Our weekly Super Ego clubs column took a wee breather from the paper this week in order to bring you some great live bands we love. But does that mean you're not going to go out partying? Possibly even partying like this dude, who last month broke the world record for continuous DJing (130 hours and 30 mins)? Maybe! After the jump, my picks of the week.

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In this week's Super Ego column I bitched that club cover charges were getting too high -- and pumped some affordable, worthwhile upcoming parties. Here are even more for this weekend, including one called, yes, Cheap. You know it!

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Watch your snowballs: the First Lady of Beatdown, Lady Blacktronika, is hopping on her magic sleigh and coming down the mountain for Honey Soundsystem on Sun/22. She'll be giving SF some much-needed transwoman power on the decks, and it will be the tea.

That mountain would be Mt. Shasta, where the prolific, San Jose-born producer and DJ has been headquartered lately, releasing track after track of absorbing, soul-seizing grooves on her Sound Black Recordings label. Her aesthetic takes the expansive and unrushed Detroit beatdown blues-house sound (with which she's had some personal experience) and the mesmerizing moodiness of artists like Theo Parrish and Alton Miller in unexpectedly deep directions -- using her notable experience as a singer and some lovely dubby effects shared with her former production partner Mattski to give the malleable beatdown sound some intriguing new shapes.

In anticipation of her first DJ gig in San Francisco after spinning around the world, I chatted with her over email about her gospel music-loving roots, the challenges of being a transgender woman in the electronic music industry, and some of the women on the scene that she admires.

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In this week's Super Ego nightlife column in the paper, I write about this coming weekend's giant Edwardian Ball at the Regency Ballroom, which spans five events and welcomes thousands into its playful goth-steampunk-burlesque embrace. Named for Edward Gorey but encompassing more than a few winks at the Edwardian Era of the last turn of the century, the all-ages ball has come to act as a summit for a certain essential, instantly recognizable San Francisco nightlife subculture.

The ball was launched in 2000 by Justin Katz of "premiere pagan lounge ensemble" Rosin Coven and Mike Gaines of the neo-cirque Vau de Vire Society, and has grown enormously in the 12 years since -- including branching out to Los Angeles. I interviewed the genial Katz over email about the ball's Gorey origins, the challenges of expansion, combatting the dreaded FOMO, and welcoming a new generation of Friends of Ed.

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Local and global nightlife notes, reviews, tunes, and more

I'm still buzzing over last night's fantastic installment of the Housepitality weekly at Icon, which was a classic San Francisco get-down, a warm intersection of smiling hotties, sweet freaks, and warm tunes from main men DJ Bus Station John and Honey Soundsystem's Ken Vulsion. A gay old time indeed in a perfectly pan-orientational venue.

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