Did your hardcopies of the weekly papers get soggy on your way to work this morning? Go ahead and toss those in the blue bin, because here's our Wednesday roundup of what's up in free news:
SFWeekly: On the cover this week, Lauren Smiley investigates "the most contested turf in San Francisco public education" at Edison Charter Academy in Noe Valley. Edison, as you might know, fell apart when it was a public school and was reborn as a for-profit charter school. Now that the debate around charter schools is heating up in the wake of Waiting for Superman, Smiley's history-until-now of Edison is especially relevant. San Francisco's allergic reaction to corporate entities adds an extra layer of complexity to the already nuanced business of education, which is further compounded by the brewing teacher revolt. The only thing San Francisco likes less than a big corporation is a big corporation from New York telling us how to teach our kids.
In Food: Kauffman, always the dreamer, loses track of how many members of the waitstaff helped him out at the new Hayes Valley izakaya hotspot Nojo. Although he skewers the name (GET IT?) for sounding like "another of the Bold Italic's microhoods", the joint actually adds a lot to the growing trend of Japanese bar food joints in town. Kauf recommends we check it out before the "opera ticket holders from Woodside" figure out that the service is just as good as nearby restaurants with triple-sized bar tabs. Between a review in the Weekly and Yelp's Izakaya-centric newsletter this week, it won't be long before the cheap-seats opera crowd finds out about it.
In Arts, Jonathan Kiefer reviews "Go the Fuck to Sleep", the faux-children's book by local author Adam Mansbach. The book has gained a lot of mentions for being something of an unlikely viral sensation on the Internet. A highly bloggable cover illustration by Ricardo Cortés and some leaked PDFs sent the book to #1 on Amazon on the pre-order numbers alone. Kiefer's review might be overthinking the whole thing a little bit, but that's what print publications are for, right? Overthinking?
Also in the Arts section: Your cats should probably be in prison and Conan O'Brien once met author John Updike in the basement of the Harvard Lampoon back in 1984. On Page 45, we learn that the Gold Club is having their 7th anniversary next week.
In Film, Nick Pinkerton takes on Terence Malick's magnum opus Tree of Life. We have to admit we set this one aside to read later, but only because we're terrified of spoilers. (Spoiler alert: how would we know there are spoilers if we didn't read it yet? You're on your own there.)
Over at the Guardian, you can now save the planet and some paper by flipping through their virtual edition. It's just like the real thing, except you can't roll it up and swat flies with it.
The cover story, Matt Sussman's Art Fair City looks at the artMRKT and ArtPadSf - the city's two recent arts fairs - and their role in re-establishing San Francisco as "a haven for visual arts." We weren't aware that visual arts had ever left, but that's probably because we find sublime and distinct beauty in every discarded takeout container we see on the street. Worth a read if the scene around the scene is something that interests you.
Editor's Notes: Tim Redmond looks at what Yee and Avalos are doing to set themselves apart from a huge pack of candidates. And, if you ask him (which you didn't, but you know...now you're reading it) - those two are doing exactly what they should be doing. For Yee that meets shooting just left of center and ignoring the fact that Rose Pak hates him. For Avalos that means getting Tom Ammiano behind him and cosponsoring Ed Lee's pension reform.
In other politics news: Carly Nairn warns that Supervisor Wiener's charter amendment will be like voting away your voice on issues like tenant protections and rent control. Or it could save us regulars from having 2-mile long ballot. Or maybe both.
In film, Dennis Harvey calls Tree of Life "self-important", but our same spoiler alerts apply here: we've got our fingers in our ears until we can catch a screening, so instead why not check out a preview of Another Hole in the Head?
In food, Paul Reidinger checks out another place we've never heard of: Morph in the Outer Richmond (oh, that explains it). The pan-asian place has the "elegant chill" of a nice martini and it gets a little tacky by shipping in soft shell crab from the East Coast and naming a salad "2-NA", but redeemed itself with a fried whole rainbow trout stuffed with scallops, prawns and calamari.
Finally, it's over to the East Bay Express, where Madeleine Blair wonders who benefits from Farmer's Markets. Apparently the answer to that question is not the city of Oakland.
In government news, Jerry Brown's state park closure plan is apparently illegal at both the state and federal level, but at least the East Bay Green Corridor is making it easier to get solar panels up on rooftops in the East Bay.
In Asian parenting news, Luke Tsai looks at Gene Yang and Thien Pham's new graphic novel Level Up about growing up in a post-Amy Chua Asian American household.
In Arts & Entertainment, Kelly Vance is the third person today to screen Tree of Life before we get to see it, so we flipped over to Rachel Swan's spoiler-free review of CalShakes' Titus Andronicus. That could get confusing when Titus Andronicus (the band) comes to the Fox Theater at the end of the month.
In Food: John Birdsall, formerly of the Weekly's SFoodie, has a new blog called What the Fork (no, seriously, what the fork?) and he tries out some molé ice cream in Fruitvale.