The comedians of Laughter Against the Machine are bullies, except they only bully up, never down. When a big guy kicks a little guy, they kick the big guy -- with jokes. This type of maneuver used to be the province of the left wing, but these days the left wing is interested only in sticking its head in the sand, as you may have noticed. So, oppositely, Laughter Against the Machine is staging an attack on Arizona, D.C., Wisconsin, and other places that are famous for being really, really fucked up right now, which is to say, it's going on tour. Help them train for this on Monday.
Legendary three-dot columnist Herb Caen once wrote that "San Francisco ain't what it used to be -- and it never was." Really? Tell that to Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Stewart, or Kim Novak. When you see the likes of Bullitt, Dirty Harry, or Vertigo, it's hard to believe San Francisco was anything but the bad-ass beautiful hip groovy intriguing edgy center of the universe where the good guys always won, the clothes were always cool, and certain cars went really really (and we mean really) fast.
Starting later this month on Tuesday nights the Top of the Mark provides a window the past via such classic films shot in San Francisco while also offering a great view of the city today and an assortment of wine.
The first peddler's cry that ever got our attention was at the Renaissance Fair. "Ladies! How'd you like something hard and sweet between your lips?" As teenagers, we had coincidentally just been pondering that very question. (The product in question was lemon ice, and we were too broke to get any; point moot.) At the "Cries of San Francisco" Market Day, artist Allison Smith leads a very large and loudly braying group of people around the Market and Fifth area, loose in the streets.
Local historian Chris Carlsson loves San Francisco, and has spent a long time studying it. At this point, he knows so much awesome stuff about the city, he wants to tell you about it! And show it to you!
He's most interested in times and places people have been hella into equality -- they're the ones who made us famous for being freak-flag fliers, or dirty hippies, or the city that'll protest anything, or gaytown, or name your reason you like it here. Murals, divine food, clean air and water, Pride -- a lot of it came from work done in the years between 1968 and 1978, by young people in bellbottom pants and long hair. Carlsson's new anthology, Ten Years that Shook the City, tells those stories, and today is the first day to take his walking tour. Using QR-code-enabled plaques and your smartphone at 24 locations, the tour lets you walk around and listen to what was up back then. Here are some pictures of what was up back then; we hope they freak you out in a groovy way.
Over the past decade Davy Rothbart has nurtured this universal desire as editor of Found magazine by scrapping together street-found notes and photos from people around the world. He chooses the most compelling pieces and includes them in the magazine. They are the notes of the unknown.
Now the tables are turned, and Rothbart -- and his love life -- are on display in David Meiklejohn's new documentary My Heart Is an Idiot, which screens Friday and Saturday at the Roxie. (Rothbart and Meiklejohn are traveling across the country with the film.) The documentary explores Rothbart's relationships and struggle to understand love as he tours the country doing readings from Found. While it sounds melancholy, there's plenty of humor as well. Rothbart gets some solid love advice from unexpected places -- Newt Gingrich, Zooey Deschanel, and Ira Glass among others
Each Friday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from Golden State basements, thrift stores, estate sales, and flea markets.
A binder of old Mail Box News magazines
Date: 1974
Publisher: Maid of Scandinavia, Co.
Your fifth birthday should be a happy time, but there bobs the clown, a mad-eyed buoy of frosting and wickedness whipped up by a relative and fouling up your party like half-cooked chicken fouls a tummy. Such is the dark side of back-in-the-day.
Whenever you yearn for that purer time when Americans scared their own desserts up from scratch rather than settling for whatever Dora the Explorer sheetcakes they find mouldering in the Safeway bakery department, just remember: Sometimes the homemade and handcrafted turns out monstrous.
