[Images of Barney Rosset and the Tropic of Cancer ad courtesy of Double O Film Productions.]

Barney Rosset, the man who risked prosecution to publish Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in the United States, has been a personal hero to me ever since I first encountered the book in high school. Reading it — and his much finer book Tropic of Capricorn — utterly transformed my life. (Whether that was for better or worse is debatable.) In my hours of browsing at used bookstores, I started to take a careful look at anything that happened to have been published by Grove in the 1950s and 1960s. It led me to Sherwood Anderson, D.H. Lawrence, William Burroughs, some of Kerouac’s later stuff, Samuel Beckett, and — oddly enough — Henry James, whose reputation Grove helped to resucitate in the 1950s.

Barney Rosset is most noted for the battles he fought against obscenity laws. By publishing Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch, he provoked the censors. As Win McCormack, the publisher of Tin House, writes: “Through his legal victories in the resulting obscenity cases, as well as in one brought on by I Am Curious (Yellow), a sexually explicit Swedish documentary film he distributed, he was probably more responsible than any other single individual for ending the censorship of literature and film in the United States.”

And now Obscene, the 97-minute documentary film about Rosset, is receiving its San Francisco premiere tonight at the Roxie, at 7:00; a second screening is at 8:50. Directors Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor promise all of the above, plus “Rosset’s public fight against hypocrisy is inextricable from his tumultuous personal life: the same unyielding, quixotic, restless energy that upended centuries of law brought Rosset perilously close to personal destruction.”

Juicy!

The run is from tonight through Thursday, September 11, nightly at 7:00 and 8:50, plus Sat, Sun and Wed at (3:00) and 5:00. The Roxie is at 16th and Valencia.

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Should be a good event, especially equal rights matter to you. This fall is going to be enlightening to see how the california populous ends up on this issue.

Dear Friend, Please join me Saturday in fighting for marriage equality at the No on Proposition 8 kick-off rally in San Francisco:

No on 8 Kick-off Rally
Saturday, September 6, 2008 – 10:00am
2278 Market St., 2nd Fl. (map)
San Francisco, CA

Let’s work together to stop discrimination from being written into our constitution.

I look forward to seeing you Saturday.

Sincerely, Gav

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[Image by the Asian Art Museum.]

The Asian Art Museum hosts their Matcha event series on the first Thursday of every month, from 5 to 9 in the evening, and it’s that day again. The theme for tonight’s event is Tea and Spice, and I probably can’t describe it any better than they do:

Still dusty from its annual trek to Burning Man, Tealchemy’s Tea Temple will be erected inside the Asian Art Museum for MATCHA. Everyone can sip earthy tea inside this mammoth atmospheric, communal space, which celebrates the centuries-old nomadic trade and travel of the Silk Routes. Elsewhere in the museum, taste teas from India, Persia, and Tibet (courtesy Samovar) or those along China’s Tea and Horse Roads (courtesy Teance).

Discover how these different blends are brewed and grind your own spicy chai (Indian tea), mortar and pestle style. Learn about tea and its cultural influences, see art of the spice routes on a guided tour, and view Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty before it closes (Sept. 21)

So it looks like I can look forward to a nice cup of tea after work today.

The museum is on Larkin next door to Main Library. Admission is $5 after 5 PM, and as they imply up there, for that awesome price you get the run of the museum. The Ming Dynasty exhibit is pretty cool.

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Oakland police think they have found the gang behind at least some of the rash of restaurant robberies that plagued the East Bay this summer.

Yesterday they arrested three people they say perpetrated three of the takeover-style heists, in which hoodie-wearing men enter restaurants at night, force employees and patrons into a back room, and clean out the cash register.

The Oakland residents were arrested Tuesday evening after they allegedly departed from their successful MO and knocked over a nail salon. Police were given a description of the getaway car, which they spotted, followed and stopped. Inside they found ski masks, guns and the money from the nail salon.

Among the arrestees was the getaway driver, a 20-year-old woman whom police said was the girlfriend of one of the bandits.

Contradicting Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums who said the string of robberies were a result of the poor economy, a police spokesman said “These aren’t guys who lost their jobs and got desperate… These are people who had access to guns and get off on the thrill of robbing people.” And the brother of one of the suspects commented:

He’s got no reason to be doing nothing like this. He’s not a drug addict, not in a bind, there’s no pressure situation. He was cool, man. He missed his calling: He should have been a basketball star. He’s an incredible basketball player. He don’t have no reason to be robbing no restaurants. That kind of (expletive) is serious and petty at the same time, you know?

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Today C.W. Nevius has a column on the latest, scariest crime to hit Glen Park: the carefully planned robbery last Friday night of Buddies Market, and the brutal, gratuitous attack on the store’s owner, Paul Park, who survived — just barely.

Glen Park has been subject to a wave of robberies in the past six months, mostly random street muggings. The reasons are obvious to anybody who spends as much time there as I do: BART station, freeway on-ramps, and residents who generally have iPods or laptops with them. Residents, I might add, who are smart enough to hand the goods over without a fight. No wonder predators are drawn to the neighborhood from miles away. Nevius writes of them: “No one knows who they are or where they are coming from.” Technically true, but residents have their suspicions, and unlike Nevius I’ll tell you exactly what they suspect: thanks to BART, the sociopaths living in Oakland and Richmond are right next door. What with the downturn in our economy, it’s likely that this is a problem that won’t go away.

The solution to this problem is obvious: a small number of officers in conspicuous locations in Glen Park during the times of greatest risk, from about 8:30 PM until 1:00 in the morning, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. How difficult could it possibly be to protect the residents of Glen Park from these crimes? Captain Denis O’Leary of the Ingleside station claims his hands are tied, but give me a break. You don’t need to mobilize a riot squad. He has 109 officers. The presence of a single police vehicle parked in the bus stop at Diamond and Chenery, with two officers nearby, from 8:30 PM until 1:00 AM every night, and two more officers conspicuously posted outside the BART station at the same time, should be enough to deter most of these crimes. We’re talking about four officers at most for nine hours a week.

Was a police car posted there last Friday night? Somehow I doubt it. Maybe this isn’t a good long-term solution, but as an emergency measure? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The Glen Park Merchant’s Association has started a blog so that residents will have a place online to discuss the problem. The president of the association has started a fund where you can make donations to help with Mr. Park’s recovery.

What do you think? Leave a comment here.

[NB: I'm not a resident of Glen Park, but I work there almost every day and know several people in the community.]

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Courtesy the Extra Baggs blog by San Jose Mercury News sportswriter Andrew Baggerly comes this news: Giants shortstop Omar Vizquel — known, among other things, as a musician, snazzy dresser, and above all, a miracle-worker at shortstop — is also an accomplished painter, with a show opening tomorrow at the Caldwell Snyder Gallery, 341 Sutter St.

Click the thumbnail image to go to a page where you can see Vizquel’s paintings, which show an impressive touch.

Fans of Vizquel’s work in a baseball uniform may have only a few days left to see him exhibit his skills on the field. Though he has the most hits (2369 at this writing) of any active player, he’s been hitting under .200 all season long, and many are saying his playing days are numbered. But the 11-time Gold Glove winner still makes amazing plays at shortstop, exhibiting the unearthly grace and composure of a great dancer.

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An Israeli teacher on a year-long posting to a Hebrew school in San Francisco finds Pier 39 “filled with beliefs and life” and the Golden Gate Bridge “a magnificent architectural structure.” Another ball of fire writes that he “spent the summer living in San Francisco, doing exactly what I’d hoped: working in VC, reading business plans, meeting with entrepreneurs, doing due diligence and generally learning the business;” in his spare time he rode a motorcycle.

A Swedish woman now living in Hayes Valley wonders: “Can somebody please explain to me why staff in the Golden Gate Park always leave the engines running while they load and un-load their trucks in the park? While clearing shrubs, cleaning up flower-beds and so on. The engines are always on. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Previously:
Idle NY theater critic visits, finds our scene wanting
Visitor finds SF “too hilly to be dull“

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Congrats to Martina Patella, an Oakland cyclist who won the women’s event in the Giro di San Francisco cycling race yesterday.

Patella is a member of a team sponsored by San Francisco hedge fund ValueAct Capital, a firm so mysterious that even the “About Us” link on its website is password-protected. So screw them. Instead, enjoy these photos of the winning cyclist.

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“Miracle fruit” — Synsepalum dulcificum to the degree-holding class — is a strange berry which has little taste of its own but which works to nullify and transform spicy, sour or bitter tastes, making them sweet. The New York Times had an article about it in May, with users saying it makes Tabasco sauce taste like sugar and lemon sorbet mixed with Guinness like a chocolate shake. Thus “the fruit of the poor lemon” becomes possible to eat.

Mugwumpin, the San Francisco theater company planning a trip to Cairo to a theater festival, will hold a fundraiser for the trip featuring the strange fruit on Saturday, Sep. 6 in Oakland. For more info, email info@mugwumpin.org.

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Tomorrow the toll to cross the Golden Gate Bridge goes to $6 cash, $5 for FasTrak. Don’t get caught short.

The Golden Gate Bridge District, which is not managed by the Calif. Dept. of Transportation or CalTrans, sets its own tolls. The fare to cross CalTrans bridges in the Bay Area, including the Bay Bridge, remains at $4.

If you’re new in town and don’t understand which bridges we mean, here are the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Flickr photo by user brothergrimm.

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Sunbathers in Dolores Park in May. Flickr photo by Operators are standing by

It’ll be a hot one today, ladies and gentlemen, and hotter tomorrow, due to that late-summer east-wind thing. In the worst case, wildfires will destroy several thousand acres in the East Bay. In the best case, the only burning will be in Dolores Park — sunburning, that is.

If you’d rather get sunburned standing up than lying down, there’s bicycle racing in town today as the Giro di San Francisco (which is Italian for “Tour de San Francisco”) goes until 4:00 pm. The race’s epicenter is Levi’s Plaza.

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The N.O. Metbloggers are covering Gustav as it hopefully misses them. Please give your support and get up to the minute reports from the ground at:

http://neworleans.metblogs.com

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I just drove back to town after a week in the suburbs of Portland. Driving down from 505 to I-80 to the Bay Bridge between 7:00 and 7:30 on a Saturday night, I expected the usual congestion in Berkeley and backup at the bridge toll plaza. Nothing! The drive was smooth as butter, with exactly 1 car in line in front of me at the tolls.

Could be because of Burning Man, or all the local Democrats that went to Denver for the Democratic Convention are taking a long weekend, or maybe that whole staycashun thing is catching on. But the Bay Bridge sure was easy tonight.

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No Regret, promotional still

This morning, an interesting-looking film came to my attention: No Regret, by director Leesong Hee-il. The trailer can be viewed here. It first screened at the Frameline Festival earlier this year, and it’s being billed as “the first breakout gay film from Korea.” In addition, it is the director’s first full-length feature film. A whole lotta firsts going on with this one. Here’s the synopsis:

Set in Seoul, South Korea, “No Regret” centers on Sumin (Lee Young-Hoon), who leaves the orphanage where he grew up and heads to the city to study art design. After losing his job at a factory due to layoffs, he finds himself working as a prostitute in a gay bar. Initially Sumin resists the advances of Jaemin (Lee Han), who comes from a rich and conservative family that doesn’t accept his sexual identity. Eventually Sumin succumbs to Jaemin’s advances, after they briefly experience happiness as passionate lovers, Sumin and Jaemin’s relationship falls into heartache and tragedy.

Jaemin’s parents go on to arrange a marriage for him; sounds like a real tear-jerker. However, in a review on SF Gate today, David Wiegand says: “Despite the surface hokum of the plot, there are only a couple of moments when you just don’t believe that Su-Min would do what he’s doing or that Jae-Min would say what he is saying.”

Shows tonight at 7:15 and 9:30; screenings daily thereafter at 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, and 9:30. Tix are the usual $10.50 general.

NOTE: There has been some confusion over where the film is actually screening; I have verified that it will screen at the Lumiere and not the Embarcadero Center Cinema.

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Last night I was walking in my t-shirt along Ocean Beach. Man, it’s like Los Angeles. So not much to post here, except that I wish the Fleishhacker Baths were back. The Beach Chalet was packed- and funny tidbit, the Japanese gentleman sitting next to me who really loved the Jack Johnson cover band, asked if it was safe to wait for the 5-Fulton at 10:30PM. “Will there be a driveby shooting?”

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