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Week Around the -Ists

Brock Keeling — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:00:54 GMT

DCist spent the week honoring some local heroes. First and foremost, they honored 75 year-old Mona Shaw, who smashed up a local Comcast cable office with a hammer after she got fed up with their terrible service. They also premiered a new music video by rising D.C. band Georgie James and got some great comments in support of a local reporter who got kicked out of the White House by First Lady Laura Bush for asking a tough question about voting rights. Finally, they got a chance to hear from famed photographer Annie Leibovitz about her new exhibition at the Corcoran and...they had to bust Wizards star Gilbert Arenas for cheating at Halo 3. Sometimes Agent Zero isn't always a hero.

Gothamist loves fall - and can't helping loving City Councilman James Oddo for letting his f-bomb flag fly when a Norwegian comedian fails to be funny. Also fun: A makeover that a statue of Mahatma Ghandi got. Not so fun: A noose found outside a Columbia professor's door, a , or the strange murder where a man killed his date and slept next to the body for days. The And the Big Apple blog spoke to Jonny Greenwood about his solo projects and that album his band Radiohead dropped this week.

Week Around The -ists

SFist Jer — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:20:10 GMT

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank.

Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their First Amendment rights by writing a food column about sex, revealing a musical coverup, reminding barbecue goers to eat pigs, but not act like them, and hating on , all the while trying not to get run over. In other First Amendment news, a local anchorman offended the whole city with a racial epithet – just because you can say it doesn't mean you should. Meanwhile, Phillyist readers were embracing their freedom of expression by celebrating—and photographing—the city's Fourth of July Festivities.

Torontoist asked their readers an honest well-meaning question: is Toronto ugly? They said goodbye to Zanta, Toronto's answer to the naked cowboy, who is leaving for a suburb, and to a famous truck. They mused about the problem of towers and debated whether native protests are justified. Oh, and they were the first media organization to have anything on a free White Stripes concert happening in a downtown YMCA as it was happening, so that was pretty awesome.

Londonist are living through interesting times. With terror alerts becoming part of the daily routine, they marked the two year anniversary since the Tube blasts that killed 52 people. All while coping with some biblical weather. Meanwhile, no slowdown on the cultural events. The biggest race in the world came to London this weekend, when the Tour de France pedaled off from London. And the O2 Dome - the largest roofed building anywhere, ever - finally reopened. So with all this excitement, perhaps not the best week to ban smoking.

Over on SFist, a bus driver revealed his top 10 list of things that annoy the crap out of him. Another 10-item list: activist Josh Wolf's action plan for SF; he's running for Mayor almost a year after being jailed for refusing to turn over videotapes. On the fine arts side, SFist interviewed the symphony's young, talented associate conductor. Folks were bummed and outraged at a stupid 4th of July injury to a teen drummer. Good thing Jesse Jackson's on the way to save the city.

Photographs, from top: Matching Los Angeleno dog owner and dog by LAist's Malingering, "the death of venus" by Okaypro on Flickr (via Phillyist)

After the jump: Bill Gates saves gay publishing in Seattle; DC's panda ain't pregnant; Gothamist on the factions warring over Central Park; and more!

Transformers

Mahler Symphony No. 5

Cedric — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:17:05 GMT

Mahler's 5th Symphony is one of his most famous works: the 4th movement, Adagietto, became super popular as the soundtrack of Visconti's Death in Venice, and the whole piece has an epic, cinematic quality. The piece was written in 1901, and first performed in 1904.

We put the CD on our iPod and took it with us for a test drive for a week. Actually, we quickly forgot about the iPod: this symphony is a study in contrast, and with a noisy background, you miss out on the delicate textures of the softer tracks. You pump up the volume only to be scarred by the next fortissimo. Yet, riding our bicycle at twilight on the embarcadero to the Adagietto, you see the city in quite a moody light. Where is our beaked mask?

Stage Fog: The Selected Shakespeare

Karen — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 16:20:28 GMT

San Francisco Shakespeare Festival
Free Shakespeare in the Park returns with starring the magnificent Julian Lopez-Morrilas as Prospero. (If you haven't seen this man in action, you're missing out.) Local director Kenneth Kelleher helms this stormy tale of political intrigue, romance and comedy. The Tempest lands in San Francisco September 2 at the Parade Ground in the Presidio, but tours the Bay Area starting June 24. Check out the schedule.

California Shakespeare Theater
Cal Shakes has been churning out beautiful productions ever since Jonathan Moscone (yes, that Moscone) became artistic director several years ago. And now, thanks to the young, hip vision of associate artistic director Sean Daniels, we're seeing productions like The Merry Wives of Windsor--with huge puppets! (Quick, that one closes on Sunday. And yes, puppets can be hip.) Up next in July is Restoration Comedy (because Shakespeare companies don't just do the Bard anymore), followed by Merchant of Venice in August and the capper As You Like It in September.

Marin Shakespeare Company
Up north at Dominican College, Marin Shakes mounts delightful summer fare. And they scored quite a coup this year with Barry Kraft, who plays King Lear starting in July. It's said that Kraft has been in every Shakespeare play. Alice in Wonderland also opens in July, and the season closes with Comedy of Errors in September.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz
Now in its 25th year, Shakespeare Santa Cruz also launches its season with Lear, playing in rep with As You Like It and Shaw's Pygmalion. This company with its great actors and production values is well worth the short road trip. And if you schedule it right, you can take in the Boardwalk before curtain.

Woman’s Will
The feisty Woman's Will changed the Shakespeare landscape when they came on the scene a few years ago. In theater, there never seem to be enough meaty parts for women, and this is especially true in Shakespeare's work, though of course in those days men played the women's roles. Woman's Will takes that back and more, casting women in the men's roles (and the occasional man in a woman's role). All of this makes their Twelfth Night an even sweeter treat. It starts touring in July.

Photo of Barry Kraft in Marin Shakespeare Company's King Lear by Stephen Underwood.

For more stage options, check out the listings at the Guardian, the Express, the SF Weekly, and the calendar on Theatre Bay Area's website.

The Tempest,

A Counter-Intuitive Search For Coffee

SFist Jer — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 11:54:49 GMT

The last time we actually posted something in this column (as opposed to our contest cop-out), it ended with something like, "blah blah, sick of chalk menus, blah blah, cafes are all the same, blah blah."

Perhaps the problem wasn't with the cafes your Trimethyldioxypurist was visiting. Perhaps the problem was, in fact, your Trimethyldioxypurist. We tend to gravitate toward what we're comfortable with, toward what we know.

So, in our efforts to find something special, new--or at least different--we tried to find a couple joints that weren't previously on our radar. Our usual tendency is to avoid places that are tourist-heavy. We also avoid busy, crowded places with lots of foot traffic. Accordingly, this week we tried J.R. Mugg's (499 Bay St.), at the turnaround point of the Taylor Street cable car line, as well as Cafe Venice, a sort of ramshackle, hole-in-the-wall kind of place right off the 24th St. BART station.

J.R.'s interior is cleaner than an operating room, big, airy, and pleasing. We were a bit surprised; there were a ton of tourists outside waiting for the cable car, and nary a person inside the shop. J.R.'s, in addition to coffee drinks, has food and gelato. It was a hot day, and the "triple espresso" gelato was especially tempting.

We were looking forward to trying the coffee at J.R.'s, as it's advertised as "all fair-trade, all organic." Emphasizing our efforts to try something different, and taking our cue from the proprietor of Palindrome, we started with an espresso macciato, which was described to us as "an espresso topped off with milk foam." The result was interesting -- and not necessarily in a good way. The flavor started off lovely -- a little dark, bitter, and lively. Toward the middle, the taste turned very sour, which was wholly unexpected. The finish, however, was clean, so the sourness didn't linger.