It may only be Tuesday, but it’s not too soon to start thinking about fun to be had in advance of this weekend:
Thursday’s Cinema by the Bay festival kickoff at Temple is to include new Wholphin DVD shorts by Wild Things creators Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs (and if you’re looking for movement of your own, Club Bootie mashup men Adrian and the Mysterious D will be playing late).
On Friday night the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery will kick off their Passport program with a party at the Mission’s Polish Club. The idea: you buy a $25 passport at Rare Device or online and tour SF neighborhoods over the weekend to collect artist-created stamps, including those created by Clare Rojas and Andrew Schoultz. The party is free to “passport holders” and valet bike parking is available, of course.
I’ll be celebrating my new 18 Reasons membership at the Guerrero St. space on Sunday for the last of four master coffee roaster sessions. Here’s to hoping that De La Paz’s tutorial on brewing the perfect cup gets me through the impending Monday morning.
Just when I was getting ready to get better about unnecessary purchases, local outfitter Chrome came out with “Pasha,” a long-sleeved, zippered hoodie for winter as part of its first women’s line. Best known for their messenger bags, Chrome has created a cozy-looking item (as if they’ve experienced more than a few SF winters) with an asymmetrical back pocket and finger holes. It reminds me of a similar item Nau came out with last year, but with more colorful mesh. Too bad the holidays are still months away.
…Why use workbooks and pens when serialized video can be introduced to adult students to create more engagement and better take home value?
A similar line of thinking led Oakland, Calif., organization CEO Women to create Grand Café, an educational video series that features four immigrant women helping each other grow their endeavors after meeting in a business start-up class. The characters speak English and their experiences are cataloged in a Latin Telenovela format, and the protagonists (including a jewelry maker from Haiti, a handywoman from Mexico, and an accountant from China) were based on the nonprofit’s own immigrant and refugee entrepreneur clientele.
The first four episodes of the planned 18-part series are currently being rolled out in Oakland and San Jose with lessons on separating personal and business expenses, seeking out computer skills, and securing bank loans. (And, this being soap opera-esque, there’s a love story thrown in.) CEO Women, whose main aim is helping women increase their business skills to become economically independent, is using the series to scale their current 16-week business training program, and at least 700 women have viewed the telenovela-as-curriculum since it launched in September.
I tend to oversubscribe to film festival and screening e-updates but was glad to see that the eighth year of the SF Documentary Festival is underway; it’s SFIndie’s crown event during a busy (and publicized) year of programming. Before the Roxie-based fest closes next Thursday I’m hoping to see the Bay Area Shorts and “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virgina”–my mom’s family hails from WV, but even if they didn’t, who could resist with a description like this?
Bringing the WTF to this year’s DocFest is the truly awesome White family, the infamous Appalachian clan known for misdeeds as impressive as their family tree: shoot-outs, robberies, gas-huffing, drug dealing, pill popping, murders. They’ve got their pride, the Whites; Jesco’s a tap-dancing star, and do we detect a note of self-satisfaction in their own notoriety? Because it’s hard to believe they forgot the cameras were rolling when they got out the drugs for grandma’s birthday party. If you’re born a White, you’ve got a decision: either live the lifestyle or try to live it down. But, as they put it, ‘At least people know who the [&%$!] we are.’
Microcredit organizations’ efforts, GOOD Magazine and the Berkeley co-working center HUB Bay Area are no strangers to TheSanFranista posts, so I’ll get right to the point–international (and now domestic) lender Kiva.org is celebrating their fourth anniversary on November 3. The $20 tickets for the party at the Brower Center will get you organic treats and access to three floors of troublemaking (for a good cause, of course). I’m especially looking forward to headlining band Baba Ken and the Afrobeat Connection after they played a can’t-stay-in-your-seat show at Elbo Room earlier this year.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s talk last night with local World Affairs Council head Jane Wales about the state of women’s work and well-being globally was one of the more insightful 90 minute presentations I’ve heard (read: it had me engaged in the far back of the Fairmont main ballroom around the dinner hour). And with good reason: the co-author of the newly published Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide with his reporter wifeSheryl WuDunn has been one of the main advocates and researchers of the “girl effect,” the theory that investing in women has exponential benefits on a country’s birth rate, workforce output, and poverty rate.
Kristof said that he became interested in the topic of gender inequity in the early 1990s after he and WuDunn were the first couple to win the Pulitzer Prize for their Tienanmen Square coverage. Shortly thereafter they learned that nearly 40 million baby girls were dying annually from not getting the same medical and food resources as baby boys. He’s since seen the number of “missing women” only increase, largely because of sex selective abortions and honor killings.
I haven’t yet read his recounting of the individuals he’s met around the world who are looking to provide education and job opportunities to women and girls to change these trends, but Kristof’s storytelling skills have a wakening effect. I was glad to hear that he’s given the Half the Sky game rights to Games for Change, a company that creates digital games to raise social consciousness, after they launched Climate Challenge and Darfur is Dying. Off the page, into the world?
I have a massive amount of respect for a new nonprofit, Music National Service, that currently has its first class of MusicanCorps fellows in public schools, hospitals and community spaces around the US. (And not just because I’m tone deaf–the work that the fellows are doing to introduce digital arts instruction and music therapy is too often underfunded). Local musician Kiff Gallagher started the organization with seed money from the Hewlett Foundation, and fellows are now serving in Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, and the Bay Area (not a bad roster, especially considering the model carries over some AmeriCorps themes).
The music service will be playing at tonight’s Latino Heritage Month Celebration at the City Hall rotunda in honor of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts and other organizations. The attire? “Ethnic festive.”
Alley Pezanoski-Browne, a lauded local filmmaker in her own right, turned me on to tonight’s Film Arts Forum at Mezzanine. The “Meet the Programmers” event is to include decision makers from the SF International Asian American Film Festival, SF IndieFest, Frameline, the SF Jewish Film Festival and the SF International Film Festival. It’s hosted by the latter and sure to get into questions about the programming selection process for local fests and screenings, topics that Frameline festival director Jennifer Morris and IndieFest ED Jeff Ross are no strangers to.
I was glad to see a bit of peer work review included in the schedule–the night includes Laptop Shop, a chance to “screen your clips, trailers, marketing materials, design directions—or whatever else you’re working on” through your own computer or materials. How very interactive.
In leaving New York this morning, I was more than a little nervous about missing my flight (unrelated to a whisky sour at Temple Bar, though delicious). My pal’s apartment is great but doesn’t include a Clocky, the household device I’ve been debating purchasing until my snooze-button hitting reached epic lows. My friend Josh Spear had raved about them early on, and a new set of hues drew me in. The wheeled alarm clock has now been the savior of more than a few morning meetings with the Star Wars-eque tone it plays as it rolls away from you.
The product that Nanda Gauri created while a student at the MIT Media Lab now comes in chrome, almond and cocoa–if I were a more moneyed friend I’d send my New York host one of the $50 gems. Maybe for Christmas.
I like seeing pals you believe to be absurdely creative show it to the world; in this case, I’m cracking up over burgeoinging SF band My First Earthquake’s Antoinette-esque video for “Sweet Frown.” In October you can see the foursome (possibly sans wigs, but it’s hard to say with this group) at Hemlock Tavern, the Bernal Heights Fiesta on the Hill, and the Stanford Co-Op in their “virgin rocking of Palo Alto.” A perfect way to celebrate their first full length recording of indie pop enjoyment.
It may only be Tuesday, but it’s not too soon to start thinking about fun to be had in advance of this weekend:
