This Saturday night marks the continuation of a Bay Area summer tradition of free outdoor movies in parks in San Francisco and Marin: the always free Film Night In The Park series. The series, which began last weekend with a screening of Chasing Ice at the Fairfax EcoFest,  kicks into full gear this Saturday evening at 8pm (or dusk) with a free screening in San Francisco's Dolores Park of Raiders of The Lost Ark (trailer below of this 1981 Steven Spielberg fantasy adventure flick) - projected onto a huge screen with the perfect backdrop of the San Francisco skyline. Attendees are invited to bring picnics and blankets (no chairs so as to not block views) and advised to arrive early to secure a good vantage point. Also bring warm clothes in case that pesky SF fog descends on the hillside park - Dolores and 19th, San Francisco's Mission District.

All screenings are free but "donations are accepted" according to the organizers of this wonderful series that will include such films as Martin Scorsese's recent Hugo in Old Mill Park in Mill Valley on June 21st, School Of Rock with Jack Black at Creek Park in San Anselmo on July 19th, and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Union Square San Francisco on July 13th where on August 17th the American musical classic Singin' In The Rain will screen. Other scheduled screenings in the upcoming Film Night In The Park 2013 series, that concludes on September 21 with a screening of Skyfall in Dolores Park, will include The Avengers in Creek Park, San Anselmo, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom in San Francisco's Washington Square Park on September 7th, and The Birds in China Camp in San Rafael, Marin County - screening at the beach at Chinese Village which is the perfect setting for this 1963 Hitchcock suspense classic that was filmed not too far from there in Bodega Bay in the next county over from Marin, Sonoma County.
 

This weekend's Treasure Island Music Festival is coming up, so it's time to start planning your stage circuit now. Check out the set times by stage/day below or visit the TIMF online schedule planner to customize your festival schedule.

 

And the winner is......Too $hort in the ongoing beef / rap battle between Too $hort and Messy Marv who, as instigator, is indeed messy - not to mention foolish to take on the respected "Godfather of Bay Area rap." That's my personal opinion but already it seems that most other Bay rap fans are similarly taking the side of $hort in this seemingly mean spirited & uncalled for attack by Marv - an undoubtedly talented rapper but one known for starting beefs with others.  This battle (essentially an attack) began recently on Twitter by Marv but $hort did not take the bait and respond, at least initially. Soon after the beef escalated from online to the studio where Messy Marv., a couple of weeks ago, recorded "Class of 84 (Fuck Too $hort)" in which his main gripes with  Too $hort seem to be that he was not born in the Bay, that he has not helped other artists enough to Marv's liking, and that he is "old." Note that at thirty something (his self-penned bio says he's 31 but some say he's closer to 40 than 30) Marv is not exactly a young cat himself in this rap game.

                              

Bay Area hip-hop got much love in the Big Apple over this past weekend when both Andre Nickatina and Zion I & The Grouch (aka Z&G), who headlined concerts at NYC's Highline Ballroom and Knitting Factory respectively, had the packed venues loudly & appreciatively showing much love for the Bay Area.

Sunday night at the Highline, in Manhattan's Chelsea district, longtime San Francisco rapper Andre Nickatina stopped the music and led the packed house in a back-and-forth chant of "Mac Dre, Mac Dre." Throughout the rest of the excellent show, for which up-and-coming SF rapper Roach Gigz opened, he had the supercharged audience (many donning SF Giants hats) singing along to the lyrics of songs such as "Killa Whale." Two nights earlier over in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Zion I & The Grouch similarly had the packed Knitting Factory crowd (many clearly Bay Area transplants) singing along in unison to the Zion I Bay Area hip-hop anthem "The Bay."

"It's like being at a rap show in San Francisco," enthused one Andre Nicatina fan Sunday night in New York as the artist formerly known as Dre Dog launched into one of his newer songs, the title track of his recent album My Middle Name is Crime, a collaborative full-length with The Jacka (with the absent Jacka's verses played back on tape).

Today marks the anniversary of a sad occasion for Bay Area rap fans. On this date, November 1st, back in 2004, Vallejo rapper Mac Dre was shot and killed in Kansas City, Missouri after a car pulled alongside the van he was in and fired several shots, killing the rapper born Andre Hicks on the spot.

Mac Dre had performed at a concert in Kansas City that weekend and was on his way out of town on Highway 71 when the car pulled up alongside the vehicle in which Mac Dre was a passenger and opened fire. The driver of the van crossed over into the southbound lanes of the highway before crashing into a ravine. By the time medical help arrived on the scene Mac Dre was dead from a single bullet wound.

If he were alive today, Mac Dre would be 40 years of age and, no doubt, the traditionally prolific artist would have recorded and released at least a dozen albums and Treal TV DVDs over the last six years. In honor of Mac Dre, below are a few videos by the artist including two from the 1990s, from his pre-Thizz stage and before he spearheaded the Bay Area's hyphy movement. You're missed, Mac Dre.