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As a Vans salesman recently told us, "Yo, Sis, this is fresh!" Maybe so. more ›

How about that Twilight Singers show on Monday? It blew our socks off, and now we're inspired to fill in the holes in our Twilight Singers album collection. Our friend Jeff Klein is on tour with Dulli and company, so we had a chance to spend time with them on their Sunday night off in San Francisco. A trip to Tommy's Joint for dinner followed by drinks at the excellent new Mission bar Homestead revealed all the band members to be rather mellow: just a fine group of black-clad gentlemen enjoying some cocktails and a great jukebox. But once they got onstage the next night, the energy level skyrocketed. One of the most passionate performances we've seen all year. more ›

Faithful readers, you've probably noticed that this SFist watches the same types of movies over and over again: Is it a documentary about something weird and/or in San Francisco? Gosh, who could SFist possibly get to watch that? So we figured we'd mix it up a little bit and go watch something a little less provincial for a change -- which is how we ended up at the 9:00 p.m. screening of the Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela at the SFIFF. First of all, the audience for a historical and personal documentary about South Africans in exile from 1960-1990 as apartheid was being dismantled is very different from the usual scruffians we see at our wacky movies about, say, the history of the Mission hipster told through burritos used as puppets -- there were a lot of earnest expressions on faces, internationalist people carrying Global Exchange backpacks, and in the audience, we ran into a friend from New York who's devoted her life to public interest law. Boy, we're usually pretty shallow in our movie picks, aren't we? Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris told the audience that the documentary itself is a eulogy to his stepfather, who fled South Africa with a group of 11 friends and helped found the African National Congress, and an attempt to tell his story and to resolve posthumously the sometimes-strained nature of their relationship. His stepfather's story is pretty amazing (he fled, mostly by foot, from South Africa to Tanzania, and then emigrated to the Bronx). We started out dubious about the premise, and even more dubious about the dramatic "reenactments," but as the movie progressed, it all of a sudden didn't really matter. It's a great story. We wish there'd been a little more information about modern African history (the movie presumes a fair amount of knowledge) and we also got the sense that Harris was pulling some punches about the conflicts between him and his stepfather, but that's all pretty minor stuff. 12 Disciples plays again tonight at 6:30 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and it'll also be airing on PBS in September. more ›

Hey, no one told us that Gavin was giving a State of the City address last night! We totally would have gone! more ›

Clutching his photo of his one and only true hero, Henry Chinaski, Barrespondent Drew makes it through another week of imbibing to let you know which booze-holes are worth a Muni ride. more ›

Sunday night in the Bronx, the New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-2. As everyone knows, that means the Yankees will win the 2005 World Series. more ›

We've been reading Shout magazine, which you can pick up for free at Amoeba, for the last two issues. Granted, we've known one of the photographers for nearly ten years. So when he called and asked if we wanted to assist on a shoot, with Afrika Bambaataa, we had to cancel a few plans. Sorry, friends, but it's not every day you get a chance to meet one of your heroes. more ›

It was so hot this weekend, all EssEffist did was huddle on our bed and read books in the dark, books we got from Bay Area local bookstores and reserved from the San Francisco Public Library. more ›