2 posts tagged “sfc”

In middle school a few of us had the opportunity to go to Oakland with our then 8th Grade Language Arts/Social Studies teacher (mind you we were in bilingual ed so the class was in Spanish) to see Benjamin Bratt in his brother's movie, Follow Me Home, I had no idea that they were natives of SFC.

A year later Peter Bratt would bring the film to a special screening for folks at my high school and speak with us a bit about the film. One homey in particular would as him about his use of the song Rapper's Delight in a sceen where a little girl is jump roping while singing the following lyrics:

Peter answerd the question saying that he'd chosen the song namely thinking of the first time he'd heard it, when he was in middle school at a dance. That middle school was MY middle school and for whatever reason our extreme pride in our SF upbringing brought us all to applause. Maybe it was that hometown boys and girls never amount to anything exciting. Maybe its because hometown boys and girls who did make it big weren't like us. So here stood a brown brother, a brown Latino brother, who went to the same ghetto ass middle school many of us did, saying look I'm sorta successful, my brother is definitely successful, I am a reflection of you.

Fast forward. 2004. In college we had this amazing TV in our apartment. Living with 4 other people (the arty co-comedian, the literary tolkenfan punk rocker, the techy walking pharmaceutical rep & the techy indie film-maker) proved to be great for a few things. Our house was full of random tech apparatuses and toys, something to entertain you.

Our TV though. Rivaled everyone else's. While we girls felt it was completely frivilous and unecessary the boys felt that the bargain indie film-maker got for our HD tv was too good to pass and within a few days of moving in we had cable, high-def and all the premium channels. Which was good and bad of course. But short of the fact that it kept me entertained while working on my thesis alone in the apartment and during black history month (oh blacksploitation movies how you kept me sane that year) I rarely felt that TV.

And then Showtime aired Spike Lee's Sucka Free City... a supposed gritty look at my home town via examining the lives of 3 dudes, one white, one black, one asian. I was psyched.

But it did nothing for me. It was only in part my SF. But not really SFC. Movies never depict us right. They depict small pockets of our city... The Palace of Fine Arts where Sean Connery meets his daughter in The Rock and Mike Meyers strolls in So I Married an Axe Murderer... street chases, the Castro... all the same crap. Sucka Free City shot in spots of SF rarely seen, but did it leave the taste of SFC in your system? No.

But today after catching a piece in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle I realize that there may indeed be a change on the horizon. MY SF may be reflected sooner rather than later and it is my hope that distributors will pick up Peter Bratt's latest film from Sundance and maybe everyone will taste an SF closer to the one I've lived.

Peter Bratt's La Mission is apparently going to depict only the neighborhood in which I spent a lot of my life, but also a

side of the city, in my opinion, rarely depicted in film. And don't get me wrong what excites me about this is less about my dire love for my city, but the fact that for once people will see it from another angle. We ain't just the city by the bay. We are way more. We're more than the warf, the Castro and Hunter's point. Everyone know's were a diverse hot bed for anything goes, any day of the week is perfect to be naked and now a hipster mecca. But its about time that shit was reflected on screen.

I hope he does it right. Because if not, I may have to step it up some day and show my hometown's many sides.  

So all my San Francisco loving aside, this weekend, Barry Bonds record breaking 756th homerun ball was sold at auction for $752,467.

Today, whilst watching the Today show, I discovered that the owner of said ball is Marc Ecko owner/designer of the falling off Hip Hop brand of clothing Ecko Unlimited. His plans for the ball were what caught my attention not his celebrity.

In what I believe to be a really weird, but not nearly shock inducing enough publicity stunt, the man has created a website, to encourage the public to decide the fate of the ball. Saying he wants to "democratize" the debate surrounding what to do with this ball,  that some believe is an "embodiment of cheating culture- not just in baseball."

Since when have sports ever been a democratic issue? Of all the issues in the world, this dude is worried about what is fair and true when a homerun baseball is concerned?

I hardly feel like this is a battle worth fighting, Mr. Ecko. To be quite frank, if you want to talk about a cheating culture, yes sports should be considered but your methodology is quite flawed.

To encourage this debate and "democratize" the fate of a piece of sports memorabilia he asks people to choose one of three options.

1. Bestow it: Return the ball to the hall of fame where items like it can be found.

2. Brand it: Burn an asterik into the ball, so we all remember it's not just a homerun ball but has a more deeply seeded history.

3. Banish it: Knock that shit into space.

I see the effort to be adult and political but wonder how much of it is being a sour sports fan by contrast, in fact when I tried to find another stock image of Ecko, or even something related to his clothing line and its sub brands, the only site it would link to was this voting site of his. Recently I've seen quite a few celebs in the news making an effort to be relevant and this just seems like a weird attempt to get out there again.

Barry or not, SF or not, just give the man a break and either give the ball to Cooperstown, or back to him.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the real reason I find this weird. THE MAN PAID over $750,000 to engage the US in some sort of "thought provoking" debate? Really lame. He could have just written an article.