For a couple years now, the  Off the Grid organization has been choreographing regularly scheduled al fresco food courts, handling the logistics and licenses required to have three-to-eight food trucks corralled in a core urban location for a few hours of lunch or dinner time revelry, creating steady income streams for mobile food entrepreneurs and bringing a sense of camaraderie to local communities. Their online calendar provides info on where and when you’re guaranteed to find eclectic meals on wheels every day of the week.

But, now,  the next stage of street food evolution has arrived: There’s no need to check a calendar to get your grub on at the SOMA StrEatfood Park.  Opened this summer in a heavily trafficked area South of Market, the brainchild of Carlos Muela—proprietor of first-rate Mission tapas bar Esperpento—has turned a vacant lot into a festive hub of eclectic, modestly priced eats every day of the week—at lunch and dinner. It’s also about to become a major nexus of weekend nightlife, with a third shift of trucks now taking over on Friday and Saturday nights from Midnight to 4 am. From Vietnamese bahn mi, to pulled pork mac and cheese, to burritos, to chicken schnitzel, to falafel, to fresh baked cookies, this is a cornucopia on macadam.

As many as 10 trucks a shift set up camp around StrEatfood’s clever, barn-like covered seating area complete with big screen TVs playing local sporting events, heat lamps for the cooler weather, and—this being San Francisco—free WiFi access. And—drum roll please—there are public restrooms.

The StrEatfood Park also also has outdoor seating, with clustered plantings that make it feel less like a vacant lot than an urban garden.  At night, strings of tiny lights give the venue an carnival air as tail lights whiz by on the freeway above and giant billboards loom overhead.  There’s a gritty, urban magic to the place that’s likely to turn it into a regular spot on the itinerary of more adventurous tourists.

Matt Yee comes in from the sea this Saturday night

If you’ve ever been on an Atlantis gay cruise, odds are you’ve found yourself drawn in the the very corny, slightly porny and utterly irresistible whirlpool of musical energy that is a Matt Yee singalong.  Pounding the keyboards in his signature muumuu, moving through a succession of wild wigs, whipping out punny props and hit-or-miss gags with the relentlessness of Carrot Top, Yee tosses away his own inhibitions—and it’s utterly infectious. Any shyness you have about singing in public will be wiped out by Yee’s overwhelming tsunami of silliness. You will sing. You will dance. You will make synchronized hand gestures.

A Hawaiian native—and still a resident when he’s not off floating the seven seas (Yee performs frequently on mainstream Royal Carribean cruises as well as on GLBT charters), the seafaring songster makes a rare shoreside appearance for a 10:30 pm. late show at the Rrazz Room this Saturday night. Cancel your Martuni’s plans pronto! (Or head over there afterwards if you’ve still got the music in you!). The evening’s repertoire is likely to swing frantically from TV theme songs, to Broadway tunes, to pop hits; a maniacal mash up, masterfully orchestrated by a man who makes it all look incredibly offhand and casual. However the rest of your week is going, you can guarantee yourself a big smile this Saturday night.

 Video of Matt with Idina Menzel, after the jump

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Yes, our taste in music is broad. From yesterday’s shout out to the SF Gay Men’s Chorus, we move to today’s cool buzzing hum-out to t Ming & Ping, the ultra-pleasurable synthcoction of LA-based artist/composer Bao Vo.

M&P, who play at the Elbo Room on Tuesday night are a sort of hybrid of the Pet Shop Boys- in their tunes of cautiously jaded yearning -and Gorrilaz- in that the “band” consists of fictional characters: M&P’s recordings are actually solo Vo, and in dreamy videos, Vo plays both of the “spiciest twins making the spiciest new wave music,” assuming two personae along the lines of Tennant (alpha-fey frontman) and Lowe (Andrew Ridgely).

Double Vo-sion

Performing live, its another story altogether. Vo leads an onstage extravaganza with elaborate costumes, dancers (spicy indeed), and a hyped atmosphere of blip-stomp chaos that, well, enlivens the electro-chilled aura of the recordings themselves.

While remaining largely under the pop radar, Ming & Ping’s music has developed a somewhat unlikely  following among extreme sports enthusiasts after being included on the soundtracks of wakeboard, snowboard, and snowmobile films. This shouldn’t keep you away from the show if you’re more a skinny-jeaned nerd than a Stoned Dudley Do-Right.

Ming & Ping don’t exist, but they’re game to seduce both of you.

Video after the jump

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In the hot seat at the Clift (Photo: P.J.Ohm)

Whenever I think about the Clift Hotel, I start humming “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” It’s the last link in a free associative chain triggered by the Clift’s memorably outlandish lobby decor. That 1984 tune, of course, is from Tears for Fears’ fey-tastic 1984 album Songs from the Big Chair.

My bouts of nostalgia notwithstanding, the Clift plays host to a series of musical events that are utterly au courant. The next two shows are coming up soon, and if you click on the links below, you can get on the guest lists, gratis.

• On Thursday, May 24, experimental trip-hopster Shlohmo ushers in the Memorial Day weekend. GUEST LIST 
• On Friday, June 2, Diego Garcia—brainy Brown graduate and former leader of Elefant—brings his dreamy, Beatlesque pop to town. This one’s a must catch. GUEST LIST

The free shows, in the hotel’s swank Velvet Room, will get underway around 10 p.m. (Doors at 9ish). But since you’renot spending anything for tickets, consider showing up early to kick off the night with luxe libations in the adjacent Redwood Room, one of the most indisputably alluring cocktail lounges in town. Most weeknights, the post-work crowd thins out around 7:30 and the handsome room maintains a comfortable level of volume and crush for a couple magic hours, the ideal time to tap the staff’s creativity and knowledge of locally sourced spirits.

One of the handsomest bars in town (Photo: Clift Hotel)

Crackerjack barman Anthony Kim recently joined me in lamenting the sparse supply of Hangar One’s bracing chipotle-infused vodka, but made up for it with the Redwood Room’s signature House of Pisco cocktail, which blends pisco (Peruvian eau de vie) with pineapple and clove gum syrup, and green chartreuse. A skinny helix of lemon peel straddling the glass provided a bitter aromatic counterbalance to the drink’s slight sweetness. Kim is a master pisco mixologist; his concoctions using the locally imported Encanto brand recently won him a trip to Peru for the annual grape harvest.

Pour yourself a drink and check out Diego Garcia on video after the jump

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Rrazz Room impresarios Rory Paull and Robert Kotonly flank diva CeCe Peniston (Photo: Pat Johnson)

Last Wednesday night, a most eclectic constellation twinkled in the San Francisco night.  The Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko, perhaps the United States’ most adventurously booked boîte, celebrated its 4th anniversary with a benefit for St. Jude’s Hospital for Children. The evening’s “Whoa, how the heck are these acts gonna share a stage?” kind of lineup proved utterly successful. It reflected the wide-ranging tastes of Rrazz owner-impresarios Robert Kotonly and Rory Paull, long loathe to have their club perceived as a ‘cabaret’ with all the attendant stereotypes of dowager princesses downing too many expensive martinis to the songbook standards of their faded youth.

While the Rrazz’s quirkily curated booking calendar always incorporates some of same great interpreters of song who ply their trade at Manhattan’s Carlyle, Feinstein’s, and the late-lamented Algonquin Oak Room (Tyne Daly, Betty Buckley and Amanda McBroom have all played the intimate 186 seat room over the past couple seasons), Kotonly and Paull cast a much wider net. Well-regarded soul, R&B, gospel, comedy, jazz, burlesque and drag acts are a regular part of the offerings, as are some of the Bay Area’s best local talent—fortunate to have the chance to perform in such a jewel box of a venue.

Natalie Douglas, a sublime interpreter of song (Photo: Pat Johnson)

And so, last Thursday’s highlights swung like a drunken metronome from Edna Wright—spark plug sister of Darlene Love—belting “Want Ads,” a 1970 hit with her group, The Honey Cone; to local percussion legend Pete Escovedo and his sons pounding out a volcanic set of Latin jazz; to CeCe Peniston riling up the crowd with her dance club classic “Finally”; to a revelatory rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Natalie Douglas, who deserves to be a household name.

More on the anniversary gala, and Rrazz room April highlights after the jump 

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North Beach has long been one of San Francisco’s most popular neighborhoods for an early evening stroll. It’s dense with terrific little tourist spots, from one-time Beatnik hangouts like the Vesuvio bar and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s still-going-strong City Lights Books, to Diego Rivera murals, to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul with its creepy statue of Saint Lucia holding her eyeballs on a platter.

While a perfectly pulled espresso has never been hard to find in this historically Italian American enclave (Try the legendary Caffe Trieste, or the wedge-shaped Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store) dining options have tended to lean heavily toward the heavy: Mega-portions of red sauced pasta and other Little Italy staples.  But last year saw the welcome opening of Campanula Kitchen, a great spot to drop by for nibbles and drinks without weighing yourself down.

Shareable late night savories: pork belly dice.

And sweets: ice cream finger sandwiches. (Photos: Campanula Kitchen)

On the sunny southwest corner of Washington Square, Campanula’s floor-to-ceiling windows provide a terrific view of the comings-and-goings of the neighborhood’s dramatis personae (hipster artistes, Sicilian grannies, Chinatown cool kids, and, yes, the dreaded gentrifiers). Look up a little higher and take in one of the best views of Coit Tower in town. Now, turn your attention to the menu of small plates.