Saturday
August 7
See You Soon Viewers are expected to do a little work in Soon 3 shows, which typically involve oversized set pieces, mystifying activities, and interactive elements. Audiences actually guided the action in last year's performance piece Shake, a theatrical look at touch and tension triggered by participants who strode down a red carpet and shook hands with performers. The year before that, it was Smackers, a treatise on sex and voyeurism in which groping, kissing performers, seated in a Winnebago meaningfully parked between Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church and Broadway's strip joints, covered one another in saliva and lipstick as the reactions of gape-mouthed passers-by were recorded on video cameras and played back to other viewers. With Possibly Pandora, a look at our collective fascination with illusion, the company continues to work from the theory that many watchers actually want to be doers. Viewers will interact with three performers, following directions for a photo shoot involving a stretch limo, high-intensity lighting, a wind machine, and a makeup artist -- all participants will be asked to sign a model release so that their pictures may be broadcast on the Internet. The show opens at 1 p.m. (and runs Saturdays and Sundays through Aug. 22) in Washington Square Park, Columbus & Union, S.F Admission is free; call 558-8575.
Get Your Fill The vivid and strangely cyclical history of S.F.'s Fillmore District unfolds during the course of The Fillmore, the fourth installment of KQED's popular documentary series "Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco." The story begins after the 1906 earthquake, when an influx of immigrants shaped the Western Addition into one of the country's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods. But the area's makeup shifted dramatically with the onset of World War II, when Japanese residents were forcibly removed and rapidly replaced by black Americans, who flocked to the city in search of wartime work. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong were among the musical luminaries who dropped in on the burgeoning jazz scene, and for a time, the Fillmore's thriving black community was tagged the "Harlem of the West." But the face of the neighborhood changed again in the '50s and '60s, when outsiders deemed the Fillmore a slum and targeted it for urban renewal. Blocks were leveled, buildings stood vacant for years, residents were displaced, and ironically, the Japanese community that had been relocated only 20 years earlier began re-establishing itself with renewed Japantown construction. Actor Ossie Davis narrates the film, which features home movies, photos, and recollections from former residents and activists, and music from the Fillmore's jazz heyday. The 85-minute documentary concludes with talk of creating a Jazz Historic District; it screens at 9 p.m. (also 4 p.m. Sunday, 10 p.m. Monday) on KQED Channel 9.
Street People No matter when summer visitors arrive, there will always be a street fair to impress upon them the city's rightly celebrated cultural diversity. The Korean National Day Festival promises a kimchi fest and Korean barbecue, Korean and Western pop songs, farmers' dances, and martial arts. It begins at 11:30 a.m. with a ceremony at Civic Center Plaza (Eighth Street & Market), followed by a parade at noon from Market to Union Square, and the festival at 1 p.m. in Union Square, Geary & Powell, S.F. Admission is free; call 252-1346. The Nihonmachi Street Fair, meanwhile, offers the usual arts and crafts and food, plus Asian-American rockers Love Daria, Filipino sketch comedy group Tongue in a Mood, and the West Coast Lion Dance Troupe. It begins at 11 a.m. (also Sunday) at Japantown, Post & Buchanan, S.F. Admission is free; call 771-9861.
Sunday
August 8
Sufi Safari North Indian classical sitar player Habib Khan and symbolist poet Raven entranced listeners at the Mountain Aire concert with an elaborate stage show where a giant mirror ball bounced slivers of light off a frog pond and two naked butoh dancers slipped out from behind a pair of trees at midnight and wrapped themselves around the musicians as a bonfire blazed before them. All of this was just atmosphere, of course; Khan already plays trance music, which derives its hypnotic effect from wave after wave of musical figures layered with Raven's Celtic-inspired poetry and a very international backup band featuring pianist Ira Stein, tabla player Rais Khan, djembe from Ben Mawhorter, didgeridoo by Stephen Kent, and flutist Diane Grubbe. The show begins at 2 and 8 p.m. at Yoshi's, 510 Embarcadero West (at Washington), Oakland. Admission is $5-20; call (510) 238-9200.
Monday
August 9
All Aboard! So it hasn't quite been the monthly series that poet Curt Hopkins originally anticipated, but "Beautiful Trainwreck," the acoustic music and poetry night he inaugurated with a reading and live set from the Hail Marys, will continue nonetheless with the new installment "Country-Western Sonnets," featuring musical guest Eric Moore. Hopkins, a founding member of Seattle's Big Time Poetry Theater, will expound on the joys of rural life in a show sponsored by the fictional Ozark Jimmy line of fine country products, which includes Mesquite-Flavored Japanese-Style Toilet-Bacon, Hawaiian-Style Macadamia Nut Toilet-Bacon Puffs, and so forth. Moore, late of Portland honky-tonk band the Worried Guys and rock 'n roll outfit Sprinkler, is threatening songs of freeway fires and alcoholic romance as accompaniment. The show starts at 8 p.m. at Doc's Clock, 2575 Mission (at 22nd Street), S.F. Admission is free; call 824-3627.
