Long before folks like Bill Cosby,Barbara Streisand, Woody Allen, Jonathon Winters and Bob Newhart were seen on TV, they paid their dues performing in front of a brick wall in a little North Beach club owned by Enrico Banducci. The Hungry I name wasn’t yet used to sucker in patrons to a sleazy strip joint and still was a very famous venue here in the 50’s & 60’s that numerous live albums were recorded at.

San Francisco’s Performing Arts Library & Museum, located on the 4th floor at 401 Van Ness in the Veteran’s Building is featuring an exhibit on Banducci’s famous Hungry I nightclub through the summer, and it’s well worth the FREE ADMISSION…

So if yer a fan of show biz in general, you’ve got no excuse not to check it out, and if you’re a veteran, well it’s in a convenient place if you happen to be sorting out your affairs…

Details on the history of the HUNGRY I club, more pix and the hours of the exhibit etc after the jump
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Notes from the locals on Russian Hill re: BYOBW: flower damage. Thank GOD there was no drunken arrests (he goes on and on about drunkenness in this week’s blotter- be happy I’m saving you from it.) OK onto quote Dudley in his sheriff’s blotter from the Central District:

Every once in a while, we get caught ‘flat footed’ (pun intended),
regarding spontaneous events. Easter Sunday was such an occurrence when
Officers came upon a crowd swelling from 200-400 in size at Hyde and
Lombard. Several individuals were dressed in costume and “Big Wheel” races
were being held down our own ‘Crookedest Street in the World.” The crowd
in the immediate area grew to a few thousand by estimate and traffic was
impacted for approximately one hour. A police report was made regarding
damage done to the flower beds.

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A few weeks ago I snapped a photo of a stunning wall mural along the Market Street corridor. The image of a man dressed in flannel and jeans walking a menacing, snarling pit bull. The artwork was well crafted – rich in color and dimension – and viewed through the chainlink fence of the open parking lot that the graffiti mural faced, was appropos commentary on the artworks immediate setting.

I passed that same lot this morning, and looked up to find that the graffiti MURAL had been painted over – erased via housepaint, and the newly ‘blanked’ surface had already been tagged.

It stopped me in my tracks. As an advocate for public art, I rejoice at seeing artistic works across the otherwise blank canvases of our city. As an advocate for public ART, I am disheartened by the prolification of graffiti tags – the repeatative signature scrawl that serves the purpose of dog ‘marking’ urination – simply to mark a spot, to document one’s passing through.
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This just popped into my email box and it’s way too fun not to share:

RJ’s BWClub INVITES YOU to join our “NUDE QUEEN SALUTE” to Captain
Christopher Rynd’s 1132′ long, 236′ high, 151000 ton, $800 million
QUEEN MARY II, with 4300 combined crew and passengers, as it sails
under the GGBridge and into SFBay at 3pm Sunday, 2/4/7.

This is FREE, but you must bring or wear British, royal, maritime, or
pirate costuming accessories (that still leave you mostly naked) AND
any British, American, or rainbow flag you may have. The weather will
be warm and sunny and about 70 degrees…perfect for nudity, which is
legal on these beaches.

RJ will be wearing a US Navy captain’s hat, an orange life preserver,
the leather flag, and nothing else but a cigar. You are welcome to
wear anything that you think will shock, annoy, or amuse the rich
British tourists aboard the QM2…just leave little to the imagination.

Who doesn’t love a little naked pirate hijinks?

Full details from the email after the jump.

*Thanks to Sara for the tip*
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At noon on Jan. 27th in the Sharon Meadom in lovely Golden Gate Park there will be a giant group hug for art! The organizers will arrange everyone by color, so they ask that any participants wear brightly colored clothing. It’s performance art, public art and will also be video art. How great is art that involves hugging?

Brownies and cookies will also be provied.

*Thanks to Jessica for the tip*

Last week I was in Superstar Video getting videos to watch with a flu-ridden boyfriend and found Piece by Piece: San Francisco Graffiti Documented in the ‘new’ section: I’m slightly obsessed with graffiti and street art, so this doc caught my eye, especially when I saw it had four sets of laurel leaves (film fest awards) on the cover. It’s really fantastic, and no matter how you feel about legal (and illegal) street art, you’ll never look at San Francisco’s streets the same way again. There’s a thriving art underground going on here, rich with art history, geographical influences, and community. Watch the trailer to get a taste of what I’m trying to convey here; I only felt the doc lacked in the areas of pasteups (a la Shepard Fairey‘s OBEY) and straight-up taggers, like Vegan, Orphan and Donk. Plus, what some of these guys (and girls) do is just incredible. Color me a fan.

It made us want to take regular trips around the city with cameras — of course, we’re not the first people to have this idea. The San Francisco graffiti pool on Flickr is fascinating to watch; some of the members have been documenting the same spots around SF for years and have captured some amazing spraycan archaeology. What they catch is not always legal, but sometimes it’s even sanctioned by the SFPD. Image by funkandjazz, featuring Tase, Rubz, Kuma, and Iful.

Too many post-holiday days were spent indoors playing with new gadgets, so my boyfriend and I ventured out for a dayhike in the Marin Headlands. The weather was stunning, the drive was short, and the sights were amazing – the oceanside view of the GGB with the city as a backdrop, rather than the otherway around. We followed several trails leading into the hills overlooking Rodeo Beach and found ourselves behind the Marine Biology campus where we discovered an amazing display.

The layout was of an actual blue whale skeleton, from the whale the washed up at Fort Funston back in 1988. The decaying carcass was buried at the beach by scientists, 10 feet under the ground for 10 years, and in 1999 the insect-cleaned bones were brought to Marin and reassembled into this exhibit. The bones resembled bleached coral reef – chalky white and somewhat porously textured. A dried bundle of bleen – the fiberous ‘screen’ through which the whales filter out their krill lunch – was bundled beside the skull, like coconut husk fibers.

An amazing thing to see. And you can see it from Google Earth, too! look up 37°49’58.57″N, 122°31’57.68″W. After reading Liz’s post, I added a comment to wikimapia, too!

(upper left image from Headlands Institute display)

In an attempt to dodge the rain, I wove my way back from lunch near the Metreon, and turned down the side alley between the MoMA and the W hotel. This stretch of Natoma is the turn-around for the W’s valets, and is one of the access ways to the MoMA parking garage, as well as having a number of small print galleries and design firms that front onto it. I’m usually peeking into the windows of Aurobora Press, a fine art monotype print house with a small gallery space up front, but today my eye was drawn to the oddly familiar shapes hung in the storefront display cases of the parking garage.

It took me a minute, but I realized what made these shapes seem so familiar – the paintings are done on automobile hoods! The subject matter ranged from an homage to Bruce Lee, to illustrations of street youth overlaid on New York City street maps. All very cool.

note: I looked for a placard with info on the exhibit, the contributing artists, etc., and found nothing. Perhaps it’s posted at the display cases on the front side of the garage.

While I was riding the N Judah home this evening, a man who I later discovered was writer and bike mural guardian Joel Pomerantz hopped on and began a spiel about donating small amounts of cash to support maintenance and restoration of the Duboce Bikeway Mural. A Bay Area Reporter article tells more about the maintenance work underway.

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Yup, it’s the same sculpture from Burning Man Sculpture Defaced In Honor Of Burning Man, where back in early september the public installation by Dan Das Mann near the Ferry Building was affixed with a bong and lighter. This time, someone gave them Abu Ghraib costumes. Are these everyone’s favorite sculptures to prank? This one’s sure to offend lots of people, but I can’t help thinking of this in humorous reference to (The Seattle Stranger’s) children’s Abu Ghraib Halloween costumes that made the internet rounds back in 2004.

Photo via the Flickr set by Ninavizz.

Update: Scott posted this at Laughing Squid (with more description) and points out to me that it’s not just Dan Das Mann’s sculpture but it was also created by Karen Cusolito. Not knowing either of them, I only went by the name I saw in the last post’s comments. Sorry Karen!