Tech guru says Internet destroying middle class

05.14.13 - 2:55 pm | Tim Redmond |

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Jaron Lanier isn't a Luddite. He can't be dismissed as a crackpot, whiner critic who is jealous of the success of others. He virtually invented virtual reality; he was a tech guru when most of today's tech titans were still in diapers. So when he says that the Internet is destroying the middle class, maybe everyone ought to stop for a second and listen.Read more »

DPH: Unaffordable housing is bad for your health

05.14.13 - 2:55 pm | Rebecca Bowe |

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To cover rent on a two-bedroom apartment at "fair market value" in SoMa, a San Francisco minimum-wage earner would have to work 7.4 full-time jobs. Read more »

Pick-up bball legends tell the tale of the game outside

05.14.13 - 1:18 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

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We're talking about basketball, NYC pick-up announcer legend Bobbitio "Kool Bob Love" and I, but our conversation is hardly hinging on the Warriors-Spurs match-up or LeBron James' shot at MVP this year. Rather, we're discussing the power of the men and women ballers on the playground -- a culture that Garcia and French filmmaker Kevin Couliau painstakingly documented for their film Doin' it in the Park, which begins its Bay Area run at the Clay Theatre on Thu/16.

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Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

05.14.13 - 9:39 am | Emily Savage |

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This video has been floating around of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield floating in space, slowly turning inside his vessel, playing the acoustic guitar and singing Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie (“Space Oddity,” naturally). It’s an arresting image, melding science, sound, nerd culture, and pop culture together in the coolest of ways. And it was his goodbye love letter to space, as he returned back down to earth yesterday.

Outside the spaceship, and also back here on earth (and playing San Francisco this week, naturally) there are bands that are grounded by gravity, though little else -- the celestial atmospheric head case of Kisses, larger-than-life Big Boi, otherworldly solo pounder Black Pus (Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt), cosmic soul duo Myron and E, and more invade our shores in the coming days. Maintain your curiosity, and greet them live in the flesh, eyes and ears wide with wonder. Read more »

Racism and homophobia east of the Rockies

05.13.13 - 1:27 pm | Tim Redmond |

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There are assholes everywhere, and there are people in San Francisco who use racist and homophobic slurs. But this interactive map (based on students at Humboldt State analyzing 150,000 nasty tweets (the academic life for you), suggests that the most concentrated jerkfaces are east of the Rocky Mountains. Either that or they use Twitter more.

Sandra Bernhard thinks I'm groovy (feeling's mutual) [UPDATED]

05.13.13 - 1:21 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

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Raise your hand if performance comedy stylist Sandra Bernhard is an ever-present entity in your cultural firmament. Is she the voice of your internal monolouge when you're feeling powerful?

Bernhard's mark on popular culture is everywhere. Remember her cameo in Truth or Dare, in which she encourages Madonna to go ahead and meet that young Spanish actor Antonio Banderas? I like to imagine that Bernhard (“Sandra”) and I have it like that -- I can fly her out to my hotel room when I'm just sooo bored of hanging out with the back-up dancers. I want her always sitting on a stool with that wall of '90s hair, gold hoops, knotted silk button-down, a la 1990’s Without You I’m Nothing. May she drawl about tambourines and poppers 4eva. Read more »

Why rent control works

05.13.13 - 1:05 pm | Tim Redmond |

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I shouldn't even bother to talk about this, because all it will do is stir up the trolls, but I'm getting sick of all the talk about rent control being a source of San Francisco's housing problem. The latest is an editorial in the Business Times, which I buy to read J.K. Dineen's stories about commercial real-estate, among other things. I should treat it like the Wall Street Journal; nobody takes the Journal's editorial page seriously.Read more »

Here’s which tech companies won’t turn your emails over to the feds

05.13.13 - 12:12 pm | Rebecca Bowe |

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When you write a letter, seal it in an envelope, and drop it in the mail, federal law is clear that it’s a private document. No government agent can legally open it up and read it without a warrant demonstrating probable cause under the Fourth Amendment. But really, when was the last time you sent anybody a letter? Read more »

The Chron discovers the lack of waterfront planning

05.13.13 - 10:40 am | Tim Redmond |

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So the Chronicle's John King (who's generally not a bad architecture critic and really seems to understand city planning) finally discovered something that some of us have been talking about for months: There's no comprehensive planning on the waterfront. Read more »

The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on 'Black Watch'

05.12.13 - 10:31 pm | Marke B. |

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If you thought the theatricalized story of a jaunty and imperiled Scottish regiment in Iraq in 2004 would come off as a sort of "Trainspotting meets Black Hawk Down," you wouldn't be too far off the mark -- in a very positive way. I'll leave the nuts and bolts reviewing of full-force National Theatre of Scotland via American Conservatory Theater's spectacular "Black Watch," (through June 16) presented at the huge Mission Armory, to my colleague Robert Avila in next Wednesday's Guardian. But my first thoughts upon emerging from Sunday night's opening performance, after I cleaned the constant stream of expletives from my ears (and a bit of something from my eye) is that yae fookin' coonts moost sae this pish, i.e. the production and performances are well worth the gasp-inducing $100 ticket price.

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