Spit Happens

The Sister Spit open-mike series has seen its share of chain-saw wielding, naked cello playing, and puppet shows since it began, and eventually, hosts Sini Anderson and Michelle Tea decided that they shouldn't deprive the rest of the world of San Francisco's most boisterous girlie talent any longer. So last year, 12 Sister Spit performers piled into two vans and set out to tour America, playing some 30-odd venues at which Anderson and Tea also hosted local all-female open-mike performances. It was such a hoot, they're doing it all again this year. The 1998 Sister Spit Ramblin' Roadshow includes trapeze and poetry act the Turnbuckles, spoken-word cultural critic Beth Lisick, performance artist Stanya Kahn, Tribe 8 singer/storyteller Lynn Breedlove, and spell-caster Shar Rednour, and if that particularly San Franciscan combination doesn't raise a few eyebrows (or hackles) in Middle America, then S.F. can just wipe that smug expression off its face. The tour's kickoff show begins at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Elbo Room, 647 Valencia (at 18th Street), S.F. Admission is $5-10; call 437-9272. Meanwhile, over in the East Bay, strippers and circus freaks will be joining forces for Oxymoron: The Punk Poetry Show, a spoken-word and performance benefit for the Berkeley Women's Refuge, which shelters battered and homeless women. Cirkis Redickuless curator Chicken John is slated to perform, along with Danielle Willis (the stripper-cum-writer who helped make Jack Davis' birthday party so memorable), folk-punk singer Meri St. Meri, poet Julia Vinograd, Covert Culture Handbook author Richard Kadrey, and others. Dr. Howl MC's the show, which begins at 6 p.m. Sunday at 924 Gilman (at Ninth Street), Berkeley. Admission is $5-7; call (510) 525-9926. (H.W.)