When Boulder-by-way-of-Canada newgrass musician and banjo virtuoso Jayme Stone blows into town tonight to perform in Swallow Hill’s Daniels Hall, he’ll arrive with more than just his five-string. Thanks to a seven-week stint in Mali, he’ll bring the knowledge and experience of two unknown musical ancestors, along with the konou…
In sum, I’ve consumed seventeen and a half cold beers by the time I fall through the doors of the Wazee Supper Club (1600 15th Street) just after midnight. The first eight went down between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., while I was watching college football. The half a beer…
Watching Chine inspect wine glasses — the way he delicately scoops each stem from the counter, elevating it high above his head and rotating it below the track lights at the recently reopened Gelman’s Restaurant & Bar (2911 West 38th Avenue) — is like watching poetry emerge from the page…
“Most of the peace events today involve marches or holding signs, stuff that I don’t think is fun, even though I love peace,” says Dana Cain, local collector, event planner and child of the ’60s. “Why doesn’t anybody do it like John and Yoko did it?” Such was the inspiration…
Ralph Roberts probably thinks he’s seen and heard everything there is to see and hear about beards and body hair. Since he began crossing the country in May on a 38-foot-long mobile barbershop for the WAHL Let It Grow Tour, he’s seen a contender for Most Hirsute Homeless Guy shaved…
It used to be that if someone called me “green,” he meant I was sick, sad, immature, inexperienced, unsophisticated or naive. Now it means I’m an Al Gore quoting, gum-wrapper-recycling, water-conserving, non-littering, canvas-grocery-bag-carrying, Styrofoam-refusing, wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-with-my-engine-idling pain in everyone else’s ass. And it’s all true, save the Al Gore bit (I…
With a little help from James W. Loewen (author of, most notably, Lies My Teacher Told Me) and Howard Zinn (most famous for A People’s History of the United States), anyone can learn to distrust the way American history has been recorded and represented — from the point of view…
Daniel’s mad because he can’t bring booze into the green room. “I mean, what the fuck?” he whisper-screams into my left ear as local singer-songwriter Ryan.Mad.son channels Howie Day to a half-dozen people standing by the stage of the Walnut Room (3131 Walnut Street). “The whole hallway of rehearsal spaces…
First it was the prospect of a female president. Now it’s a shot at a woman veep. Many would argue that women have rarely been more empowered. But those are women with senatorial seats and pantsuits, women who eat barreled pork for breakfast. What about minority women, low-wage women, every-damn-day…
They’re everywhere, the foot soldiers of the political process — clipboards and pens in hand, earnest fervor oozing from their eyes and dripping from every “Are you registered to vote, man?” The answer, from me and almost everyone, it seems, is a piqued-though-not-pissed “Yep.” Not so from an off-balanced gentleman…
My buddy Darren will never be featured on a televised episode of American Idol — not because he’s a lousy singer, but because he’s not lousy enough. Granted, he won’t be charting on Billboard or CMJ anytime soon, either, but that doesn’t say shit about his ability to nail Bowie’s…
For Bay Area poet-turned-playwright Marisela Treviño Orta, the Latino legend of La Llorona has always been more ghost story than parable: “She is kind of a bogeyman, a scary figure,” Orta says of the woman in white who is damned to roam the earth in search of the children she…
In the bizarro world of corporate coolness that is Maloney’s Tavern (1432 Market Street), packs of Marlboro Lights cost $9, all finger food arrives in wax-paper-lined metal buckets on strangely shaped porcelain plates and accompanied by perfectly portioned sides, policy allows Top 40 songs to make only one appearance every…
It’s not the volume of the screams that’s so troubling; it’s the pitch. “Shrill” is the first adjective that comes to mind, then “piercing.” We’re sitting on the back patio of Sengers on the Fax (3014 East Colfax Avenue), trying not to stare as a table of sequined tank tops…
I’m playing beer pong against a pirate, and it’s not going very well. Aim is an issue, certainly, but trajectory is what’s causing me the most trouble: My ping-pong balls are either missing the table altogether or rolling around the rims of the red plastic cups before plummeting off the…
I am not one of the forty or fifty proud sporting “TEACHERS Make the Difference” or “Ask a Teacher!” stickers on their blouses and button-ups, trading in blue tickets for draft beers and tall cocktails, grazing around a spread of meat and cheese and veggies while carrying conference materials under…
One of the first things I notice about Lodo’s Bar & Grill (1946 Market Street) is that many of the female employees have curves, and I don’t mean the humps made by a pair of 34Ds over a size-two waist. I mean hips, and asses that explain themselves. This actually…
A favorite bar band of mine from the Midwest sings an audience-participation song about Leinenkugel’s beer that has just four lines: “I like my Leinenkugel’s beer (Woo-hoo!)/So does everybody here (Woo-hoo!)/If you don’t like it, you’re kind of queer (Woo-hoo!)/I like my Leinenkugel’s beer (Woo-hoo!).” I’m typically so drunk by…
No OGs, new Gs or dirtballs allowed. No sluts, sports fanatics or dudes who love the sight of their own pectorals. Definitely no one coming straight from the gym. You clowns are not welcome at Lucky Strike Lanes (500 16th Street), at least not according to the dress code —…
Sushi-and-Sapporo Quest 2008 begins when I suggest to Noel that we go to Parallel 17, since I’d scootered by there a few hours earlier and noticed that all the umbrellas on the patio bore the welcoming Sapporo insignia. But I’d been duped. Despite those casual umbrellas, Parallel 17 is a…
No sooner does the level of my Great Divide Samurai bottle dip below the top of the label than Carol, the bartendress at the shiny-new Jonesy’s EatBar (400 East 20th Avenue), asks if I’d like another. It’s been less than five minutes since she served it to me. “Oh, I…
I typically pack a just-in-case deck of cards as a preventive measure when I’m trying out a new bar or restaurant — just in case the service is slow, or just in case the music/crowd/vibe sucks but we’re in no hurry to go home. Tonight, however, I pack my blue…
