Tuesday, May 20
Full Moon Book Sale (all day long!) and concert with Jonathan Segel (6:30p)
Every full moon you can find great live music at Red Hill. Search the shelves or sit down with a cup of wine or a neighborly cheeseplate of delectables, let the kids browse the board books, and enjoy your evening with some of the best music by the best musicians San Francisco has to offer. Help us celebrate this month's full moon with a free concert by Camper Van Beethoven's Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher with the divine Alison Faith Levy. And, as always, an outrageously good book sale. This event is also a fundraiser to Save Rent Control in San Francisco. Enjoy the party, donate to the cause and learn why you should vote NO on Prop 98!
Red Hill Books presents a Free Fundraiser to defeat Proposition 98 and SAVE RENT CONTROL in San Francisco with a literary and musical evening to fill the full moon.
Red Hill's usual Free Full Moon Concert series will take a literary turn in order to spread information regarding the June 3rd ballot initiative posing as "eminent domain reform."
Hidden in this in this initiative is a ban on rent control in
California. The concert and readings are free but the information is priceless regarding quality of life in San Francisco. We hope to have plenty of generous audience members interested in the saving the last bits of affordable housing in California.
On the bill for reading are:
Stephen Elliot (Happy Baby, Sex for America)
Katie Crouch (Girls in Trucks)
Richard Loranger (Poems for Teeth, Poems for a Centralized Church)
Alvin Orloff (Gutter Boys, I Married an Earthling)
Andrew Foster Altschul (Lady Lazarus)
With live music performed by members of Camper Van Beethoven, Mushroom, The Sippy Cups and Cracker:
Jonathan Segel, Victor Krummenacher and Alison Faith Levy.
Stephen Elliott is the author of six books including Happy Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion Award as well as a best book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. In addition to writing fiction he frequently writes on politics. In 2004 he wrote Looking Forward To It, about the quest for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Elliott's writing has been featured in Esquire, The New York Times, GQ, Best American Non-Required Reading 2005 and 2007, Best American Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2006. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is a member of the San Francisco Writer's Grotto. He is also the founder of The Progressive Reading Series which helps authors raise money and participate on behalf of progressive candidates across the country.
Katie Crouch is a native North Carolinian and a migrated Northern Californian who has written Girls in Trucks, an image deeply familiar to both locales. This is Katie Crouch’s debut novel, which just came out in April and is a hot pick in this Vanity Fair!
"Though this feels almost like a collection—each chapter its own story with its own narrative technique—Crouch's portrayal of a young woman's self-sabotage and the pitfalls facing young women in a cold world is wise, wry and heartbreaking.
&em;Publisher's Weekly
"Gentle humor and sharp observation couched in straightforward prose with none of the preening preciosity so often seen in Southern fiction."
&em;Kirkus
Andrew Foster Altschul is the author of the novel Lady Lazarus. His short fiction and essays have appeared in publications including Esquire, McSweeney's, Fence, One Story, StoryQuarterly, and anthologies such as Best New American Voices 2006 and O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. He is also a frequent contributor of political analysis to The Huffington Post. A former music journalist and rock DJ, he currently teaches creative writing at Stanford University.
From Publishers Weekly:
In this gleeful, difficult debut, Altschul lays into an easy target — cynical celebrity culture — and meticulously crafts an over-the-top pop mirror world for his young heroine. Leaning heavily on the star mythology of Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and their daughter, Frances Bean, Altschul introduces Calliope Bird Morath, the most famous poet in America, beloved to deconstructionists and culture theorists and fifteen-year-old girls alike. Calliope's childhood, revealed in retrospect, is haunted by a public fascination with her parents, mercurial rock 'n' roll heroes Brandt Morath and Penny Power, a fascination continuing long after Brandt's suicide when Calliope is a small child. Pushed by the demanding Penny to claim her father's destiny, Calliope skips college to attend a prestigious M.F.A. program, and soon publishes a collection of poems that centers on Brandt's death and sounds a lot like bad Sylvia Plath. The media swarms, and Calliope scandalizes—and perhaps really does find a path back to her father after all. Over the course of nearly 600 pages, Altschul registers some razor-sharp cultural observations and executes some thrilling high dives (the character named Andrew Altschul's sessions with a Lacanian analyst in particular). But the book's tricky PoMo narrative is bloated with gee-whiz grad-schoolisms, and storytelling takes a backseat to indulgence throughout.
Alvin Orloff began writing in 1977 as a teenage lyricist for The Blowdryers, a San Francisco punk band. After studying sociology at U.C. Berkeley he dabbled in underground theater with The Sick & Twisted Players, performance art with the Popstitutes, and deejaying at Baby Judy's neo new-wave nightclub, before wholly succumbing to his literary pretensions. His writing can be found in numerous zines as well as the anthologies, Beyond Definition (Manic D Press, 1994), Tricks and Treats (Harrington Park Press 2000), and Pills, Chills, Thrills and Heartache (Alyson Press 2004). Orloff is also the co-author of transsexual showbiz memoir, The Unsinkable Bambi Lake (Manic D Press 1996) and a queer romance/alien invasion novel, I Married An Earthling (Manic D Press 2000). His latest novel is Gutter Boys (Manic D Press 2004), a wryly-twisted tale of unrequited love and debauchery set in 1980s gay Manhattan. Orloff lives in San Francisco's Mission District where he is hard at work on his 3rd, 4th, and 5th novels.
Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, and visual artist who has been living in San Francisco for eight months and seven days, not counting the ten years that he lived here before. He is the author of Poems for Teeth (We Press, 2005), which Bob Holman calls "one of the most extraordinary and virtuosic poetic feats since Francis Ponge took on Soap," as well as The Orange Book and eight chapbooks, including Hello Poems and The Day Was Warm and Blue. He is a recent and very happy escapee from The Big Mean Dirty City ( New York ).
Poems for Teeth is a marvel. In addition to extraordinary poems, the book contains calligraphic representations of each poem prepared by the author and artist Eric Waldemar and musical scores and notations for songs within the poems.
Short Attention Span Book Club
Short Attention Span Book Club has changed it's meeting time to the 3rd Sunday in May which is the 18th at 4:30. We return to the writer I like to call the Vonnegut of contemporary Israel, Etgar Keret and his latest collection of sharp, surreal short stories, The Girl On the Fridge.
Waffles for Dinner meets May 31, 12:30- 1:30
The Waffles for Dinner Book Club for middle readers brought to you by our own Dennis Griffin, the ebullient agent for getting kids to talk about good books for the sheer fun of it!
Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett
A Vermeer painting is stolen. Petra and Calder, two bright, quirky
sixth-graders, come together to solve the crime that has the whole
world baffled.
Already being heralded as The DaVinci Code for kids, Chasing Vermeer
will have middle grade readers scrutinizing art books as they try to
solve the mystery along with Calder and Petra.
Join Dennis as we explore the hidden messages in art.
Children's Morning Story Hours Expanded to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at Red Hill!
Tuesdays at 10 am: Itinerant children's librarian (and Bernal resident and historian) Valerie Reichert leads the library's Lapsit Storytime for children ages 0 to 3 at Red Hill Books.
All the kids want to know what stories Red Hill's Patrick has in store for them! Come by every Wednesday and find out!
Thursdays at 10 am: Valerie leads the library's Preschool Storytime for children ages 3 to 5.
This means that we have now have regular children's programming Tuesday through Thursday at 10 am!
Every Monday from 3 - 7p
The Itinerant Poetry Librarian's Lending Library
The Itinerant Poetry Librarian will be setting up shop and loaning books at Red Hill every Monday.
Every Sunday and the evening of the Full Moon
Free Live Music, Wine & Snacks!
Always on a Sunday and every full moon you can find great live music at Red Hill. Search the shelves or sit down with a cup of wine, a neighborly cheeseplate of delectables, let the kids browse the board books, and enjoy your Sunday afternoon with some of the best music by the best musicians San Francisco has to offer. All shows are from 3 to 5 pm.
On the evening of the full moon we put a bunch of great books on sale and invite you to a fabulous free concert.
Sunday, June 1 -- 3 - 5p
Gaucho
Gaucho began as a Gypsy Jazz trio in 2002 but has now grown to the size of a sextet and has brought the styles of Klezmer, Brazialian Choros, Swing, New Orleans and Roots styles as well as modern day melodies of relevence and the occasional irreverence. Dave Ricketts-guitarist/bandleader, Rob Reich-accordion, Mike Groh-guitar, Ralph Carney-horns, Pete Devine-drums and Ari Munkres on bass.
Dig Gaucho playing a red hot session at Red Hill: [mp3]
Sunday, June 8 -- 3 to 5p
Octomutt
Octomutt is a San Francisco Bay Area gigging duo comprising Ashley Adams (bass) and Ted Savarese (guitar and vocals). Each project is treated in a unique way and utilizes other instrumentalists accordingly for color and texture. As friend and fellow musician Amy Molinelli says, Octomutt “sounds like San Francisco—like its skyline, like its angles, like its hills.”
Heller Highwater have become Red Hill Sunday favorites. John Heller on guitar and vocals, Mike Mechanic on guitar and vocals, Andrew Waegel on banjo, dobro and vocals with Chris Xiques on bass and vocals. Four part harmony with four guitars by four fabulous musicians... for a bunch o' Berkeley hillbillies.
Sunday, June 22 -- 3-5p
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a collaboration between Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker, Monks of Doom) and Alison Faith Levy (Loud Family, The Sippy Cups, Mushroom). Digging at the roots of their rootlessness, these songs sweep out the dark corners of longing, regret, and desire with the intimate wit and wisdom of old friends. www.myspace.com/mccabeandmrsmiller
Sunday, June 29 -- 3 to 5p
Knuckle Knockers
Hailing from the hayseed neighborhood of Bernal Heights in San Francisco, the Knunkle Knockers can't wait to play you their favorite vintage and original songs and fiddle tunes. The Knuc Knocs stoke the fires of the Appalachian music tradition to give you a glimpse of the past through the eyes of the present, with voice, fiddles, mandolin, guitar and 5-string banjo. Bill's nimble and masterful playing, Stairwell Sisters' stalwart Martha's crisp guitar work and voice that's the envy of the trailer park, and Karen's emotive playing that's a confluence of the past and the playful, all go neck and neck, knuckle to knuckle on lightning dance tunes, fire and brimstone, and magical harmonies. Contact the Knuckle Knockers at nerakk@gmail.com, 415-821-1567 or 415-282-2125.
Saturday, April 12 -- 10 - 11a
The Waffles for Dinner Book Club
The Waffles for Dinner Book Club for middle readers brought to you by our own Dennis Griffin, the ebullient agent for getting kids to talk about good books for the sheer fun of it! It is at both Phoenix (10 - 11a) and Red Hill (12:30 - 1:30p).
Unexplained disappearances, daring thefts, perplexing mysteries, and the greatest sleuths of all time combine in this page-turning read. From Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot, famous detectives puzzle their way through a maze of alibis and motives in this superb selection of classic and contemporary crime fiction.
Babble On is a performance and reading series with a smattering of open-mic flavor, trotting out some of the hottest local writers and musicians and also giving you the opportunity to showcase your talents, as well. To ease your way up to the microphone we make sure to have free wine and delicious pastries on hand.
Thursday, March 20 -- 8p
David Lincoln, Mobility Lounge
At the frontiers of global think, Singapore is San Francisco, San Francisco is London, London is Bangkok.
Van is a computer animator who aspires to creating the perfect cartoon spider. When he is served eviction notice on his low-rent apartment, he is forced to secure his bohemian perch by taking the extreme recourse of marrying a complete stranger.
Renée, the French traveler he meets on the internet, is drawn into his web. As the attraction ignites, their relationship falls apart, and Van is forced to seek not fame but riches by joining a mysterious start-up with its headquarters in virtual space.
The software architect, K.P. Nair, who arranges everything for DQI (Digital Queen International), plots to trade places with Van—including a not-so-subtle play for Renée, Van's wife of convenience.
Personal loyalties must endure misunderstandings and stubbornness in this wry and tender debut novel about the boom and bust era of the late 1990s.
From an airport city outside Amsterdam, to Silicon Valley, France, India, and beyond, Mobility Lounge reveals the information and its consequences in this all-too-real world of global desire.
Stephen Elliott is the author of six books including Happy Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion Award as well as a best book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. In addition to writing fiction he frequently writes on politics. In 2004 he wrote Looking Forward To It, about the quest for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Elliott's writing has been featured in Esquire, The New York Times, GQ, Best American Non-Required Reading 2005 and 2007, Best American Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2006. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is a member of the San Francisco Writer's Grotto. He is also the founder of The Progressive Reading Series which helps authors raise money and participate on behalf of progressive candidates across the country.
Katie Crouch is a native North Carolinian and a migrated Northern Californian who has written Girls in Trucks, an image deeply familiar to both locales. This is Katie Crouch’s debut novel, which just came out in April and is a hot pick in this Vanity Fair!
Andrew Foster Altschul
From Publishers Weekly:
Alvin Orloff began writing in 1977 as a teenage lyricist for The Blowdryers, a San Francisco punk band. After studying sociology at U.C. Berkeley he dabbled in underground theater with The Sick & Twisted Players, performance art with the Popstitutes, and deejaying at Baby Judy's neo new-wave nightclub, before wholly succumbing to his literary pretensions. His writing can be found in numerous zines as well as the anthologies, Beyond Definition (Manic D Press, 1994), Tricks and Treats (Harrington Park Press 2000), and Pills, Chills, Thrills and Heartache (Alyson Press 2004). Orloff is also the co-author of transsexual showbiz memoir, The Unsinkable Bambi Lake (Manic D Press 1996) and a queer romance/alien invasion novel, I Married An Earthling (Manic D Press 2000). His latest novel is Gutter Boys (Manic D Press 2004), a wryly-twisted tale of unrequited love and debauchery set in 1980s gay Manhattan. Orloff lives in San Francisco's Mission District where he is hard at work on his 3rd, 4th, and 5th novels.
Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, and visual artist who has been living in San Francisco for eight months and seven days, not counting the ten years that he lived here before. He is the author of Poems for Teeth (We Press, 2005), which Bob Holman calls "one of the most extraordinary and virtuosic poetic feats since Francis Ponge took on Soap," as well as The Orange Book and eight chapbooks, including Hello Poems and The Day Was Warm and Blue. He is a recent and very happy escapee from The Big Mean Dirty City ( New York ).
Poems for Teeth is a marvel. In addition to extraordinary poems, the book contains calligraphic representations of each poem prepared by the author and artist Eric Waldemar and musical scores and notations for songs within the poems.
Tuesdays at 10 am: Itinerant children's librarian (and Bernal resident and historian) Valerie Reichert leads the library's Lapsit Storytime for children ages 0 to 3 at Red Hill Books.
Gaucho began as a Gypsy Jazz trio in 2002 but has now grown to the size of a sextet and has brought the styles of Klezmer, Brazialian Choros, Swing, New Orleans and Roots styles as well as modern day melodies of relevence and the occasional irreverence. Dave Ricketts-guitarist/bandleader, Rob Reich-accordion, Mike Groh-guitar, Ralph Carney-horns, Pete Devine-drums and Ari Munkres on bass.
Octomutt is a San Francisco Bay Area gigging duo comprising Ashley Adams (bass) and Ted Savarese (guitar and vocals). Each project is treated in a unique way and utilizes other instrumentalists accordingly for color and texture. As friend and fellow musician Amy Molinelli says, Octomutt “sounds like San Francisco—like its skyline, like its angles, like its hills.”
Heller Highwater have become Red Hill Sunday favorites. John Heller on guitar and vocals, Mike Mechanic on guitar and vocals, Andrew Waegel on banjo, dobro and vocals with Chris Xiques on bass and vocals. Four part harmony with four guitars by four fabulous musicians... for a bunch o' Berkeley hillbillies.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a collaboration between Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker, Monks of Doom) and Alison Faith Levy (Loud Family, The Sippy Cups, Mushroom). Digging at the roots of their rootlessness, these songs sweep out the dark corners of longing, regret, and desire with the intimate wit and wisdom of old friends.
Hailing from the hayseed neighborhood of Bernal Heights in San Francisco, the Knunkle Knockers can't wait to play you their favorite vintage and original songs and fiddle tunes. The Knuc Knocs stoke the fires of the Appalachian music tradition to give you a glimpse of the past through the eyes of the present, with voice, fiddles, mandolin, guitar and 5-string banjo. Bill's nimble and masterful playing, Stairwell Sisters' stalwart Martha's crisp guitar work and voice that's the envy of the trailer park, and Karen's emotive playing that's a confluence of the past and the playful, all go neck and neck, knuckle to knuckle on lightning dance tunes, fire and brimstone, and magical harmonies. Contact the Knuckle Knockers at 
