Down With Car Culture

The owner of the Power Exchange sex club (above) is running for mayor and was part of the raucous after-party at the Temple Bar Friday night following the weekly mayoral debate in front of City Hall.



The drinking was briefly interrupted by the arrival of thousands of bicyclists riding by in the fifteenth anniversary of the Critical Mass bike ride which takes place on the last Friday evening of every month.



One of the other mayoral candidates, Lonnie Holmes (above), had the gumption to stand in the middle of the street holding up a large campaign sign as the cyclists whizzed by appreciatively.



The Critical Mass event and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition are controversial for their advocacy of bikes over cars for this congested city...



...but who can seriously advocate for car culture over ped culture after looking at the estuary of the Presidio, for instance, which until recently was a huge asphalt expanse covering a toxic dump?



On Saturday morning, the place was filled with locals and tourists on rented bicycles gasping at the almost psychedelic beauty of the day.



It's hard to change people's behavior, but living without cars as much as possible creates communities, improves everyone's health, and is a blueprint for some kind of future without oil wars.

Das Lied von Erde at San Francisco Symphony

On a whim, I called the San Francisco Symphony hotline Thursday morning at (415) 503-5577 (don't let them know I told you this number), and was informed there were $20 rush tickets available for that evening's performance of Mozart and Mahler at the Davies Hall box office.



Even with this inducement, I felt a little ambivalent, because Mahler's 1909 "Das Lied von Erde" has twice bored the heck out of me when I heard it live. The piece is an hour-long set of six German art songs that somehow bloat into a huge symphony as Mahler channels his inner melancholic Chinese soul (the lyrics are German translations from Chinese poetry).



The auditorium was one-third empty, and my $20 even got me a First Tier box all to myself, just to the right of the stage, which turned out to be a wonderful spot.



The concert is being recorded as part of Michael Tilson-Thomas' Mahler Cycle, and though the audience sounded like a tuberculosis ward in the first half of the program, coughing up a storm through Mozart's Symphony No. 34, they were wonderfully silent for the most part during the long second half.



The performance of "Das Lied von Erde," as it turned out, was one of the best live concerts of my entire life, finally winning me over to the piece.



This was due not just to the magnificent playing in the orchestra, but because of baritone Thomas Hampson who was in spectacularly superb voice, filling the huge hall with sound in a way that very few singers in the world can accomplish. I can't wait until he crosses the street to the San Francisco Opera next month for Verdi's "Macbeth." The other soloist, tenor Stuart Skelton, wasn't even remotely in the same league, but he wasn't terrible and his share of the songs came through fine.



The concert is going to be repeated tonight (Friday) and again on Saturday. According to that phone number I told you not to write down, there are $20 rush tickets available tonight for the concert. I can't recommend the experience highly enough.

Youth at City Hall

The under-18 set were all over City Hall on Thursday, on the Van Ness front stairs...



...and on the rotunda stairway inside.



Also setting up shop in the South Light Court late Thursday afternoon was a group called the "Arts Providers Alliance of San Francisco" (click here for their website)...



...which has something to do with San Francisco's Art Commission...



...which administers something called the "Arts Education Funders Collaborative" (click here for the site).



As one arts group vendor explained to me, as she was setting up her table to introduce her group to various educators, "there's a lot of new money out of Sacramento for arts programs in the schools, so we're here to take advantage of that."



Though the entire affair seemed to consist predominantly of women, there were a few token male representatives, such as the young man fronting for "Shakespeare Camp" above.



Across City Hall in the North Light Court, another education-related group was setting up for an awards ceremony for "business partners" who had helped with "Summer Academies"...



...that are set up annually for paying summer jobs in various industries for students between their junior and senior years.



The young ladies above seemed to be the "Hospitality and Tourism Industry" stars. Good luck, everyone.

A Sea of Grass

There are many types of grass forming a huge, undisciplined lawn on the northern seashore of the Presidio...



...between the Marina district and the Golden Gate Bridge.



When the San Francisco Opera runs out of room, rehearsals are sometimes held in an abandoned YMCA facility across from the lawn and under the bridge.



I've just been cast as a supernumerary in a production of "The Magic Flute"...



...which started rehearsals on Tuesday.



I had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful the area can be, particularly when the scene looks like a sea of grass.

The Prime of Mister Thad Trela

Early Saturday evening, my friend Thad Trela celebrated his 80th birthday...



...by hosting dinner at Home restaurant on Church and Market...



...for about 40 friends who consisted of ex-lovers...



...old acquaintances...



...folk dance partners...



...tennis playing buddies...



...along with former colleagues and students from Thad's days teaching at San Francisco State.



At the end of the evening, Thad gave a short speech, starting off with a quote from Maurice Chevalier on being asked what it felt like to be 80. "Well, if you consider the alternative..."



He then continued with one of the most moving testimonials I have ever heard. "Through all the missteps, and stupid mistakes, and wrong turns in my life, not to mention the worries about this and that, I never expected to reach this age and feel happier and more content than at any other moment in my life. Plus, I've actually found a partner late in life, Steven, which was completely unexpected. Each and every one of you helps to make my life so rich. Thank you."

Newsom's Latinos and Mirkarimi's Koreans

Early Friday evening was a hive of activity in the City Hall area, with a few spectators such as the masked man above watching the collaborative of mayoral challengers debate on the Civic Center plaza lawn.



H. Brown, pictured above with Josh Wolf, Wilma Pang, and Kenny (the Clown) Kahn, has a brilliant wrap-up of the event over at his SF Bulldog site (click here).



In the rotunda of City Hall, City Treasurer Jose Cisneros and Mayor Gavin Newsom were giving dumb speeches honoring "Latino Heritage Month," which started on September 15th.



Catalina Garcia from Univision was there (above) as were a 25-year-old lobbying group called the Instituto Laboral de la Raza (click here for their website). It seems they started off as an advocacy group for low-paid Mexican-American workers but over the years they seem to have been co-opted by the organized power structure of San Francisco almost completely. Their current major mission, from the looks of their website, seems to be giving out awards to the powerful at $200-per-person "awards" dinners every year.



At City Hall, they were giving out awards for Latino "Business Leadership," and the winners were three Mexican restaurants: Casa Sanchez, L's Cafe, and Regalito. Newsom strung together a condescending cascade of cliches and then posed for a few fans before disappearing.



He was followed by the Xitlalli, Danza Azteca group who at least made a mighty drumming noise in the rotunda.



On the second floor, Supervisor Mirkarimi was hosting his monthly art show, and September's installment was called "Women Artists in Action."



It was being held in conjunction with two concurrent shows at Somarts and the Japantown "Miyako Mall" (click here for more info).



It's being curated by a group called KAWAWA (click here for their website), which is an acronym for Korean American Women Artists and Writers Association.



Now that's a mouthful.

Why Are We Still Murdering People in Iraq?

The weekly Thursday vigil in front of the Federal building on Golden Gate Avenue continues as does the insane, evil occupation of Iraq by the United States military and tens of thousands of overpaid thugs working for sinister corporations like Blackwater.



Meanwhile, Senator Dianne Feinstein only seems to get upset when the warmongers are criticized, as her recent vote "condemning" the "Petraeus/Betray Us" ad put out recently by MoveOn.org (for more, check out Jan Adams' "Happening Here" by clicking here).



There was new signage sponsored by the national American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) which is trying to persuade Americans through monetary self-interest rather than moral appeals, though I doubt whether it will be any more effective in changing the status quo.



The present leadership of the United States is so outrageously tone deaf to how most people currently think and feel about the Iraq occupation, as evidenced by their latest votes in D.C., that it's starting to look like we need a complete clean sweep of these rotting politicians, and that includes Madame Speaker Pelosi, who is going to be remembered as one of the most inept enablers of tragedy in American history.

San Francisco Symphony's Opening Gala 1

Thanks to a European tour, the Gala Opening Night of the San Francisco's 96th season wasn't competing with the San Francisco Opera opening this year...



...which meant the socialites were rested and ready for yet another marathon night of partying.



The evening began with three cocktail receptions at 5:30 followed by sit-down dinners at 6:30, held variously in a tent and two different areas of City Hall.



This was followed up by the "Champagne Promenade" in the curved Davies Hall lobby, featuring plenty of free bubbly as everyone watched the rich and mildly famous troop in from their parties.



The diminuitive lady above with the tiara is Bella Farrow, the self-proclaimed "Queen of Nob Hill."



When I asked Irene Bechtel and Agnes Brown (above) how old our Queen might be, they replied that all Bella would admit to is 83. "I love her," added Irene. "Talk about determination!"



The crowd's age averaged out a bit younger than the opera opening and some of the expensive gowns looked wonderful on the women rather than absurd.



In fact, judged strictly as a joyful public party, the Symphony won hands down over its neighbor across the street.

San Francisco Symphony's Opening Gala 2

It's much easier being male than female at these gala events, because you don't have to worry about what to wear as long you own a simple tuxedo, and the lines to the bathroom aren't as grotesquely long.



Local press titans were represented by the Hearst Corporation's Phil Bronstein (above) who seemed to be ignoring his statuesque date...



...and Bay Area Reporter publisher Tom Horn (above, with the glasses).



Cedric, the outrageously tall Frenchman who writes about classical music for SFist, was having a good time with his wife Yumiko. (Click here for a fine review by Cedric of the previous evening's "Tannhauser.")



Also in attendance were what Armistead Maupin used to call "A-Gays" in his old "Tales of the City" series...



...and even a welcome appearance by Marlena (above), the Hayes Valley drag bar owner who is equally at home in a tuxedo and a gown.



There was a symphony concert in the middle of all this involving Renee Fleming, the new Queen of the Opening Night Galas, but I'll leave Joshua Kosman at the Chronicle to write about that. Let's just hope he wasn't feeling as grumpy as the previous evening when he was seeing "Tannhauser" at the opera. ("Do you think he had a bad appetizer over at Breezy's?" my friend Charlie asked.)



After the concert, everyone was invited to a party next door in the large, lavishly decorated tent where many of the guests were hungrily grabbing at a variety of hors d'oeuvres, though it wasn't as bad as the Macy's Passport show according to Beth Spotswood (click here).



The space soon became claustrophobic...



...so many of us repaired to City Hall...



...which was lit up purple on the outside for some reason...



...and a lurid red inside the rotunda.



A dance band was playing in the North Light Court...



...and after a martini, I crawled home at midnight.

Shower Off Your Sins at "Tannhauser"

A new production of Wagner's early (1845) opera, "Tannhauser," opened at the San Francisco Opera on Tuesday evening, directed by the acclaimed British genius Graham Vick and choreographed by Ron Howell (pictured above).



For the last month, I've been rehearsing a ten-minute scene at the end of Act One with six other supernumeraries (Alan Goes is pictured above). We've been working with six principal singers, including the great German tenor Peter Seiffert as the tormented knight Tannhauser, while carrying a dead wolf around my neck, and dodging a live horse who has been getting spooked onstage. Tonight it all went off brilliantly.



For those worried that David Gockley, the new General Director, would be taking the company back to the literal, dumb days of Lotfi Mansouri while scorning the European subtext style of Pamela Rosenberg, this production should be a corrective as it is both daring and bizarre.



In this version, the famous Pilgrims Chorus is sung by mostly shirtless male choristers with various "sins" carved into their torsos in blood.



The first dress rehearsal was extremely amusing watching the chorus lined up in the basement makeup room while they were handed out personal sins that ranged from "LAZY" to "DRUNK" to "RAPIST." Then the two young gentlemen above would make sure everyone's hands and feet...



...looked perfectly filthy.



In the men's chorus dressing room area, there was a hilarious, unironic bit of signage advising them, "Please let us know if you are planning to shower off your sins after Act I, so that we can supply you with a shower cap..."



I have no idea how the production worked from the audience's point of view, and it's impossible to be even remotely objective when you're backstage in a costume, but the finale at the end of four hours struck me as an absolutely amazing coup de theatre, and musically it couldn't have been more exquisite. The spontaneous applause for Graham Vick, the director, from the entire cast at the curtain call was unusual and heartfelt.

Muni Outfit of the Month

A tall man with long red hair waited for 20 minutes beside me for an outbound N Judah train at the Van Ness Muni Metro station this morning. He was wearing what looked to be homemade armor over the front of both his legs and arms, along with a cape over his shoulders and a bag and a thermos attached to his waist.



I wanted to take a picture at the station, but didn't since he looked a bit frightening. Does anybody over at Greg Dewar's fabulous "N Judah Chronicles" (click here) know who he is? The gentleman didn't seem to be coming or going to a movie shoot and he's definitely not in "Tannhauser" at the opera tonight. In any case, he made me want to wear a cape around everywhere.

Miniature Golf Course Swan Song

On an exquisitely beautiful afternoon...



...the "Hayes Valley Historic Miniature Golf Course" was open for its last day of free neighborhood fun.



The Wowhaus art collaborative between Scott Constable (above)...



...and his wife Ene Osteraas-Constable (above) turned out to be a wildly popular success story over the summer.



When it opened last May, only a few stragglers were on hand to enjoy its felicities...



...but last Saturday there was a waiting list of at least 50 people wanting to use one of the handmade wooden golf clubs...



...and the artists were beaming with pleasure at how the art project had taken on a life of its own.



My favorite hole was the Zen Center Number 7 which didn't actually have a hole so the golfers had to figure out how to play and score it on their own. For earlier accounts of the course on this blog, click here and here, and many thanks to Scott and Ene for brightening the neighborhood.

GGP 2: Hiroshi Sugimoto at the deYoung

The New York-based Japanese photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto (click here for his website), plays with the fine lines between painting and photography, not to mention reality and illusion.



The portrait of Queen Elizabeth above, for instance, is a huge, hyperrealistic photo of Madame Tussaud's waxworks version of the monarch.



His first major museum exhibit was assembled by the The Hirshhorn Musem in Washington, D.C. and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and is currently installed in the basement of the deYoung until September 23rd.



Though I'm not a big fan of the museum, I'd urge you not to miss this exhibit because the huge prints are spectacular, the lighting is dark, mysterious, glowing, and reproductions don't do the work justice. (To check out small prints from the exhibit, click here, but again, you need to see them in person.)



Upstairs Deborah Oropalla plays with some of the same themes, combining Photoshopped photos of "sexy women dressed as pirates, generals, leaders" and actual historical figures.



It's not as interesting as Sugimoto's work, but it has its own slightly psychedelic charm.



Not even remotely charming is the "Peter Max and the Summer of Love" exhibit.



A couple of dozen prints are hung haphazardly around what looks like a community college recreation area next to the basement bathrooms, and though I'm not a Peter Max afficionado, his work doesn't deserve to be presented in such a shoddy manner.

Update: According to Tyler Green at "Modern Art Notes" (click here), the lousy job of curating was done by none other than Peter Max himself, so I guess he does deserve the shoddy presentation.



In the museum tower, which can only be accessed via elevator...



...there was a great view of the new California Academy of Sciences, with its "eco-rooftop" which looks more interesting than the rest of the building.



In yet another consumer incursion into what was until recently a noncommercial space, another gift shop filled with crap has been installed in one corner of the tower.



I stayed long enough to take the above faux Gerhard Richter photo...



...to match the large canvas in the soulless Wilsey Court.

GGP 1: Shakespeare's Parking Garden

Near the corner of Lincoln and Ninth Avenue within Golden Gate Park, there is a hidden jewel of a mini-park called "The Garden of Shakespeare's Flowers."



The place dates from 1928, when it was organized by the California Spring Blossom and Wildflower Association.



There are a number of inscriptions on the brick wall of botany-related quotes from Shakespeare's works and the stated intent was to fill the small park with floral examples from same.



A wonderfully meticulous bit of graffiti adorned one of the ornamental globes, turning it into a cartoon eyeball...



... which was looking over the construction on the near-completed, rather brutal looking revision of the California Academy of Sciences.



From Shakespeare's Garden, you can take a short path to the Academy of Sciences annex of the new underground parking garage built underneath and to the sides of the Music Concourse.



The huge place was near-empty and looking at the hefty posted rates, $2.50/$3.00 an hour, it was easy to see why.



The Academy parking area exits onto the Music Concourse...



...which takes you to the entrance of the new California Academy of Sciences building.



Continuing across the Music Concourse...



...towards the new deYoung Museum...



...you can walk down a ramp to yet another wing of the massive garage...



...and directly cross the psychedelic green space to the basement entrance of the museum.



I wonder which city employees are eligible for the parking spots at literally the front door.

Hola, Isabel!

Though I find most cell phone conversationalists on public transportation extremely obnoxious, this young woman on the 47 bus the other day was a lovely exception. For one thing, she was speaking in a soft, lilting Spanish that reminded me of all the public cell phone junkies in Italy who sounded like they were singing. For another, anybody who can accessorize this well on a Muni bus is forgiven a lot.

San Francisco Opera's Opening Night

The little park between the San Francisco Opera House and the Veterans Building was roped off for an entire week for the construction of a huge tent.



It was being used as the setting for the 2007 San Francisco Opera Ball that included a cocktail reception, a sit-down dinner for 800 with 1,300 pounds of rack of lamb and 15 pounds of caviar among other delicacies, and after-dinner dancing to Bill Hopkins Rock'n Orchestra.



This was to celebrate Opening Night of the San Francisco Opera season which was starting off with an old, gaudy production of Saint-Saens' "Samson and Delilah," a sex-and-violence-and-lots-of-praying French Grand Opera spectacular from 1877.



I hosted a small party that included one handsome dude in a tuxedo...



...and three beautiful young women, and all it cost was $10 for standing room, which has to be the best deal in San Francisco.



We assembled in the box bar at intermission where we somehow snagged a table...



...and watched in amusement, horror and fascination at dozens of wealthy women who looked like nothing so much as drag queens with lots of money.



Upstaging most of the socialites, in fact, was my downstairs neighbor Morgan Jones channeling Josephine Baker.



The opera itself, what little I heard of it, looked pretty silly, with the diva Olga Borodina sounding fabulous and the debuting tenor Clifton Forbis sounding pretty awful. Still, the cheesy special effects finale with Samson bringing the infidel's temple down is always fun. For a very loosely translated and funny synopsis, click here for chorister Tom Reed's tour through mangled French.



In Kosman's review at SFGate this morning (click here), he writes "The Israelites and Philistines hurled their competing theological viewpoints at one another, and though of course the listener rooted for Jehovah's troops, it was perhaps more out of sentiment than dramatic urgency." To which I must add, speak for yourself, Mr. Kosman. The Philistines were much more fun than the Hebrews, with wild costumes, dances and orgies, not to mention a religious icon of their god Dagon that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Maria Montez movie. "Glory to Dagon!" indeed.

Caution: Fire Zone Ahead

I wanted to play golf at the Lincoln Park Municipal golf course on Wednesday, before the ancient course is privatized and turned into an overpriced horror like the Harding course further south.



The greens were all being worked on, however, and had been replaced by 18 temporaries, so I continued walking along the shoreline trail known locally as Land's End.



The area has new signage, improved trails, and the local forests have been seriously pruned.



My favorite, non-euphemistic sign in San Francisco has remained, though.



The powers-that-be in California might consider some new signage as we're coming into deadly serious fire season for the next two months, and Bay Area skies are already grey with smoke from the "Moonlight Fire" in Plumas County hundreds of miles away, possibly mixed with a little seasoning from the fire east of Morgan Hill that started on Monday. (For great photos and maps, click here for a story in the "Sacramento Bee.")



Actually, fires have been raging out of control all year long in California, the most spectacular being the Zaca fire in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties which started on the Fourth of July and still hasn't been completely extinguished.



A Los Olivos rancher (white) and his Mexican laborers were arrested yesterday for being the originators of the fire while doing soldering work on the farm, but that strikes me as a bogus prosecution. California is as ready to ignite as Greece and the spark could be from anything.



One of my favorite photoblogs is called "A Change in the Wind," written by Kit Stolz about world climate change in general and Southern California in particular, where he lives in the mountains around Ojai. Stolz is the opposite of a ranter, which just makes his prose even more terrifying, rather like the 1950s sci-fi books by John Wyndham where everyone acts very restrained and British as the world quite emphatically ends around them. Check it out by clicking here.

Summer of Love 40th Anniversary

After much wrangling by various impresarios on how to best mark the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, a gentleman named Boots Houghton stepped up and put on a free all-day concert with veteran musicians on Sunday.



It turned out to be a perfectly charming event with close to 100,000 people attending.



The only fly in the ointment in this City That Often Doesn't Know How was the Muni bus service, which instead of adding vehicles for this special event, actually cut them down because they were on a Sunday schedule, so there were huge clumps of passengers being passed by buses that were already packed to the gills.



So we grabbed the car out of the Civic Center garage and drove to the Van Ness and McAllister bus stop where we offered a ride to two older women from Russian Hill and Sacramento respectively.



The very proper-looking middle-aged ladies had both been hippies in their youth and had nothing but fond nostalgia for the era.



Our good deed translated into instant good karma with a parking spot just a block from the concert in Speedway Meadows.



Unfortunately, the flowered peace sign is no less relevant today than it was forty years ago...



...and absurdly enough, marijuana is still illegal.



There was less nudity than expected for such a warm day, though George Davis, who is running for San Francisco mayor on the single issue of clothing optional areas for Golden Gate Park, finally found the perfect place to campaign.



There was an amazing span of ages in the large crowd...



...being entertained all day by the makeshift bands who would play twenty minute sets.



I had to leave after an hour to attend an opera rehearsal...



...for Wagner's take on sex and spirituality, "Tannhauser."



The crammed 5-Fulton bus ride back to Civic Center was graced, however, with the perfect hippie dog.

The Barnyard Animals Debate

The third in a series of weekly debates for San Francisco mayoral candidates took place in front of a tiny crowd in Civic Center Plaza Friday evening.



The big news of the week was that former Supervisor Tony Hall had dropped out of the race, in part because too many of his supporters were getting the squeeze from City Hall in terms of city contracts canceled, permits denied, and so on. The city's deeply compromised Ethics Commission also decided to send up a flare about improprieties committed four years earlier during Hall's previous supervisorial run.



Paul Hogarth (above) of the "Beyond Chron" site (click here) was the jolly moderator for the event.



Hall started things off by telling the group that he had qualified for matching campaign funds from the city before his decision to drop out, and that it takes a month for the funds to be disbursed, but that he was going to be passing it on to his fellow candidates as a group.



He then took issue with the quote from Eric Jaye, Gavin Newsom's version of Karl Rove, in that morning's San Francisco Chronicle: "Newsom's campaign manager, Eric Jaye, said Hall's exit will affect the campaign, though probably not the outcome of the election. "He was one of the last candidates left that wasn't named after a barnyard animal," Jaye said." Hall's response was that it's much better to be named after an animal than to be like Gavin Newsom, "who is just plain chickenshit."



In his three minute opening statement, h. Brown talked about the endemic corruption of the San Francisco Police Department where absolutely nothing has gotten better during Newsom's tenure. "It's the same dysfunctional commanders who have always been there, and nothing's going to change for at least the next ten years. They are only going to get more expensive while providing less and less protection for the citizens of San Francisco, not to mention beating the crap out of perfectly innocent people because they are on steroid rages, something for which they can't be tested in this town."



Wilma Pang, the music teacher, talked about her language skills and peace and love...



...while videojournalist Josh Wolf gave a stirring speech about the wi-fi initiative and how it could be done right, unlike the piss-poor initiative that Newsom crafted with Google and Earthlink, probably while he was drunk on a corporate plane with executives from the aforementioned companies.



Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai talked about the raw deal her southeastern Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood has been getting. "Newsom finally visited the Sunnydale Housing Project for the first time. Meanwhile, they are killing us with asbestos dust and pretending nothing is wrong."



The most poignant speech came from Harold Hoogasian, above, a native San Franciscan who has a chain of flower stores. His disgust with the thugs who run "the machine" in San Francisco was both angry and rueful. "In the last couple of decades, the cost of living for people in San Francisco has gone up 85% while the City Hall budget has risen by 500%. That money isn't going to help actual citizens in San Francisco, it's just going towards feeding the machine." He directed us to go to a new website called "Unplug The Machine!" which you can get to by clicking here.