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Feature

Super-Hyped Infection

Sensational headlines coupled with fearmongering public health reports have HIV-positive men in San Francisco running scared. It doesn't have to be that way.

By Cristi Hegranes

Published: December 14, 2005

At 2 a.m. on an unusually warm Saturday in November, Hadley sat in the back of a taxi, his head leaning on the windowpane. He was sobbing. It was an anniversary of sorts -- it had been one year...

Matt Smith

Free Love and Enterprise

Peace and wow will get you an image to sell to tourists, but not fed

By Matt Smith

Published: December 14, 2005

Last weekend, a literate friend looked at the sidewalk seven paces south of my doorstep and exclaimed, "That's the Tristero's horn." She was looking at a blue silk-screened image, about the size...

Infiltrator

Hate Mail Mon Amour

We pay tribute to those who love enough to write

By Harmon Leon

Published: December 14, 2005

Having placed in my mouth a sufficient amount of a meatball Hot Pocket for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, contemplating...

Dog Bites

Straight to Video

Dog Bites turns into a film critic to help us understand the Bayview police video scandal

Overheard by Matt Palmquist

Published: December 14, 2005

When we heard about the racist in-house video produced by a San Francisco police officer at the Bayview Station and made public by an outraged Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief Heather Fong last...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Week of Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Published: December 14, 2005

One City, Under Fernet Sweet bitters: I never expected to live long enough to see the day that Fernet-Branca would grace the cover of SF Weekly ["The Myth of Fernet," Dec. 7]. That...

Music

Cock Party?

Question for Jordan Knight: Was the Block those New Kids were on located in the Castro?

By Brock Keeling

Published: December 14, 2005

Aside from the remarkably catchy "Hangin' Tough," the only thing I knew about New Kids on the Block as an adolescent was what I heard on the playground: They were a bunch of fags with AIDS. At...

Music

Dead Like Me

Attempting to survive 11 straight hours of the Grateful Dead

By Dan Strachota

Published: December 14, 2005

I hate the Grateful Dead. I've always hated the Grateful Dead. Numerous times over my lifetime, people have tried to get me to appreciate the band, with little success. The interminable solos,...

Music

The Hanukkah Songs

Wherein we find the coining of our new favorite word: "Jew-pergroup"

By Michael Alan Goldberg

Published: December 14, 2005

In an unfortunate confluence of the Hebrew and Christian calendars, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Dec. 25, which means that we Jews will have to deal with the ol' "Hanukkah? Isn't that the Jewish...

Music

Have a Blue Xmas

John Waters comes to town with a bag full of bawdy holiday cheer

By Rossiter Drake

Published: December 14, 2005

And now, in celebration of the famously scrawny filmmaker coming to the Fillmore on Dec. 14 to present "caustic holiday observations in a rapid-fire monologue covering all of his Christmas...

Reviewed

The Mother Hips

Red Tandy

By Mark Keresman

Published: December 14, 2005

When too many artists are cookie-cutter predictable, the more cynical listener can discern all there is to know from the first strum of a song's intro. So blessed be the band with the creativity to...

Reviewed

Samara Lubelski

Spectacular of Passages

By Justin F. Farrar

Published: December 14, 2005

Samara Lubelski is an accomplished singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and recording engineer from New York City, who has spent the past decade playing in a couple of psych-folk outfits (Hall...

Reviewed

Mat Maneri

Pentagon

By Sam Prestianni

Published: December 14, 2005

On his most ambitious album to date, renowned forward-jazz violinist Mat Maneri directs some of the headiest, head-spinning music of the year, and yet his message is very clear: Unity is where it's...

Reviewed

Beck

Guerolito

By Rossiter Drake

Published: December 14, 2005

The marketplace is cluttered with remixes that play like glorified covers, lazily pasted-together retreads exhibiting little imagination. That's not the case with Guerolito , the remixed companion...

Reviewed

Ennio Morricone

Crime and Dissonance

By Dave Pehling

Published: December 14, 2005

Most attempts at compiling the massive output of Italian soundtrack giant Ennio Morricone have stuck to the obvious, focusing on a mix of the indelible spaghetti western themes that helped elevate...

OK Then

Band Advice

How to get all the blow jobs and cash you can handle, in eight easy steps

By Garrett Kamps

Published: December 14, 2005

An old boss of mine once told me I was a fool to think guys form bands for any other reason than to fuck chicks and make steaming piles of cash. This dictum has long lingered in my brain, for if...

Bouncer

Tender Isn't the Night

If you're looking to entertain your divorced and jobless friend, avoid the Tenderloin

By Katy St. Clair

Published: December 14, 2005

Watch yourself, because there are militant Hare Krishnas out there. In fact, when last I checked -- which was the late '90s -- they were in Berkeley, quietly plotting against the police and...

Hear This

Get your improvisational noise on with the "Jyrk Jamboree"; get your Mexicali rock on with Los Lobos

By Justin F. Farrar, Dave Pehling, Sam Prestianni

Published: December 14, 2005

For fans of psychedelically experimental sound, the "Jyrk Jamboree," which hits the Hemlock Tavern on Wednesday, Dec. 14, looks to be an intriguing event. This traveling caravan of indie-noise...

BeatBox

Holy beat-bevy Batman: Cut Chemist, Z-Trip, Radar, Faust, Romanowski, dead prez, Marques Wyatt, Lisa Shaw, and "The Rootdown SF."

By Dave Pehling, Tamara Palmer

Published: December 14, 2005

The first two volumes of Bomb Hip-Hop's Return of the DJ compilation often get credit for reviving the art of vinyl manipulation in the latter part of the '90s, but local promoter Mark Herlihy...

Eat

The Art of Eating

A little culture, a little shopping, a little lunch -- grazing San Francisco's museums

By Meredith Brody

Published: December 14, 2005

In this relentless holiday season -- during which Macy's opened its Christmas shop, complete with massive toy soldiers glowering down at Union Square, by the second week of September, and nonstop...

Dish Enchanted

Feeling Crabby

Must we love everything about S.F. -- even the Dungeness?

By Bonnie Wach

Published: December 14, 2005

Being a native San Franciscan comes with obvious benefits. You get to call it Frisco or San Fran or Shaky Town or Land of Fruits and Nuts or whatever the hell else you want. You earned that right...