We attended the Synthetic Biology Debate put on by The Long Now Foundation, and walked out scratching our heads… (in a good way). Drew Endy and Jim Thomas debated pros and cons of open source bio-engineering, and the social implications that it brings. Honestly, a lot of what they were saying went right over my head… however, it made me think about heavy topics that I hadn’t even considered before:
— As the world learns more about manufacturing biology, is it most responsible to contain knowledge to a small few restricted research teams, risking corporate control (or worse); or is it better to make the entire field open source, forego patents, and risk hostile world-powers gaining advantages!?
— How do we protect the existing world economy while encouraging advancements in bio-technology?
— How do we distinguish important bio-advances like malaria cures or insulin advances, from potential disasters?
— And furthermore, what needs to be done about updating our outdated patent system to encourage future advancements?
While there was no official winner or loser, just starting the conversation was an important step to the future of the field. And judging by the massive turnout this Monday, it clearly is a pressing topic!
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In what will be the perfectly timed weekend holiday, Halloween is here again for us to enjoy!! You can almost feel the excitement in San Francisco as the weather turns colder and SF’s patron saint “the costume” makes its official debut! Local dress-up started last weekend, but costumery officially kicks off on Friday. And it should prove to be quite a fun weekend (if the quantity of local parties and clubs scheduled are any indicator)!!!
I have never personally been a big fan of the holiday. As the Creative Director of LEGENDmag and freelance graphic designer for Exkclamation, I spend my days excreting creative juices for client projects. So, often when it comes time to be creative for fun, this mental keg is tapped for ideas. Fortunately, I have a creative-support network that keeps me in the spirit, and for that I am very grateful.
Some such friends invited me to a truly remarkable event last year, that I plan on attending again: SF’s Day of the Dead parade! It’s a community event that has been happening for the last 30 years in San Francisco’s Mission District and brings together the creativity of events like Mardi Gras; while infusing it with a somber Halloween-style, respect-for-the-dead vibe. Basically it boils down to many thousands of people respectfully parading around the Mission with processional bands and “floats”; which ultimately end up in Garfeild Park to pay respect to the dead at large, temporary, community altars.
Dia de los Muertos is meant as a celebration of your deceased loved ones, however this parade is not all the downer that it may sound to the uninitiated. Music, celebration, costumes, and skulls abound in the streets; party goers freely join or spectate the parade at all points; and traffic is at an all-time high. So if you plan on going, follow these small instructions:
1. Don’t expect to trick OR treat
2. Take public transportation or walk (it’s near impossible to drive in the Mission)
3. Bring flowers, candles, and respect
Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
Sunday, November 2, 2008 @ 7:00PM
24th & Bryant, in the Mission District of San Francisco http://www.dayofthedeadsf.org
PS. There is also an illegal soapbox derby starting at 1:00PM the same day at the Bernal Speedway if dangerous speeding vehicles are more your thing! (Shhhh…!)
How is it that there’s always something going on that you didn’t know about in the city? When I read about this event I stopped caring about why I didn’t know and just wanted to eat. There are times when you have to sacrifice for the man kind. And I’ll willing to throw myself in front of the bullet on this one. For all those people who can’t eat tomatoes because they are too acidic, for everyone who is straight edge and won’t imbibe wine, and for all those on diets that just don’t allow for you to stuff yourself anymore…it is for you I attend this event!
Did I mention that you’re ticket includes all the pasta, beer, wine you can eat!
In celebration of Italian culture and cuisine, FIERI is hosting the world’s largest tomato sauce competition in San Francisco. Bay Area restaurants will compete for the coveted distinction of being named The Boss of the Sauce!
The event has attracted the attention of television producers for spotlight coverage to be evaluated by the Food Network. Proceeds from the event benefit Saints Peter and Paul Church, and FIERI, in preservation of the Italian Culture and language.
We accidentally happened upon Pandora’s Trunk over the weekend and need to share! For those of your who haven’t heard, Pandora’s Trunk is a travelling indie-arts show hosted and featuring independent designers here in San Francisco. This month’s show was hosted at the lovely B.U.S. Stop and featured live music, unique takes on clothing, delicious refreshments, and free admission!
Out of the 15 or so exhibiting vendors, one particular booth caught my attention (and wallet)… Recover Your Thoughts is a book bindery’s “side project”, combining discarded public library books, excess print-house paper stock, and twenty thousand dollars worth of high-end book bindery equipment. The creations merge remnants of the previous books with good-quality paper stock to produce one-of-a-kind blank journals infused with some humor and a lot of creativity!
Future dates for Pandora’s Trunk are as follows (check the website for additional dates):
Saturday, November 22, 2008 (1:00 - 5:00pm)
– hosted by Climate Theatre
– 285 9th Street @ Folsom, San Francisco
– featuring live cabaret fashion performance, live music, refreshments
Thursday, December 4th, 2008 (6:00 - 11:00pm)
– hosted by Brava Theatre
– 2781 24th Street @ York (near Bryant)
– featuring live fashion runway show, live music, activities, refreshments
The Capsule Design festival again returns to Hayes Valley in San Francisco, for their free Fall event, featuring 745+ local designers and 160+ booths. If you are in the area, it is worth a stop by to catch some of the local flavor and enjoy the beautiful Octavia promenade.
Capsule Design Festival
Sunday, October 19, 2008
11:00 am ‘til 6:00 pm
Hayes Valley Park (at Octavia and Hayes Streets)
San Francisco, CA 94102
Brought to you from the crew that put on the Grand Central Freeze stunt and Food Court Musical comes the Mp3 Experiment Tour. After great turnouts in NYC and Toronto, the Mp3 Experiment makes it’s way to SF, then Chicago.
Basically, everyone will download an Mp3, transfer it to their portable player and then show up at the event ready to press play simultaneously with others. Then the fun begins!
Date: Saturday, October 4 (rain or shine) Location: Mission Dolores Park [map] Time: The event will begin at exactly 2:00 PM. Arrive early! The event will be over at 2:45. Wear: A Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green shirt Bring: An umbrella and an uninflated balloon.
For the past 10 years, the folks from Spearhead have been gathering friends in the park for an intimate fun little concert known as Power to the Peaceful. We headed out there to take a look and were mighty impressed. Sixty-thousand people, dancing, swaying, and frolicking in Golden Gate park (and for once, the sun was out!). A grand time for all and a good example of how a massive concert can go on without any hitches. Granted, it could have been the weed-infused crowd, or the lack of any alcohol sales but I want to believe people were out in the spirit of the event!. Nevertheless, great music + great people + great weather + Golden Gate park = perfect day!!
If you’re in SF make sure you check out what’s going on with the independent artist music festival. We’ll be supporting the events all week long. One of the must see’s on monday.
The Toronto International Film Festival begins tomorrow. As one of the largest indie film festivals in the world, TIFF is responsible for screening hundreds of independent films over its nine day run. If you can’t make it north of the border to check out the latest in film, no worries! We’ve got you covered, with LEGENDmag’s TIFF 25! Make a note of the following movies so you can see them, as these make their way from Toronto to you.
In alphabetical order, here’s a list of the top 25 standouts…
Movie
Director
Appaloosa
Ed Harris
The Brother’s Bloom
Rian Johnson
Burn After Reading
Joel & Ethan Coen
The Burning Plain
Guillermo Arriaga
The Burrowers
JT Petty
Che
Steven Soderbergh
$5 a Day
Nigel Cole
Flash of Genius
Marc Abraham
Food Inc.
Robert Kenner
The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow
The Lucky Ones
Neil Burger
Medicine for Melancholy
Barry Jenkins
Miracle at St. Anna
Spike Lee
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Peter Sollett
Nothing but the Truth
Rod Lurie
The Other Man
Richard Eyre
The People Speak
Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove, Chris Moore
Rachel Getting Married
Jonathan Demme
Religious
Larry Charles
Rocknrolla
Guy Ritchie
The Secret Life of Bees
Gina Prince Blythewood
The Stoning of Soraya M.
Cyrus Nowrasteh
Who Do You Love
Jerry Zaks
The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky
Zack & Miri Make a Porno
Kevin Smith
Some will think that I’ve overlooked some that should have been in the TIFF 25. Films such as Ghost Town (Gervais is hilarious I’m sure, but its not even Indiewood, let alone indie), Management (Anniston in yet another romantic comedy), and Uncertainty (ok… this one looks really good too, and would totally make the list if it was called the TIFF 26!) will do well at the festival and beyond, but those 25 are it for this year!
LEGENDmag was out at The Adorable Disaster, and we hope you were there too! Aside from the artwork, we were most impressed by the curation style: hanging all artists in “viewing stations” around the room with a variety of illustration styles and media types represented throughout.
If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, the exhibit is up until the end of the month!
207 Powell St. #400, San Francisco, CA
You know how Dante, the hapless mini-mart clerk from “Clerks”, as the disaster of his day continues to unfold, keeps repeating the line, “But I’m not even supposed to be here today!”? To which his video-store clerk friend Randall eventually replies, “Stop saying that. You sound like an asshole.” That’s pretty much how I felt last weekend at the Outside Lands Festival. Or I should say trying to get to the Outside Lands Festival.
The whole transport flow of this city is not set up to contemplate the idea that a large number of people would want to go to the Outer Sunset at once. This is intuitively obvious by the horrified tone with which most city residents say “out there” when discussing the neighborhood but I learned it experientially trying to get there from the Marina. I think it was when the first unnaturally stuffed full 28 blew past me that the initial, “But I don’t even like Radiohead” escaped my lips.
I realize some of you are still reeling from that statement. Look, Radiohead isn’t bad, in fact they’re great, as we all know. But it’s a very subdued monotone kind of great that never fully kicks out the jams in the way that I yearn for. Let’s just call it different cups of tea. I was plenty excited about the Black Keys and the Cold War Kids and several other acts further down the bill, and about seeing my friend Caille, with whom I’d made these plans ages ago, so I was determined to get there.
Several more unusable 28s made me realize that might be no mean feat. I headed out to Chesnut Street, where surely I could hail a cab, right? Wrong. As even the usually taxi-rich corners of Chesnut, Lombard and Union with Fillmore proved to be completely depopulated I began to understand, but remained convinced that redirecting to Van Ness would work.
The shortage of taxis prevailed there as well. This point was particularly driven home by roving gangs of hip young concert bound kids in bright colors trying in vain to hail one themselves or making calls and cursing, “three hours!” Sweating and consternated, I trudged the entire length of Van Ness to the Muni station on Market Street muttering, “But I don’t even like Radiohead!” under my breath.
I finally caught the N Judah, the one line in the city that goes right there without requiring multiple switches and transfers. Had to reverse flow, of course, by going Eastbound to Embarcadero to get to an empty train going Westbound, rather than trying to board one of the already packed trains at Civic Center Station. This train was soon uberpacked itself, and moved slowly down the line as other trains were backed up in the tunnels.
Until it cleared the tunnel at last into the Inner Sunset and stopped moving at all. It seemed that something highly unfortunate had transpired between 4th and 7th Avenues, and three trains in a row were stopped and not going anywhere. Glancing anxiously at my watch, I joined the hordes debarking and hoofed my way roughly 30 blocks to the concert. To which I arrived just in time for the final set of the day, Radiohead. And I don’t even like Radiohead!
To be fair, they put on an excellent two-hour show. Despite the difficulty of seeing the stage through the standing masses arrayed across the perfectly flat polo field I was drawn in by the hypnotic power of Thom Yorke’s voice and the band’s surging wall of electronic noise. Radiohead might be growing on me.
The notion of staging more open-air festivals in San Francisco is also growing on me. Some obvious transport issues need to be worked out, the vendors who were brought in to set up the grounds and ended up making it into a kind of ill-signed maze of cattle-chutes should be replaced. About half the $85 single-day ticket price of this one would make it a lot more accessible (although the crowd was packed out at 60,000, so maybe not). More big festivals though, particularly ones featuring varied and unusual acts, would really suit our music-happy city. September’s Noisepop festival on Treasure Island should be worth checking out.
Oh, by the way, I’m new here at Legend, so let me introduce myself: Hi, my name is Chris. I’m a fan of cats, Beat writers, people with geeky glasses, rock music, Star Trek and foggy climates. I’m not usually this grumpy. And I look forward to writing for you more!
This is San Francisco, home of the disenfranchised, the rebel, the artistic warrior. This is San Francisco, home of the progessive thinker, revolutionary, voice of the voiceless. What better place to celebrate independent thinking, art and culture at it’s best? Even our local government agrees that now is the time to come together to explore, create, celebrate and enjoy the amazing myriad of talent in our fair city!
Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a proclamation in November 2007, officially declaring September 8 - 12 as “Independent Artists Week” in San Francisco! Celebrate Independent Artists Week as Infin8 Sync and friends host various informative and entertaining events throughout the week. Artists Week (IAW) is a weeklong celebration of artists ranging from Musicians and Filmmakers to Fine Artists and Fashion Designers. Everybody will have the opportunity to collaborate, be enlightened and celebrate their industries!
The schedule consists of the following activities:
“Green Day” - Live Artists construct a mural in an art-deprived setting with drinks, live music and poetry
BYOA- Get Graphic - Independent magazines, fashion designers and graphic artists “show their stuff” in a mash up celebration for graphic artists in these industries .
Ear Hustle - Dedicated to the development and progression of the Bay Area Independent Music Industry. Join the conversation of where the Bay’s music scene is headed. Meet people that make it happen and learn what it takes to survive in one of the hardest industries in entertainment.
Lyricist Lounge - Music ‘n Film Conference – The finale and ultimate celebration
Filmmakers and musicians: writers, producers, directors, etc. exhibit their skills while all other facets of the arts come together to show how they are very significant in the film and music industries .
All of these activities will allow for an opportunity of unity and synergy in the independent industry. The target audience for this conference are all artists and supporters, as well as businesses who cater to the artist community. The Bay Area is yearning for an event of this magnitude.
Also, portions of the proceeds from this event will go to the several designated non-profits.
I apologize if the picture above has hurt your eyes. It hurts mine even more because it’s a picture of me. Yep. That’s a 13 year old, tortured soul named Amber. Why on earth would I post this online, not once but twice? To promote a show, of course! The show is Mortified, and yes, I am aware that I have promoted this show in the past. But here’s the difference. This time, I’ll be on stage reading my most private high school thoughts and some of the worst teen poetry you’ve ever heard. It’s going to be a great show and I encourage all of you to come out and share the pain!
It’s Summertime! Time for BBQs, Beaches and long hot angsty confession from your favorite local teenage icons! The heat is on with one of our hottest MORTIFIED’S yet! This one is full of passion, pain, sex and angst!
This month features:
GEORDIE MARTINEZ: After seeing “Dangerous Liaisons”, and having his heart broken, a 17 year old navy kid attempts some Dangerous Liaisons of his own.
AMBER MILNER: The true story of a 6 foot 1 awkward 15 year old girl and her spiral descent into depression and horribly bad poetry.
KEVIN WOFSY: Hear the diary entries of a young boy who came out of the closet right before being shipped to a conservative British boarding school and going right back into the closet.
ANGEL YAU: A real and very self deprecating “vote for me” speech made before her high school class election…partially musical and truly embarrassing!
SEAN SWEENEY: Hear a self-absorbed, unique ripoff of “Lord of the Flies” as a screenplay.
CHRIS WEST: Witness the poetic tragedy that occurs with too much listening to The Cure and not enough time talking to girls!
PLUS: THE RETURN OF THE HOUSE BAND: The nasty raunchy metal sounds of LIVE EVIL doing interpretations of bad 80’s metal songs!
All this and more at your comedy/self-help escape, MORTIFIED!!!
SHARE THE SHAME!
WHAT: Mortified
WHEN: Saturday 8/23 and Monday 8/25
TIME: 8:00pm (Doors Open At 7:00)
WHERE: Make-Out Room (3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110)
TIX: www.eventbrite.com
COST: $12 Presale / $15 at Door
