Large San Francisco street fairs such as the annual events on Haight, Castro, and Folsom tend to give me claustrophobia these days, but there are tiny affairs in various neighborhoods that are utterly charming such as the Potrero Hill Festival, which had its 20th anniversary on Saturday.
The three blocks between Missouri and Wisconsin Streets on the North side of Potrero Hill were filled with lots of young parents...
..."elite fitness" trainers demonstrating their beauty...
...and a great a capella quartet singing on a makeshift stage with a view of downtown.
The Festival is nominally a benefit for the NABE, which is a neighborhood community center with youth and senior programs. They were operating a dunk tank with local celebrities being doused...
...including Thick Description theatre director Tony Kelly (above), who is running for District 10 Supervisor on November 2nd.
In fact, there seemed to be as many candidates and political operatives at the fair as there were voters to convince.
With the election fervor in the air, it seemed appropriate for the San Francisco Department of Elections lady above to be fronting a booth looking for pollworkers, and also explaining ranked-choice voting to anyone interested. "So explain ranked choice voting in as few words as possible," I asked her. "Okay. Even if you only want one candidate to win, don't put their name down three times as your first, second, and third choice. Because if your second choice is being used, it means that your first choice is already completely out of the running, so putting their name down again is useless. It's amazing, even some of the candidates don't understand this."
The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, a Bay Area early music ensemble playing period instruments, is enjoying its 30th season this year, 25 of them with the same British music director, Nicholas McGegan (not pictured).
This last weekend (and again this Tuesday evening the 19th in Atherton/Menlo Park), the ensemble is being led in an all Johann Sebastian Bach concert by a Danish harpsichord star, Lars Ulrik Mortensen (above), who conducted from his instrument in a performance that was bizarrely entertaining. Since his hands are busy much of the time at the harpsichord, Mortensen conducts the rest of the small ensemble with every other part of his body that he can. He swoons, makes faces, bends and sways, and makes expressive movements with his arms and hands when they are unoccupied. I half expected him to throw off his shoes at some point so he could use his legs, feet and twinkling toes to help guide his fellow players. At Friday's performance in Civic Center's Herbst Theatre, it was difficult not to giggle at some of the more outlandish gestures, and in fact a woman sitting behind me lost it at one point and did just that.
Whether on account of all this commotion or for some other reason, the Bach was full of life in music that can be deadly dull when performed too correctly or mechanically. The program included two harpsichord concertos (#1 and #3), the Orchestral Suite #1, and the solo soprano Wedding Cantata with the Swedish soprano Maria Keohane (above and below).
Keohane's concert gown was a bit unfortunate, reminding me of a recent bridesmaid's dress episode on "Project Runway," but her beautiful voice and spirit were infectious. In particular, the duets between her and Gonzalo Ruiz playing the oboe were magnificent.
The harpsichord concertos were filled with eccentric tempos and casual mastery that kept being punctuated by Mortensen's Muppet-like gestures toward the ensemble. It was fun.
The Burning Man sculpture in the Hayes Valley, Ecstasy, was gazing at a half-moon on Thursday evening, while presiding over neighborhood dog walkers at her feet.
The Shanghai show is finally out of the house at the Asian Art Museum, and has been replaced by a touring exhibit of five centuries worth of Japanese screens.
The show originated in a sharing of treasures by the St. Louis Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, where Jay Xu (above), the new director of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, worked from 2003 to 2008.
"This is the first exhibit I planned myself for the Asian, from day one," he told the press on Wednesday morning, and let's hope it is only the start of more exchanges with the great museum collections of the Midwest.
The inked, painted, and goldleafed screens made of paper and silk were created for Buddhist monasteries, temples, wealthy homes, and royal palaces, and the exhibit has a large selection of minimalist 17th century screens that look bizarrely modern.
Even the 1990 Red Rash (above) by Sasayama Tadayasu, made out of stoneware and metallic glazes, didn't look at all out of place.
Best of all, the museum is presenting this exhibit without walls of glass to protect the screens from the patrons, which is unusual and makes all the difference in the world.
The exhibit is opening Friday morning, and will be in town for the next three months.
Much of the fun is reading the stories associated with the screens, such as the 1820 Fans and Stream (above, detail) by Sakai Hôitsu. The following is from the Saint Louis Art Museum website:
"Scattering fans is associated with the art and culture of the ancient capital Kyoto and a particular outing of aristocrats and ladies along the scenic mountains of Arashiyama. As the procession crossed the Sugagawa River near Tenryuji Temple, the fan of a young courtier was caught by a sudden gust of wind and drifted down into the waters below. Delighted and inspired by the beautiful and poignant image, others threw their fans over the bridge to watch them float on the breeze into the flowing stream."
