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Feature

Clown Without Borders

Why would a former S.F. stockbroker travel to war-torn countries and refugee camps just to make people laugh?

By Bernice Yeung

Published: December 4, 2002

The first time Moshe Cohen, the leader of the American arm of Clowns Without Borders, performed for the refugees from Guatemala's civil war in southern Chiapas, he baffled the audience. It was...

Matt Smith

Unnatural Gas

"Environmentalists" make bad transit worse by insisting Muni buy alt-fuel buses

By Matt Smith

Published: December 4, 2002

The bus is for chumps. There: I've said it. I know, I know -- Transit First, livability, access, a better environment, safer streets, improved quality of life, humane urban space, etc., etc.,...

Dog Bites

Photo Phreaks

Is scrapbooking a hobby – or a mental disorder?

By Andrea Nelson

Published: December 4, 2002

Most people store snapshots of family and friends in a haphazard pile in the handiest desk drawer, where they gradually turn brown and get buried in loose change, old check stubs, and pencil...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Week of December 4, 2002

Published: December 4, 2002

Ludicrous, just ludicrous! Byrne has his head up his ass: I want to clear up an important omission in Peter Byrne's recent article ["Griftin' on the Dock of the Bay," Nov. 20]. There...

Music

Punch-Drunk Love

The Run For Cover Lovers walk the thin line between love and hate

By Dan Strachota

Published: December 4, 2002

Love stinks. We know it does, because the J. Geils Band says so. If other song titles are any judge, love also hurts, sucks, and bites. Somehow, however, this feeling blooms eternal, rising from...

Reviewed

23 Skidoo

The Gospel Comes to New Guinea
Just Like Everybody Part Two

By Philip Sherburne

Published: December 4, 2002

It's been a great year for reissues. The resurgence of interest in overlooked post-punk classics has led to the re-release of Cabaret Voltaire's entire back catalog, as well as Soul Jazz's In the...

Reviewed

Richard Buckner

Impasse

By Lawrence Kay

Published: December 4, 2002

In the early 1990s, then-local singer Richard Buckner detached himself from his longtime band, the Buckets, to become one of altcountry's rising stars. Although steeped in traditional country and...

Reviewed

Talib Kweli

Quality

By Martin Woodside

Published: December 4, 2002

It's strange to think of Quality as a coming-out party for Talib Kweli, since an artist as respected as Kweli shouldn't need one. In the late '90s the thoughtful MC (whose name combines Arabic...

House of Tudor

House of Tudor

Modern-day torch songs, synth-pop sleaze, and Central Asian electro hybrids

By Silke Tudor

Published: December 4, 2002

As the sixth-largest city in the country and the first major metropolis north of the Mexican border, San Diego should have more to offer to the cultural mix than, say, Rocket from the Crypt and...

Hear This

Hear This

The spazzy punks in Sexy make pants-dropping tunes

By Ajax Green

Published: December 4, 2002

Ever since Jim Morrison's bacchanalian heyday, many rockers have tried and failed to get loaded and deliver a good show. Most musicians who get drunk on stage play like three-fingered adolescents...

Eat

Noblesse Oblige

Charles Nob Hill

By Lisa Davis

Published: December 4, 2002

Having heard about Charles Nob Hill for years, three foodie friends and I decided that when the fall chill finally entered the city we'd give in to a grown-up dinner at one of San Francisco's...

Social Grace

Calculating Kindness

How to pay off good Samaritans, party during Ramadan, and play footsie during dinner

By Social Grace

Published: December 4, 2002

Dear Social Grace, Last summer, my girlfriend and I were driving through the Navajo Nation (in what we call Arizona), viewing all the amazing mesas and terrible poverty, when my car got stuck...

Film

Full Speed Ahead

Arthur Miller's daughter Rebecca comes into her own with Personal Velocity

By Bill Gallo

Published: December 4, 2002

Each of the beautifully made vignettes that comprise Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity glimpses a young woman caught at a crossroads, faced with an important decision, and about to experience...

Reel World

The Searchers

Feeling dubious about Reese Witherspoon, and other insights from film historian David Thomson

By Michael Fox

Published: December 4, 2002

"There's definitely a point at which someone my age says, "Am I serving any purpose by referring people back to the past?'" admits David Thomson, the British-born, S.F.-based film critic and...

Reps Etc.

Reps Etc.

Published: December 4, 2002

Commentary by Gregg Rickman ( greggr1@mindspring.com ). Times compiled from information available Tuesday; it's always advisable to call for confirmation. Price given is standard adult...

Night&Day;

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

No rhythm? Look lousy in a tutu? Fit right in at the Dance-Along Nutcracker

By Heather Wisner

Published: December 4, 2002

Visions of sugarplums be damned: When you leave the Dance-Along Nutcracker , you'll have images of drag queens and grannies and wee tots dancing in your head. This Nutcracker , originally...

Night&Day;

Finder's Keepers

Your trash is treasure to Davy Rothbart, creator of Found magazine

By Lisa Hom

Published: December 4, 2002

Trashiness is in the eye of the beholder, but there's a general consensus that Davy Rothbart 's Found magazine is as trashy as it gets. Rothbart's pet project isn't a supermarket tabloid that...

Art

Anxious Times

The latest incarnation of "Bay Area Now" displays a restless discontent with the status quo

By Adrienne Gagnon

Published: December 4, 2002

I'm not sure what I expected, really. Tear gas, flower-clogged gun muzzles, passionate speeches proposing radical resistance? Eighty thousand people marched down Market Street on Oct. 26 to protest...

Stage

She Stands Alone

It's every man for herself in Hedwig's glam-rock solo tour de force

By Michael Scott Moore

Published: December 4, 2002

Most people know that the Hedwig phenomenon started as a play in Greenwich Village, but many wouldn't know, from the movie, that the person playing Hedwig in the live production has to be several...

Stage

Alarms & Excursions

Benny Hill-esque fragments from Michael Frayn's cutting-room floor

By Michael Scott Moore

Published: December 4, 2002

Michael Frayn's latest farce, after the dead-serious Copenhagen , is as shallow as it is witty. It starts like a simmering pot of water: Four middle-class Londoners are trying to have a dinner...