Once a year, the Alternative Cafe throws a birthday party of sorts. This year’s is called New Brow IV. It’s a show of underground art, it’s their signature brand, it’s opening this Friday, and it’s kind of a big deal.

It’s made up of 20 artists, mostly from San Francisco and L.A., that come out of the fresh and hip underground art scene, which bubbled up from a stew of urban subcultures, including tattoo, hot rod, graffiti, comics, graphic design, cartoons and punk rock. Influential artist Robert Williams – co-founder of the scene’s flagship magazine Juxtapoz, contemporary of Big Daddy Roth (Rat Fink) and the artist of the controversial Guns n’ Roses Appetite for Destruction album – helped stir the pot. Now the pot is bubbling over and more and more people want a taste.

“This art’s been here for 30 years,” says Tanem Davidson, who filmed a documentary, New Brow: Contemporary Underground Art, about the movement. “But other countries are starting to get interested. In places like Norway and Argentina, it’s very new. Norway found us and asked to screen the film.”

Davidson began making his film five years ago, screened it at Golden State Theatre in 2009, and is bringing it back for sale and download in a new version honed after post-production grooming and screenings (and feedback) from across the world.

“I just finished the final cut just now,” Davidson said on Monday, turning away from the desktop computer and two monitors in a back room of the café. Like the New Brow IV art show, the film is full of the leaders of this art movement: Ron English (Supersize Me’s Ronald McDonald and the painted fusion of Barack Obama and Abe Lincoln), Eric Joyner, Anne Faith Nicholls, Billy Shire, Morgan Spurlock, Shepard Fairey (remember that red and blue Obama poster?), Anthony Ausgang, Justin Giarla (owner of the influential Shooting Gallery). They bring the viewer into their exciting world and get them up to speed on the whole damn thing, scored to a killer soundtrack by The Dimes, Matt the Electrician (from P.G.), Sugar and Gold, The Elevator Drops and others.

One collector called the film a “document.” After seeing it in Seattle, he insisted that Mark Ryden – one of the most famous and successful denizens of the movement – allow Davidson to interview him and his wife, artist Marion Beck. And they did.

“I had gone to art shows [in Orange County],” says Greg Escolante, one of the artists interviewed in the film, “and the youngest person there was, like, 65. Everyone’s whispering, and it’s quiet.”

Underground art is not that. It’s youthful, self-taught, brash, funny, weird and urban. For New Brow IV, the gallery has enlisted, for the opening party (not “reception”… ”party”), four DJs – Tyler Jackson, Todd Profit, Aaron “Dirty” Waters and Philip “The Senator” Rush. Some of the artists are expected to come. The gallery used to try to end their opening parties at 9pm, but the excitement and momentum and conversations pushed the closing time to 10pm and beyond. For this show, they make room for that kind of loitering bon vivant with an afterparty in Carmel, the location for which they’ll disclose at the opening.

The film and the art show, which was curated by gallery owner Scott Grover, share some artists: Anthony Ausgang, Shawn Barber (intense and dark portraits of tattooed folks), Van Arno (fleshy comics style nude women reprising historic or mythic scenes), Isabelle Somaras and Eric Joyner (playful robots living in a colorfully surreal world). Others will be found only in the art show, like Chrystal Chan’s portraits of demure girls on the verge of shedding their innocence and Dan Quintana’s sexy, sci-fi/punk-rock women.

The Alt Cafe is a conduit for this kind of creative stuff that’s usually found in bigger metros like L.A. and San Francisco, home of Shooting Gallery, an ally of the film and a partner gallery to Alt Cafe. The latest exhibition there, Home in the Weeds, by Kevin Cyr, has channeled some of Monterey County, too. On a recent visit by the Weekly to the gallery, Cyr said that the ’50s campers and camping gear of his multi-media solo exhibit were partly inspired by Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. He even went inside one of the lean-to campers and brought out the book. As much underground art action as there is here in California, it’s been dismissed by the art establishment of New York City as amateur and lacking depth. They’re probably just jealous because they weren’t invited to the party.

NEW BROW IV opens 7-10pm Friday at Alternative Cafe, 1230 Fremont Blvd., Seaside. Free. 583-0913, www.thealternativecafe.com