San Francisco is in a period of rapid change and struggle as a tsunami of cash crashes over its sea walls and floods its streets. Construction and change are altering the face of The City by The Bay, and its culture. A flood of new residents from around the world wander its streets mostly unaware of its history, libertine and artistic ways. Thankfully, when their pub crawl inevitably leads them to the old streets of North Beach the veil is lifted and all is revealed.
Recently, on my fortified weekly crawl through North Beach I reached Grant and Vallejo and was thrilled to see the spirit of anarchy flashing across the church wall of the City’s patron saint, St. Francis. Unannounced, of course, movie maker Paul Berry was showing his film BARK set in a future where over a million humans are living somewhere other than Earth. This streetside cinematic wonder chronicles, what else, unceasing power plays to control life, this time on the Moon.
The movie is driven by the Jefferson Airplane’s album BARK and the Bagavad Gita. Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner lives across the street and must flash back when he looks out the window some Saturday nights. Like the album, Bark is an antiwar movie. St Francis must be pleased. War this time is propelled by a lust for the Moon’s very special cheese. Buffalo grazing on Moon Cheese grow huge and human life is extended. Motive for war. Like Paul Berry, our movie-maker, some of the moon’s residents resist the order and win. Look for BARK on St. Francis and Proxy’s Hayes Valley sidewalk screen.
