You know it's the Christmas season around the Civic Center just by walking down the sidewalk on Van Ness Avenue, where you will suddenly be surrounded by hundreds of beautifully dressed children, mostly girls, excitedly making their way to the Opera House where the San Francisco Ballet performs Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" every year, usually twice a day.
In the fifteen years I've lived in the neighborhood, I've never attended a performance, figuring the show wasn't designed for a hardened cynic like myself, and the sight of all those kids wasn't particularly appealing.
However, a dozen online writers including myself were invited by the ballet company for a lovely reception with crabcakes and wine in a Ballet School rehearsal studio at their Franklin Street headquarters, and then treated to a performance with great seats in the orchestra.
Part of my resistence to attending this "Nutcracker" was because it was a newish 2004 production, the fifth in the company's history, and it was choreographed by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. I think Tomasson has turned the ballet company into one of the greatest ensembles in the world over the last 20 years, for which he deserves all credit, but as a choreographer he bores the heck out of me, especially when he tackles a story ballet.
Nothing I saw last night made me revise that opinion, but the show and the performance itself was wonderful. The scenic design by Michael Yeargan, setting the tale in 1915 San Francisco, is sensational and the Act 1 finale in the Land of the Snow is close to perfection.
The presence of all the small children also turned out to be part of the amusement. They were amazingly well-behaved, and even when they talked, it was in their "inside voice" and often quite funny.
During the Arabian dance, two muscular, turbaned dancers brought out a large magic lamp that was emitting steam. Before Adeline Kaiser could rise out of the lamp to dance around in her harem outfit, the tiny girl seated behind us who looked like she was about four years old asked her mother, "What's in there?" "Shhhh...you shouldn't be talking." "Are they cooking a hot dog in there?" I'll never see another magic lamp in any movie or stage production without thinking the same thing.
Off the Polk Street entrance to City Hall, just below the Mayor's Office...
...there is a huge crosswalk with yellow flashing lights and occasionally a few motorcycle cops out to issue easy moving violation citations to people who don't stop for pedestrians.
However, there are no actual signal lights, which can confuse people who don't know the area and expecting people to stop for you as a pedestrian is always a risk.
Late this morning, Susan Leal, the head of San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission was hit by a vehicle while in this crosswalk, and supposedly thrown thirty feet through the air. She's currently at San Francisco General Hospital and is reportedly doing well. I asked about 40 people inside City Hall, from deputies to Supervisors' aides, if they knew any details of the accident, such as whether the car was going north or heading south of Market.
I couldn't find anyone in the building who professed to know anything, which seemed rather odd, even though Leal's PUC offices are on Market Street. Mayor Newsom recently announced he wants to kick Leal out of her job this coming year for unstated reasons, although a reasonable guess is that she somehow offended local crime syndicate Pacific Gas & Electric. Perhaps the poor woman was just upset after a particularly nasty meeting at City Hall and wasn't paying attention to the traffic.
Or it could be a case of yet another suburban commuter tearing through the Civic Center neighborhood with a cell phone glued to their ears, paying no attention to those annoying pedestrians. These same drivers try to run me down just about every day at the corner of Franklin & McAllister, oblivious to crosswalks and traffic signals.
Car culture really is toxic.
Apologies for the sparse postings lately, my dearest readers. I've been working my teats off for the last couple of weeks for a couple of clients, and even videotaped 42nd Street Moon's "Oh, Lady! Lady!!" production at the Eureka Theatre on Saturday night (see simple set above). It's an extraordinarily sophisticated musical from 1918, a collaboration between the great British writers P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton with music from a young Jerome Kern.
Just as interesting to somebody suffering from a severe cold were two trashy made-for-TV movies about natural disasters on Saturday and Sunday night. First was "Landslide," about evil condo developers who blow up a bit too much of Diamondback Mountain during Phase Two of their project, bringing the mountain down over most of the characters' heads. It was so sincerely cheesy that it's an instant classic. Now we're watching the four-hour British "Flood," where London faces a storm surge, with Robert Carlyle and Tom Courtenay as two of the drowning rats.
