09 January 2014

san francisco - adventures in food & beat lit


Below is a list of places to visit while in San Francisco.  Chosen based on my love of music, food, art, nature, or free / low cost activities.  Here are my Daytrip Reviews- followed by Food Reviews- followed by a more detailed index list of these places that includes their addresses and hours of operation.  But first let me share a little Beat influenced music for you to enjoy (for those who know “Naked Lunch” by Burroughs) during your read ...


Locals often travel on foot or by public transportation.  Parking can be expensive (up to $65 per day in some neighborhoods).  Strongly recommend visiting a Walgreen's to buy a Clipper Card, which is good on most public transport and can be refilled as needed.  Bikes are seen everywhere, but so are steep hills (not for novices).  Taxis are abundant and reasonably priced.  You have to love a town where you see businessmen in suits riding skateboards to work in the Financial District.

I visited neighborhoods like Chinatown, Japantown, North Beach, Mission District, museums in the Financial District and Muir Woods north of the Golden Gate.  I did not bother with the overpriced and tourist populated Fisherman’s Wharf.  Really enjoyed staying with friends in Oakland, where their beautiful backyard full of fruit trees perked up our breakfast and good times were had winding down in their salt water hot tub during the evenings.

DAYTRIP reviews --

Treasure Island is just over the Bay Bridge (which was twinkling with thousands of white lights when I visited).  In a warehouse on the island there is a working artist collaborative that stores & builds monolithic sized art sculptures on-site together (often they are kinetic art).  The LED illuminated sculpture outdoors is called “Bliss” and was part of the documentary film “Spark.”  Like the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, this is an amazing repository for many large scale works.  Incredibly impressive and recommended.


Bliss Dancer by artist Marco Cochrane


Heartfullness by artist Katy Boynton

Charon by artist Peter Hudson (a ferris wheel sized zoetrope of the styx boatman)

Jewish Contemporary Art Museum offered an exhibit of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs.  Several were published in Ginsberg’s book “Beat Memories“ which is available on amazon.  An intimate collection of artfully snapped candids featuring the stalwarts of the Beat literary movement such as William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, etc. often with handwritten captions.  Very much enjoyed the audio/video that floated throughout the room of Ginsberg reading his work.  Excellent soundtrack for a literary art exhibit.  I was recommended SFMOMA frequently but they were closed during my visit in August 2013 for construction, it is said they have a phenomenal collection of contemporary masters.  SFMOMA did loan a small exhibit to the Jewish Contemporary under the exhibit umbrella of artwork made with spiritual fervor.  Fun, modern architecture in this museum with lots of vaulted ceilings and a well curated collection.





City Lights Bookstore 
There is an independently owned bookstore in North Beach with three floors of books designated as a Historical Landmark.  The top floor holds classics and poetry, there portraits of great writers line the wall near the ceiling.  This upper room is also used for smaller poetry readings and has windows that look out into Kerouac Alley below as well as eyeshot of the cheap tenement rental across the street.  Quite appropriate to look out the window at a clothesline of working class people who use a rooftop as a soccer field for their kids.  

The Beat movement in art & literature grew out of earlier movements like dada surrealism, bauhaus, french bohemian and grew into a counter culture movement that includes hippies (Beat is often tied to jazz music, spoken word, modern art, cinema verite and french new wave film).  Described as non-conformists, who rejected materialism, living often as transient bohemians, with interest in experimentation, alternative sexuality, esoteric mysticism, and spontaneous creativity in art, music and writing known for "explicit portrayals of the human condition." Kerouac defined Beat to be like "beatific, upbeat, on the beat," somehow divine and in synch with the flow of the universe. 

When I visited City Lights Bookstore I was led up those stairs by the sound of poetry being read aloud, drawn to the smell of printed text on paper.  Words had rolled up the walls of the alley & into the window, sound emanating throughout the building so that you could hear the poets' beckon.  Poetry can be so essential and down to earth.  Some primordial & intrinsic expression, uttered outloud on the street itself for whomever chooses to listen. It was pretty great to get to the top of the stairs & realize the poets were actually outside in the street and the sound simply carried by the speakers, delightful.  I found my way outside & enjoyed a large poetry reading.  Diverse range of writers mixed with poetry devotees and occasional interested passerby.

The bookstore opened in this location in 1952, later venturing into publishing during 1955 with Lawrence Ferlenghetti, raided in 1957 for selling what was considered obscene poetry such as Ginsberg's "Howl", and defended by the ACLU in protection of First Amendment free speech rights.  In what became known as a precedent establishing verdict for the publishing industry, that case helped paved the way for what we know as modern American literature, more free of the constraints of over-reaching legal censorship.  

"during the trial of Ferlinghetti, respected writers and professors testified for the defense. Judge Horn rendered his precedent-setting verdict, declaring that Howl was not obscene and that a book with 'the slightest redeeming social importance' guarantees First Amendment protection. Horn's decision established the precedent that paved the way for the publication of such hitherto banned books as D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer". The media attention resulting from the trial stimulated national interest," - from wiki

All of the books mentioned above were on the Pope's Banned Book lists for decades (meaning ex-communication for readers).  For example, Henry Miller was an American writer who had to publish in France during the 1930's due to his home country's puritanical censorship practices and difficulty in shipping and distributing such literary work (his work wasn't printed in America till 1961 with even more obscenity trials for the 30 year old book). The bookstore's trial sensationalized several of the writers and by 1958, 'beatnik' had become a pop trend much to the originators dismay.  So unfortunately instead of being respected for taking the legal risk that freed publishing from many shackles of censorship, the beat movement got written off as some sort of fashion statement to be rolled out into a trite, static, tv stereotype (e.g. Mayard G. Krebbs off "Dobie Gillis" 1959-1963) wearing berets and beating bongos.  I was more attracted to Beat literature due to its influences of Buddhism, Taoism, meditation, Algerian mysticism, jazz as spontaneous expression of trained musicians, writing as stream of consciousness on the level of automatic-writing.

I could devote an entire blog to this one bookstore.  But, I really like books even in the age of Kindle (someone recently told me books will always exist, if nothing else as art objects to be collected & displayed).  So I felt lucky to visit the mecca of the literary Beat Movement.  I bought an illustrated hardback copy of poetry from 1794, written and illustated by William Blake called "Songs of Innocence and Experience" instead of a t-shirt. I skipped the "beatnik" kiosk at vesuvius & went to caffe trieste where they roast their own beans instead.   http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/sie/ 





^one of many quotes on the sidewalk in Kerouac Alley\/ between City Lights and Vesuvius

 
San Francisco has some amazing parks, including famous Golden Gate park.  I visited Washington Square Park in North Beach near City Lights Bookstore, then later went to Delores Park near the sanctioned & vibrant graffiti painted walls of Clarion Alley skirting the Mission District.   

 
 


Nature is an essential way to take a moment during travels and ground your energy, rejuvenate yourself & save a little money while you catch your breath.  I am a big fan of park picnic baskets, brown bag liquid lunches, sitting in the grass, humming on a pipe and people watching.  Apparently Jack Kerouac was known to lounge around daytime drinking in Washington Square Park, nurturing his alcoholism and scribbling genius prose.  The author even documented a nap in this North Beach park in his later book “Big Sur” which documented his further descent into the addiction that eventually killed him.  Below is a quote from the book about his day in Washington Square park: 

“So Ben ... sees I’m going overboard crazy and I need sleep — ‘We’ll get a bottle!’ I yell. But end up, he’s sitting in the grass of the park smoking his pipe, from noon to 6 P.M., and I’m passed out exhausted sleeping in the grass, bottle unopened, only to wake up once in a while wondering where I am and by God I’m in Heaven with Ben Fagan watching over men and me. And I say to Ben when I wake up in the gathering 6 P.M. dusk, ‘Ah Ben I’m sorry I ruined our day by sleeping like this’ but he says: ‘You needed the sleep, I told ya’—‘and you mean to tell me you been sitting all afternoon like that?’—‘Watching unexpected events’ says he …  ‘What happened while I was asleep?’—‘Oh, people went by and came back and forth and the sun sank and finally sank down and is gone now almost as you can see, what you want, just name it you got it’—‘Well I want sweet salvation’—‘What’s 'sposed to be sweet about salvation? maybe it’s sour’ …  I feel good because I’ve had my sleep but mainly I feel good because somehow old Ben (my age) has blessed me by sitting over my sleep all day and now with these few silly words … It’s been the only peaceful day I’ve had in California, in fact, except alone in the woods”


 

SUTRO BATH RUINS & SUTRO HEIGHTS garden park--
If you love nature and ruined architecture, then put on some good walking shoes and take a hike around Sutro Baths along Ocean Beach.  Beautiful crashing waves, rocky boulders cresting from the earth, dramatic ruins of a bygone era, mysterious cave tunnel, precarious staircases... its enough to make you want to wear dramatic victorian garb & write poetry.  Sutro Baths was built around 1896 as the largest indoor pool complex in the world with grand vaulted ceilings, glass skylights, pools and eventually an ice skating rink.  A fire in 1966 utterly destroyed the facility leaving only geometric and angular pools for algae & wildlife to reclaim.  However now it is under the watchful eye of the NPS & open to the public.  Next door is the still open & updated, Cliff House Restaurant (which offers Sunday brunch for $50 per person with bottomless mimosas) and across the street is Sutro Height Park and garden.  Lots of free parking in the immediate area.  The National Park Service offers a map that includes miles of hiking trails that go from the stone parapet observation deck overlooking the garden in Sutro Heights, down to the crumbling ruins of Sutro Baths and the not-to-be-missed cave to the north of the bath ruins.  A staircase to the North of the ruins leads to a trail around the Golden Gate Park area and USS San Franciso memorial that runs along the beach of the Pacific Ocean. Lands End trail is in the same area.  South of Sutro Baths, is the Cliff House restaurant that has beautiful ocean views and was built by the same Adolph Sutro who created the rest.  Cliff House offers public restrooms, $$$ dining, and a gift shop for tourists.  Self guided tours of the Sutro Bath Ruins, Cave and Sutro Heights garden park are all free.


 










View of the Sutro Bath ruins taken from with a Canon PowerShot S70 suspended from a Delta Levitation Light kite. The veritical line running thru the photo is the kite line.  Photo Credit: Kato4 taken 11 June 2007

Daiso is a small chain of dollar stores that sell small Japanese products including kitchen gadgets, stationary supplies, beauty accessories & lots of little whimsical, practical objects.  I was disappointed to have missed their shop in Japantown, but they have another location near Market Street by my hotel which even my boyfriend found fun.  They have an online shop but it is very limited in comparison to the inventory at the storefront location.  This is not an anime shop, however if you love random kawaii characters, unusual shapes & colors then you will be on cloud nine. 


Its a lonnnnnnng , breathtakingly lovely walk from the parking lot to the mountain-top paradise known as Nature Friends Tourist Club.  A beautiful drive along the Panoramic Highway north of San Francisco takes you to the town of Mill Valley.  Nestled in the Muir Woods, the spot is perched on a mountain with a spectacular view.  Styled like a German chalet in the Alps, typically only open to private members however they are open to the public one Saturday out of the month if you check their calendar.  So say you wanted to start your own fraternal organization, base it on a love of community & hiking in the green mountains, then you end up building your own amazing German influenced biergarten/clubhouse chalet then you have the right idea.  Nature Friends Tourist Clubs are found all over the world and are based on the concept of hiker cabins you would find in the Alps to rest in, these depend on the honor system to maintain.  Nature Friends Tourist Club serve beer till their supply runs out and it is CASH ONLY, with nary an ATM to be found in the trunks of any of these lovely trees.  Beer, Forest, Hiking, Clean Air and they even offer board games to guests.  Delightful place to bring a picnic.  Members have the luxury of RSVPing one of the handfuls of cabins on their property for overnight visits.  Wear good footwear, LNT & enjoy the beautifully groomed & maintained hiking trails where you find the occasional bench after walking much incline.  So nice of them to share their beautiful space with us.  I feel like I should keep it a secret so it doesn’t become overrun, but the smart folks there keep it to themselves the rest of the time & that is a good thing for everyone.







FOOD Reviews (addresses listed at the end of the blog)--

Had fresh seafood at both Swan Oyster Depot in Nob Hill and R&G Lounge in Chinatown.  Swan Oyster Depot is over 100 years old and serves the freshest seafood remarkably fast.  Tasty crab and serious selection of oysters, divine clam chowder.  Worth the wait. Simply delicious, fresh seafood, understandably the best seafood in the city and frequently voted so. On the other hand R&G Lounge recommends reservations, but the chinese food is authentic and crab looked as good as Anthony Bourdain said it would be.  Chinatown is full of cheap chinese food featuring carnival barkers on the curb hawking to bring in tourists.  R&G was full of local asian diners, tasty food and no hype.
 

The Ferry Building is on the Embarcadero near Pier 1.  It is like a food court / mall that ONLY sells foodie fabulousness in little shops.  Tons of shops who produce their own fare, such as locally made cheese, sausages, vinegars, regional raw honey and the like.  A few days a week they allow a farmers market to spring up outside on the sidewalk.  Great place for a cheap but refined lunch bought inside & enjoyed outside in back where the pier views the Pacific Ocean.  This place is a must for any chef or serious home cook.



Bang San Thai is near enough to the Financial District to deliver and the food did not disappoint.  Had papaya salad, curried chicken, rich succulent Tom Kha soup was delivered still hot, savory and happily enjoyed from my hotel room the one night we chose to stay in.

Mario’s Bohemian Cigar overlooks Washington Square Park near North Beach & City Lights bookstore.  Excellent Italian food, full bar and coffee.  Service was quick & polite.  While in the North Beach area we visited Caffe Trieste to taste their in-house roasted coffee.  This place is serious about coffee, they are not starbucks so don’t roll in their talking venti bla bla bla.  Caffe Trieste is a landmark on any Beat History tour & it is still visited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Over in Mission District we hooked up our soda fix at The Fizzery which offered hundreds of specialty soda pop & microbrew like colas.  This candy & soda fix was an accidental find before I gave up walking up hills and waited inside before calling a cab.

The most fulfilling foodie adventure of my entire trip was the tour at Sunce Winery north of the city, in Santa Rosa which is tucked into the Sonoma Valley wine country.  Lovely drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.  Owned by a family & less fancy that some of the bigger wineries, but down-to-earth, super nice and generous with the pour.  Loved the educational part of the tour where we saw how casks are stored, cared for and later bottled.  After the wine tasting (from white to red), we took a stroll through the vineyards before heading back to the hotel.  This winery is not as old as some of the other Sonoma Valley wineries, but this family kept vineyards in their home country of Croatia for generations before moving to California.  This artisinal skill is evident in the flavor spectrum of their wine and blends.  Excellent wines and they do ship.




INDEX LIST
Transportation / Daytrip Activities & Restaurants by Neighborhood:
Random / Financial District / North Beach / Telegraph Hill / Ocean Beach / Japantown / Mission District / North of SF / Nightlife spots

Transportation
- Daily visitor passes available on BART & MUNI or get a
* $30 Clipper Card from Walgreens (works on all BART, MUNI, F Line Streetcar, Commuter Ferry) refill as needed.
- Mike’s Bikes Rental - chain open since 1964, original location at 1233 Howard St 94103.
* $6 Tollway on Golden Gate Bridge to return (free to leave) one time payment 877-229-8655

Random Places of Excellence
*Swan Oyster Depot $$, 1517 Polk St. (bt. Sacramento & California in Nob Hill) – local seafood.  Open 10:30a – 5:30p everyday closed on Sunday.  Won Best of sf for last 14 years. Only 20 seats, super friendly & not rushed.  AMAZEBALLS fresh crab & oysters (no veg).
* R& G Lounge $$ Chinese 631 Kearny St., Chinatown San Francisco; (Bourdain recommended salt & pepper crab). Vegetarian friendly full bar
* American Steel (burning man art whse in Oakland)
* Treasure Island (bm art whse in Winery Bldg, gives tours) http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/treasure-island


Financial District area
* The Ferry Bldg. closes at 6pm (acme bakery, cowgirl creamery cheeses, far west fungi, boccalone salumaria, beekind honey, stonehouse oil & vinegars) 1 Sausalito (embarcadero @market street, pier 1)- San Francisco Ferry Bldg  San Francisco, CA 94111 with farmers market, cafes & artisanal food stores, via F streetcar running along Market Street that turns north at the embarcadero.  http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/merchant_list.php 

 -SFMOMA closed for renovations when I was there Sept 2013

- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts $10 12-8 701 Mission Street SF, gallery/performance hall/lovely garden park with free lunchtime outdoor concerts

- Jewish Contemporary Art Museum 736 Mission @ 3rd $12 11a-5Allen Ginsberg photo exhibit & part of SFMOMA’s collection currently on display

- Bang San THAI $, 505 Jones St. (in tenderloin, but has free delivery to our hotel)

- Cartoon Art Museum 655 Mission Street $7  11am -5pm, closed monday

North Beach (pier 7ish)
* City Lights Bookstore 261 Columbus Av @ Broadway 94133 10a-midnight (literary mecca of SF) www.citylights.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Lights_Bookstore  
* Mario's Bohemian Cigar (Italian food & Coffee), 566 Columbus Ave. $ 10a-11p
* Washington Square Park (beautiful green space, next to marios & cathedral, chill space) http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2006/06/02/jack-kerouacs-nap-in-washington-square-park-sf-ca/
* Caffe Trieste $, 601 Vallejo St. (produces, roasts & brews coffee, beat history)
- Green Tortoise Hostel (Kearney at Broadway) Green Tortoise Hostel $37 per night
- Beat Museum $8 – 540 Broadway 10a -7p tiny museum includes neat gift shop
- Vesuvius coffee (full bar, coffee shop, beatnik t-shirt seller)
- The Saloon 232 Grant (bt. Columbus & Vallejo) est. 1861 blues bar  http://www.sfblues.net/Saloon.html

Telegraph hill
- Exploratorium Science & Interactive Museum (6-10 Thu $15. All other days is $25) Willard Aylum suitcases exhibit in West Gallery– near Pier 15 on Telegraph Hill
-  Telegraph hill staircase & Coit Tower - both free to explore, observation deck
- TCHO Chocolate at Pier 17 near Telegraph Hill-free samples, hour tour by reservation at 10:25 & 1:55pm http://www.tcho.com/tour/

Ocean Beach
*Sutro Baths Ruins 48th @ Point Lobos Ave. cave & free nature area -National Park Area. Beautiful and free entry.  Lots of free parking nearby.
*Sutro Heights Park across the street from Cliff House & Sutro Baths.  Lovely view
Ocean Beach – free parking, free admission way too cold to swim in
- Cliff House, 1090 Point Lobos Av. – expensive restaurants but nearest restrooms to Sutro
Map for hiking around Sutro Baths at:

Japantown (west of 101 north of market)
ichiban kan and daiso are dollar stores full of fun random japanese items, but maido has costly variety.
- Maido - 2nd floor 1581 Webster St, San Francisco (variety)
- Ichiban Kan 1625 Post St - Miyako Mall 22 Peace Plz, Ste 540 - (between Buchanan St & Laguna St)
* Daiso 22 Peace Plaza (in the same building as Ichiban Kan, has own generic. Also has location in financial district on Market Street) www.daisojapan.com
- Kissako Tea House: Japan Center, 1581 Webster Street, #195, San Francisco, CA $8.75 bento meal
- Super Mira: 1790 Sutter Street (supermarket with hot take out counter in back)

Mission District
* sanctioned Graffiti Alley (“Clarion Alley” off Mission bt 17th & 18th)
* Delores Park (south on delores st @ 18th)  simple casual, nice people smoking, less touristy that golden gate park
* make out room, bar & lounge - 3225 22nd St @ Mission, SF – free entry, divey lounge bar w cheapish drinks. Stopped in for a poetry reading & drinks.
- five & diamond clothing store.  510 valencia near 16th. Alt wear
* The Fizzery (allllll the bottled soda pop varieties) 2949 Mission St, 11:45a – 7pm

North of San Francisco (lovely drive across golden gate bridge)
* Nature Friends Tourist Club – chalet style hiking 30 Ridge Ave., Mill Valley 94941 open select days to guests (check their website) north outside city, cash only beer, byob allowed, picnic baskets encouraged. off Panoramic Hwy.  http://touristclubsf.org/
* Sunce Winery 1839 Olivet Rd  Santa Rosa 95401 (707) 526-9463 operated by Frane Franicevic.  Family owned & operated in Sonoma Valley.  Free tours for groups of less than 6 people. www.suncewinery.com

Nightlife (check fb for times & djs)
Underground SF - 424 haight (djs)
Monarch 101 6th St  10p- 3am (djs)
Public Works, 161 Erie Street, SF, CA - 21+,  (djs)
Lounge 3411 in Oakland (djs)
Boom Boom Room (oldest blues club west of Mississippi)  in fillmore, motown & soul
Yoshi’s Jazz Club (big room, expensive meals) 1330 Fillmore, SF 94115

Gallery of my vacation photos at (mostly grafitti, nature & sunce winery):

HUGE gratitude to my friends, guides & hosts for helping me enjoy california – much love to heather blaikie, kelli lewis, stacy young, rudy peev, mike clagg & mike steele. Without their help this travel blog would not have been possible. 

08 October 2013

VideoFest26 films about or by WOMEN



Below is a list of videos, you ladies may have interest in.  These one time screenings will be held during the 26th Annual Dallas VideoFest held Oct. 9-13.  For more info visit - www.videofest.org

CAMERA/WOMAN (Morocco) Director: Karima Zoubir.  Working as a videographer at weddings in Casablanca, Khadija Harrad is part of a new generation of young, divorced Moroccan women seeking to realize their desires for independence while honoring their families' wishes. Mother of an 11-year-old son and primary breadwinner for her parents and siblings, she navigates daily between the elaborate fantasy world of the parties she films and the demands from her traditionally conservative family. Sponsored by Women Make Movies. Documentary Feature. Saturday, Oct. 12, 6:15 pm,, Alamo Drafthouse


FREE THE BUTTERFLY/UWOLNIC MOTYLA (Poland) Director: Joanna Frydrych. Catherine Rosicka-JaczyÅ„ska used to have money, beauty, and fame, until she got sick. While ALS kills in average after four years, she lives more than a dozen. This disease takes the possibility of any movement, and Catherine is exceptionally active in the modeling industry. She is not able to speak a single word, but wrote a book that became a bestseller. Catherine achieves everything she wants, except one of the most important things.  Documentary Feature. Sun., Oct. 13, 4:00 pm, Alamo Drafthouse.

GIRLS LOVE HORSES (USA) Director: Jennifer Reeder.  A professional woman, traveling alone, recalls and reenacts an incident from her adolescence after injuring herself off-camera. This experimental narrative unravels patiently and points to melodrama as a potential form of plot structure. An adult female and the girl ghost from her past emerge and retreat within real-time exchanges and previously recorded footage. The linearity is disrupted by magical b-roll and a constant shift between the actual and imagined. This is a fractured little story about a business trip, a bloodstain and being okay.  Experimental Short.  Experimental Program 3: TIME AND OTHER DIMENSIONS – Saturday, Oct 12, 2:15 pm, Alamo Drafthouse.

Lie Back and Enjoy It:  A Film about Joann Elam (USA) Director: Jessica Bardsley.  JoAnn Elam was an experimental filmmaker, postal worker, and social activist. This film remixes JoAnn's footage as a way of introducing viewers to her life and work.  Screens with FREE RADICALS.  Sun., Oct. 13, 7:30 pm.

TOWING (USA) Director: Wenhwa Ts'ao.  A film about a female veteran's struggle to make the adjustment to civilian life, one fateful night her experiences in the war come back to challenge her as she's yet again forced to face meaningless death. TOWING explores themes of gender, race and class with a feminine perspective on the emotional effects of war. Narrative Short.  GETTING IN TROUBLE shorts block – Sunday, Oct. 13, 6:15 pm.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG PRESENTS MOMS MABLEY (USA) - Breaking racial and sexual boundaries as a pioneering comic talent, the African-American stand-up comedienne Jackie “Moms” Mabley has long been an icon in the comedy world. First-time director Whoopi Goldberg explores Mabley’s legacy through recently unearthed photography, rediscovered performance footage, and the words of numerous celebrated comedians, entertainers, and historians, including Eddie Murphy, Joan Rivers, Sidney Poitier, Kathy Griffin, Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Mabley tackled topics such as gender, sex, and racism, making her one of the first triple X-rated comedians on the comedy circuit. Once billed as “The Funniest Woman in the World,” she performed on stage and in television and film up until her death in 1975.  Comedy pioneer Moms Mabley comes to life again, complete with rolling laughter and measured eloquence, in this astute first documentary feature which showcases Mabley’s talent and pays homage to a woman whose relevance still resonates today. Documentary Feature.  Thursday, Oct. 10, 10:00 pm.

ANNE BRADEN:  SOUTHERN PATRIOT (USA) Director: Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering.  Hailed by King as “eloquent and prophetic,” the power of life committed to social transformation by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering.  Documentary Feature.  Saturday, Oct 12, 12 pm.

MERCY MERCY: PORTRAIT OF A TRUE ADOPTION (Denmark) Director: Katrine Riis Kjaer.  Easily one of the most important documentaries on inter-country adoption, this documentary offers a rare look at all participants in the adoption process, including the parents who give their children up. Two loving Ethiopians parents, Sinkenesh and Hussen, just diagnosed with HIV are told they have only a year to live. They make the painful decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption, handing them over to a Danish family. In an emotional departure, the Danish family promises to stay in touch and the adoption agency agrees to broker the relationship. What seems like the best decision for the children becomes a series of tragic and painful events for all, unveiling that the wellbeing of children is not always the main priority in the adoption process. Greed, selfishness, unrealistic expectations and skewed cultural perspectives idealizing one way of life over another collide in this powerful story.  Documentary Feature.  Saturday, Oct. 12, 4:15 pm, Alamo Drafthouse.

VESSEL (USA) Director: Diana Whitten.  Captain Rebecca Gomperts and her organization, Women on Waves, work with a global network of locally-based organizations to transport women 12 miles offshore, just outside of domestic jurisdiction, where doctors provide safe, legal medical abortions at sea. Their actions shock the church, infuriate the government, exhilarate the media, and provoke mass debate among the voting population, but break no laws. They hope, instead, to save lives. Documentary Feature (Preview Screening). Director in Attendance. Thursday, Oct. 10, 6:45pm, Alamo Drafthouse

LUCKY (USA) by Director: Laura Checkoway.  Spanning five years on the streets of NYC, this intimate documentary follows Lucky Torres, a young mother and homeless lesbian masked in tattoos who longs to rise from a life of darkness. Documentary Feature.  Sun., Oct. 13, 12 pm, Alamo Drafthouse

DVF26's Opening Night will be on Wed. Oct. 9 with Ruby Revue doing a burlesque show, 60’s costume contest & a premiere film screening of "TRUE TALES" told by one of Jack Ruby's headlining dancers.  This AMS Pictures original production centers on Nancy Myers (aka “Tammi True”) who will do a Q&A after this documentary film which delves into her life as a headlining act dancing at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in the early 1960s. Celebrate with the Video Association of Dallas, we invite everyone to come dressed in their best early 1960s “Mad Men” attire. $20 cover for 21+ includes film, performance, cash bar and party featuring music by Dj Mr. Rid (free admission to All-Festival Pass holders). Dallas VideoFest 26’s opening night documentary feature will be screened at the same location as the Opening Night event being held at Gilley's Dallas with doors opening at 7pm. 

TRUE TALES (USA) Director: Katie Dunn.  Just two days after Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a little-known Dallas strip club operator named Jack Ruby murders Oswald on live television. Why did he do it? Despite decades of theories and speculation, the question has never been satisfactorily answered…until now. Shunning the press for nearly 50 years, Tammi True—a top-billed stripper in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club—is finally ready to reveal the answers. AMS Pictures presents an original docudrama exploring the bizarre world of 1960s Dallas burlesque through the eyes of its preeminent entertainer. Featuring dramatic re-creations shot on actual locations, TRUE TALES immerses you into the events that led to one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th Century. Documentary Feature.  Opening Night Oct 9th at Gilley’s Dallas, doors open at 7 pm.

Dallas VideoFest was voted 2012 Best Annual Festival by D Magazine. Our Expanded Cinema program was voted 2012 Best Visual Art and 2013 Best Light Show by Dallas Observer.  Video Association of Dallas (VAD) brings our community quality video programming such as the independent alternatives of VideoFest 26. 

Tickets to Films:

All Weekend Festival Passes:

 

26 November 2012

expanded cinema 2012 dvf omni video installation

- INDEX -
(1) transcript of the curator quotes & artists' statements for the dallas video fest collaboration to show art on the Omni Dallas Hotel
(2) summary video clips of the one time only screening as captured on youtube, vimeo etc. from multiple perspectives
(3) local press coverage of the event & photos & press videos of the display

---
(1) copied from the the curator Carolyn Sorter's press release which includes artists' statements below -

"The walls of the Omni Dallas Hotel are continuously wrapped with LED bars that function rather like a low-res computer monitor. Only a handful of buildings in the world offer displays similar to this one, and since this particular system was specifically created to fit the hotel's architecture, it is unique.

The company that installed the system provided a small repertoire of videos adapted for it, but not even the person responsible for operating it, Pat Anderson, understood all the details of the system's requirements and display parameters.

So the coordinator of the project, Carolyn Sortor (also an artist in the program), with assistance from Ben Britt, worked with Anderson to analyze and test the formats compatible with the system and the dimensions of the display and its "pixels." Sortor and Britt then created a template designed to make it easier for artists to create works that might utilize the display's full
potential.

(Digital image by Carolyn Sortor, from part of the template, which was also
used in testing the display.)


All had experience with video, but none had ever worked with anything remotely like the Omni system. The display constitutes a potentially looping screen approximately 193 feet high and 999 feet wide. But while it may be the biggest screen in town, it's very low-res, effectively just 20 display pixels tall and 333 in width or circumference.

The organizers also hoped KXT 91.7 FM public radio would simulcast the program audio, and that could happen only if it were appropriate for the station's listeners; e.g., the works had to have audio, without any excessively long silences or objectionable content. But since many people might also never hear the audio, the videos also had to work without it...  

The "expanded" in the program title refers not just to the size of the Omni display, and not just to the seminal 1970 book of the same title by pioneering new media theorist Gene Youngblood, who will speak at the VideoFest on Sunday afternoon, but to the breadth and depth of our viewers, as well as the potential of media to help us not only to define but also to share and expand our points of view....


All works are site-specific video especially designed for the LED display on the exterior walls of the Omni Dallas Hotel, with audio expected to be simulcast by KXT 91.7 FM radio, and were made in 2012.
Curated by Carolyn Sortor, Bart Weiss, and Michael A. Morris. (TRT 52:15 min.)

Works in the program are shown in the order listed below.

Tim Capper with Ryan Hartsell and Wes Martin, Pong Master, 1:49 min.
visionwise.com
"Playing games with each other is the intention of the living. Being nice to each other is the invention of the living. Exploiting each other is the convention of the sinning." Online flaming. Game Over. Concept by Tim Capper, with script, music, and audio effects by Wes Martin and animation by Ryan Hartsell.


Michael Alexander Morris, Monument for Juanita: Candy is the Sun, 2:45 min.
michaelalexandermorris.com
Monument for Juanita: Candy is the Sun is an ephemeral moving light monument to Juanita Slusher (aka Candy Barr), the infamous exotic dancer and Dallas folk hero who performed at Abe Weinstein's Colony Club, which was originally located just steps away from the current location of the Omni Hotel in Downtown Dallas. Over the years, the skyline of Dallas has morphed from the brick and concrete architecture that characterized many cities at mid-century to a sleek, postmodern cityscape of glass, argon, and LED screens. In her own words, “[d]ancing was my greatest pleasure. It was my world. I danced a picture. I just lived it up there, and whatever I was painting came across – charcoals, oils, or pen-and-inks.” Monument seeks to commemorate Juanita in her moments of creative ecstasy, giving her the face of the city as her canvas.



Shane Mecklenburger, OMNEY, 4 min.
shmeck.com
I'm fascinated with perceived value – what we value, and how we value it. I'm also interested in – and often astonished by – the spectacle accompanying symbols of value. This spectacle is a creative activity, like the daily invention of value itself. Nothing has any value until we impart it, so every economy is an act of imagination. My projects participate in these activities to highlight our creative control and the malleability of value. For the Dallas Videofest I chose the format of the dance party, a basic human spectacle accompanying nearly every important cultural transaction. I thought it would be fun to try and make the building dance. The spectacular scale and cost of the Omni's display made it seem like the perfect medium to express the ritual dance of value and exchange.




Mona Kasra, You'll Forget Everything, Soon, 1:28 min.
monakasra.com
Mona Kasra is a new media artist and a PhD candidate at University of Texas at Dallas with a focus in Arts & Technology. Mona's video artworks tend to be poetic autobiographies, revealing her curiosities, memories, fears, and insecurities, and are mainly centered on a process of personal discovery through an open narrative structure. You'll Forget Everything, Soon is about physical and emotional distance. It alludes to the obscurity of human communication, and the curious relation between presence and absence. It explores the state of being and simultaneously not-being, and is occupied with the thoughts of two people who are close, yet far away from one another.


Andrea Goldman, Stop. Collaborate. Listen., 3:07 min.
andreagoldman.org
Andrea Goldman creates videos, drawings, and songs that explore overlapping rhetorics of ideology, common sense, and personal freedom. Her video Stop. Collaborate. Listen. uses the concept of hendiatris, a rhetorical device that conveys a broad concept – or motto – through three terms or phrases, such as "eat, drink, and be merry" or "live, love, and learn."



Jenny Vogel, Save Our Souls, 7:30 min.
jennyvogel.net
My work explores subjective themes as they are experienced in the age of information. I examine the anxiety of alienation, the desires of communication and a sense of be-longing in a virtual world. These traits, attributed to Romanticism, are dealt with in my work through the lenses of contemporary communication technology, the media and historical preconceptions. I am particularly interested in the depiction of the individual and individuality through media technology, with its resulting misrepresentations and miscommunications. Through this juxtaposition of technology and Romanticism I attempt to challenge the image of the Internet as the “global village,” objectivism in the news and the ideology of science. High-resolution photographs of low-resolution encounters, offer a surprisingly intimate reading of a contemporary loneliness. Live streaming video projections of the one-shot-per-second progression of web cameras result in a fireworks-display of light signals as if trying to communicate in some unknown code, some unknown message. Voyeurism and self-induced surveillance through constant online exposure are the desperate desires of participation in the online world, which fails in the colloquial boredom of chat-rooms. Together these practices present a postmodern tableau of the Romantic ideal of solitude, the failing utopia of the global village and the dark beauty of a mediated planet. However, I don’t merely see my subjects as victims whose individuality is crushed by the homogenizing effects of globalization and mass media. They are also heroes in a way, defying categorization, re-instating a sense of humanity, poetry and myth. These themes are expressed through a wide range of practices, including photography, live-streaming web movies, video, drawing and printmaking. In many of my works the medium is used in its original form, providing references to its real world scenarios, while at the same time adding self-reflexive content.



Frank Campagna, Orange you glad I didn't say knock knock, 3:22 min.
franksart.net
Frank Campagna is a fixture in Dallas whose murals are as recognizable as his scratchy voice. But he also has made an artistic mark with Deep Ellum's Kettle Art gallery, which offers a quiet escape amid the entertainment district's music venues. (USA Today 7/ 27/ 2012.) In his video entitled, Orange you glad I didn't say knock knock, Campagna utilizes his experience of working on a large scale, along with his recent fascination of playing with both video and audio editing.



Kyle Kondas, DOTS, 2:30 min.
vimeo.com/kyle1point0
My video paintings have always been a study of how to break down and disrupt the normal image of the video. The original material that I work with has always had to come from various areas of interest that I've been passionate about. First it started with video games, which I still work with, but recently I've started working with media referencing pop-culture. Originally, my pieces were glitched through the use of programs, but now I have started working with the video's code through the study of circuit bending. For the Omni, I decided to go back to one of my very first pieces ever and try applying both forms of glitching together. DOTS has been a new experiment and possible first piece into a new area of work.


Rebecca Carter with Mark Collop, The Eyeballs From Outer Space/Strangers in the Night, 3:14 min.
rebeccacarter.org
My works utilize language, thread matrixes, photography, and video to explore shifting states of intimacy and alienation. The Eyeballs from Outer Space have become a kind of super hero. They are the cosmic gaze of a benevolent Other swarming in layers larger and smaller. Semi-embodied as flickers of light momentarily on the Omni hotel they peer over the city of Dallas. They fix the city for a moment in a shifting gaze. "I love you   Dallas." They can't speak it, but the impulse of intention sits there on the edge of seeing and being seen. With audio by Frank Sinatra with Mark Collop.


Carolyn Sortor, Braille, 3:08 min.
c-cyte.com
In Braille, two hands each seamlessly circle the building twice, but never meet, "reading" a visual braille that sets out the name of the alphabet's inventor twice. In the language of dreams, Freud wrote, doubled objects can refer to repetition in time. The text is huge, but could probably be read only by those who can't see it, and be seen only by those who can't read it. The alphabet's inventor, Louis Braille, used an awl to create his texts, the same instrument with which he'd accidentally blinded himself as a child. Braille's invention revolutionized communications for the blind, but the school in which he taught forbade its use. Use of the alphabet spread after he died, but it's now being superseded by automated reading technologies. The sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor that's used in this piece expresses both the paralysis and gorgeous order that can result from conflicting emotions within individuals in an interconnected social group. Within individuals, such conflict can result in abulia; it can also create consciousness. In the moment of conscious indecision, time seems suspended; but it's not. Conflict implies difference. Some handicaps are invisible, yet real.

 
(above film clip #4 include Braille, Specter City and Owboy)

Edward Setina, Specter City, 3:38 min.
edwardsetina.com
Ted Setina's piece casts the Omni as a giant audio levels display that literally translates music into visual form, with display bars of a size suggesting rising and falling skyscrapers.
Jeff Gibbons, Owboy, 2:58 min.
jeffgibbons.net
I often find myself with a lack of position, more concerned with the interactions or connections between infinity and a seemingly finite life. I am here in an existence, all of which manifests itself in the perception of a fragile mind, a vehicle of flesh, which resides in a “cause-and-effect world.” This instills a need for attachment, understanding, and meaning (purpose). So I place meaning in the work I do (how I function in society), purpose in my attachments and love, and try to make the best of living, while existing in the knowledge of my own mortality. I see purpose as a coping mechanism that I cannot live without. It is the meaning I place on my own existence and everyone/everything else’s that makes now, before, and after have value. There is a balance between purpose and doubt, existing within life and death, where meaning and futility work as a seemingly polarized constant.



@hdxdvd (Kari Altmann), Omnia XII Ethnique Epic Vista Demo 1280p with Tribal, 2:47 min.
karialtmann.com
A string of mutated, translated, and appropriated terms from the back end and black markets of cultural and biological production. Through proximity, they exoticize and re-brand each other into mythical new territories, textures, and tribes. Displayed and titled similarly to HDTV demo clips full of "ethnic," seductive, and often feminine footage.  Kari Altmann is a wifi-based artist currently stationed in Baltimore and New York, with recent residencies and on-site projects in Bucharest, Seoul, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Panama, Bilbao, Berlin, and beyond, as well as several tours inside the U.S. Since earning a BFA from MICA in 2008, she has exhibited in a range of platforms, from "print to real life" showrooms and live stages to filesharing cloud communes, 3d simulated spaces like Chrystal Gallery for Gentili Apri, and editorial arenas like Dis Magazine and Rhizome at the New Museum.



Philip Lamb, Metamorphosis, 2:30 min.
philiplamb.com
As with most all cities, Dallas has a history of replacing old buildings with new ones . .. sometimes for good, sometimes for the worse. In the case of the Omni hotel, Dallas is lucky to have gained a beautifully appointed convention hotel where other buildings have stood. The metamorphosis of our built environment is an ongoing slow process. With intended irony, Philip Lamb’s video symbolizes this evolution by showing the implosion of older buildings on the surface of the new building. After the collapse, the architectural regeneration is represented by patterns of color. The music accompanying the video is "Bat Chain Puller" by Captain Beefheart. It is nonsensical and surreal, and serves to emphasize the organized chaos from which cities evolve.



Expanded Cinema was coordinated and compiled by Carolyn Sortor, and the template to facilitate the making of the video works was created by Carolyn Sortor and Ben Britt. Special thanks to Mark Abuzzahab of KXT 91.7 FM public radio; Pat Anderson of Matthews Southwest, Lighting Producer; the Omni Dallas Hotel, the Dallas Convention Center hotel; the City of Dallas; Bart Weiss with Dallas Video Fest for pushing the idea, and Jeff West for saying yes."

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(2) video clips of the one time only screening as captured on youtube, vimeo etc. from multiple perspectives.  The clips embedded above seem to be opportunists with a camera whom I believe got the best shots of the work synched to the audio simulcast on KXT.  

I tried to put the individual videos with their artist statement above.  My favorite background noise is from a video taken from the perspective of one of the bridges from Oak Cliff shot by chadeg as "omni video #1" which I have posted below. if you listen to the audio at :23... bystander “you are about to get run over, lol. Like really, do you want to risk your life just to film this?” cameraman: “yes ma'am, yes.”  His camerawork in the first 2 videos is lacking as he gets his bearings on the busy bridge but the shots get way better & you can hear the KXT simulcast audio clearly from #2 through video #5. His is the most unusual perspective with a great view of downtown of all the video I found of the exhibition.  The award for best audio and video for capturing this moment goes to youtube poster puddingebola.



snippets of all artists' video without KXT audio by dallasfilmsociety (3:55)

first 11 minutes of program without KXT audio (nice clear footage by JKStudioDFW)-


summary video of event (13 minutes) by pulp lizard

(3)
post event coverage story by pegasus news with embedded video interview by dallas morning news
http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2012/sep/27/expanded-cinema-omni-dallas-art/

http://artandseek.net/2012/09/27/the-biggest-screen-of-all-the-omni-hotel/

wfaa's excellent vantage point for videotaping during event with terrible audio (faint kxt simulcast, lots of wind on mic, 8 mins. includes work by Vogel & Campagna)


general show of the hotel's wall screen technology not related to the event


Dallas Video Fest - film opening with credits
http://vimeo.com/49561451

www.videofest.org

more info about the experimental films shown at the 2012 festival in my earlier blog >here<

much gratitude to the artists and organizers who participated in this public art event.  the true beauty of the project is that it exposed the general public in this city to video art.  people that may have never set foot in a museum were shown this undeniable artwork which used the skyline of the city as a canvas.  Art projected on the hotel's exterior as a moving picture screen, synched to the sounds of free public radiowaves for one night only.  this writer was emotionally moved to have witnessed it & am glad it was captured by all those cameras so it can be shared again here.