Idyllic summer nights (especially those in places where it’s warm at night) can leave little to be desired–unless you’re Q Tonic founder Jordan Silbert, that is. The gin and tonic lover discovered that the tonic water he was drinking four summer ago was chock full of artificial flavors and high fructose corn syrup, and in the name of not standing up for something so undignified, he set out to create a crisper tonic. After pulling together quinine from South America, organic agave and lovingly designed floral-inspired glass bottles, Silbert’s concoction can now be found locally at NOPA.

“One of the things that excites me most about Q Tonic is that it enables you to actually taste the difference between and gin and tonic made with different gins–a gin and tonic made with Plymouth and Q Tonic tastes very different than a G&T with Hendricks and Q Tonic,” says the drink maker, who slaved over the recipe in his Brooklyn kitchen for more than a few seasons. “Unlike when you use mass produced tonic waters, you can actually taste the different botanicals that make different gins great in their different ways.”

When asked about non-gin drinks, Silbert suggested a few so simple that they may get me out of my mojito-making habit this summer, including:

Lil’ Q
* Fill a highball glass with ice
* Add 3 oz Lillet White
* Top with 3 to 4 oz Q Tonic
* Garnish with mint or an orange twist

Gin-ger Tonic
* Fill a highball glass with ice
* Add 2 oz of your favorite gin
* Add 1 oz ginger infused simple syrup
* Add .5 oz lime juice
* Top with 3 oz Q Tonic
* Stir
* Garnish with a lemon wedge and/or a piece of candied ginger.

Thanks to Headline Shirts for the company tip. Partially reposted from JoshSpear.

I’ve been a big fan of each of the screenings I’ve been lucky to see at the local women-focused theater Brava this year (Pop-Up Magazine and SF Women’s Film Fest included), and tonight’s film celebration of global social entrepreneurs was no exception. FRONTLINE/World, the documentary TV series created with KQED and WGBH in Boston, hosted the “Heroes from a Small Planet” event with the innovation advocate organization Skoll Foundation.

The brief international stories are carefully researched and well told, and two are particularly worth a watch. Marjorie Macafee’s “Wheels of Change” about a Bay Area engineer who’s created an open source model for this RoughRider wheelchairs tracks the chairs’ production and use in a Vietnamese factory. And Jenny Chu’s “Yeabu’s Homecoming” about a Sierra Leonen doctor’s surgical efforts to repair the obstetric fistulas caused by prolonged labor is a stark wakeup to the lack of adequate medical care in parts of the developing world. Brava is right.

Genius Jimi wallet creator Mike O’Neill tipped me off to a Snik recently, and I’m most grateful. With the global user base of mobile phones approaching 3 billion people, more than a few music listeners and callers find themselves in a daily tangle of headphones/bags/jackets that might be avoided if Snik creator Rob Honeycutt has his way. His product line of zipper puller and cord grooves featured on snaps and buckles relieves pressure on the earbuds (runners rejoice). “I believe there is a widespread need for this ‘interface’ between a person’s clothing and their mobile technology,” said Honeycutt, who would like the feature to become ubiquitous on clothing and bags over the next decade. For now, the small devices are available by the 6 and 12 pack, each of which is less than $20. Dangling cords be darned.

Partially reposted from Joshspear.com.

In yet another attempt to bring smiles to recession-wary locals, Florida Street company Headline Shirts is using cotton and cartoons to introduce a new series of San Francisco-themed t-shirts. If you’ve eaten a taco, ridden a bus, or looked skyward in this city, you’ll appreciate the Ts featuring the 22 Filmore crashing into a fire hydrant and the “I (image of bike tire where stolen frame once was) SF.” I paid Headline creative director Jake Ginsky and Chris Gorog, the founder of parent brand Revel Industries, a visit yesterday and walked away with my own wish list.

The company, which I first noticed for their SMS-driven Reactees and “America-Everyone Hates Us Now!” shirt that Villians sold during the last days of the Bush administration, said that the provocative nature of their work has gained more acceptance with people speaking their minds in the midst of the administrative change. Still, Gorog said it’s imperative to him that the company’s wares are positive as “T-shirts are an inexpensive way to improve your spirit in these down times.”

With 20 top end menswear stores predicted to be out of business by the end of the year, Gorog said Headline Ts have been the most recession-proof of his three lines (which include the mid-market menswear line REVL and the top-end Gythamander). The California-produced shirts, which include “Party like it’s 1929″ in a Dirty Dancing-inspired font, are sold everywhere from Canada to Japan and printed with eco-friendly inks.

The four-person Headline crew (with specialties in design, technology and operations but who all work on customer service) will move above Weird Fish on Mission Street in July, where they’ll remain founding members of the “Mission Garmentos Association,” a nod to their relatively lengthy experience (and survival) in fashion retail.

Ginsky and Gorog are honest about mistakes they’ve made. It seems that the 53 steps required to produce a men’s buttondown makes for a very intricate process, and a $2,000 mold used to create a belt buckle featuring a running horse yielded only six belts. When asked about advice for other clothing upstarts, Gorog said he’d advise securing a quarter of a million dollars, expect growth to take three years, and plan to go out every night to promote it. (The continual personal promotion of the brand helps in a major way and is a lesson that another local shirt designer, WilloToons founder Willo O’Brien, demonstrates brilliantly.)

Still, they’ve established a set of products between the three lines that’s diverse enough to keep them afloat and have a ball while doing so. Because, as Gorog said, “If you’re not having fun, you should at least do something that will make you more money.”

Cinematic Sunday at Swig on Geary has me most excited for the weekend–the “semi-regular” short film screening series seems to be gaining steam for all the right reasons. IndieGoGo and The Auteurs, two local start-ups I admire for the ease of promotional tool use they provide filmmakers and afficinados, will be co-hosting this Sunday along with popular film showcase Indee.tv and behind-the-scenes site MakingOf.com. Sure, the description for one of the screenings, “Lies,” sounds like a This American Life promo (”three perfectly true stories about lying”), but some of the selections sound most intriguing (i.e. “a love story about two gay wrestlers living in rural Iceland”). Should be a great way to support local screening efforts just off the 31.

When Stanford Business School grad Efe Cakarel got fed up with sub-par film options for video on demand while traveling, he decided to do something about it. “The offerings were as exciting as a train time table,” Cakarel said. “They reminded me of the bad video stores I used to visit in Istanbul in the ‘80s.” Thankfully for us, his reaction was to create The Auteurs, a film showcase and lovingly created community hub for movie aficionados and creative visionaries behind film projects (the site’s namesake). Cakarel and his team of filmmakers and programmers have cataloged and host 3,000+ films to date—everything from In the Mood for Love to the ‘70s Soviet flick Dersu Uzala–and are working with academics and critics to select their next offerings.

In working to create a place for intelligent film discussion and sharing, Auteurs writer Daniel Kasman said the team is looking to create a place where people can share their opinions but that isn’t elitist. “Popular doesn’t always mean good,” according to one portion of the site, and the anecdote to blockbuster film has been presenting hard-to-find greats as part of the IFC-sponsored Criterion Collection.

One user who goes by the nomiker Ms. Godard said she first noticed the site’s striking design. “I was looking for a movie social network and all them seemed crap, and The Auteurs is visually great. I also like the site because you meet really cinephiles and not people [who] like Adam Sandler.”

Another user who asked to go by his name on the community, Carlo is a Subterrenean Homesick Alien, frequently participates in the Cinemaethque portion of the site, where select films from the site are highlighted in weekly online festivals. He described the Auteurs as “more than just a forum for discussing films, but also a place to show your films, or watch other people’s films, made by users.” Get to it.

Partially republished from Josh Spear post.

Next week brings big brand blogging conference BlogWell to San Francisco with pals from Technorati, Get Satisfaction and SocialMedia.biz. The Tuesday programming includes social media best practices from Intuit (Tara Hunt’s stomping grounds before her move to Canada), PepsiCo, and the like. (I’m not quite sure how the event is going to be limited to big companies–”no agencies, no startups”–but am interested to see what there is for us little gals to glean.)

I’ve been a big fan of Oakland designer Jen Jennings’ geometric-inspired line Serial Cultura since first seeing it at a Valencia Street trunk show last year. She was back in SF last weekend showing her fourth collection with its more subdued take on the patterned perfection of previous seasons.

While she’s currently using more muted colors than the lime and fuchsia she loves, the Parsons graduate and textiles aficionado is still using her signature combination of hand-dying silks and digital printing. Repeating shapes created in Photoshop are scanned onto fluid-like shirts and dresses, a process that can take up to a week per item. The resulting triangle bias tops and wrap dresses are all made in California and being sold at the local AB Fits.

Image by Scott Clark.

Tonight at Shotwell (on Geary, obviously) I saw a postcard for this month’s Indie Mart, the independent apparel and design showcase. If the crafting and clothing (including Coma and Cotton and Gangs of San Francisco’s local irony) aren’t enough for you at the Potrero Hill show this Sunday afternoon, the BBQ and DJs might do it.

Hosting this the weekend following bi-monthly payday is either cruel or genius. (Last time I walked out with turquoise specs that even an Olson twin would shy away from.) But with its promise to be “bigger, better and more badass” than previous fairs, who could argue?