitten was in the window of the record store on my block. Another sign of a pleasant turnaround on 14th Street. Ten years ago, it was Naps 2 (a housing project bar with a friendly sort of vibe), and dog crap everywhere. Now, it's a bustling with DIY fare, cool records, a bike shop owned by friends of mine, and an art gallery.UPDATE Feb 2006: Six months after the record shop opened, it closed. So did the art gallery. Now there's a little clothing boutique there. I miss Naps #2.UPDATE June 2006: Needles and Pens also left. My little street is quiet again. Oh well.