Civic Center

SoCal Road Trip 1: Arroyo Grande

2009-07-04T23:31:00.000-07:00

I started a Southern California pilgrimage this week at my sister Hilary's house atop a hill in the Central Coast of California.

She has a mad love for the animal world and her place is overrun with happy creatures, including Norman the goat...

...along with three horses...

...not to mention three cats and five chickens and four baby ducks and Lopez, the Pyrenees sheepdog who protects the homestead.

The hilltop was happy above all because their independent daughter Kyle had finally reached the real age of majority for all Californians, sweet 16, which is when you can finally legally drive on your own. The sense of relief for everyone in the family could probably be felt for miles around.

Ghosts of the Vulcan Stairs

2009-07-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

San Francisco has innumerable secret beautiful places...

...and one of the loveliest is the Vulcan Stairs situated on a hill parallel to 17th Street going from the Castro District towards the Upper Haight Ashbury.

Both the top and the bottom of the stairs start off of obscure side streets...

...and the houses nestled along the stairway look like magic cottages.

I used to live on various parts of this hill for 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and I was shocked at how many ghosts there were for me as I walked down the stairs for the first time in years.

Lee Brenneman, a best buddy for two decades before his death from an aneurysm, called one morning with personal gossip. "I've been trying not to be such a tramp lately because I can't seem to look at anyone these days without getting a venereal disease. Anyway, I met this guy last night who wasn't very interesting but he said he lived on the Vulcan Stairs and that's all I needed to hear."

"The sex? It was so-so. Waking up on the Vulcan Stairs? It was bee-yoo-tee-ful."

It still is.

San Francisco Gay Pride Parade 1: Uncut

2009-06-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

A delightful new neighbor, who happens to be a beautiful, young heterosexual woman, had never been in town for the annual Gay, Etc. Parade which takes over our Civic Center neighborhood for a weekend.

So I promised to drag her to the parade with the following advice.

"You don't want to watch the parade because it's long, slow and dull. You have to march up Market Street instead."

We walked from Civic Center down Mission Street to the staging ground in the Financial District, arriving 90 minutes into the affair which was in its dull, corporate contingent stretch.

Shunning the evil Wells Fargo float, we marched onto Market Street with a group who self-identified as Levi's employees.

We walked faster than the parade pace and caught up with a tiny Emeryville group...

...which was trailing an Oakland fire truck covered with lesbians...

...and a float of glamour girls of all genders who were part of a large crew who were proud to be from Oakland.

In truth, the San Francisco Gay, Etc. parade has long been a venue principally designed for Bay Area suburbanites and greater Northern California, which is part of why it's fun. The tourists gets to go wild in the city streets.

Our favorite group that we marched with was an anti-circumcision platoon dressed in penis costumes...

...and carrying great signs.

San Francisco Gay Pride Parade 2: Celebrities

2009-06-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

"What was your favorite edition of the gay parade?" I asked one 67-year-old veteran.

"The first one in 1970, definitely. I lived downtown then, and the route went up O'Farrell Street. It was such a shock. Plus, George Maharis from 'Route 66' was the Grand Marshal that year which took a lot of courage."

For an entertaining paean to the openly out gay actor, click here for D. Stephen Heersink's "Gay Species" blog.

Besides touring musical stars marketing their show...

...there were plenty of politicians in convertibles...

...though I was sorry to miss Gavin Newsom being harassed by leftists protesting his public health budget cuts (click here for an account in Fog City Journal).

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were on an unusually downbeat float...

...with a death bell tolling while they held up ironic tombstones.

They seemed to be making political points, but it was a bit too high concept.

They could have just held up signs with pictures of Michael and Farrah and it would have worked as well.

Tranny Fest at Dolores Park

2009-06-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

On a gorgeous late Friday afternoon, there was a festival for the "Trans" community at Dolores Park which preceded a march at 7 PM (click here).

As San Francisco's Gay, Etc. Pride weekend has become larger and more commercial with each passing year, cultural offshoots have appeared, such as Saturday's man-free Dyke March and Friday's new Trans March for transvestites, transgenders "and their fans."

The large crowd at Dolores Park enjoying the perfect weather...

...was a mellow, interesting mixture of homo and hetero park neighbors sunbathing...

...getting a buzz on with beer...

...and watching entertainment up the hill at the Trans stage...

...all being being filmed by Dina, the former producer of the legendary public access show, "Tranny Talk."

Bye Bye Bybee

2009-06-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

A small demonstration took place at noon on Thursday at 7th & Mission in front of the luxuriously appointed federal courthouse that houses the Ninth Circuit Federal Court...

...under the watchful eyes of a number of Homeland Security officers across the street.

They were calling for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, who was one of the more notorious legal enablers of torture by the Bush/Cheney administration (click here for a fuller account by the indispensable Jan Adams).

Code Pink and a consortium of other peace groups were asking the simple question, "Why is Lynndie England in jail for the torture of prisoners when the people who ordered her to do so are continuing with their pampered lives in prestigious jobs?"

To the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," the crowd was singing "Bye Bye Bybee"...

...and in a spontaneous moment, a couple of old peaceniks started dancing to the song.

Until a few top people in the Bush administration responsible for torture are legally punished, this isn't an issue that's going to go away.

All Star Tamales at Heart of the City

2009-06-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

In Civic Center's "Heart of the City" farmers' market, which is open on Wednesdays and Sundays...

...the most popular food booth belongs to an East Bay company called All Star Tamales.

They distribute their 14 varieties of tamales out of their headquarters in Pittsburg, and at four farmers' markets around the Bay Area: in Walnut Creek, downtown Oakland, and Alemany and Civic Center in San Francisco.

The lines in the Civic Center on a Wednesday can be daunting around noon when all the nearby government office workers come by for an inexpensive lunch of $2.75 for a single tamale, $5.00 for two, and even cheaper as you buy more.

This doesn't deter many people from their corn meal fix, and the usually grungy United Nations Plaza along Market Street turns into an open-air carbohydrate heaven.

Solstice Cruise

2009-06-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

The boss of my partner domestique has a 49-foot yacht, and to reward his workers for creating special effects for a Korean tsunami movie, he invited them for a Saturday cruise.

The boat is berthed on the northeast side of Tiburon, so we were able to cruise by homes belonging to the other 1% of the population...

...who are grotesquely wealthy...

...from the other end of the telescope.

The day was too exquisitely beautiful to spend much time seething with class resentment, though...

...and for every ostentatious yacht in the Sausalito harbor...

...there was a decaying sailboat covered in junk nearby.

My favorite Sausalito harbor story involves Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison and his 192-foot triple decker yacht which was called Izanami after a Shinto deity since Mr. Ellison, though Jewish, fancies himself something of a Japanese warrior. Somebody then took a picture and it was published mirror image in a boating magazine where the name backwards spelled "imanazi." The boat was subsequently renamed "Ronin."

FDR's old yacht, the Potomac, was also hanging out in Sausalito for the afternoon rather than its usual Jack London Square berth.

We continued past the Sausalito sewage treatment plant that's been dumping thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the bay over the last couple of years, possibly because rich people's waste doesn't stink.

Finally, our captain gunned the engine and gave us a thrill ride under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was too cool.

San Francisco Opera's 2009 Summer Season

2009-06-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

A few of my cultural blogging compatriots have written of their deep disappointment with new General Director David Gockley's conservative programming, using this summer's three operas consisting of "Tosca," "La Traviata" and "Porgy & Bess," as Exhibit A. Though the trio easily fall into the category "Done to Death," I don't have as many objections, partly because the three summer operas performed in June have always been a bit of an anomaly and a marketing nightmare.

The San Francisco Opera season traditionally extended from the first Friday after Labor Day until sometime in November or December with anywhere from five to ten operas performed in repertory during that stretch. Starting in the early 1980s, when a complete Wagner Ring cycle was produced, an additional set of operas in June were offered as part of a year-long season which didn't make much emotional or calendar sense. Three months of intensive operatic production followed by a six-month layoff has always made the trio of summer operas feel like a strange afterthought. "Oh, and here, have some more opera even though you're probably thinking more about where to go on a summer holiday."

There have been attempts at creating thematic festivals with an all-Mozart summer or "Seductive Sirens" or what have you, but they always seemed a bit half-assed. Attendance has always been problematic in the summer, and though for instance I adored Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen" a few years ago, it's also true that you could shoot a cannon from balcony standing room at every performance and not worry about hitting many people.

Gockley inherited a deficit and an opera house that was dispirited by Pamela Rosenberg's management style, and an audience that was declining in numbers and enthusiasm, not to mention the fiscal disaster that's currently engulfing the world. So I don't blame him for trying to build new audiences with tuneful, beginner friendly operas, particularly during the summer when the city is filled with foreign tourists. However, since I'm not an opera beginner and fall closer to the sophisticated, jaded end of the scale, my solution is to simply avoid those warhorses seen one time too many.

Puccini's "Tosca" is a good newcomer's opera, short and melodramatic, with heapings of sex, violence, politics and pretty tunes. I saw it in the late 1970s with Montsarrat Caballe and Luciano Pavarotti, and though they were both enormous and dramatically ridiculous, I knew while hearing it that there was no good reason to ever go see "Tosca" again because it was probably never going to be sung better. When asked to be a supernumerary in this summer's production, shooting the tenor as part of a firing squad in the third act, I figured it would be less dull to be in the opera than watching it, but I was wrong. It's an adequate, very traditional, well-sung production and that's about it. The Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka has a beautiful voice which I look forward to hearing in other roles, but this is definitely The Last "Tosca."

I felt the same way about "La Traviata," Verdi's version of the Camille story, but was invited to a dress rehearsal and was curious to hear what Anna Netrebko sounds like these days. I hadn't seen her live since her debut in San Francisco over ten years ago as Lyudmila in Glinka's "Ruslan and Lyudmila." At least during the dress rehearsal, Netrebko gave a great performance. Her voice was exquisite, she looked beautiful, was believable in the part, and projected Superstar Diva energy which was genuinely fun. She also sold out the house for all her performances.

It's too bad that she was in a ridiculous production conceived and directed by Marta Domingo, Placido's wife. She has directed a couple of versions of "La Traviata" and this is her second, updated to the Jazz Age 1920s, which she originally created for Renee Fleming for a DVD. Fleming nixed the production, probably because the 1920s flapper fashions make any woman with a figure unlike Audrey Hepburn look fat, including Ms. Netrebko whose beauty is more in the Ava Gardner vein.

The suprise success of the summer was Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" in a production directed by Francesca Zambello that has already played in D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. Most of the excellent principal singers had performed in these earlier productions and they gave brilliant, polished performances. Debuting in the title roles were Eric Owens and Laquita Mitchell. I've heard Owens sing in everything from John Adams to Handel, and Porgy may be my favorite performance from him. Mitchell was a totally believable Bad Girl who sets the codependent romance in motion.

I saw the touring Houston production that Gockley initiated in the 1970s and also performed as a racist white sheriff super in a threadbare version of that same production in 1995. While enjoying all the famous tunes, I wasn't convinced or all that impressed by the opera, but this current production has changed my mind. "Porgy and Bess" was finally looking and sounding more like "Peter Grimes" and "Boris Godunov" where the main character is really the entire village (in "Grimes") or the entire country (in "Boris").

For some reason, the seven performances sold out before it even opened, and standing room turned into a free-for-all which hasn't happened at the War Memorial Opera House in some time. I stood in the top balcony when the company was featuring Operavision, two large screens that come down from the ceiling with video closeups of the stage. It was a perfect place to watch the production, because you could see Catfish Row from a birdseye view as a single, surging mass of people, while watching individual closeups on the screens to the left and right. The chorus and the supernumeraries gave one of the best ensemble performances I've ever seen on that stage, and their energy was the real key to the success of this production.

Meet The Merolini

2009-06-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Opera's annual twelve-week summer camp for aspiring opera professionals is called the Merola Opera Program and it's over fifty years old. On Tuesday evening at the Green Room in the Veterans Building, there was a meet-and-greet party for Merola donors and this year's crop of artists.

The highly competitive program is free for the artists and includes a small stipend, transportation and housing in various donors' homes. One of the few singers who already lives in the Bay Area is Eleazar Rodriguez (above) who has already starred in the 2007 world premiere of Lou Harrison's "Young Caesar" at Yerba Buena Center (click here for my account from that performance).

The format of the evening was a series of interviews with the young artists, including the Tennessee soprano Susannah Biller above.

The interrogators of bass Evan Boyer (above) and all the others were San Francisco Opera Center Director Sheri Greenawald, along with Merola chairman Jayne Davis and president Patrick Wilken.

The only problem was that there were 29 young Merola artists and the evening promised to last forever. Since the order of interviews was alphabetical, by the time they had gotten to New York tenor Brian Jagde (above), people were starting to wonder if this was going to be the "Gotterdamerung" of get acquainted evenings.

The young artists held up well, though, and managed to come up with varied and funny anecdotes all night. One of the recurring themes was the large contingent of "Midwest Mafia Merolini" centering in Iowa, such as contralto Suzanne Hendrix above...

...and Minnesota soprano Sara Gartland above, who is singing in this year's Merola production of Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz" at the Cowell Theatre in late July.

Not all the Merola artists are singers. There are a few slots for apprentice "coaches/accompanists" and one slot for the young Mexican director Fernando Parra Borti (above), who is smart as a whip.

In a thick, funny accent, apprentice coach Tamara Sanikidze from Tbilisi, Georgia (above) told the most candidly hilarious story about her trip to the White House for a performance during the Clinton administration. Wearing her new Jimmy Choo shoes, she managed to fall down a marble staircase on her rump, fracturing her tailbone in six places and then endured a tour by Bill Clinton through the Oval Office while she grimaced in pain. "I thought to myself, you're the most powerful man in the world, why can't you cut your ear hairs?"

South Carolina baritone John Chest (above) is on his way to an apprentice program in Munich, Germany after this summer and if they don't cast him as Britten's "Billy Budd," then somebody's not paying attention.

Public Safety vs. Public Health 1: The Fireman's Ball

2009-06-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

An expensive public relations campaign being paid for by San Francisco Firefighters Local 798, which includes full-page newspaper ads and robo-calls to San Francisco citizens, culminated on Tuesday afternoon with a protest rally in Civic Center Plaza.

The purpose was to decry possible budget cuts to the police and fire departments by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

There were a lot of children involved...

...along with many of the usual political suspects, including the local Republican leaders above...

...Scott Weiner of the Democratic Central Committee...

...and political fixer Jim Lazarus who has been working for downtown interests since Dianne Feinstein was mayor.

Joanne Hayes-White (above), the fire chief who climbed to that position from departmental chauffeur, looked happy and excited to be at the event...

...except when she was having her photograph taken.

San Francisco's Public Defender, Jeff Adachi, talked with some of the attendees before crossing the street to a counterdemonstration on the steps of City Hall. "Mayor Newsom doesn't seem to think my department is part of public safety," he told me, alluding to the fact that his already underfunded department is slated for draconian cuts.

Public Safety vs. Public Health 2: Poverty Inc.

2009-06-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

The demonstration organized by SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) on the steps of City Hall seemed to be better organized than the fireman's affair, possibly because they have more practice.

The ubiquitous Robert Haaland was one of the speakers...

...and a number of the San Francisco "stupidvisors" were in attendance, including Eric Mar...

...and the newly demonized John Avalos, chair of the Budget Committee.

Supervisor Chris Daly, with babe in arms, looked like he could have stood on either side of the street except that he's been characterized as Public Enemy Number One for years by many of the powers aligned with the firefighters.

Mike Farrah, head of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services, looked similarly torn, crossing back and forth between the two camps.

The major gripe of the public health protest was that the budget that Mayor Newsom proposed contains huge cuts in public health spending, which has already received a number of slices over the last couple of years.

In the same budget, Newsom has proposed to give a 6% raise to the already well-compensated, benefits-for-life police and firefighters. This wasn't sitting well with other city employees about to lose their jobs.

Public Safety vs. Public Health 3: Patronage Politics

2009-06-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

The SEIU protest on City Hall's stairs ended at about 1PM which was when the firefighter's rally was supposed to begin, but they seemed to be waiting on the perpetually late Mayor Newsom, and didn't start the speeches until 1:20.

Former Mayor Willie Brown, Jr. showed up on time, and stood on the flatbed truck podium while gossiping with DJs from radio station 97.7 FM ("The Bone") who were there in support of the firefighters.

Finally, dignitaries in the crowd were introduced including a trio of young military veterans.

Gary Delagnes, the president of the Police Officers Association, gave a speech calling the Supervisors a bunch of carpetbaggers from elsewhere who were "idiots" and weren't "real" native San Franciscans. It was when he mentioned his 89-year-old mother who "still lives in the City in the house she's always had" that I realized neither Delagnes nor the vast majority of the firefighters at the rally actually live in San Francisco. Delagnes, for instance, lives in Novato and doesn't pay a dime in taxes towards the six-figure salaries his police union members make each year.

Willie Brown, Jr. was introduced as "Mayor Brown" and he gave a short, rabblerousing speech. The fact that his eight years of mayoral patronage politics is one of the main reasons the city's budget is so out of whack was not mentioned.

The current mayor, Gavin Newsom, finally showed up and spouted cliches where the phrase "unprecedented shortfalls" cropped up at least a half dozen times.

The sheer emptiness of his rhetoric was dismaying and he looked even more like a hollow suit than usual.

Finally, the emcee from the Fire Department (above) told everyone to cross the street to City Hall and to go talk to their Supervisors about why the proposed cuts to the public safety budget were wrong. This made little sense to me, since it was 1:45PM and the Supervisors wouldn't be in their individual offices, but would instead be in the Board chambers for their weekly full meeting at 2PM.

Public Safety vs. Public Health 4: "Get in Line"

2009-06-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

There are four security entrances to City Hall but the entire firefighters' rally of about 300 people all entered at the Polk Street side, which further confirmed my suspicions that this was the first time in San Francisco City Hall for many of these suburbanites.

They streamed up the grand staircase to enter the Board chambers...

...but there was already a long line to the right on the second floor consisting of public health supporters...

...and they started a loud chant that reverbated throughout the dome, "GET IN LINE! GET IN LINE! GET IN LINE!"

Meanwhile, a couple was trying to get married on the balcony in front of Mayor Newsom's office.

The firefighters never did get in line but instead milled around the area at the top of the stairs in front of the Board chambers, and had to be stopped by deputy sheriffs from muscling their way in.

When the Board chambers ran out of room, they started up a chant, "LET US IN! LET US IN! LET US IN!" which disrupted the proceedings inside for the next thirty minutes.

After this bit of political theatre, the firefighters and their families streamed back home soon after. As a public relations stunt, it was something of a backfire, as they certainly didn't seem to win many friends in San Francisco.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival

2009-06-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

At the dreamlike Palace of Fine Arts complex, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival is currently holding its 31st annual season over four weekends, with two more to go (click here for tickets and info).

The 40 local Northern California dance companies are a wildly multi-cultural affair that range all over the world...

...from Philippine Mindanao-Muslim dance to Tex-Mex to dances from the Russian Navy.

Though the Maxfield Parrish section of the Palace of Fine Arts has recently been refurbished, the buildings housing the Exploratorium Museum and the Theatre are falling apart and there currently aren't any plans to refurbish them.

This is too bad because the wide stage seems perfect for large dance groups and the festival, which used to perform at the small Herbst Theatre, is taking advantage of the space with real theatrical skill.

There are three performances each weekend, two on Saturday and a Sunday matinee. From what I saw at Friday's dress rehearsal, the professional level of these amateur groups was astonishing, and the show itself was surprisingly slick. I was also told that some of the most exciting moments are at the end of each Sunday performance. This is when the newly formed ensemble of eight to ten groups that have been performing together all weekend join spontaneously in a free-for-all dance.

One Way Our Own Way

2009-06-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

On Jackson Street near Polk on Friday afternoon, the parked car on the left reminded me that many San Francisco drivers are operating their vehicles while listening to their own different drummers. It's a good thing to remember when crossing the street.

Dawn to Twilight

2009-06-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Symphony's three-week Schubert/Berg festival wraps up this week with the two final works written by each composer, who both died too young. Schubert left the world from complications brought on by syphilis at the age of 31 and Berg died at age 50 from an abcess that poisoned his bloodstream.

Berg's only violin concerto was written in 1935 as a memorial to the 18-year old Manon Gropius who died of polio.

It's an intense, 25-minute work that was masterfully played by the soloist Gil Shaham who danced between conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and associate concertmaster Nadya Tichman like a possessed imp.

The hour-long Schubert Mass No. 6 from 1828 was a beauty, though it did set the Opera Tattler to daydreaming about Spanish cognates of the Latin Mass (click here) and Axel to dreams of repetition (click here).

The five vocal soloists had very little to sing so they looked comically underused throughout the performance...

...and having Laura Aikin (above middle) singing the soprano felt like deluxe casting for such a small assignment.

It didn't matter since the Symphony Chorus, which has been steadily getting better for a number of years, sounded wonderful under its new director Ragnar Bohlin (above).

The Schubert Mass performance was dedicated to Peter Shelton, the longtime symphony cellist who also died too young at age 54 last month.

Lords of the Samurai 1: Hosokawa Morihiro

2009-06-11T12:32:00.001-07:00

"Lords of the Samurai" is an amazing new exhibit opening Friday for the summer at the Asian Art Museum.

It could just as easily be called "Treasures from the Hosokawa Family" because just about the entire exhibit consists of holdings from one of Japan's oldest royal families whose belongings, through luck and circumstance, were never destroyed in wars or bombings over 700 years.

Hosokawa Morihiro (above), a genuine Daimyo (Lord) from the Hosokawa family, was at the museum's press preview.

The American Occupation abolished Japanese peerage in 1947, so Hosakawa Morihiro was a marquis for his first nine years, and then became a journalist and a politician in the 1970s, serving in the National Diet (Congress) for two terms before becoming governor of Kumamoto until 1991.

In 1992, he publicly proclaimed himself disgusted with the corruption of the LDP Party which had run Japan for 38 years, and he started the reform "Japan New Party," where he was swept into office as Prime Minister in 1993.

This didn't set well with his opposition and they dug up a scandal involving misuse of funds in the 1980s which drove Hosokawa Morihiro out of office after 8 months.

Still, those eight months were historic, including the first apology to the rest of the world by a Japanese leader for its actions in World War II, "a war of aggression, a mistaken war."

To gauge how brave this gesture was, imagine how long it's going to take before an official leader of the United States utters similar words about Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

Lords of the Samurai 2: Family Treasures

2009-06-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

The family crest of the Hosokawa family is an extraordinarily modern looking logo called "The Nine Planets" which are actually "The Nine Grahas" taken from Indian cosmology according to the Asian Art Museum's entertaining new blog site (click here).

The crest is embedded on everything from sword hilts...

...to enameled pottery.

Besides the displays of samurai related arms and armor...

...there are collections of monster screens...

...masks from the Noh theatre...

...and clothing that actually made me covetous...

...for its sheer beauty.

Lords of the Samurai 3: Samurais R Us

2009-06-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

The new director of the Asian Art Museum, Jay Xu (above), has done an excellent job marketing the institution, and attendance is up over 50% since his arrival last year.

So instead of trumpeting the fact that these objects from the Hosokawa Family collection have never been seen outside of Japan in history...

...the emphasis in marketing has been on the Japanese version of the feudal knight or American Western gunslinger.

One room has been turned into a "Daimyo For A Day" space...

...where you can throw on a robe...

...and pretend you're Lord for a Day.

There are even plans afoot to teach the ancient Japanese game of Go and sponsor tournaments, which would be cool for games masters like Matt Hubbard (click here).

The long lineage of warrior artists is continuing with former Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro, who retired from politics in 1998. He then became an apprentice in ceramics to Tsujimura Shiro, one of Japan's most gifted, eccentric artists (click here for a fascinating Japan Times interview with Morihiro on his experience).

A few examples of Hosokawa Morihiro's pottery is included in the Samurai exhibit (above).

If you would like to meet the former Prime Minister, he will be at a public ribbon cutting ceremony for the exhibit on Friday the 11th at 10AM.

Mountain Play 1: Man of La Mancha

2009-06-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Oh good, we're going on a field trip," Scott said as we climbed into school buses in Mill Valley for a ride up Mount Tamalpais for the 96th annual version of "The Mountain Play" at its mountaintop amphitheatre (click here).

On winding, narrow roads we perilously drove around two other school buses that had broken down on the way up, which just added an element of danger and theatrical excitement to the afternoon.

This year's musical was the 1960s Broadway hit, "Man of La Mancha" from a TV play called "I, Don Quixote" by the fascinatingly eccentric Dale Wasserman, who just died in Arizona in his 90s last December (click here for his website hawking his memoir and unproduced plays).

Its gloss on Cervantes and "Don Quixote" is a strange mixture of "follow your dreams" hokum and sophisticated stagecraft which deals with plays within plays within plays.

Unfortunately, the cast wasn't up to the vocal demands of the musical which can get almost operatic at times, and the staging was below The Mountain Play's usual standards. When Sancho Panza has the best voice in "Man of La Mancha," it's not a good sign.

Matters were not helped by the actress playing the lead part of Dulcinea trying out a phony Spanish accent that sounded like a cross between George Hamilton in "Zorro, The Gay Blade" ("fight injoostice to the pipples") and Rita Moreno as Googie Gomez in "The Ritz" ("everytangs cohmeen up chhhhroses"). Scott, above, got a bad case of the involuntary giggles during her song, "Why Do Joo Do Da Tangs Dat Joo Do?"

Our hostess for the afternoon was the writer Beth Spotswood above (click here) who is the Development Director for the organization. She was radiating good energy as she dealt with broken down buses, needy donors, and thousands of people crawling over the top of Mount Tamalpais.

Mountain Play 2: Holy Mt. Tam

2009-06-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

The school buses will also take you down the mountain but playgoers are encouraged to hike down Mount Tamalpais to downtown Mill Valley six-plus miles away if they are in the mood.

The hike is outrageously beautiful and not even all that terrifying for those with a fear of heights like myself.

We were paced by The Opera Tattler (click here) who looked overjoyed to be scampering through forests.

We stopped for food and drink at the Mountain Inn halfway down...

...and then continued around curving roadways where people lived in forest houses on stilts.

There was a lemonade stand at one of the homes, complete with elaborate signage in colored chalk on the roadway.

They had also drawn the above signage 50 yards past the lemonade stand which made me happily open a beer in my backpack while proclaiming, "NO!"

The Mountain Play people drive hiking theatregoers' coolers to downtown Mill Valley after the play so you don't have to haul them with you. It was a genuinely fun day.

Lulu Sings To Berg, With Love

2009-06-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

"A Schubert/Berg Journey" [to the Center of the Earth via Vienna] was the official title of the San Francisco Symphony concerts on Wednesday and Thursday evening, and journey wasn't a false description. We hopped all over the place, going from a chamber string orchestra to a monstrously huge symphonic orchestra to solo piano and back again. The Ambassador (click here) and Axel (click here) thought the whole thing was a bit too iPod Shuffle demented but I rather enjoyed the variety show aspect of the concert, especially since we had famous cameo stars, including Julia Fischer who was an exquisite soloist in a Schubert Rondo for Violin and Strings.

Then it was on to more early Berg Lieder with orchestra, in this case the "Altenberg Lieder" with Laura Aikin as the soloist. Especially affter Michelle deYoung's overwhelming performance last week in the "Seven Early Songs," poor Laura sounded a bit underpowered in front of the monster Berg orchestra, but I liked the piece and thought she did a wonderful job.

The first half ended with an even larger orchestra playing the first movement from the "Lulu Suite," taken from Berg's last, unfinished opera about the temptress Lulu who destroys everyone in her path with her wanton sexuality before being carved up by Jack the Ripper. This is probably the time to confess that I have friends more musically sophisticated than me who adore Berg and who count "Lulu" as their favorite opera, bar none, but I am not at that level of sophistication and I just don't get it. The music is difficult and disturbing, and the subject matter of both "Lulu" and "Wozzeck" are Germanic Expressionism at their absolute ugliest.

The second half of the concert started with the famous Yefim Bronfman offering a wild, committed performance of Berg's "Piano Sonata, Opus 1" from 1908, which is a bear. Though I don't understand the music and don't particularly want to listen to it again, there's no denying there's something great about it.

Then we were treated to Tilson Thomas at piano, Laura Aiken back as soloist, and San Francisco Symphony clarinet principal Carey Bell playing Schubert's last musical piece, "Shepherd on the Rock," and Bell pretty much stole the show.

This was followed by the return of the monster orchestra finishing up the "Lulu Suite" which included Laura Aiken giving a sensational performance of a few short arias in a role she's famous for in Europe. I walked out of the hall feeling bludgeoned.

Explosion in the Tenderloin

2009-06-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

Sometime between 11AM and 11:30AM this morning, an underground transformer exploded at the intersection of O'Farrell and Polk Streets, causing smoke and flames to shoot out of manhole covers.

It also knocked out power over a four block radius for at least five hours, which included a number of street lights on Van Ness Avenue.

This created a horrendous traffic jam which then proceeded to become wider as it backed up other key intersections in San Francisco.

A few of the public safety employees were quite helpful, such as the policeman above helping a parked car get out of an alley under yellow tape...

...and the Department of Parking and Traffic officer above.

Most of the public safety employees, though, were rude and unhelpful, with special pride of place going to a group of motorcycle cops who arrived around 2:30 PM, parked in front of the AMC movie theatre complex, and then strutted around like self-important thugs.

Frenchy's Adult Book Store on Geary near Polk had an amusing cross-sell sign advising its customers to try the Locker Room dirty movie arcade around the corner on Polk Street.

Smoke was still steaming from underground at 3PM.

At about 4:30 PM, power started coming back to most of the neighborhood, although some neighborhood liquor stores and a few bars never bothered closing in the first place.

A street person told me there had been three different explosions throughout the day and it was the final one that caused a huge plume of fire to explode above the street.

Pacific Gas & Electric is probably responsible but I'm sure they will eschew any and all blame. My favorite comment was from WSanders over at SFist:

"In our neighborhood, PG&E has determined that the best way to upgrade their infrastructure is to wait for it to catch on fire and then replace it. Looks like they're rolling out their policy to include the City."

SFMOMA Free Tuesday 1: The Americans

2009-06-04T09:36:00.001-07:00

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has two special exhibits that have been touring the country lately. The first is called "Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities" which is a sweet, lowbrow affair celebrating paintings by O'Keefe and black-and-white photos by Adams that were created mostly in New Mexico at the same places. They reminded me once again that I enjoy O'Keefe's pretty colors, and am left utterly cold by Adams' perfectly composed black-and-white photos of unpeopled nature.

Downstairs is a 50th anniversary celebration of Robert Frank's landmark Grove Press photography book from 1959, "The Americans," which is a series of 83 mostly downbeat, black-and-white photos from across the United States which Frank took as part of a Guggenheim grant project which he culled from 28,000 shots.

The book was met with horror and derision when first published because they were a slap in the face of how Americans pictured themselves at the time, but they have aged brilliantly, and transport you to a place in time so powerfully that it's hard to shake off.

The Magnum photojournalist Elliott Erwitt uttered a famous quote trashing Adams while praising the Swiss Jewish exile Robert Frank:

"Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy - the tone range isn't right and things like that - but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention."

The exhibit starts with a few early photos by Frank from Latin America and also photos by photographers who "influenced" him, but they aren't what's interesting about the show. To see the 83 photos of "The Americans" one after the other makes you realize there's an overall, intangible narrative. It's photoblogging on a grand scale before such a thing existed.