Five people were hurt at a house on Congo St. (map) when an explosion ripped through the first floor of the house, pictured at right courtesy Google Street View.

Best detail in the Chronicle’s story: A 20-year-old cat, Paws, was saved by a 19-year-old man, a resident of the flat.

(Photo from my BlackBerry. Sorry about the blur: I was walking!)

Well, the line wrapped around the block and extended well down 19th Street, and they had to delay the start of the performance in order to get the capacity crowd into the theater. It was a good show.

The Golem, set in a medieval Jewish ghetto, was produced in Germany in 1920 — the year the Nazi Party was founded. As you might expect from that context, the film was at times baffling, at times infuriating, but always compellingly weird and thought-provoking. And the original music by Black Francis was basically awesome.

More after the jump!

ART is a Weapon and hacks should not be armed. This city has some decent graffiti, but I have to say it’s hard to find. You’d think there would be fewer hacks in a town like SF that prides itself on it’s bohemian, artistic bent. No matter, this film is looking pretty fine, and should satisfy the graffiti fans hunger. BOMB IT was shot in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tijuana, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, Berlin, Cape Town, São Paulo, and Tokyo.

Through interviews and guerilla footage of graffiti writers in action on 5 continents, BOMB IT tells the story of graffiti from its origins in prehistoric cave paintings thru its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70’s and 80’s, then follows the flames as they paint the globe.

The details:

BOMB IT movie site

April 10- 14 at the Red Vic Movie House on Upper Haight st.
Thur, Fri & Mon: 7:15, 9:20
Sat & Sun: 2:00, 4:15, 7:15, 9:20

At 3 pm today, Grania Davis will be at Borderlands Books on Valencia with Speculative Japan, an anthology of Japanese sci-fi and fantasy stories in English translation. Read a review from an English-language Japanese newspaper.

Attend Other Magazine’s release party for issue 13, the “Dead Magazines” issue, looking at the zine explosion of the late 80s and early 90s, with interviews by Suzanne Kleid with the creators of Kitchen Sink, Flatter, Frighten the Horses, Comet, Clamor, and Processed World. The party is at CounterPULSE Gallery, 1310 Mission St. at 9th St. tonight from 7 PM to 11 PM, and the price of admission gets you a copy of issue 13 — or you could look at it the other way around too. (Other Magazine is, of course, the driving force behind the wildly popular Writers With Drinks monthly literary event, which will next happen on the second Saturday of December.)
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Through total accident, was at a picnic at Oakland’s Shoreline park, where you can walk out to a vista point and see the tankers getting unloaded and loaded. Here, we realized we were staring at the one that bashed into the Bay Bridge. Brother-in-law took photos, so thanks Mark!

And more after jump. The best way to see it was probably on a boat. We were surprised the ship was still unloading containers. They were placing metal-looking empty flats onto the boat while they took off the containers. The gash is very eerie looking. We didn’t see any oil around the coastline there, but did see containment efforts of foam-looking long bumpers up against the rocks, and lots of signs about no swimming, etc. nearby.
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Former Stanford provost ,alum and oil tanker namesake, Condoleeza Rice was confronted before her testimony in a House chamber today with a Code Pink member waving bloody hands in her face. Bay Area congressman and chairman of the House Foreign Relations committee Tom Lantos shouted “Out!,” while Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz, the red paint wearing woman protester, was hauled away shouting “War Criminal! War Criminal!”.

Seconds later in a video, one catches the violent take down of more Code Pink members by Capitol security for who knows what offense, possibly wearing the same pink shirt too many times to the building. 5 demonstrators in all were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, including locally based activist Medea Benjamin.

It’s not the first time Code Pink has disrupted Rice. At a Commonwealth Club event in May, Benjamin and three others interrupted a speech by The Secretary of State at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall shouting “Stop the torture. Stop the killing. U.S. out of Iraq,” as police led them out of the auditorium.

Short video clip of Condoleeza’s less than enthused groupies at the Capitol building below…
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The annual Litquake literary festival closes tonight with its traditional explosion of events and readers, the Saturday night Litcrawl down Valencia St. Check the schedule, arranged in three time blocks, and make your picks now. Then plan how you’re going to get from one to the other of the always jam-packed free readings. Smart audience members usually pick one from the first group, have coffee during the second, and arrive early at their chosen third-inning reading.

And if tonight merely whets your appetite:

• tomorrow at 4:00 pm at Good Vibrations, writer and anthologiest Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors will read from her anthology She’s On Top.
• On Tuesday, Michelle Tea presents her monthly RADAR reading series, this month with novelists Rebecca Brown and Lucy Korin, critic Masha Tupitsyn, and performance artist Ric Royer. Sara Seinberg will guest-host.

Yes it’s ladies night… who knew that Weds Sept 26th held so many prospects and events to discover bold, beautiful, brainy and bodacious babes abounding in the Bay Area tonight.

Amongst the choices we have to enjoy their influence on our cultural landscape include:

Author Naomi Klein, who when she’s not grilling Alan Greenspan on the radio, is speaking at the First Unitarian Universalist Center on Franklin St, exploring the subject of “disaster capitalism” seen in the rampant corporatization occurring in the wake of cataclysmic events. Hiding in plain sight in the aftermath of either forces of nature or war, greed has replaced need and Klein’s new book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism” explores how. Klein identifies a “disaster capitalism complex” building a booming niche amidst the traumatic breakdowns after events like Katrina, WTC collapse, the Sri-Lankan Tsunami and and the Iraq war. Using highly visible examples of corporations enriching their coffers at the troughs of trauma, she extends her analysis to include numerous instances over the past 50 years where a common economic ideology has slipped in to win similar spoils amidst a backdrop of human suffering. She’s even narrated a short film on the subject, click pic at right to preview the flick. She dissects the politics & policies of mass manipulators that have enacted egregious economic blackmail techniques into so many ravaged regions from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and now of course the U.S and Iraq. Is your interest piqued? Then head down to 1187 Franklin Street (at Geary), seating starts at 7 pm.

Or maybe you need something besides a shocking mental exercise, how about a series of Beginner’s Hula Hoop classes for ladies, or perhaps some Punk Aerobics?

At Thee Parkside aerobics instructor Gina “Lunges” Lovoi has tailor-made rock n roll infused workouts for all levels every Wednesday from 6ish to 7:30. Yer DJ is Me First & The Gimme Gimmes vocalist Spike, and unlike most gyms, there’s plenty of beer, cocktails and even burgers and french fries available to ease those post work out pains & hunger pangs…

Hula heads should boogie on down to 1805 Divisidero to work those abs, and be prepared to take this class run by Isabella Zamor seriously folks, as the instructor’s fees reflect that she surely does… more info at http://www.hoopgirl.com

…and for those in the mood for something a little less strenuous on the brain or body, like say kicking it to some live music, there are plenty of female talents lurking about on stages in venues ranging from The Hotel Utah to The Fillmore tonight, with several of these ladies listed after the jump. So whether you want to see a lesbian Led Zeppelin cover band, ambient indie rock from Arizona, or hear an upcoming jazzy chanteuse on tour from Rome Italy, a local lady comedian or attend a gala affair in Alamo Square… simply read on, and check out some mp3 samples and videos.
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It’s a bit of a dovetail off Mark’s water pipe burst post because it is indeed directly related, but the Flickr images (above, by Telstar Logisitics) make for one helluva hole. Sitting here at JFK waiting to go home, I even miss our mini-disasters.

Small MSM news article with a few images is here, snip:

Officials said the collapse occurred where city Public Utilities Commission workers have been installing an 8-inch-wide pipe that will connect the main water line to a new building on Howard Street.

PUC Assistant General Manager Michael Carlin said crews dug up part of the street Wednesday night to do the work. The new pipeline broke apart Thursday afternoon for an unknown reason as workers were filling in the hole with dirt, he said.

The water caused an even larger section of the street to collapse, Carlin said. No one was injured.

Link.

Even better: Flickr photos by a couple different locals are here.

While “ground zero” in Manhattan will almost certainly feature a Rudy Giuliani sighting and be the focus of much mainstream media attention on September 11th, there will be other distractions and gatherings afoot here on the left coast.

While Megadeth entertains the metal masses at The Warfield, I see that the Alcoholocaust crew have booked a more intimate affair with perennial political punkers M.D.C at Annie’s Social Club that night.

Most popularly known as Millions of Dead Cops, and alternately Multi-Death Corporations, the guys are not without a sense of humor, and have tempered their raging fury at times with humorous odes to preparing tofu spaghetti & respecting the rights of chickens to roam free while doing the “chicken dance”. I believe my fave MDC show was on Divisidero in 1988 at the late Kennel Club ( now The Independent) when the appeared as Mourn Divine Correctly as lead singer Dave donned a beehive wig & ball gown to celebrate the life of the late John Waters’ film starlet.

If drag is your thing, but you take it pretty darn seriously perhaps head over to Club Crash on Sept 11th to attend the the Transgender Law Center’s fifth anniversary. One has to wonder who booked the oddly insensitive named choice for a venue called Club Crash for an Anniversary Party on the typically bleak day of Sept. 11th . Gotta love that sick sense of humor displayed by SF Human Rights Commissioner and Transgender Law Center co-founder Cecilia Chung & crew…

Another Gay themed event occurs at Castro’s Books Inc. store, a release party for a collection of gay erotica edited by Simon Sheppard called Homosex: A Celebration.

The 11th Annual Madcat women’s film festival begins with screenings, and a free Bar BQ plus a performance by musical guests Amber Asylum at The El Rio.

In the East Bay, conspiracy buffs will gather at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, the politically purposeful movie palace hosting a 9/11 Truth Film Festival & symposium beginning Sept 10th and running through Tuesday Sept 11th.

Details on these events and links to more info including PowerPoint slides of engineering analysis of the WTC buildings’ collapse after the jump
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