Engineer's Daughter

tour de san francisco

Whenever I do one of my long weekends in another city I always come back to the Bay Area with a renewed energy for all the amazing art and culture going on right here in my own backyard, and the way I'm feeling post-Chicago is no exception.  This weekend I took advantage of the gorgeous weather and hoofed it from one end of the city to the other, taking in street fairs and art installations alike.  Because I'm feeling lazy (and a little woozy from all that sunshine) here on a Sunday night I'm distilling the highlights down to bullet points instead of doing full write-ups for each one.  You will quickly notice that food and drink constitute a strong theme:

• Summerland in Mint Plaza - A grilled shrimp skewer over an artichoke heart and frisee salad from Chez Papa Resto, then a red velvet and an horchata cupcake from Mission Minis.
• Tour de Fat in Golden Gate Park - One New Belgium Hoptober golden ale.  To benefit the SF Bike Coalition and the Bay Area Ridge Trail, naturally.
• Expo for Independent Arts in Golden Gate Park - A chatty stop by the KALX table, and a free scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream from Ben & Jerry's thanks to a random benefactor.
• Altered Barbie at Shotwell 50 Studios - Always a fun show, but Alis Cumming's creepy-cool voyeuristic photos of dolls in compromising positions (one of which is pictured above) genuinely knocked my socks off.
• Folsom Street Fair - Plantains with beans and cheese on corn cakes from Pica Pica.  Strawberry salad from the Spencer on the Go truck.  Oh yeah and the kink.com booth.

zine fest

If there's one place where I totally lose my head it's at the SF Zine Fest.  I have a history of walking in with the intention of just doing a casual browse and yet walking back out again with my pockets full of nifty things.  Beyond mere retail therapy I am always inspired by the sheer amount of creativity on display, by people still taking the time and energy to make things.  Here are some of my favorites from my visit on Saturday:

• Christine Wu - Her tiny one-inch-square zine The Adventures of Kitty the Cat features sewn binding and is (as advertised) about a cat.  Cuteness abounds.
• Sarah Oleksyk - Her Kitten Cavalcade print caught my eye but her other prints are totally rad too.  Otter Erotic!  Cerberus Pug!  She also does a beautifully-drawn mini-comic called Ivy.
• Matt Leung - Great posters for all of the shows I should have been at, ever.
• Jen Oaks - She had done a series of prints for the fest called Employees of the Month that were disgruntled-looking kitties in dress shirts and neckties.  Yes, I will stop at any table with a cat on it.
• Theo Ellsworth - Love his crazy beasties a lot.     
• Indrind Press - Two very nice lads who make wonderfully creepy comics.  The Pompadoured Troubadour, also called: Suffer Little Children, or: The Imaginary Origin of Steven Patrick Morrissey earned a heartfelt "fuck yeah" from me.

touch the gear

Right on Capp, between 20th and 21st Streets in the Mission, there is a vine-covered arch that leads back from the sidewalk to the idyllic patio of the San Francisco Community Center, home this week to Outsound New Music Summit.  Before last night I didn't even know the Center existed, but I was happy to stumble in for the Summit's kick-off event, a hands-on expo called "Touch the Gear".  A full roster of sonic artists had set up their instruments in the concert hall, and visitors were warmly invited to interact with them.  Not just ordinary guitars and drums, mind you, but rather amplified hand-cranks, textured boards meant to be played with plastic combs, and the like.  I plucked a pine cone attached to a contact mic, made swirling swoopy sounds on Amar Chaudhary's amazing tablet-based controller, and played a dustpan percussion duet with my coworker Alex.  The Summit continues at the Center through this Saturday and features an impressive line-up, including performances by the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Bonfire Madigan, and Jess Rowland with the Dreamland Puppet Theater.  Pick a show; scratch that avant-garde musical itch.

outdoor exploratorium

The Exploratorium does it again.  This week the museum officially opened a new set of outdoor exhibits scattered around the piers at Fort Mason, and Aimee and Sophie and Brent and I drove over there today to check them out during a break in the rain.  Even though a few installations were experiencing technical difficulties (and we all really wanted to "taste the tides" too!) overall there was still plenty to entertain and teach a nine-year-old and adults alike.  Sophie's favorites were the Wave Tracing exhibit, where a loose pier piling draws lines in sand to illustrate what the waves and tides are doing at any given moment, and then the Pier Piling Pivot, a giant piling that lifts itself out of the bay at the touch of a button to give visitors a closer look at the barnacles and other assorted sea creatures that have attached themselves to its surface.  Brent really liked a piece that illustrated the speed of sound while I was very impressed by the Rust Wedge, a slab of concrete that is being split merely by the power of rusting steel.  Like everything at the Exploratorium proper these Fort Mason exhibits are as artful as they are educational, utilizing clean modern design to effectively transform experiments into sculpture.  Above all, though, they're just plain fun. 

state by state

I headed into the city yesterday afternoon with the intention of making the SF Greek Food Festival (spanikopita! baklava!) my first stop in the Mission, but at the last minute I decided that what I really needed was a walnut tart from Mission Pie.  With fresh whipped cream on top, no less.  Then from 25th and Mission I walked up to Dolores Park, said hi to KALX and Mount Vicious at the Expo for Independent Arts, and then stretched out in the grass to listen to the awesomely rockin' Aerosols for a bit.  Not bad for a gorgeously sunshiney day.

Evening found me over in the Haight for Sean Wilsey's presentation about his new book State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America at the Booksmith.  Using the WPA's old American Guide series as their inspiration, Wilsey and co-editor Matt Weiland recruited an impressive variety of writers to contribute a new piece of writing for the book, one for each of the 50 states.  So just for starters you get Joshua Ferris on Florida, Carrie Brownstein on Washington, Anthony Bourdain on New Jersey, Alison Bechdel on Vermont, William T. Vollman on California.  Wilsey screened a short film produced by Powell's Books that featured 19 of the State by State authors discussing their experience on the project and reading from their work, and then he answered questions and talked about trying to get J.D. Salinger in the book and how Vollman ended up in a San Francisco S&M club in drag as research for his chapter.  If you need a virtual road trip in this election year, I think this is the book for you.

I picked the Booksmith over Film in the Fog's screening of An American in Paris in the Presidio last night, but once I got home I rented the movie from iTunes and happily settled in for two hours of Vincente Minnelli's lavish candy-coated vision of love and art French-style in what was certainly a more cozy environment.  I love all the familiar Gershwin tunes and that final ballet in which Gene Kelly's athleticism and Leslie Caron's elegance serve as perfect counterpoints to each other.  I had forgotten how cool the Toulouse-Lautrec sequence is too, with characters taken straight out of the artist's paintings.  Who cares if the whole thing was shot on a soundstage, it still made me want to run away to Paris and swan along the Seine.

Oh and I sadly won't be able to make it, but you should know that one of my favorite artists Marilyn Minter, she of the uncomfortably-realistic almost-pornographic glamour-shot paintings, is lecturing at the San Francisco Art Institute tomorrow night.  Highly highly recommended.

You should also know that I'm DJing today:
3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, September 28
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

globes > hearts

I was in a wanderin' mood this afternoon, so I took the bus out to Crissy Field and strolled around in the gorgeous sunshine for a bit.  While I was there I took a look at the so-called Cool Globes that currently line the promenade near the water.  Similar to those wretched hearts that were scattered around the city a year or so ago, artists have been invited to decorate large globes, in this case themed to solutions to the problem of global warming.  The niftiest one I saw was done by Lindsay Obermeyer, who knitted her globe a cozy turtleneck using the same fiber that usually goes into making parachute cords.  Other solutions included things like rooftop gardens and wind power, in other words nothing you haven't heard before.  But the globes get points from me for effort, even if they are sponsored by a car company.

After another bus ride over the hill to the Mission and a yummy dinner at Ti Couz I walked to Little Tree Gallery to try to muscle my way into the opening for Andrew Tosiello and curator Clare Haggarty's new project there.  For the duration of their show the gallery will be playing the part of a Mafia-run social club, complete with surveillance.  I got far enough inside the door tonight to observe a card game in progress, cigars being chomped, guys and dolls, before someone asked me if I knew anyone there and my cover was blown.  Back onto the sidewalk with me, to stand outside the curtained window with the rest of the hoi polloi.  If I hadn't had a strong Ti Couz cocktail in me I might have been more annoyed than amused, but as it is I think their play on the idea of exclusivity is pretty darn clever.  Maybe next time I'll try to sweet-talk the doorman.

Also, a heads-up that Alex Knost's new film Beach Blanket Burnout is screening for free at VASF in the Haight tomorrow night.  I just watched the clip they have online and am literally drooling.  Artsy, meditative black-and-white surfer film?  Yes please!  You can take the girl out of southern California...

And I'm DJing tomorrow as well:

3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, August 10

KALX Berkeley 90.7fm 

This really is my last Sunday afternoon, seriously this time.  But rumor has it I'll be popping up on Sunday mornings in a few weeks.  Stay tuned!