by Nicole Gluckstern

Ahhhh, summer in the city, at last. And while there’s no end of street fairs and festivals to while away the extra daytime hours, the flipside to the experience is that some of them can be downright exhausting. From elbow-to-elbow crowds to overflowing porta-potties to mediocre sound engineering, music festivals can be an exercise in a peculiar masochism, forcing one to withstand hours of discomfort for the ephemeral payoff of bragging rights, or a single, incandescent set that makes it all worthwhile. Happily, there are still festivals that exist on a more chill plane, with Phono del Sol, happening this weekend, being one of our faves. SFist caught up with the hive mind behind the curtain (namely Christian Cunningham, Ben Van Houten, and John Vanderslice), to get their thoughts on this most auspicious anniversary.

SFist: From a personal standpoint, how do you feel the festival has evolved or changed?

Phono del Sol: When we started Phono del Sol, the goal was to find a way to showcase amazing local artists in the great (and totally underappreciated!) Potrero del Sol Park located near Tiny Telephone. Seven years in, the festival is bigger than it was when it started, but it still remains true to the original vision, with a ton of amazing local bands and some of our touring favorites providing a great reason to enjoy a day of music, food, and fun.

In terms of the work involved in producing such a festival, how is it divided between The Bay Bridged and Tiny Telephone? Who spearheads what and what is the overall chain of command, particularly your role and the role of Tiny Telephone?

The Bay Bridged spearheads the overall production of the festival, but there’s definitely a shared spirit that we’ve all developed over the years. We all have similar values when it comes to supporting local artists, curating a musically diverse lineup, and keeping the festival affordable and accessible. Every year, we all see what works and doesn’t work, and make little adjustments to make sure that the next year is even better than the previous one.

Tell us a bit about the curation process. How do you folks begin the process and how do you wind up with your lineup? What criteria, if any, are you looking to fill?

Curation is a pretty organic process. It’s really important to make sure that we have a ton of great local artists on the bill. We also want to make sure that the bill is musically diverse, with a mix of different sounds throughout the day. This year, we knew we wanted to bring Thee Oh Sees back after they crushed it at Phono several years ago. We were also really fortunate that Jay Som, one of our favorite local artists, was available to perform. From there, we put together a bill of ten great bands that we feel is our best lineup yet!

There’s always a good mix of favorites at the festival, but who of the newer acts are you most excited about? What about them captures your interest and what should we expect?

There are so many great emerging local bands playing at Phono del Sol, and we’re excited about all of them. But two highlights are sure to be Madeline Kenney and Rayana Jay. Madeline Kenney crafts inventive, looping compositions; she put out an EP on Toro Y Moi’s label last year, and we’re excited hear some songs from her forthcoming album. Rayana Jay’s songwriting suggests she is a future R&B star, and at Phono we get to hear her amazing voice live!

Will there be tours of the Tiny Telephone space again as part of the festival?

John Vanderslice: I wish! I've got a broken ankle and I'm hobbling around on crutches like a jerk. Next year I'll be back at it, and I can show everyone the modular synthesizers we're starting to collect.

Phono Del Sol happens from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 17. Find tickets here.

Related: Phono Del Sol, SF's Best Low-Key Music Fest, Announces Lineup With Thee Oh Sees, Jay Som, And More

Local activist and author Cleve Jones first attended an eight-hour premiere screening of the Dustin Lance Black-penned miniseries When We Rise at the Castro Theatre last week. This week he's fielding reactions from the public at large and giving interviews in support of the prime-time airing of the miniseries, which is based in part on his memoir of the same title, and SFist grabbed a few minutes with him to talk about how weird this has to be.

SFist: It has to be bizarre seeing your life, and your youth, reenacted on screen. How accurate has the portrayal been?

Cleve Jones: It is truly a surreal experience. I worked on the book for three years and Lance worked on the screenplay for three years (the first half of the book was done in about early 2013), so it's been an extremely long process. It was also difficult that during that time I lost both my parents and both my uncles. But yes, seeing the reenactments is more peculiar that I can possibly describe. One of the things that's very sweet about all this is that the real people behind these characters — Roma, Diane, and Ken, Cecilia, and Gilbert Baker [famous for creating the rainbow flag] — we're all still actually friends and we're all still involved in the movement, and that just has added something very wonderful to this, to have someone else to go through this experience with. Roma Guy is someone who's been a touchstone for me for literally decades. She's someone I've checked in with about everything from which candidate to support, to you name it. Gilbert Baker is probably my oldest and dearest living friend. Ken Baker and I have known each other and worked together off and on since I think the late 70s, starting at The Stud bar. I'm completely overwhelmed with watching it, yes.

The weird part with the miniseries is how it's so fictionalized. I tell people "It is not accurate yet remains somehow truthful." And we all knew things would be condensed and there'd be these vast distortions of time and space. For instance the Black Cat closed in 1964 when I was 10 years old, so we couldn't have gathered there around Jose Sarria, as shown in Part 1 (and I wouldn't end up meeting Jose for many years). The place we did hang out was The Stud, and that's not shown. The stabbing incident occurred not in San Francisco but in Sacramento. And I met Ricardo, my boyfriend, several years later in Austin, Texas.

How much of these other peoples' stories came out of the book, versus out of interviews Lance did?

Diane is not in my book at all. There are a couple of references to Roma and to Ken. Gilbert is a significant character. At the beginning of this, Lance wanted me to help him identify people who had been there who had been there since the early 1970s and were still alive and still in the movement.

Was the use of the 1971 Life magazine, which featured the words "Gay Liberation Movement" on the cover, your idea, or Lance's?

I told Lance about that. It's featured in the book, and you know it's funny how many older people have told me they also vividly remember that issue.

Is there a portion of the miniseries that is the hardest for you to watch?

Scott [Rempel] and Marvin [Feldman] were just my dearest friends. Not a day goes by when I don't think about them. So, these reenactments, even though they're not particularly accurate in detail, are difficult. And I of course think of Scott and Marvin's families as this is being broadcast.

The show goes a long way to describe how fractured the LGBT community was as this movement took shape in the early 1970s, and that hasn't been widely portrayed before. What do you think the defining moment of coming together was? Was it the Briggs Initiative for Californians? Was it the AIDS crisis?

The Briggs Initiative was a very important one because it targeted all of us who wanted to work in the education system, so everyone felt threatened. Members of racial and ethnic minorities felt threatened, and so did members of unions and the labor movement. That was a real significant moment that grew out of when we built our first coalition with Labor, the Coors beer boycott that was organized by Harvey.

When AIDS came, the response from our lesbian sisters was truly important. But a lot of people have focused on the caregiving aspect, and while that was important, it was a also a period when lesbians came into leadership roles in the movement as a whole. Up until that point gay men had dominated many of these leadership positions, and as so many of them were sick and dying this was a time when women really stepped forward and began taking responsibility for continuing the work that had been started.

What's been the funniest or strangest reaction to the miniseries that you've seen so far, on social media or otherwise?

Right now I'm getting about 50 Facebook or Twitter messages an hour, so I haven't gotten to them all yet and I'm just slogging through. The oddest and funniest thing is that I'm hearing from a lot of people I haven't heard from in decades — who knew so many of my ex-boyfriends were still alive?! And admittedly, there were a lot of them, but my god. They're all coming out of the woodwork.

'When We Rise' continues airing Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Previously: These Are The Real-Life San Francisco LGBT Heroes Portrayed In ABC's 'When We Rise'

If you've ever gotten coffee at Andytown or picked up a print at Three Fish Studios, you've already taken in Peter Cochrane's work: He does the weird and wonderful floral arrangements you see at those locations (including Andytown's "secret" outpost at Square headquarters). He's also a writer and editor, most recently heading up arts publication SFAQ before striking out on his own as an artist.

This Saturday marks Cochrane's first solo show at the Great Highway gallery. Entitled A Continuum, it seeks to "honor the beginning, the present, and the end as a connected stream," Cochrane says in his artist statement. Heady enough stuff that I feel crass by following it by suggesting you head to its opening party Saturday evening from 6 to 9 p.m., which will also feature the inevitable art-show free-flowing booze and food from neighboring Lawton Tap Room.

Though I've been engaged in an ongoing conversation with Cochrane for years, since we first spoke at a chilly barbecue thrown by a since-parted couple I met at the gym, reading his statement made me realize that his thoughts on San Francisco have a beginning, middle, and end of their own — and that some of you might enjoy his musings, as well. So I had him submit to our 20 Questions, with the below results.

Name: Peter Eric Steines Cochrane

Introduce yourself in one sentence: Hello, my name is Peter and I am a 29-year-old man who arranges flowers and writes and is an artist and a total homo.

Age and occupation: I am a 29-year-old artist.

Hometown: San Diego, CA / Bigfork, MT (depending on which year of childhood — it’s complicated).

How long have you lived in SF? Give me another 10 months and we’ll call it an even decade.

Best deal in SF: "My affordable yet mind-altering, historically conscious, socially provocative art," is what I think what I’m supposed to say. But really Kabuki Theater’s $6 Tuesday movies or a large, deep dish, jalapeño pineapple Patxi’s pizza eaten alone, split over the course of four dinners.

The best thing in/about your neighborhood is: Though I live in Western Addition, the Sunset is my home based on clocked hours so I’d have to say petting all of the dogs in front of Andytown Coffee Roasters in between arranging their flowers one at a time. Special shoutout to my main girl Jazzy the gallery dog at The Great Highway Gallery next door.

Your favorite Bay Area restaurant is: Tosca, with a before and/or after drink at Vesuvio. (This is not a recommendation based on habit, but was lovely the two or three times it’s happened.)

Place you always tell visitors to the Bay Area to check out: James Turrell’s skyspace “Three Gems” in the sculpture garden at the de Young. Preferably go on a Friday night when the museum is open late and sit there staring up at the black night through the sky hole as the lights shift from red to white to green to blue and destroy your comprehension of physical space.

You have two hours and $25 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?: I’d probably get a coffee from Andytown, sit on the dunes at Ocean Beach, and pocket the rest. What do you think I am, a rich 29-year-old artist? Free money!

Favorite mode of transportation: The Peter of 2013 who rode his bike or walked everywhere no matter the time of day or weather is ashamed of the Peter of 2017 who says, "My car."

Beer, wine, cocktails, or mocktails (please elaborate): Anything that’s pretty rough, like a slap to the face, and must be drunk slowly: tequila straight up (for sipping, not shooting, you beasts), tequila and soda with lime, tequila and grapefruit juice, gin on the rocks, gin and tonic, whiskey straight, vodka with ice, a martini, wine (whatever crosses the $6.99 / bottle line), or a Margarita with Grand Marnier if I’m feeling fruity and want to think of the way my mother says “Grand Marnier."

Favorite Bay Area stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it: San Francisco is full of limp-wristed fairies. I guess I bought into this the first few years I lived here but then gentrification shoved most of us out leaving behind the richest, whitest, buffest, discreetest, masc4mascest of them all.

Who's your favorite San Francisco character (living or dead, real or unreal): John Waters (I think he counts as living, dead, real, and unreal).

San Franciscans are the WORST about: Going on second dates.

SF has the BEST: Rent control laws.

You can tell someone is a local here IF: Native local: friendly, talkative, calm or neurotic, owns their own home and business, maybe has a funny haircut, owns a “The City” shirt or an embroidered “SF” baseball cap and wears it with pride.

Long-enough local: friendly, talkative, California nice, ambitious in the dreamy way, just came back from a hike, will have kids in the city because they resent their parents for raising them in the suburbs.

I have found/sold/bought the following on Craigslist: My first bike, which a mechanic later called a “death trap,” but from which I only fell off and scarred the left half of my face once, thank you very much.

What do you want all SFist readers out there to know about your city? Despite everything you’ll read about the city being overpriced, culturally hemorrhagic, overrun by tech billionaires, colder than Chicago (a personal feeling after having lived in Chicago where the houses are actually built to withstand cold temperatures), it’s still rife with moments of overwhelming beauty — the fog rolling over Twin Peaks to the east in a billowing, white wave; Victorian and Edwardian homes clutching to every hill and valley whose windows glint orange and gold with the setting sun; unadulterated frost in the early winter morning creating silver lakes of grass throughout Golden Gate Park — and charming, genuine people. You just have to look a little harder to find them all now.

Tell us an “only in San Francisco" story: One time, back when the drag night Mother was called Trannyshack and Trannyshack was at DNA Lounge, I went to a Björk tribute night after a day spent at the old SFMOMA. After getting a few too many drinks with friends the house lights went down and the first performer walked on stage, red cloths trailing behind her otherwise naked torso. As “Jóga” reached its crescendo she was hoisted into the air by pulleys and ropes that clipped into rings pierced through the skin of her back. The red cloth, now rivers of blood, were waved by her backup dancers as she flew around the stage without missing a lip-synching beat. “This is better performance art than I’ve seen in the museum,” I thought to myself having realized all my friends were now missing and had missed the whole performance. I later found that one got kicked out, one was clutching a toilet, and one was walking home in the rain, all swearing off booze and, misguidedly, Björk. Like so many other San Francisco moments, it came and went as if in an isolated dream.

At the absolute earliest, the Christmas season typically starts toward the middle of dessert at Thanksgiving. But Jane Lynch, three-time Emmy and Golden Globe winner, declares that the holiday season starts now, and who are we to argue?

The Christmas spirit is strong with Lynch, and that's driven her to record a new album, A Swingin' Little Christmas!
featuring Kate Flannery, Tim Davis, and the The Tony Guerrero Quintet. Hence the early start to the holidays: As Lynch jokes to SFist, "I want people to buy the album, and I just declared it Christmas time, so I hope they'll start buying it now."

Lynch, who was raised near Chicago and trained at Second City and Steppenwolf Theatre, is known for her TV appearances, perhaps most prominently as Sue Sylvester in Glee, Amy in Angel From Hell, and as host of Hollywood Game Night. Her film credits include memorable appearances in the works of Christopher Guest, from Best in Show through the recent Mascots, and in 2013 she made her Broadway debut in Annie as Miss Hannigan.

Lynch will perform selections from her new album at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on December 8, 9, and 10 — fully in the swing of the Christmas season. Tickets for that are available now starting at $90. As on the album, Lynch will be accompanied by the Tony Guerrero Quintet as well as Davis, the arranger for Glee, and Flannery, known for her performance as Meredith Palmer on The Office. In anticipation — and in celebration of the newly announced start to the Christmas season — SFist interviewed Lynch below.

SFist: You joked that it's Christmas already, but when does this whole thing really start for you?

Jane Lynch: WelI, I think, because you don't want to get sick of it, I always try to hold off before December 1 before I start incorporating Christmas into my life. You don't want to saturate it.

And when does it end? January 1st? February?

Lynch: Oh I stop right after Christmas. As a kid I was a big Christmas lover, I would love when we would put up the tree, I was in charge of the ambiance. I loved that feeling of Christmas.

So it's still that way now?

Lynch: Well, some years as a child, I wouldn't get the spirit, and I'd get so sad. And in my adult years, I'm in California, and we don't celebrate it as much here. I don't go to malls, so I don't see all the decorations. But when I go home to Chicago... Chicago is a Christmas town, the Christmas spirit there is welcomed in my heart. I love the same rituals in my family: We eat the same food, the same people come over.

You told Bon Appétit that you celebrate with McDonald's food — is that so?

Lynch: As a kid, I remember sticking my nose in the bag and smelling those fries... and that was Christmas.

What other traditions were there?

Lynch: We also had particular albums: Firestone released a Christmas album every year with big singing stars of the era, the more popular stars, not the rock stars, with all these different carols. That's very much what we modeled our album, A Swingin' Little Christmas! after. We've got our own standards and our own takes, you'll recognize them. At home, that's what we would do — play the same stuff all over again.

One of the great things about Christmas, especially growing up, were the specials — the animated specials, the musical specials, and we always looked forward to that. We're definitely harkening back to that. We're kind of retro to begin with, we play music of the early '50s and '60s, and this is gonna have the same kind of corny comedy too, and musically, if I may say so myself, it's just gorgeous.

What are some of your favorite cuts rom the album?

Lynch: "We Three Kings" has beautiful harmony and beautiful backup — I really like the tight three part harmony we do. There's also "Up on the Housetop," a really jazzy, sweet version of it thanks to Tim Davis, our vocal arranger who also arranged everything on Glee. There's a gorgeous a cappella version of "Coventry Carol," Kate Flannery sings it. It's a lot minor chords, it's very dramatic, it's one of the most beautiful things. So, at the show, we're basically performing the album.

Setting aside the holidays for a moment, I wanted to ask about Mascots. How was making that movie: Did you enjoy working with anyone new, or seeing the usual Christopher Guest cohort?

Lynch: I got to work with Ed Begley Jr. — it was the first time he and I had scenes together in these movies. He was so funny and so smart, so the idea that his character had [spoiler] a micropenis... that was so funny, and I didn't know that until we were shooting. And just to be back with everybody, it was really lovely.

What else are you working on, other than spreading holiday magic?

Lynch: Tomorrow I start shooting what will be a two-episode arc on Criminal Minds. I'm coming back to it — it's what I did it before Glee.

And where can people find the album?

Lynch: Go on iTunes, listen to a sample. It's also on janelynchchristmas.com, amazon.com, and the Home Shopping Network.

Jane Lynch appears at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on December 8, 9, and 10, with tickets available now and starting at $90.

Previously: Jane Lynch Brings New Christmas Cabaret To Feinstein's At The Nikko In December

Bar owner, spirits writer, pisco brand owner, and longtime friend of SFist Duggan McDonnell has just published his first book, which is titled Drinking the Devil's Acre: A Love Letter from San Francisco and her Cocktails. The book is at turns informative, witty, and highly personal, with a narrative that encompasses both local cocktail lore, recent cocktail history, and McDonnell's own personal journey from being a server at Mecca in the Castro to becoming the owner of Cantina and the local bar industry's poet laureate, as well as one of its biggest cheerleaders.

The book is anchored by 25 cocktail recipes, some of which were original Bay Area creations and many of which were not, and McDonnell takes pains to add more in-depth instruction than your average cocktail how-to, including making custom blends of spirits specifically for cocktail mixing, and adding on related riffs on classic cocktails, like the Boothby Cocktail and the Revolver for the Manhattan.

I talked to McDonnell about the book, how it came about, and what's so special about the drinking culture of San Francisco.

SFist: So, first of all, what is the Devil’s Acre?

Duggan McDonnell: The title comes from a real geographical place, a block at the edge of what was then called the Barbary Coast (now, North Beach). Have you been to that triangle of land cut on three sides by Columbus, Broadway and Kearny? That was known as the Devil’s Acre, the furthest edge of civilization, what was then certainly the wickedest, wildest place in the whole, wide world.

This is certainly an original book, just in form alone — part history, part memoir, part cocktail handbook — how did the concept take shape?

Can I confess? Ambition had me struggling with all that I wanted to say, so a hybrid form took shape. I wanted to write a book that I wanted to read; I sought something personal, specific yet encyclopedic. I sought very much to connect with not only local readers of history and cocktails, but with anyone anywhere who appreciates a specific narrative. More than anything, Drinking the Devil’s Acre is a book about devotion: to craft, to a City, to drink, to love.

In tying various cocktails to the Bay Area, there are good arguments to made for the Martinez and Irish Coffee and their roots here, and certainly Pisco Punch and Tiki drinks like the Mai Tai and Scorpion Bowl can be traced directly here, but there are some stretches here too — there are some more distant connections, shall we say, to things like the Bloody Mary, the French 75, and the Daiquiri. Was your point just to celebrate 25 classic cocktails in a San Francisco context? (And yes, it’s true, it feels like San Francisco is keeping the ginger beer industry afloat right now.)

Cocktail facts are boring, and murky; I’m much more interested in celebrating that which has been heartily embraced here, the cocktails which have been a part of our lives for generations whether created here or not. However, as Northern California is one of the most creative communities in the history of the world (and, certainly in alcoholic beverages), it’s an easy case to be made. But say, the French 75, everybody should know it was created at Harry’s New York Bar, Paris. But in the late 90’s through the recent years, a French 75 appeared on the majority of cocktail menus across San Francisco and is largely thought of as the gateway cocktail, getting vodka drinkers onto gin.

There’s a lot to be learned here about SF’s cocktail pioneers. What do you think is one of the most significant pieces of SF booze history that most people don’t know?

I’ll simply say that this city’s booze history was created and driven by eccentrics, iconoclasts like Trader Vic who had a lot of character, a ton of talent and knew how to have a great time.

You include a bunch of recipes for “superior cocktail” blends of various spirits, including rum, brandy, and whiskey. This isn’t something I’ve ever seen before and I was wondering what inspired this — and do you use these blends in your bar?

I absolutely vetted every single one of my ‘Superior Formulas’ and employed them for years at Cantina to make certain they stood the test of time in many different cocktails. No one whiskey is always perfect in a Manhattan, Sazerac or Old Fashioned — that’s why I advocate creating blends that are actually designed to serve in cocktails.

The book goes from speaking generally about SF neighborhoods and history to getting highly personal about how you met your wife, Felicia — which happened over a cocktail. Maybe tell a bit of that story, as a teaser.

You got it right: The book’s narrative starts wide, taking a long view history and then funnels to a very specific night in 2008 when a guest commented about the cocktail I’d just made for her. A woman, named Felicia, had become a regular at Cantina but this occasion was her first time tasting the Laughing Buddha cocktail. The cocktail was a special one to me, as I'd created it years before from a very unique place of inspiration. Felicia said:
"You know what this tastes like?"

"Tell me," I said.

"Those Spicy Thai Kettle Chips!"

She had no idea that her insight, and taste buds, had gotten to the heart of what actually inspired me to make the drink. A cocktail inspired by a bag of chips! Felicia was the first (and still only) person to make this connection. So, I was smitten!

How have you seen the cocktail scene morph in the last decade, or since you opened your bar Cantina?

It’s so big and pervasive now. Cantina, Alembic, Bourbon & Branch and Rye all opened within a year of each other, and that felt tremendously exciting. Now, a new joint opens every hour … My only caveat is that as culture moves so very fast in this city of innovation, let us not forget the tales of our tribe, let’s remember the giants whose cocktail-shoulders we stand upon.

What would you say is the most useless or annoying trend, drinks-wise, that you’ve seen in the last couple of years?

Clarifying fresh-squeezed juice. Really? You’re gonna send something lovely, acidic and full of vitamins through a processor and strip it all away just to get it clear? Isn’t that what vodka is?!

Lastly, what’s the best cocktail town besides San Francisco?

Buenos Aires. History plus creativity, fresh produce and lovely service.

If this can be said of anyone, Jeff Goldblum's voice is jazz. His impromptu cadences, his vocal dynamics: They're unexpected delights no written interview — apologies! — could do justice.

Fortunately, Goldblum hopes to do real musical justice to actual jazz next weekend with his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra in San Francisco. For those who didn't know, yes, Jeff plays keys, and just as theatrically as you'd expect.

With his orchestra, so named for a friend of the Goldblums in their native Pittsburgh, the multi-talented 62-year-old performs weekly in Los Angeles. SFist spoke to Goldblum on the occasion of his performances at Feinstein's at the Nikko: Two sold-out shows next Friday and Saturday, the 28th and 29th. Due to popular demand, there's now a third Saturday late show with tickets available.

SFist: Jeff Goldblum. We're excited to have you in town! Have you played the Bay Area before?

Goldblum: I've never played music up [in the Bay Area] and this will be a total first and a thrill for me. I love it up there and had a couple of big memorable life events up there — what did I do? Invasion of the Body Snatchers? And we filmed the pilot episode of Tenspeed and Brown Shoe up there in 1980.

SFist: Cool! Do you have any pals in San Francisco or in the area? I was wondering, for example, if you were friends with Carl Lumbly, who's onstage a lot here — I ask because of the Buckaroo Bonzai connection.

Goldblum: Oh does he? I haven't seen Carl, actually, but I'd love to, I remember him very fondly. We had a great time on [Buckaroo Bonzai] and that's one of the connected dots that led me back here to perform! Because — Peter Weller, did I meet him on that? I think I did! He's a horn player, and he was into this 'playing together' stuff. He would come over to my house, and we liked each other and we would play together, and his friend came over — a guitarist, a wonderful musician with whom he was studying — and we experimented together.

[Weller] went to do this Woody Allen movie and he got to talking with Woody Allen, and [Allen] said, well, 'you should do and get yourself out play a gig, you get better that way.'

Peter said 'I know a guy who has a restaurant' and we started out with [a performance] at a brunch. We got guys to play with us, and that's been changing and evolving, and Peter has been out and about and not playing with my group — I haven't run into him recently. But I've maintained this thing, performing, more and more regularly, including between my jobs.

SFist: Speaking of Woody Allen, another fine jazz musician who just played in San Francisco, there's a line I wanted to ask about from Annie Hall. On the phone you say 'I've lost my mantra' or 'I forgot my mantra'. Well, I wanted to ask, have you remembered it? Have you found it?

Goldblum: 'I forgot my mantra!' Full circle, when last we played — and the only time we played — at the Carlyle Hotel, Woody Allen was playing there. The night before we started our stretch — I'd seen him once before, and really hadn't run into him since I did that line in 1975-ish — and so I thought, well I'd like to see the room, to see him again, and me and my bass player got pals-y with the very friendly band leader that he's got and the banjo player. We started to talk before Woody came in, and I said oh my gosh, maybe I'll sit in! Half way through, Woody said look who's here, and so we sat in on a couple of songs. It was delicious.

You know, I'm still appetized for life itself in many ways and I find acting not to be pretentious, and music, and I'm married now and I just had a baby six weeks ago. And I've been working on this movie, this Independence Day 2. I play a character, David Levenson, and there's some nice stuff to do in it: The whole thing was chock full of interesting and delightful people in the cast. And even the subject matter, being visited by aliens! Well, you know Neil deGrasse Tyson? Last night I sat down and watched Cosmos, and I'm totally into it, I think it's very enlightening!

I keep doing what I kind of imagine is my lot in life, which is learning.

SFist: Ah, okay, so If you could learn from, on the jazz front, some jazz greats, who would those be?

Goldblum: Well you know, I'm still kind of filling in my education — I didn't go to college to study jazz — but what I gather they do in these courses I'm still filling in through my listening education.

I'm listening to Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner — from Pittsburgh, where I'm from, because my parents back in the '60s would bring back his records. On my phone these days I'm listening to Bill Evans, Theolonious Monk... just catching up with all of them.

Oh, and Tony Bennett! Do you like Amy Winehouse?

SFist: Duh.

Goldblum: Well, when she was around she struck me terrifically, and seeing this documentary, Amy, which I was very eager to see, really struck me, especially Tony Bennett. That scene, which feels very voyeuristic, this scene of her in her very sad stages of breakdown and difficulty, where she's almost walking out, and saying 'I can't do this', and Tony Bennett is so thoughtful. I've adored him for so long, and in fact met him once. He says to her, 'You're gonna be fine, just do what I do, and keep trying to make it better.' And he's so sweet, and they come up with this lovely recording, and I found the most touching part of the documentary to be when Tony Bennett says, 'Life, if you stay around long enough, teaches you how to live it.' I just thought that was boiled down, rich broth.

SFist: Speaking of Tony Bennett, it just occurred to me, have you thought about doing 'I Left My Heart In San Francisco?' when you're here?

SFist: I might do anything! What I usually like to do, believe it or not, is I leave it up to John Mastro, who has been this band manager, and he's a musician... we've sort of cooked up this approach whereby what he does is sort of make this a surprise event for me. It's what I seem to have an appetite for! I have a bunch of songs I play every day that we might get to, and I bring my book, but he doesn't tell me what we're going to play.

I like to improvise, I like to do cold readings. But, I'm nothing if not conscientious: I practice, and when I'm on set, which I've been doing in Albuquerque for Independence Day... I'm a big proponent of preparation, coming up with an interesting way to play something whether its musically or theatrically.

So, Tony Bennett. Maybe we'll play it, but I want to be surprised.

SFist: Could you talk about the group you'll be playing with a bit?

Goldblum: The local bass player that we've never played with but who comes highly recommended is Dan Feiszli, and of course Lincoln Adler, who will sit in as our saxophonist, and Annie Ellicott, who has sung with us here and whistled sophisticated jazz, in my humble opinion, she'll be with us for a couple songs. And our regular members Kenny Elliott on drums, James King, who's one of the stars of Fitz and the Tantrums, and on guitar John Storie.

They're the meat and the brisket and the potatoes, I'm the I don't know what, I'm the horseradish.

SFist: Hey, I figured I'd ask if you'd seen the new Jurassic Park reboot?

Goldblum: I haven't seen it, but congratulations to them! Because, you see, I've been in Albuquerque shooting, which overlapped with their premiere and this run of the movie. Did you like it?

SFist: Hmm. Well, let me ask you something else, and this is totally random, but I was pointed to a production of the most wonderful tale — The Legend of Sleepy Hollow — which you did a long time ago, playing Ichabod Crane.

Goldblum: Yes, Sun Classics, we filmed in Utah at a ski resort in the middle of winter and I remember it was a modest production compared to, say, the Tim Burton version. But I recall being very moved, when we were outside in the snow. I was actually recalling this on set in Albuquerque. I was saying to myself, on this path, because it reminded me of Robert Frost, "The woods are lovely dark and deep / But I have promises to Keep / and miles to go before I sleep."

I remember thinking about it then and kind of weeping... It's a struggle. [The narrator] gets caught up in the spookiness and the bigness of nature. I've read analysis, and I think it's not a bad thing, it's not death, maybe that's part of that guy's dilemma. But maybe instead of death, the woods and all that is something so profoundly mysteriously good and cosmic and unnamable. It's very actable: I can see myself, or somebody else acting that moment.

Arguably anonymous Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer took another step toward non-anonymity with an on-camera interview recently. This interview with The New West's Will Hearst appears to have been posted last month, but it just surfaced on social media yesterday (and subsequently on Eater). In it, Bauer, in big sunglasses and hat, talks about a lot of things he's talked about numerous times on his blog over the years, and in other interviews, like how he runs on the treadmill every morning to stay trim and brings food home from restaurants to his dog. Also, he will always, always love the Caesar salad at Zuni and says it once again.

If you watched the most recent season of Project Runway, you're likely familiar with Emily Payne, the 80s/Space Oddity-influenced talent who was often the voice of compassionate reason on the show, even in the midst of reality-TV-chaos.

Payne's been in the fashion design biz since 1997, and has lived in SF (with a break in SoCal, for which we forgive her) since 1999. As a private-label designer, she worked for companies that sold goods at Hot Topic, Urban Outfitters, and Forever 21, but in 2007, when Emily and her now-husband Isaac had a daughter, Emily moved into kid's clothes, launching cult-fave line DevonRose.

In 2011, she started her women's label, Leathertongue, which Emily described to SFist as "a high-end street wear label for fashion forward women who want to show their femininity, but with a sharp edge," (which basically sounds like how 9/10ths of the women I know describe their aspired-to personal style). And she's still chilling with the Runway pack: She's going to be teaching a draping class at Britex with Sacramento-based Season 11 designer Richard Hallmarq on February 7 (tickets are $25, available here), and will be doing a Valentine's Day fashion show with San Mateo-based Season 12 designer Alexandria von Bromssen at The Empire Room (555 Golden Gate), details here.

Name: Emily Payne

Introduce yourself in one sentence: Hi, I'm Emily and I'm a double Leo.

Age and occupation: 41 year old Designer

Home town: Temple, Texas

How long have you lived in SF?
I lived here from 1999 to 2004 (moved to SoCal for some strange reason) then moved back to SF in 2011.

Best deal in SF:
For food: El Gallo Giro Taco Truck in the Mission (23rd) for the best MEAT!!!

For clothing, Relove"on Polk Street. It's a vintage and modern resale shop. Great buyer there, friendly and attractive staff, and nice prices, too.

The best thing in/about your neighborhood (Chinatown) is: It's close to EVERYTHING:)

Your favorite Bay Area restaurant is: SouthPaw BBQ & Southern Cooking

Place you always tell visitors to the Bay Area to check out:
Britex Fabrics in Union Square. It's a 62 year old family-run luxury fabric store with four floors of inspiration and crazy creative types EVERYWHERE inside.

You have two hours and $25 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?
Walk to Polk street, get a crumb donut from Donuts and Things. Then, cruise up Polk (towards Vallejo St) and get a imported fashion mag from Smoke Signals, and grab a dirty chai.

Favorite mode of transportation: Walking

Beer, wine, cocktails, or mocktails (please elaborate):
Red wine! I drink a glass (or two) almost every night.

Favorite Bay Area stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it:
That it's a "GAY" city...I don't buy into it...it's an "ASIAN" city.

Who's your favorite San Francisco character (living or dead, real or unreal): Juanita MORE

San Franciscans are the WORST about: Crossing the street

SF has the BEST: Weather for layering:)

You can tell someone is a local here IF:
They have three layers of clothing in their bag.

I have found/sold/bought the following on Craigslist:
Bought my Industrial Juki straight-stitch (almost brand new) for $400.00

What do you want all SFist readers out there to know about your city?
It can be incredibly beautiful and disgusting at the same time.... and it is ALWAYS changing.

Tell us a “only in San Francisco" story
When I lived in SF the first time (99-04) I had a studio space on Market & 6th for a tiny while. If you live in SF you know that's a really seedy area and DIRTY. Once (after FINALLY finding a parking spot for my enormous Explorer) I walked up the alley to the back entrance like I always do. That day was one of the only two hot days of the year and I was wearing my favorite MIU-MIU sandals. Suddenly I stepped on something that caused me to slide for a moment, nearly falling. "That better not be shit" I thought to myself as I looked down and realized to my horror that I had stepped on a dead bloated rat and rat gut had squirted onto my bare sandaled skin!! It was all I could do to hold it together as I ran into the building and stuck my foot in the sink.

See all 20 Questions With SFist interviews here

You know who Sarah Bacon is (even if you don't know that you do): She's the woman behind The Richmond District Blog of San Francisco, a long-running site that tirelessly chronicles the goings-on, big and small, of SF's Richmond District. She's also a veteran of the Bay Area's tech industry, with a career that spans stints at some of the biggest names in the biz, as well as small start-ups.

Now she's got a new bag: Nourish Cafe, a Kickstarter-(over!)funded vegetarian restaurant that Bacon and her two partners hope to open in February, 2015 in a cute little location on 189 6th Avenue. When she's not blogging, changing how we eat, or being a start-up mastermind, the SF native is busy enjoying all the natural wonders our city has to offer, as you can see from her answers to our 20 questions.

Name: Sarah Bacon

Introduce yourself in one sentence: I am a SF native with a particular passion for the Richmond District.

Age and occupation: 42, Product Manager, Blogger, Entrepreneur

Home town: San Francisco, CA

How long have you lived in SF?: All of my 42 years

Best deal in SF: Our parks. I’m always astounded by how lucky we are to have our parks, trails, and amazing views. It’s easy to escape the city’s buzz and it doesn’t cost a thing.

The best thing in/about your neighborhood is: The parks (Presidio, GGP), beaches and views. I love putting on my running shoes and escaping from my front door.

Your favorite Bay Area restaurant is: We’re not open yet but it will be Nourish Café, the new café I am opening in the Richmond District.

Place you always tell visitors to the Bay Area to check out: Lands End

You have two hours and $25 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?: A walk on the Lands End coastal trail and lunch at the Legion of Honor on the terrace (no admission required). Beauty all around.

Favorite mode of transportation: A Bolt Motorbike. But I don’t own one so really, it’s my car.

Beer, wine, cocktails, or mocktails (please elaborate): Fruit smoothies. I could drink them 24/7.

Favorite Bay Area stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it: That the city is filled with urban hipsters that only work in tech. There are plenty of people NOT like that in the city. We are still very diverse.

Who's your favorite San Francisco character (living or dead, real or unreal): I have to go with Mrs. Doubtfire at the moment. I miss Robin Williams and his house in the film was where my grandfather lived for a short time while growing up. So I have a soft spot for the best nanny ever on the big screen. Runner-up: the wild parrots.

San Franciscans are the WORST about: Change! The acronym NIMBY applies to this city for a reason.

SF has the BEST: World-renowned bridge. I love the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s such a beautiful object that weathers with us.

You can tell someone is a local here IF: They are wearing layers. Locals are prepared for ANY microclimate.

I have found/sold/bought the following on Craigslist: A hubcap, a perfectly good IKEA desk that was abandoned in front of my building, concert tickets.

What do you want all SFist readers out there to know about your city? That it’s the people that make this city what it is. Be kind to one another, be adventurous, try new things, and shop local.

Tell us a “only in San Francisco" story: I think it has to be the random wildlife encounters we have in our 7x7 area. One morning I was at bootcamp in Mountain Lake Park and a coyote was up on the playground hill, casually watching us. Wild parrots squawk overhead as they fly their feeding routes through the city. In 2013 we had an adorable river otter that made his home at Sutro Baths for a few months.

See all 20 Questions With SFist interviews here

In every other city in California, their Public Defender is an appointee. Not so in San Francisco! Here, we elect the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco, and since 2002, Jeff Adachi's been our guy. He's tried over 150 jury trials himself, and oversees a staff of 93 lawyers, all who represent over 23,000 people each year. On top of that, he ran for mayor against Ed Lee in 2011, eventually coming in sixth out of 16 candidates. He's also directed, written, and produced two documentaries. The guy gets around, as you can see from his responses to our 20 questions.

Name: Jeff Adachi

Introduce yourself in one sentence: As California's only elected public defender, my office provides the best legal representation and justice money can't buy.

Age and occupation: 56, Public Defender of San Francisco, criminal trial lawyer & filmmaker

Home town: South Sacramento

How long have you lived in SF? Since 1981 when I attended UC Hastings for law school.

Best deal in SF: Bowl of cha siu ramen + sake at Sapporo-Ya in Japantown

The best thing in/about your neighborhood is: On the Westside, we have free parking but it's hard to find your car through the fog.

Your favorite Bay Area restaurant is: Ozumo

Place you always tell visitors to the Bay Area to check out: Alcatraz, especially now with dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's exhibition

You have two hours and $25 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?: See a horror or action movie (or two), buy a popcorn (smuggle in a Coke) and give whatever is left over to the homeless.

Favorite mode of transportation: Horse drawn carriage or Muni, whichever is faster

Beer, wine, cocktails, or mocktails (please elaborate): James Bonds' Vesper martini extra dry "the apèritif of Bordeaux"

Favorite Bay Area stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it: We all eat healthy (I don't and never will.)

Who's your favorite San Francisco character (living or dead, real or unreal): Frank Kozik, an avant-garde artist who is famous for making plastic rabbits which he calls labbits.

San Franciscans are the WORST about: summer fashion style

SF has the BEST: men and women in suits & trench coats (I favor Giorgio Armani but have to find them on sale.)

You can tell someone is a local here IF: they don't ask you for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I have found/sold/bought the following on Craigslist: Concert tickets!

What do you want all SFist readers out there to know about your city? We are a city of rebels except when it comes to our coffee.

Tell us a “only in San Francisco" story: The first time I came here by myself in high school, my cousin and I visited with our class. Everyone else ate at Castagnola's but we didn't have $20 so, instead, we bought French rolls and some cold cuts for a few bucks and ate them in a grassy area near Fisherman's Wharf - it was the best sandwich I ever had in my life!

See all 20 Questions With SFist interviews here

Richard Loren has just arrived back in the Bay Area where he resided from 1970 to 1986. In fact, it was none other than Jerry Garcia, whom Loren would come to manage, that told the young man to go west.

Once here, Loren would manage bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and The Doors. In his new book, High Notes: A Rock Memoir (with Stephen Abny), from which Loren will read tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at The Green Arcade bookstore (1680 Market St.), he recounts life backstage and on the road with the countercultural stars. He also took a moment to explain his project and get into some big moments on tour.

How long have you been working on your memoir?

I started writing it in 2008 and I decided that it was a book that I was going to put together on my own terms. I wouldn't seek out representation or corporate publishing affiliation, I just went about writing it all down chronologically.

That was after I had produced the Grateful Dead's 30th anniversary live in Egypt album. That show was basically my vision. I had met Jefferson Airplane's lead singer and I was staying at his house when I moved to California. He had a lot of books about Egypt, which interested me. When the Grateful Dead went on a hiatus in '75 and I was on holiday riding a camel around the pyramids in Egypt one afternoon, I saw a stage and thought, "Hey, maybe the Dead could play here." When I went back I brought it up with the band members, we jumped on it, the band had a meeting and decided. We played there three shows in '78, and the final show there was a lunar eclipse.

How did you and Garcia become friends and collaborators?

When I became Garcia's manager in '73 we spent much of each day in each other's presence. We shared a lot of the same views culturally and socially. He was quite a human being, his interest was boundless, he was a compassionate person, and he played a hell of a guitar.

Those ten years I spent with Garcia measured up to be the ten best years of my life. We liked the same music, art, books on suppressed ancient history and ancient knowledge, stuff about things that happened, the monuments of Egypt, the anomalies that are not part of traditional academia. You know, we look at ourselves as the most advanced form of human, which is more than likely not the case. When you look at some of the structures on the planet, there are just a lot of monuments that are unexplained, mostly metaphysical, we shared the belief that we live in a multidimensional universe where not everything can be seen.

Would you talk about the Doors and your relationship with that band?

Well, I bailed Jim Morrison out of jail in '67. I never had to do that for Jerry. The police officer backstage had no idea he was in the band, and he was in fact maced by the cop, and demanded an apology of the cop. Then he got onstage and retold the story during "Backdoor Man," riling up the crowd and prompting his arrest from stage.

JIm was a poet, there are very few poets who lead rock and roll bands, he was a complex guy, he could be gentle and kind, or irrational and weird. it depended on the drugs he was taking or not taking at the time. He was a prototype. There are others that have followed in his footsteps, but nobody like Jim. His moves were always unique, none of his shows were alike. I don't know if he said thank you, but I'm sure he was grateful.

How does your book, and how do you, look at that time?

It's a collection of stories, a cultural coming of age as me as a young guy in my early 20s, my rites of passage in the music world. My life was shared with a lot of young people, but they happened to be rock stars... it was an amazing time.

From 2004 to 2008 or so, SFist made a habit of hitting interesting locals with a list of 20-or-so questions, for the edification and enjoyment of our readers. Now in our tenth year, we've freshened up original interviewer SFist Emily's question list and relaunched the feature — and who better to relaunch with than San Francisco's event king, Johnny Funcheap?

It was 2003 and Johnny Hayes was unemployed, bored and broke when he came up with the idea for Funcheap, an email newsletter to share all the fun, cheap events in San Francisco he dug up. These days, he goes by "Johnny Funcheap" and it's his full-time job, with a newsletter that goes out twice a week to over 75,000 people. But even in these days of $7 toast, the focus remains the same: all the things to do in SF and the Bay Area for free, with a few "worth the splurge" picks thrown in for good measure. "These days, I get people who want $200 dollar dinners listed on the calendar," Funcheap says, but he sends those folks packing. "That's not what we're about!"

Funcheap is currently working on a new start-up for culture seekers in San Francisco called RushTix. Each week, members get invited onto the guest list for a hand-picked grouping of events so they can discover new and interesting experiences. (That's one of the reasons the more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed he didn't get to all 20 of our questions.) Check RushTix out here!

Introduce yourself in one sentence: I'm Johnny and I spend all my time digging up strange, wonderful and free things to do in San Francisco.

Home town: Culver City, California

How long have you lived in SF? I moved here in 2001 with no job and just before we knew the economy was tanking. Great timing. But it forced me to be super cheap and hunt for deals out of necessity.

Best deal in SF: Almost every month the USF community garden hosts a free vegetarian dinner. You sit with newly-made friends at communal tables and grub on food directly from the garden and neighborhood farmers’ markets. It's typically the first Thursday of the month. Can't beat free, fresh and friendly!

The best thing in/about your neighborhood is: I live in Duboce Triangle and love it. It's so very walkable. The sidewalks of Noe Street have lovely little bulb-outs, benches and hang-out nooks. Plus we've got a great "Little Free Library" near 15th Street. That is, when it isn't being stolen or set on fire. We can't have nice things.

Your favorite Bay Area restaurant is: Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights. Their spaghetti and meatballs call me to them like the sirens, plus there's usually a huge portion left over to take home and then promptly forget in the fridge.

Place you always tell visitors to the Bay Area to check out: Tartine Bakery. Sure, everyone outside of SF knows sourdough and Boudin, but I want visitors to know what we love and would get in line for — a country loaf fresh out of the oven at 4:30 p.m. that's so warm, yeasty and moist you HAVE to spoil your appetite and eat some of it walking home.

You have two hours and $25 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?: I'll load up on peculiar art at Frankenart Mart in the Inner Richmond on their free hot dog day. Usually every first Sunday afternoon, this quirky, tiny art space has a veggie vs. beef hot dog giveaway battle (beef usually wins). And they've always got some slightly off-kilter exhibit going on. Right now, it's an old west "Sarsaparilla Saloon" with a frontier root beer bar and cat brothel. Yeah...you read that right, a cat brothel. For $25 I could probably load up on four or five unique art pieces from the exhibit, plus have a fun afternoon crafting something like a self-portrait made out of ketchup and mustard. And then you spin the "wheel of fortune" to get either 20% off, or (heaven forbid) land on having to pay 20% extra. This totally participatory art space is like a playground for creating things — one of those places that could probably only exist in a city like San Francisco.

Favorite mode of transportation: My feet! I grew up in LA taking a car everywhere and found it very isolating. I love walking whenever I can — running into people along the way, and experiencing the city as a pedestrian.

Beer, wine, cocktails, or mocktails (please elaborate): Cocktails, without a doubt! I'm partial to cuba libres at the moment (rum, Coke and lime). I've never had a bad well rum, so it's usually dead cheap during happy hours.

Favorite Bay Area stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it: We're all bike-riding, eco-friendly coffee snobs who work at tech companies and get insanely-awesome free lunches. I don't own a bike, I don't drink coffee, but I do recycle and would love to get me some Googley-lunch action now and again. Their salted chocolate chip cookies are amaz-ing.

San Franciscans are the WORST about: Hating on LA. I love it when we San Francsicans are so very proud of where we live that it comes out of our pores. But spending time and energy disliking LA is rather unbecoming of a city as awesome as SF.

SF has the BEST: Creative people. There's something about this city that attracts people who love throwing really fun and bizarre events. I think it has to do with people feeling free here in SF to be whomever they want and to create whatever events are in their heart. So we're a city filled with people who want others to experience their art simply because it's amazing to create and share something and see other people enjoy it.

You can tell someone is a local here IF: They get excited by seeing a movie or TV show with a scene of San Francisco in it. In what other city will people cheer in a movie theater if their city appears on the screen? I love it!

I have found/sold/bought the following on Craigslist: Like, everything. Cell phones, roller blades, Giants tickets, carpool road trips, dog crates, crazy roommates who accused me of stealing her mail...you name it. And I owe Funcheap almost completely to Craigslist. My very first week doing it, I posted my listing of free events on Craigslist and got 100 people to join my email list right away. That told me that there were other people who liked free things to do.

What do you want all SFist readers out there to know about your city? If you're not going out and always trying to discover new fun things to do, then you're missing out on one of the best reasons why we pay this insanely-high cost to live in San Francisco. But too many people (including me, sometimes) are instead sitting at home with Netflix. To help keep the city's arts culture thriving, I'd love it if each month everyone in SF challenged themselves to try to find just one new event to experience.

We don't get too steady a stream of celebrities here in the Bay Area, but we do get some gracing our theater stages here and there. And with that in mind we'll be kicking off a series of "exit interviews" with people here from out of town to tell us about what they love, and what they don't love, about staying in San Francisco. Starting us off is Jonathan Groff, star of the HBO show Looking, which just wrapped shooting on its second season this week.

SFist: You guys have been here a long time for this shoot — significantly longer than last year's shoot, am I right?

Jonathan Groff: Yes. Well, last year the season was eight episodes but we'd already shot the pilot, so we were here for a period of time to shoot seven episodes. But this year we did a total of 10, and we've been here since the end of August, and I leave on Friday.

This is it, this is the end. I'm so bummed. Tomorrow's my last day of shooting.

Where were you living this time during the shoot?

I am living in like the Castro/Mission gray area. I love it here.

What was your most fun shooting day this time around?

There's been so many. The first episode was really fun because it was the first one back and we were all on location in Russian River. We were in canoes and hiking through redwoods and pretending to be on drugs at a party, and it was really beautiful. I'd never been up there before so that was really kind of an amazing experience.

Yeah it's beautiful up there.

So beautiful.

Would you say that was the best location you discovered?

We shot outside of the city a couple of times this year. We were in Russian River, and then we shot in Modesto, we shot in San Leandro, and Oakland a little bit. We were kind of spreading our wings a little bit exploring the Bay Area, more than just San Francisco which was kind of fun. I don't want to give anything away but we're sort of exploring different character areas, like where they're from, and it's interesting to see how the different parts of the Bay Area sort of informed us about different storylines and different characters in the show. And it was cool to be outside the city a bit.

So, I saw you perform at Cleve Jones' 60th birthday. Had you ever met him before?

I met him when were here last year. Danny Glicker, the costume guy on Looking did the costume design on Milk, so he knew Cleve from that. So I got to meet him with Danny last year when we were here. And he told me that his birthday party was coming up, and I want to say in March he was planning it, and he said "save the date!" And I was planning on going to it and about a month before we had brunch and he asked me to sing at it. I was so excited. It was so cool, such a fun night.

Did you meet anyone else that night?
I met Armistead Maupin and his husband Chris and I'd never met them before. And we're all such crazy Tales of the City fans. So that was pretty thrilling. And he had us over for dinner at his house we had The Comeback premiere viewing party and Armistead was there.

Sidebar: What did you think of The Comeback re-premiere?

Ohmygod it's everything that I wanted and more. I'm a huge huge Comeback fan. I literally watch it so much that throughout the course of shooting this season they've had to tell me to stop saying my lines like Valerie Cherish. Like, "You're line's sounding a little Valerie Cherish can you just take it down a notch," and I'm like, "Oh, right. Sorry sorry sorry." Sometimes we'll actually rehearse our lines as Valerie Cherish while we're rehearsing a scene. We are all obsessed with the show.

I've seen you and Russell Tovey (especially Russell) out on the town a lot this trip. What have been some of your favorite haunts?

There's this bar that was recommended to me that I've now been to a couple of times this year... Zeitgeist. I love Zeitgeist, with that back area. I love it because it's like a mixed crowd, all different kinds of people. And because when I order a vodka soda and they're so giant and cheap! Really good Bloody Marys, too. I'm all about an outdoor space at a bar. Bourbon & Branch — I went there for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and that was really good.

How about restaurants?

I always love Kitchen Story. That's like my go-to. I went to Foreign Cinema a couple of nights ago, and it was beautiful. The lighting was gorgeous. I'm at Bi-Rite like every day. Starbelly I enjoy — but I've only had brunch there French toast. Tartine. Locanda I've been to a bunch of times. West of Pecos — I love it there. There's so many good restaurants in San Francisco. You eat so well here.

It's true. It's hard to stay thin.

It really is!

Is it safe to say you've all fallen in love with San Francisco a bit?

More than a little bit. We are all so upset to be leaving. I love this town. It's been so good to us. It's been so generous and kind. Everyone's been really sweet. Almost all of our crew is from San Francisco and they've just been the best. This year is different going to to restaurants and bars because last year the show hadn't aired yet, and this year people have seen the show and there's just been an amazing amount of people coming up to us and expressing their love for the show, and it's been really awesome. Every week I go to Sit & Spin on 18th Street to do my laundry and get a coffee and learn my lines, and without fail somebody comes up — all different kinds of people walking by — somebody will come up and tell me something they like about the show, or talk about something they connected to, or they want to know about Kevin or Richie and they ask questions.

I noticed that night at Hi Tops when you were out a few weeks ago you were incredibly generous with your time talking to fans.

That was crazy! I'd never experienced anything like that before! I don't know what was happening that night. It was like non-stop love. It was really amazing. Everyone was excited too because that was the night the Giants were going to the World Series. So that was part of it.

The show means so much to us, and it feels so real to us. Andrew Haigh, our executive producer and head writer and one of the directors on the show, his thing is always about trying to make it as real as possible, and a lot of the writers' and actors' personal stories end up in the show. So it feels really personal. And when people come up and say that the show feels really personal to them that just means everything to us. Especially when it's people who live in San Francisco. That's the most important crowd [to please].

Is there anything that's annoyed you at all compared to life in New York?

Let me try and think. I guess it's a good sign that I'm having trouble thinking of something. We have such a romantic view of the city because we breeze in for three months, right when it's San Francisco summer, September, October, November, and then we breeze back out again. We're all in love with getting to do the show. We're lucky because we get this fairytale honeymoon experience of being here. I can list a hundred things I hate and love about New York City because I live there, but it's harder to do with San Francisco. Because we have such a rarefied kind of existence here.

Do you have a go-to karaoke song?

I never do karaoke. I love going to see people do karaoke. I hate doing it myself. BUT, I will duet on "Islands in the Stream" if someone will be Dolly for me. I will totally whip out "Islands in the Stream" if I have to.

What can we look forward to on this season of Looking that's different from last season?

Well, we've got 10 episodes instead of 8, so there's more of it. And I think last year we spent a lot of time teeing up the characters and setting up the stories, and it was only toward the end of the first season that the complications came bubbling up. And this season we certainly dive right back in where we left off. One of the things I got most excited about as the scripts came in was that the writers didn't avoid anything that was set up in the first season. They really dig and go deeper with all of the existing storylines. They weren't afraid to get right back in where we left off. I hate it when I watch a show and you come back to a new season and it's like they pressed the restart button. They certainly didn't do that with this. They really get into the complications, and the love triangle between Richie and Patrick and Kevin is further explored.

There's more story that happens this year versus last year, in a major way. There's a lot more Doris which is always fun, because she became a season regular.

What are you off to next, project-wise?

I'll just be trying to crawl out of the deep depression that I'll be in after this show is over. I don't know what's next. I leave San Francisco on Friday and whatever will be will be. I have no plans. Looking for the next job I guess. That's the thing about acting. You never really know what's coming around the corner. Hopefully it's Season 3 of Looking.

Well, you can always come back and visit. I hope you don't miss us too much.

I will miss you very much. And hopefully we'll be back again. Fingers crossed.

Season 2 of Looking premieres on January 11.

Andrew Bird, a sublimely gifted multi-instrumentalist from Chicago who favors violin, hollow body electric guitar, and exultant whistling, recently went through one of his regular periods of reinvention, setting aside his long-running touring band and recording an album of songs by The Handsome Family, a country-rock act now widely known for the song that kicks off True Detective. Bird is now touring with a (mostly) new backup band, playing a mix of his own material and beguiling Handsome Family cuts, which he recently recorded for an album called Things Are Really Great Here... Sort of.

His sound is sumptuous as ever, even if it rocks a little less hard, and at a recent performance on the East Coast, Bird confessed to a rapt audience that he'd come to feel a sense of ownership over the Handsome Family material. Happily, he still retains full ownership over his own songs, and you can immerse yourself in both at this FREE show Stern Grove Festival show on Sunday, August 3. (You can also catch him in Big Sur on Friday night, Saratoga on Saturday night, and in LA on September 21.)

Let’s talk about the tour. How’s it going? It’s going great. This is a new group. Every show we’re learning what we’re capable of and it’s far exceeded my expectations because I kind of stumbled into this line-up. When I was living in New York, I was neighbors with Tift Merritt. We started playing together, just doing covers and then we started doing some Handsome Family songs together, and I really feel that it brought out in me a different kind of singing; a different kind of phrasing.

I don’t know if it would have happened, or continued to develop, but during Hurricane Sandy—I don’t know if you know this story—during the hurricane, David Letterman called. His people called the night before and they were supposed to have David Byrne on. And even though David’s local, he had a lot of musicians coming from different boroughs so he didn’t think they could all get there. They asked if I could do something. I had moved my family up to the Upper West Side, because our building was in Zone A, and so I was just a couple blocks from Ed Sullivan Theater. So I could do it. And Tift was downtown in SoHo and Alan, my bass player was in Brooklyn and actually went across the Brooklyn Bridge during the storm. Not at the height of it, of course. So it was a heroic effort. We all got there, the skeleton crew, and it was really bizarre, because they just had a skeleton crew at Letterman and for once, they seemed to be happy to see us.

For once? Well, they're notoriously a little hard on musicians. Yeah, I think I’ve seen a clip of Radiohead being a bit annoyed at the process at Letterman once. Yeah, out of all those shows, it’s the least... But after awhile it becomes somewhat endearing. They’re just, they’ve got this guy saying something inappropriate, but he was kind of likeable. And we just did a Townes Van Zandt and it seemed appropriate for the occasion. And that was our first gig, that was our first public show. And then I grabbed Tift’s pedal steel player, Eric Heywood, and my old drummer from Bowl of Fire, Kevin O’Donnell. So it’s not brand new collaborations but it’s still a cool combination of people.

I wanted to ask about this process, because a lot of your solo career has been working with Martin Dosh. And then you had a pretty regular group that you toured with that built up around that. I was wondering how it came to pass that you’re not working with Marty and those other guys? And is this permanent? We still do shows. We have a show coming up in Minneapolis in a baseball field in a few weeks. That relationship is still there. I just, you know, I don’t know. That Minneapolis band is kind of... there’s a lot going on in that band. Martin brings kind of an underground, hip hop sensibility to it. There are a lot of kind of unusual combinations. Jeremy Ylvisaker, the guitarist, has almost a kind of Kevin Shields thing going on. All that stuff is kind of not what you’d expect me to be doing. And it became a very... for me... Martin and I combined the looping and kind of grew it into a whole band and integrated into that. There are lots of layers going on live. We did a lot of shows. I was kind of interested in doing something a little more stripped down and song-based and a little more supported. I’m in a phase now where I’m trying to nail this vocal thing that I’ve been trying to get for years.

What does that mean? Like, I’ve made 12 records and still haven’t quite nailed what I’m capable of as a singer. Which is not frustrating at all, it’s kind of cool that I’m still searching for it. Because I know, based on shows that I’ve played sometimes, that when I’m uninhibited I can sing like Roy Orbison. But I can’t seem to get that on a record. For whatever reason. So I’m just trying out different scenarios to try to nail that elusive vocal.

With this Handsome Family record, that was part of the multi-purpose of that record. To experiment with different recording set-ups and really go for it. And it helps to do it with someone else’s songs, where there’s not as much baggage. And I felt like I got pretty close. I was kind of inspired by the old country records of the early '60s, where the singers are just singing so beautifully. Just huge voices that just saturate the room that you played in. Marty Robbins stuff, for example. And that’s what we do. We set up two microphones going straight into a tape machine, not even a board. We did it in my living room, which has very high ceilings. No headphones, everything live, belted it out. With this new group we mostly strip it down to the trio to get all the vocals, and then we add things later. But it’s mostly a live, certainly all-live singing, performance record.

What do you think it is about the Handsome Family songs that resonates with you so much? You know part of it is, I met them when I was in my early 20s in Chicago and it was an interesting time. But the first song of theirs I heard was "The Giant of Illinois," which is a song about this kind of circus freak kid who is incredibly tall. And who apparently died of a blister on his toe. And it’s a tragic story and it has this line in it… and it does what the best of their songs do. The narrative goes to a point and then the chorus drops in and says, “The sky was a woman’s arms.” Which seems like a non-sequitur, but I love singing that song because I’m never going to know exactly what that means. What it hints at is that the tragedy is that this boy will never know, will never fulfill his dreams or desires, never know a woman’s arms. I don’t know. It’s got some ambiguous line that really packs a punch. The best songwriting does that. It condenses a novel’s worth of material into three sentences and makes it the chorus. I think it gives the listener credit for having imagination.

That’s what I like about a lot of your lyrics too. They’re evocative and there’s room for interpretation but they can also sometimes be very specific and cut right through to the bone. Sometimes it takes language that’s outside of our everyday language to do that. To make you stop and not be so matter-of-fact, the “just-getting-through-the-day” kind of mentality. And that’s what you hope to do with the song, I think.

Do you write lyrics every day? Do you have a notebook and are you constantly writing down things as they come to you? No. I don’t fill notebooks with poetry. I get melodies first, and then I intone things and I look for words that do what I need them to do, melodically. But that kind of necessity, that kind of free association with the subconscious thing, it starts off with intoning nonsense and then it works its way towards meaning. And it’s kind of an arduous process. I don’t write much more than what’s in the song. If that makes sense. I don’t have much excess material.

What is it about "Tables and Chairs" that you keep returning to? Of all your songs, that seems to be the one that you most frequently play or use to bring a show to an end. You know, I think it’s a nod towards the whole experience of people gathering together outside, not in some dark room, nevertheless it’s a communal experience. The song is kind of musing about the end of the world not being such a bad thing, cause we’re all just having a big party. It’s knowing that the end of the world, the apocalypse, would really be a drag, but I’m just ignoring that and saying, nah it’ll be great. Because we’re all gonna have our own monetary economy, and we’ll all start bartering again and be in each other’s face and talking to each other. And I feel like that it being the end of the show, "apocalyptic" makes sense, but also it seems to kind of bring people together.

What’s on the horizon for you for the rest of the year and beyond? I'm working on an installation for the ICA in Boston. I’m recording in a remote location this fall, in the Southwest somewhere, in a natural amphitheater. Somewhere—we haven’t figured it out quite yet—in the Arizona region in the desert. So I’m going to do a site recording and create a picture of that natural environment. And then transposing it to the gallery at the ICA via these horns that I play through. So, I don’t know if it’s going to be successful. It’s kind of an ambitious project, just logistically. But I’m pretty into it. And I’ve always wanted to do something like that. And, beyond that, I need to write a lot this fall and winter and start working on a record.