Dear Readers,

Issue Three is at the printer and will be here 🔜

If you are anywhere near San Francisco, the first step is for you to come to the release party. That’s on Tuesday, March 10, at Latin American Club (3286 22nd Street). The program is to sit in booths and relax, it’s a bar. We’ll be there from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. or thereabouts, with magazines and snacks.

Subscribers, pick yours up at the party (or receive it in the mail just after).  

If you can’t make it to the Mission, you can buy Issue Three online, or subscribe if you haven’t already, or find yours soon in stores—including at our newest stockist, Skylight Books in Los Angeles. 

WHAT’S IN ISSUE THREE?

THE HORROR ⚫️ Katy Burnett executes a close read of Halloween II (2009), drawing a line between the film's violent heaviness and the transitional political era in which it was made and viewed—bloody realism for increasingly bloody times—in “One Day at a Time.” Mitsu Okubo made a beautiful drawing of Michael Myers to go with this one. 

GOTHS, ETC. ⚫️ Dark Entries’ DJ impresario Josh Cheon and punk polymath Brontez Purnell are in conversation. They discuss growing up goth, San Francisco's dance parties, several Dolores Park meet-cutes, archiving Patrick Cowley’s gay porn soundtracks, and maintaining the creative drive deep into their careers in a city that challenges this possibility. 

THE FLEA ⚫️ Artist-electrician Rico Duenas shows off his beloved Alemany Flea Market, the city’s primo hunting ground for stuff, in a photo essay along with an interview conducted by his friend David Gabriner, a citizen-historian and fire captain. 

ART-WORK BALANCE ⚫️ Beatrice Kilat is back with good advice about choosing to make art among life's other necessary tasks. Do you have a question to ask Bea, for possible inclusion in the fourth issue? Send it to whoever@sfreview.org.

A TYPE OF MAP ⚫️ In “The City Writes the Score,” Lian Ladia recounts a guided walk that led to a performance in one of San Francisco's beloved stairwells. The occasion was a closing event for an exhibition of paintings by David Wilson and featured musicians Zekarias Musele Thompson and Joel St. Julien. This essay features photographs by Andrew Owen.

WHAT’S SO FUNNY ⚫️ Margaret McCarthy watched a clown turn a bit part into a big hit. How did Renée Sedliar—with area clown troupe the Thrillride Mechanics—do that? Read all about it in “Enter the Mole.”

A NEW COMIC ⚫️ Who is at the art opening? You might recognize some of these characters in the latest comic by Kate Rhoades.

GAMBLING THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY ⚫️ In “A Face for Poker,” Rebecca Turner plays to unusual advantage at the casino in the land of the dead—Colma, California.

ART IN THE MIDDLE ⚫️ Alice Wu provides this issue’s CLOUD INTERLUDE.

ISSUE THREE also contains a books section (“San Francisco Review of Books” ha-ha-ha) with reviews by: Misha Crafts on Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell; Wren Farrell on Butter by Asako Yuzuki; Isabel Pabán Freed on One Piece by Eiichiro Oda; Cole Hersey on My Argument with the Gestapo by Thomas Merton and Not a Novel by Jenny Erpenbeck; Jacob Kahn on Glove Money by Sophia Dahlin; Rose Linke on They: A Sequence of Unease by Kay Dick; Alexandra Pink on Practice by Rosalind Brown; Stephanie Reist on Heartland Masala by Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji; and Michael Walker on Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler.

Till soon, and thanks as always for your support of this project—

Elisabeth Nicula
Editor
San Francisco Review of Whatever