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Letters

Letters

Published: September 29, 1999

Feature

It Ate City Hall

If you like monstrous cost escalation, you'll love Don Todd Associates, whose mutating consulting agreements typify the city's horrifying contracting problems

By Peter Byrne

Published: September 29, 1999

Over the last nine years, Don Todd Associates has been paid more than $6 million by the city for consulting on two dozen city construction projects. Through time, the consulting firm gradually...

Bay View

Unsettling History

Kidnapped and interned during World War II, Japanese brothers intend that their story not fade away

By Bernice Yeung

Published: September 29, 1999

Art Shibayama settles into a mahogany chair at his dining room table, slowly placing his hands face down on the white, lace tablecloth. Though it faces a busy San Jose street, the Shibayama home is...

Dog Bites

Dog Bites

And Now, It's Time for Another Round of More San Franciscan Than You

As told to Laurel Wellman

Published: September 29, 1999

Somewhere along the line, when we were new at the paper and afraid to object when given work, we got stuck writing this column. Of course, then we needed material for it, so we started following...

Night Crawler

Night Crawler

Trend of an Era

By Silke Tudor

Published: September 29, 1999

Trend of an Era A tousled boy with sandy-blond mats of hair and a meager Vandyke of peach fuzz peels off the wall of the Anarchists' Bookstore on Haight Street. "You got a paper?" he asks...

Music

Deconstructing Hootie

After a lengthy hiatus, the old-timey folkies in the Muskrats want to revive the folk revival

By Mark Athitakis

Published: September 29, 1999

You're forgiven for missing this particular news item, but an era ended earlier this spring. The Columbus Washboard Co., America's last remaining washboard manufacturer, closed its doors. Sales had...

Music

They'll House You

British house duo Basement Jaxx took inspiration from America. Now they're prepared to conquer it.

By Brett Sokol

Published: September 29, 1999

I am the creator and this is my house, and in my house there is only house music. But I am not so selfish, because once you enter my house it then becomes our house and our house music. ... You...

Riff Raff

Riff Raff

Clubbed

By Mark Athitakis

Published: September 29, 1999

Clubbed, Part 1 There's no delicate way to state this particularly sad, indelicate fact: The Covered Wagon Saloon is in financial trouble. After taking a look at the books recently, owner John...

Record

Review

Spring Heel Jack's The Sound of Music

By Mark Athitakis

Published: September 29, 1999

Spring Hill Jack The Sound of Music (Tugboat) Everybody from the Misfits to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has taken a stab at Rodgers & Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things," and who can blame...

Record

Review

Marc Almond's Open All Night

By Dave Clifford

Published: September 29, 1999

Marc Almond Open All Night (Instinct) The former Soft Cell electro-pop crooner has always been slippery, but on his latest album, Marc Almond has gotten ... well, Tricky. That is, in the 15...

House of Tudor

House Of Tudor

Doc Watson, "21st Century Stripper Sinema," Botanica, and Super Furry Animals

By Silke Tudor

Published: September 29, 1999

While it is impossible for five-time Grammy-winning flat-picker Doc Watson to ever find an emotional substitute for his longtime touring companion and son Merle Watson -- who died in 1985 in...

Hear This

Hear This

Matt Small's Crushing Spiral Ensemble

By Sam Prestianni

Published: September 29, 1999

Matt Small's Crushing Spiral Ensemble Pop and rock groups tend to live the tenet immortalized by Led Zeppelin: "The Song Remains the Same." But jazz cats typically turn this concept on its ear....

Eat

A Maki Among Maki

By Greg Hugunin

Published: September 29, 1999

Like many before me who've migrated to the city of St. Francis, I first hung my hat in the perpetually fogbound Sunset District, that unassuming neighborhood where the parking is ample and unending...

Eat

Brighter Than Ever

By Paul Adams

Published: September 29, 1999

Firefly has been a Noe Valley favorite, and a secluded destination restaurant, for quite a while now. Tucked away on a residential stretch of 24th Street, it is distinguishable only by the large...

Side Dish

Side Dish

The Cuisinart for You, the Calphalon for Me, Musical Chairs, Shrooming, Debutante Dish, and Down But Not Out

By Harry Coverte

Published: September 29, 1999

The Cuisinart for You, the Calphalon for Me As some of you may have already heard from my slightly huffy rival gossipeer (Hi, Hedda!), David Gingrass has been seen shopping, sans wedding ring,...

The Man Who Came to Dinner

The Man Who Came to Dinner

Entros

By Barry Levine

Published: September 29, 1999

Where have all the board games gone? -- Peter, Paul, & Mary Are you old enough to remember that seemingly interminable chunk of the '80s when Trivial Pursuit temporarily supplanted baseball...

Film

War Is Heck

By Gregory Weinkauf

Published: September 29, 1999

There is nothing gratifying about watching a bullet blast through a woman's skull. Exploding helicopters and splattered cattle are utterly indefensible. And few would smile at the image of a little...

Film

Northern Lights

By Bill Gallo

Published: September 29, 1999

The premise is preposterous, the final score inevitable, and the record reading on the feel-good-ometer is totally predictable. But Mystery, Alaska comes furnished with some winning quirks and...

Reel World

Reel World

Pipsqueak Pfollies and Raining Stones

By Michael Fox

Published: September 29, 1999

Pipsqueak Pfollies In the vast, teeming universe of cinema, small-gauge filmmaking is possibly the least-respected province. After all, who works in 8mm and Super 8 these days, other than film...

Zoom Lens

Zoom Lens

Past Master

By Frako Loden

Published: September 29, 1999

Japan's gentle, prolific director Keisuke Kinoshita died last year, and the Pacific Film Archive pays tribute with 10 of his major works on Fridays in October. The double bills seem intended to...