BEST SILvER-TOngUED ShE-DEvILS (nOW In PRInT) CONT>>
She-Devils” by this very publication, the event eventually morphed into a touring roadshow of riotous proportions, including such literary notables as Eileen Myles, Mary Gaitskill, and Beth Lisick, as well as Tea herself. It’s remained a byword of outsider, female-gendered spoken word ever since. But road-tripping is exhausting, and spoken word ephemeral, which
makes City Lights’ Sister Spit imprint such a welcome addition to the litsphere. Now we can revel in the poetry of Ali Liebegott and the prose of Dia Felix — all releases are edited by Tea — in the comfort of home or our own personal roadshows. www.citylights.com
BEST BILLBOARD PIRATE SALUTE “Sell Your Dreams,” screamed white text against an eye-searing spectrum of neons and pastels on Anthony Discenza’s billboard-mounted mural
in the Mission. The message — which laughed in the face of tech boom-fueled corporate utopianism — was just one of the unsettling takeovers of publicly visible commercial space that Steven Wolf Fine Arts rented for the group exhibition “What Keeps Mankind Alive.” The sleeper art show of the summer spotlighted San Francisco’s long history of billboard hacktivism and public culture jamming with decades worth of artists’ work (Victor Moscoso and Billboard Liberation Front provided some of the older work
best two-minute blasts from the neo-future: san francisco neo-futurists (above); from “what keeps mankind alive,” best billboard pirate salute on view). It also underscored just how native advertising has become to our digitally mediated selves, by utilizing a platform (the billboard) that has become both commercially outmoded and art-historically loaded. Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 2747 19th St., SF. www.stevenwolffinearts.com
BEST TWO-MInUTE BLASTS FROM ThE nEO-FUTURE Bay Area, hold onto your shoe hats; the San Francisco neo-Futurists have landed, and South of Market will never be the same. Formed in Chicago in 1988, the surrealist theater troupe infiltrated New York 10 years ago — and now it’s San Francisco’s turn to take in the Neo’s raucous, ever-changing signature show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. At every performance, a timer is set, and as the audience shouts out numbers in random order, the Neos race to beat the clock, performing 30 original plays in the allotted 60 minutes. On any given night there could be nudity or masks, balloons or jazz, pirouettes or pizza — or all of the above. After each performance a certain number of plays are swapped out, making each show refreshingly different. This is more than a fun night out, it’s a rowdy tradition worth cultivating. Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF. www.sfneofuturists.com
64 SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
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BEST hA-hA! If there was ever a night to call a bar and ask for “Seymour Butts,” Bart Simpson-style, it’d be every fourth Sunday at the Knockout during 1990 s Simpsons Trivia night. Note the years: Questions pertain to the first decade of the epic Simpsons timeframe, which spans 25 seasons and counting, and you can live in happy denial that the 2007 feature film ever misfired into theaters. But, it means you’ve gotta get old-school with your binge-watching ... er, research ... if you want to dominate the scoreboard. Keywords: “Bobo.” “Boourns.” “Joey-Joe-Joe Shabbadoo.” The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994, www.theknockoutsf.com; www.facebook.com/SimpsonsTriviaSF
BEST SOnIC SAnCTUARY There are a lot of great-sounding rooms in the Bay Area, but very few of them have the anything-goes spirit — not to mention architectur-
al weirdness and panache — of The Lost Church. Brett and Elizabeth Cline, who own and live behind the CONTINUES ON PAGE 66 >>
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