49ers

The corporation that ate San Francisco

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› sarah@sfbg.com

For the past decade, Florida-based megadeveloper Lennar Corp. has been snatching up the rights to the Bay Area’s former naval bases, those vast stretches of land that once housed the Pacific Fleet but are now home to rats, weeds, and in some places, low-income renters.

When the Navy pulled out of Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, it left behind a landscape pitted with abandoned barracks, cracked runways, spooky radiation laboratories, antique cranes, rusting docks, and countless toxic spills.

A quarter century later, Lennar came knocking at the shipyard’s door — and those of other military bases abandoned in the waning days of the cold war — recognizing these toxic wastelands as the last frontier of underdeveloped land in urban American and an unparalleled opportunity to make big money.

Lennar had already won its first battle in 1997, seizing control of the Bay Area’s former military pearl in Vallejo when it was named master developer for the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Two years later it almost lost its bid for Hunters Point Shipyard when a consultant for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency recommended giving the development rights to the Ohio-based Forest City.

Lennar fought back, calling on politically connected friends and citing its deep pockets and its track record at Mare Island.

A parade of Lennar supporters, many of them friends of then-mayor Willie Brown and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, told the Redevelopment Agency commissioners that Lennar was the only developer that had bothered to reach out to the Bayview–Hunters Point community. In the end, the commissioners — all of them mayoral appointees — ignored their consultant’s advice and voted for Lennar.

Nobody knows if Forest City would have done a better job. A developer is, after all, a developer. But Lennar’s victory at the shipyard helped it win the rights, four years later, to redevelop Treasure Island — long before it had even broken ground at Hunters Point. And a couple years ago, it parlayed those footholds into an exclusive development agreement for Candlestick Point.

Now the Fortune 500 company, which had revenues of $16.3 billion in 2006, does have a track record at the shipyard. And that performance is raising doubts about whether San Francisco should have entrusted almost its entire undeveloped coastline to a profit-driven corporation that is proving difficult to regulate or hold accountable for its actions.

Sure, Lennar has provided job training for southeast San Francisco residents, set up small-business assistance and community builder programs, and invested $75 million in the first phase of development. That’s the good news.

But on Lennar’s watch, a subcontractor failed to monitor and control dangerous asbestos dust next to a school at the Hunters Point Shipyard, potentially exposing students to a deadly toxin — despite promising to carefully monitor the air and control the construction dust.

And when the homebuilding industry took a nosedive last year, Lennar reneged on its promise to provide needed rental housing on Hunters Point — saying that its profit margins were no longer good enough to make rentals worthwhile. All of which raises questions about whether this company, which is working with Mayor Gavin Newsom to build a stadium at the shipyard to keep the 49ers in town, really has San Francisco’s interests in mind.

Bayview–Hunters Point native Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, a physician and a Sierra Club member, called the Lennar deal the "dirty transfer of the shipyard." She told us, "There is no reason why I’d trust Lennar more than I would the Navy and the federal regulators who have stringently worked on the cleanup of Hunters Point Shipyard, and yet it still remains toxic."

"This is just a play to get the shipyard," said Porter Sumchai, whose father was a longshore worker at the shipyard and died from asbestosis.

Part of the problem is systemic: the Redevelopment Agency hands over these giant projects to master, for-profit developers — who can then change the plans based on financial considerations, not community needs. And while Lennar likes to tell decision makers of its massive size and resources, the actual work at these bases has been delegated to limited-liability subsidiaries with far fewer available assets.

In this case, Lennar experienced a 3 percent drop in sales last year, a 29 percent increase in cancellation rates on homes, and a 15 percent dip in its fourth quarter profits. The downturn prompted Lennar’s president and CEO, Stuart Miller, to identify ways to improve what he described in the annual report as the company’s "margin of improvement" in 2007. These included "reducing construction costs by negotiating lower prices, redesigning products to meet today’s market demand and building on land at current market prices."

A Lennar spokesperson, Sam Singer, issued a statement to us saying that "Lennar BVHP is committed to operating responsibly, continually incorporating best community and environmental practices into our everyday business decisions."

But for a look at how Lennar’s model clashes with community interests, you need go no further than the edge of the site where Lennar has been digging up asbestos-laden rock.

DUST IN THE WIND


The Muhammed University of Islam is a small private school that occupies a modest flat-roofed hilltop building on Kiska Road with a bird’s-eye view of the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard. This year-round K–12 school is affiliated with the Nation of Islam and attracts mostly African American students but also brings in Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander children, many of whom have had problems in the public school system and whose parents can’t cover the cost of a private school.

"We find a way," the school’s mustachioed and nattily dressed minister, Christopher Muhammed, recently told the Redevelopment Agency in a veiled allusion to the financial nexus between the MUI and the Nation of Islam’s mosque and bakery on Third Street. "Many students aren’t members of our tradition but live across the street, down the street, or come from Oakland and Vallejo."

The minister is asking the Redevelopment Agency, the agency that selected Lennar and oversees the project, to permanently relocate the school. The school’s classrooms and basketball courts sit on the other side of a chain-link fence from Parcel A, which is the first and only plot of land that the Navy has certified at the shipyard as clean and ready for development.

Standing on these courts, the children have been able to watch heavy machinery digging up and moving huge amounts of earth in preparation for the 1,600 condos and town houses that Lennar wants to build on this sunny hillside, which has views of the bay and the rest of the shipyard.

The shipyard’s other five parcels are still part of a federal Superfund site, despite having undergone years of decontamination. Black tarps cover piles of soil that have been tagged as contaminated, and recently, radiological deposits were found in the sewers and soil. The Navy is still cleaning up a long list of nasty toxins, including PCBs and solvents, on Parcels B through F, the land Newsom now wants the city to take over so that it can hastily build a stadium for the 49ers.

But the minister’s request to relocate the MUI isn’t inspired by fear of Navy-related contamination or the impact of a stadium on the neighborhood but rather by the reality that asbestos is naturally present in this hillside and Lennar’s excavation work on the other side of the school’s chain-link fence has been kicking up dust for almost a year.

It’s not that Lennar and the city didn’t know about the asbestos. In April 2000 the environmental impact report for the shipyard reuse noted, "Because asbestos-containing serpentinite rock occurs at Hunters Point Shipyard, construction-related excavation activities could cause chrysotile asbestos associated with serpentinite to become airborne, creating a potentially significant impact to public health and safety."

So when Lennar proposed demolishing abandoned housing and roads and grading and transferring massive amounts of earth on Parcel A, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District demanded an asbestos dust mitigation plan that included sweeping and watering the construction sites and making sure that vehicle tires are washed before drivers exit.

The state Asbestos Air Control Toxic Measure also stipulates that if a school lies within a quarter mile of a construction site, local air districts can require developers to install asbestos dust monitors and shut down their sites whenever asbestos registers 16,000 fibers per cubic meter. The state requires these extra steps because children have higher metabolisms, growing lungs, and longer life expectancy. Plus, they’re lower to the ground and are likely to run, skip, hop, and play ball games that kick up dust.

Although Lennar agreed to abide by the air district’s requirements, the developer failed to properly implement this plan for more than a year.

The air district’s records show that Lennar’s environmental consultant, CH2M Hill, failed to include any air monitoring in its original plan for Parcel A, which is odd because the school is obvious to anyone who visits the site. It was only when the air district pointed out the existence of the Hunters Point Boys and Girls Club, the Milton Meyer Recreation Center, and the MUI, all within the quarter-mile limit, that Lennar agreed, at least on paper, to what the air district describes as "one of the most stringent asbestos dust mitigation plans in the state."

The plan combines the air district’s asbestos requirements with the city’s demands that Lennar limit "ordinary dust" that can cause respiratory irritation and aggravate existing respiratory conditions, such as asthma and bronchitis. Lennar agreed to implement the plan in the summer of 2005 and determine background levels of dust and toxins at the site before work began in the spring of 2006.

But that didn’t happen. For 13 months there is no data to show how much asbestos the MUI students were exposed to, neither for the 10 months before construction started on the cleared site nor for the first three hot and dusty months when Lennar’s subcontractors began massive earth-moving operations next to the school.

You’d think that after these failures became public knowledge, a devastated Lennar would have gotten a black eye and perhaps fired the subcontractors involved. Failing to protect children in a community that’s been the repeat victim of environmental injustice is a public relations nightmare, particularly in a part of town where distrust of redevelopment runs deep, thanks to the travesties in the Fillmore in the 1960s, followed by the city’s recent rejection of a referendum to put the Bayview–Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan to a public vote.

But while Lennar’s executives finally did the right thing last August by alerting the air district and replacing CH2M Hill, they didn’t release their two other subcontractors, Gordon Ball and Luster, nor did they sufficiently rein them in when violations continued, critics have testified at agency meetings.

And instead of apologizing to the air district and the city’s Department of Public Health for making them look like impotent fools, Lennar executives pushed back, contending that asbestos monitoring wasn’t necessary until May 2006 and that they didn’t need to water the tires of private vehicles.

They even listed economic rationalizations for the screwups that did happen. According to a memo marked "confidential" that the Guardian unearthed in the air district’s files, written by the air district’s inspector, Wayne Lee, Lennar stated, "It costs approximately $40,000 a day to stop grading and construction activity" and "Gordon Ball would have to idle about 26 employees on site, and employees tend to look for other work when the work is not consistent."

Meanwhile, the Department of Public Health was left reeling. Environmental health director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia told us, "It was very disappointing. We worked very hard. We wanted this system to be health protective. Whenever things don’t work, it takes time to get back to levels of trust. This hurts trust and credibility."

In September 2006 the air district issued Lennar a notice of violation for the period of July 14, 2005, through Aug. 3, 2006. Lee wrote that vegetation removal on the site "disturbed the soil and in some cases, likely resulted in dust." He also made it clear that "any track onto common roads could be tracked out to public thoroughfares and create asbestos dust plumes."

Lennar’s fines have yet to be determined, but they could reach into millions of dollars. State fines for emitting air contaminants range from $1,000 a day, if the violation wasn’t the result of intentional or negligent conduct, to $75,000 a day, if the conduct was deemed willful and intentional.

But as the air district weighs the evidence, one thing’s for sure: this wasn’t an isolated case of one set of monitors failing or one subcontractor screwing up. This case involves numerous violations and three subcontractors, two of which — Gordon Ball and Luster — are still working next to the MUI (neither company returned our calls).

Records show that once Lennar fired its environmental compliance subcontractor, CH2M Hill, properly installed monitors immediately detected asbestos dust, triggering 15 health-protective shutdowns during the course of the next six months. From these results, is it reasonable to conclude that had Lennar got its monitoring right from the beginning, further shutdowns would have cost Lennar’s construction subcontractors even more truckloads of money, as would have adequate watering of the site, which they didn’t get right for months?

So far, the only explanation for the watering deficiencies has come from Kofi Bonner, president of Lennar Urban for Northern California, who told the Redevelopment Agency, "Given the hilly terrain, it can only be watered enough so as not to create difficult conditions for the workers going up and down the site."

Lennar didn’t finally start to really control its subcontractors until January, when Lennar ordered Gordon Ball and Luster to "replace two site superintendents with new personnel who must demonstrate environmental sensitivity in conducting their work," according to public records.

MIAMI VICE


Headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla., Lennar began in 1954 as a small home builder, but by 1969 it was developing, owning, and managing commercial and residential real estate. Three years later it became a publicly traded company and has been profitable ever since, spinning off new entities.

Lennar Urban is one such venture. Established in 2003 to focus on military-base reuse, Lennar Urban recently produced a glossy brochure in which it proclaimed, "Military base reuse is our business — this is what we do."

Military-base development may be good business — but it isn’t always such a good deal for cities, particularly when communities don’t end up receiving what was promised on the front end.

In November 2006, Lennar announced it wouldn’t build any rental homes in its 1,600-unit development at the Hunters Point Shipyard. The Redevelopment Agency had originally approved a plan for 700 rental units on the 500-acre site, but Lennar said rising construction costs make rentals a losing investment.

Also in November, Arc Ecology economist Eve Bach warned the Board of Supervisors that Lennar’s public-benefits package for Treasure Island could be seriously compromised.

The package includes 1,800 below-market affordable housing units, 300 acres of parks, open space and recreational amenities, thousands of permanent and construction jobs, green building standards, and innovative transportation.

Bach summed up these proposals as "good concepts, uncertain delivery" and noted the discrepancy between Lennar’s stated desire for a 25 percent return and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose’s conservative prediction of an 18.6 percent return.

"Particularly at risk of shortfalls are transit service levels, very-low-income housing, and open-space maintenance," Bach warned.

With community benefits up in the air, high profits expected, and Lennar’s ability to regulate developers uncertain, many community activists question just what San Francisco is getting from the company.

"I can’t say that Lennar is trustworthy, not when they come up with a community benefits package that has no benefit for the community," activist Marie Harrison said. "I’d like to be able to say that the bulk of our community are going to be homeowners, but I resent that Lennar is spoon-feeding that idea to folks in public housing who want a roof over their heads and don’t want to live with mold and mildew but don’t have jobs or good credit or a down payment. I’ve heard seniors say, ‘I can’t even afford to die.’ Lennar is not being realistic, and that hurts my feelings and breaks my heart."

SHOE-IN


The story of Lennar and Muhammed University of Islam underscores the problems with a system that essentially relies on developers to regulate themselves. Bay Area Air Quality Management District records show officials didn’t know monitoring equipment at the site wasn’t working until August 2006, when Lennar discovered and reported the problem.

Lee reported after an Aug. 31, 2006, meeting with CH2M Hill staff, "They were not confident that the air sampling equipment was sampling correctly, due to faulty records and suspect batteries. CH2M Hill staff discovered depleted batteries and could not determine when they drained."

The air district’s air quality program manager, Janet Glasgow, told the Guardian, "The district had never been in this situation before, in which a developer, Lennar, came in and self-reported that they discovered a problem with their monitoring — something the district would never have been able to determine."

Worrisome as Glasgow’s statement is, there’s also the possibility that CH2M Hill’s failures might never have come to light had it not been for the city’s decision to demand another layer of dust controls. As Department of Public Health engineer Amy Brownell said, her inspectors were witnessing trails of dust firsthand, yet CH2M Hill’s monitors kept registering "non-detect" around asbestos.

"Which was suspicious," Brownell told us, "since they were doing massive earthwork."

Saul Bloom, who is executive director for Arc Ecology, a local nonprofit that helps communities plan for base closures and cleanups, told us he recalls "waiting for the first shoe to drop, wondering how there could be no work stoppages when Lennar was digging up a hillside of serpentinite."

The other shoe did drop shortly after the August 2006 meeting. It was black and well polished and attached to the foot of Muhammed, who began questioning whether the dust wasn’t harming his students.

But Muhammed found his questions weren’t easy to answer, given that Lennar had failed to monitor itself and therefore lacked the data that could have proved no harm was done, a scary situation since health problems from asbestos exposure don’t generally manifest themselves until many years later.

Those questions raised others about Lennar and whether it should be trusted to self-regulate.

DÉJÀ VU


In December 2006, Redevelopment Agency Commissioner Francee Covington asked Lennar’s environmental manager, Sheila Roebuck, if the company had any asbestos issues at other projects in the nation. Roebuck replied no, not to her knowledge.

But the Guardian has learned that Lennar already had problems with naturally occurring asbestos in El Dorado. The problems concerned dynamiting in hills that were full of naturally occurring asbestos and resulted in a $350,000 settlement in November 2006. The case involved two El Dorado Hills developers, Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and Larry Gualco, and their earthmoving subcontractor, DeSilva Gates Construction of Dublin.

As part of the terms of the settlement, the county agreed, at the behest of the developers, to make their earthmoving contractor, DeSilva Gates, who provided the dynamite, solely responsible for the settlement. Accused of, but not formally charged with, 47 violations of air- and water-pollution laws is West Valley, a limited liability company composed of Lennar Communities of Roseville, Gualco, and Tsakopoulos’s AKT Investments of Sacramento, with Lennar managing the LLC and AKT acting as the investor.

But as the Sacramento Bee‘s Chris Bowman reported, El Dorado Air Quality Management District head Marcella McTaggart expressed her displeasure directly to Lennar Communities, writing, "We are very disappointed to note that the agreed-upon measures to minimize … dust were completely disregarded by your company."

McTaggart’s words bear an eerie resemblance to Bhatia’s comments about how Lennar’s failure to protect the public heath "hurts trust and credibility."

"Ultimately, I’m very interested in being able to talk to the families and children who believe they have been harmed," Bhatia told us. "I want to help with people’s uncertainties and fears."

LEGAL PROBLEMS


Uncertainty and fear were on display at the Redevelopment Agency’s December 2006 meeting when Muhammed claimed that serpentinite, arsenic, and antimony had been found on his students and staff through "resonance testing."

Lung cancer experts doubt that methodology, telling us the only way to detect serpentinite in bodies is by doing an autopsy.

Following the minister’s claims, a rattled Bonner told the Redevelopment Agency, "Lennar cannot continue to be accused of covering something up or willfully poisoning the community because of profits. Lennar is a national public company, and the accusations and allegations are very serious."

Unfortunately for Lennar and the city, the company’s failures to monitor and control dust have left both entities exposed, since they formed a limited liability company without extensive resources, Lennar BVHP, to conduct the shipyard cleanup.

This exposure became even more evident when Muhammed returned to the Redevelopment Agency Commission in January with 15 MUI students in tow to ask for a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s site until a permanent relocation of the school had been worked out.

"It doesn’t seem proper to have peace discussions while the other side is still shooting," Muhammed said.

His relocation request got Bayview–Hunters Point community activist Espanola Jackson raising more questions: "OK, but where are the other residents going? How can you displace them? Have the residents on Kiska Road been notified? Or on Palou? Nope. You give people dollars to do outreach, but they don’t come to my door. Someone is being paid to not give the truth."

Scott Madison, a member of the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, who’d observed large excavation machines breaking rock but not using water or any other dust controls, said, "I don’t understand how Lennar, who I believe has a sincere interest in doing right, can continue to have a contractor who is out of control."

Bonner explained that Lennar sent notices of default to its subcontractors and hired people from the community to be monitors, plus installed a secondary level of consultants to monitor contractors. But when Redevelopment Agency commissioner London Breed expressed interest in releasing the old contractor and hiring a new one, the agency’s executive director, Marcia Rosen, chimed in.

"Our agreement," Rosen said, "is not with the subcontractor. Our agreement is with Lennar." Her words illustrated the agency’s impotency or unwillingness to crack the whip over Lennar and its subcontractors. But when Lennar Urban vice president Paul Menaker began to explain that its contractors have a 10-day cure period, it was too much for Commissioner Covington.

"We’re way past that," Covington exploded. "We’re not hams!"

EXPLODING HAMS


Perhaps they’re not hams, but the commissioners’ apparent inability to pull the plug on Lennar or its subcontractors leaves observers wondering how best to characterize the relationship between the agency, the city, the community, and Lennar.

Redevelopment Agency commissioners have been appointed either by Mayor Gavin Newsom or his predecessor, the consummate dealmaker Willie Brown. But the incestuous web of political connections goes even further.

Newsom is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s nephew by marriage. Newsom’s campaign treasurer is another Pelosi nephew, Laurence Pelosi, who used to be vice president of acquisitions for Lennar and now works for Morgan Stanley Real Estate, which holds Lennar stock.

Both Newsom and Laurence Pelosi are connected to lobbyist Darius Anderson, who hosted a fundraiser to pay off Newsom’s campaign debts. Anderson counts Lennar as his client for Treasure Island, Mare Island, the Hunters Point Shipyard, and Candlestick Point, another vast swath of land that Lennar controls.

Brown’s ties to the agency and Lennar run equally deep, thanks in part to Lennar’s Bonner, who was Brown’s former head of economic development and before that worked for the Redevelopment Agency, where he recommended hiring KPMG Peat Marwick to choose between Catellus, Lennar, and Forest City for the Hunters Point project.

KPMG acknowledged all three were capable master developers, but the commission decided to go with the most deep-pocketed entity.

Clearly, Lennar plays both sides of the political fence, a reality that suggests it would be wiser for cities to give elected officials such as the Board of Supervisors, not mayoral appointees, the job of controlling developers.

DAMAGE CONTROL


Under the current system, in which Lennar seems accountable to no one except an apparently toothless Redevelopment Agency, you can’t trust Lennar to answer tough questions once it’s already won your military base.

Asked about asbestos at the Hunters Point Shipyard, Bonner directed the Guardian‘s questions to veteran flack Sam Singer, who also handles PR for Ruby Rippey-Tourk. Singer tried to dodge the issue by cherry-picking quotes, beginning with a Dec. 1, 2006, letter that the city’s health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, sent to Redevelopment’s Rosen.

Katz wrote, "I believe that regulatory mechanisms currently in place for Shipyard Redevelopment are appropriate and adequate to protect the public from potential environmental hazards."

The assessment would seem to be at odds with that of Katz’s environmental health director Bhatia, who has been on the frontline of the asbestos fallout and wrote in a Jan. 25 letter, "The failure to secure timely compliance with the regulations by the developer and the repeated violations has also challenged our credibility as a public health agency able and committed to securing the regulatory compliance necessary to protect public health."

Singer also quoted from a Feb. 20 Arc Ecology report on asbestos and dust control for Parcel A, which stated, "Lennar’s responses have been consistently cooperative." But he failed to include Arc’s criticisms of Lennar, namely that its "subcontractors have consistently undermined its compliance requirements," that it has "not exercised sufficient contractual control over its subcontractors so as to ensure compliance," and that it was "overly slow" in implementing an enhanced community air-monitoring system.

Singer focused instead on Arc’s observation that "there is currently no evidence that asbestos from the grading operation on Parcel A poses an endangerment to human health and the environment."

Lack of evidence is not the same as proof, and while Arc’s Saul Bloom doesn’t believe that "asbestos dust is the issue," he does believe that not moving the school, at least temporarily, leaves Lennar and the city liable.

"They formed a partnership, protective measures didn’t happen, the subcontractors continue to be unreliable, and dust in general continues to be a problem," Bloom told us.

Bloom also recommends the Redevelopment Agency have an independent consultant on-site each day and bar contractors who screw up. "Without these teeth, the Redevelopment Agency’s claims that they have enforcement capabilities are like arguments for the existence of God."

Raymond Tompkins, an associate researcher in the Chemistry Department at San Francisco State University and a member of the Remediation Advisory Board to the Navy who has family in Bayview–Hunters Point, says what’s missing from the city’s relationship with Lennar is accountability, independence, and citizen oversight.

"If you can’t put water on dirt so dust doesn’t come up, you can’t deal with the processes at the rest of the shipyard, which are far more complicated," says Tompkins, who doesn’t want the Navy to walk away and believes an industrial hygienist is needed.

"The cavalier attitude around asbestos dust and Lennar at the shipyard fosters the concerns of the African American community that gentrification is taking place — and that, next stop, they are going to be sacrificed for a stadium." *

Chickens No Show at Town Hall Meeting

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By Sarah Phelan
.
Maybe the chickens weren’t into cycling through the rain in soggy costumes. Or they figured that being hemmed in together with them for two hours at the Whitney Young Community Center on a rainy Saturday morning would have had Mayor Newsom falling off the wagon by day’s end.
Whatever the reason for the chickens chickening out, their absence didn’t spare Gavin from folks protesting what he’s not doing for the Bayview, or housing advocates yelling, “We will not be moved!” just before they left the room, or a bunch of ACORN activists decrying his plans to demolish ’ the Alice Griffith Housing Project> .

Newsom didn’t have any answer for why AG residents hadn’t been consulted about this latter plan, which was kinda odd since it was part of his own last-ditch attempt to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco. But he was quick to point out that Board of Supervisors Chair Aaron Peskin and Sup. Sophie Maxwell have already added language to the proposal so current AG residents are guaranteed one-for-one replacement housing at their current low-income levels—housing they’ve also been promised will be built before AG is torn down. (Thanks Aaron and Sophie, and let’s just make sure there’s no last minute bait and switches this time around.)

By the end of the two hours, Gavin had also got beaten up for, among other things, holding the meeting at the top of a hill, referring to the community center as the Whitney Young Child Care center, never visiting the Bayview except for once when he was first elected, and not having translators and sign language interpreters.
Also beaten up was the SF Housing Authority’s Gregg Fortner, who gave out his phone number, only to have an audience members shout, “You never answer! Where ya been?”
And then there was the fact that Newsom introduced Miguel Bustos as his new appointments secretary. (Uh oh)
But no one mentioned the AFFAIR, in part because Gavin’s new flame Jennifer Siebel was very much in tow, and even offered up her chair so seniors and kids could be seated. Still, by the end of the meeting, Gavin must have beenwondering whether Question Time before the Board could have been any worse, and why he’d ever volunteered to give up Saturday mornings to get heckled and pecked, chickens not withstanding.

Chickens No Show at Town Hall Meeting

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By Sarah Phelan
.
Maybe the chickens weren’t into cycling through the rain in soggy costumes. Or they figured that being hemmed in together with them for two hours at the Whitney Young Community Center on a rainy Saturday morning would have had Mayor Newsom falling off the wagon by day’s end.
Whatever the reason for the chickens chickening out, their absence didn’t spare Gavin from folks protesting what he’s not doing for the Bayview, or housing advocates yelling, “We will not be moved!” just before they left the room, or a bunch of ACORN activists decrying his plans to demolish ’ the Alice Griffith Housing Project> .

Newsom didn’t have any answer for why AG residents hadn’t been consulted about this latter plan, which was kinda odd since it was part of his own last-ditch attempt to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco. But he was quick to point out that Board of Supervisors Chair Aaron Peskin and Sup. Sophie Maxwell have already added language to the proposal so current AG residents are guaranteed one-for-one replacement housing at their current low-income levels—housing they’ve also been promised will be built before AG is torn down. (Thanks Aaron and Sophie, and let’s just make sure there’s no last minute bait and switches this time around.)

By the end of the two hours, Gavin had also got beaten up for, among other things, holding the meeting at the top of a hill, referring to the community center as the Whitney Young Child Care center, never visiting the Bayview except for once when he was first elected, and not having translators and sign language interpreters.
Also beaten up was the SF Housing Authority’s Gregg Fortner, who gave out his phone number, only to have an audience members shout, “You never answer! Where ya been?”
And then there was the fact that Newsom introduced Miguel Bustos as his new appointments secretary. (Uh oh)
But no one mentioned the AFFAIR, in part because Gavin’s new flame Jennifer Siebel was very much in tow, and even offered up her chair so seniors and kids could be seated. Still, by the end of the meeting, Gavin must have beenwondering whether Question Time before the Board could have been any worse, and why he’d ever volunteered to give up Saturday mornings to get heckled and pecked, chickens not withstanding.

Will 49er tailgating burn the Alice Griffith Housing Project?

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By Sarah Phelan

Residents of the Alice Griffith Housing project were a tad upset when they learned that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s retooled effort to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco could involve their homes being demolished. A resolution that came before the Board the day before the Mayor’s Sex scandal hit, included the surprising news that over the past 18 months developer Lennar, working in cooperation with the 49ers and the City, had created a preliminary plan that would provide a world-class stadium 49ers stadium and related mixed-use development. This development would consist of about 6,500 housing units, including affordable units and the replacement of the Alice Griffith Public Housing Development.
According to a letter from Newsom that was included with the Feb. 6 Board of Supes package, “The city and the Bayview in particular will benefit from extensive jobs and economic development opportunities, over one thousand units of affordable housing–including replacing the Alice Griffith housing project for the benefit of Alice Griffith residents.”
The problem was that Newsom hadn’t share this vision with the Alice Griffith residents and the few that showed up to the Feb. 6 Board meeting, which took place during the workday, expressed outrage at being left out of the loop.
As one lady said, waving a copy of the resolution in one hand, as she pounded the public comment lectern with the other “It’s not OK to have this in here without my input.”
Another, a single mother with four kids, recalled having to fight for four years to get into the project, in the first place. “I don’t want you guys to knock it down,” she said.
As Lavelle Shaw of the Alice Griffith Tenants Association told the Guardian, ” a lot of things seem to be going in through the back door. We want to be at the table for the replacement housing. And it can’t just be affordable. We want it to be low-income.”
As a result of all this uproar, Sup. Sophie Maxwell demanded a hearing, during which the resolution was reworded, reports Shaw, to give AG residents greater input. That said, Shaw urges folks to show up at the Feb. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting, to express their feelings, fears and desires.

Don’t know about you, but i sure wouldn’t want to be roasting hot dogs when displaced folks descend

Some questions for the mayor

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EDITORIAL Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to take direct questions from the supervisors. He rarely gets asked tough questions from the press and almost never from the public. Instead, as Steven T. Jones and Sarah Phelan report ("Mayor Chicken," page 13), all of his appearances are scripted, and he does a mighty job of ducking the hard questions.

But if he is indeed going to be holding a series of town hall meetings over the next few months, there’s a chance for the voters to pin him down. Here are a few things you might want to ask the mayor:

Your own staff admits that the universal health care plan works only if employers are required to provide health benefits. Yet the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — your political ally — has sued to block this. Do you support the employer mandate? Will you call on the GGRA to drop the suit? Will you decline political contributions from the members of a group that is suing the city with the aim of destroying one of your key initiatives? Where will money come from if the suit succeeds?

When you ignored the will of the voters and decided to hold these town hall meetings instead of appearing before the supervisors, you said the supes were invited to attend. But you knew it would be illegal for them to participate under the Brown Act without some expensive preparations. Why did you do that?

Why isn’t your full appointments calendar posted on the Web? The only information the public gets is a listing of your public events. Where is the rest of the calendar?

You say you support public power, but the city’s efforts are so far limited to Treasure Island and Hunters Point. If there were a ballot measure this fall calling for the city to buy out Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s system and set up a full-scale public power effort — similar to Sup. Tom Ammiano’s measure in 2000 — would you pledge to endorse it?

The city’s general plan states that 64 percent of all new housing should be available for below-market rates. Sup. Sophie Maxwell has a proposal to make that city law. Do you support her legislation? If not, how will the city meet its affordable housing needs?

The Planning Department acknowledges that the level of new market-rate housing being discussed for the eastern neighborhoods would inevitably destroy thousands of blue-collar jobs. Is that an acceptable trade-off?

Broadband Internet service is arguably the most important public infrastructure American cities will build in the next 50 years. Why are you prepared to turn ours over to private industry? Would it not be worth $10 million — the estimated cost put out by Google and EarthLink — to build our own system?

You asked for the City Attorney’s Office opinion that invalidated the successful referendum drive on the Bayview–Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan. Why aren’t you willing to submit this far-reaching plan to a vote? And if you believe in the plan’s community oversight provisions and deference to the Redevelopment Agency, why did you unilaterally offer the 49ers a new stadium at the old shipyard, which is within the plan’s area?

Why haven’t you followed up on the promise you made a year ago, after expressing outrage over the racist and homophobic videos made by police officers, to form a commission charged with "changing the culture" of the Police Department? And after your office blocked a citizen-based community policing plan, why didn’t you offer some alternative? Are you content with the way the department is being run?

Eight months ago, after vetoing a six-month trial period for closing JFK Drive to cars on Saturdays, you promised to study Sunday closures for six months and offer a compromise plan for Saturday closures. When can we expect that proposal, and will you now support Saturday closures?

Honestly: what’s so scary about answering questions from the supervisors?

We await his honor’s response. *

The Off-Guard Awards

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It was a bad year for Jesus. His most fanatical followers just couldn’t seem to keep their dicks out of trouble: a minister who was part of the religious right power circle — someone who routinely condemned gay marriage, gay sex, and homosexuality in general — was caught getting erotic massages from a gay hooker. A Republican congressional representative who was a loyal member of the bigoted majority had to resign after sending sexually explicit e-mails to page boys.

The Vatican announced that same-sex couples are no longer acceptable as adoptive parents and said that condoms are only OK (maybe) if used by married men with HIV but only to prevent disease (not to prevent conception).

And Ann Coulter said Bill Clinton was gay, and Rush Limbaugh got nabbed with illegal Viagra … and all I can say is, it was a banner year for the Offies.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? THEIR CANDIDATE WAS REAL ATTRACTIVE TOO.

Supporters of District 6 supervisorial candidate Rob Black tried to attack incumbent Chris Daly with campaign fliers featuring pee and poop.

THE GUYS WITH GUNS SHOULD HAVE DRESSED LIKE POLITICAL PROTESTERS; THE COPS WOULD HAVE BEEN ON THEM IN SECONDS.

More than 500 cops were on hand in the Castro on Halloween night, but nine people still got shot.

THE SANTA CLARA 49ERS. THAT HAS AN AUTHENTIC HISTORICAL RING.

San Francisco lost its Olympic bid when the 49ers without warning announced they would abandon plans for a stadium at Candlestick Point and move to Santa Clara.

TOO BAD THE MAYOR CUT WELFARE PAYMENTS; POOR ANNEMARIE MAY BE OUT ON THE STREETS AT ANY MOMENT.

Mayor Gavin Newsom blasted the SF supervisors for eliminating a $185,000-a-year job for former supervisor Annemarie Conroy, saying they were attacking her "livelihood."

THAT WORKED OUT WELL, DIDN’T IT?

Newsom said he would "run roughshod" over the San Francisco Police Department to find a way to identify problem officers.

HEY, THEY’RE ALL STONED UP THERE ANYWAY. NOBODY WILL NOTICE.

Newsom’s staff sent off 13 homeless people with one-way bus tickets to Humboldt County.

AND ALL ALONG HE’S DENIED HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A GROWN-UP.

Newsom dated scientology fan Sofia Milos but denied he was a supporter of L. Ron Hubbard’s bizarre cult. Then he dated 19-year-old Brittanie Mountz but denied that he ever let her drink alcohol.

AND SUCH AN INTELLIGENT PEDOPHILE TOO.

Republican Mark Foley was forced to resign from Congress after he was confronted with sexually explicit e-mails he sent to underage male pages. "He didn’t want to talk about politics," one former page said. "He wanted to talk about sex or my penis."

HMMM … QUEER OR A DRUGGIE? QUEER OR A DRUGGIE? QUEER OR A DRUGGIE? GUESS I BETTER GO WITH THE DRUGS.

Rev. Ted Haggard, one of the nation’s leading Christian right evangelicals, was forced to step down from his ministry after evidence emerged that he had hired a gay hooker for regular trysts during which he snorted speed. Faced with the allegations, he denied the gay sex but copped to the meth.

THOSE CELL PHONE CONVERSATIONS BACK IN 1860 MUST HAVE BEEN PRETTY JUICY.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez defended the Bush administration’s secret electronic eavesdropping on private citizens by saying that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing.

AND IF YOU DON’T HAVE $10 FOR THE CAB, JUST WALK — WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT?

Senator Joe Lieberman said he thinks it’s fine for Catholic hospitals in his home state to refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims because in Connecticut it’s only a short taxi ride to another hospital.

IT’S GOOD TO KNOW HE’S ONLY A HEARTBEAT AWAY FROM HAVING HIS HANDS ON THE NUCLEAR TRIGGER.

Dick Cheney accidentally shot a campaign contributor while hunting quail.

BUT WHAT ABOUT HIS TERM AS VICE PRESIDENT OF DRUNKEN QUAIL-HUNTING SHOTGUN BLASTS? WE’RE THINKING THAT MIGHT STILL BE RUNNING.

Cheney told reporters that his term as "vice president for torture" was over.

THE DEVIL, OF COURSE, IS IN THE DETAILS.

A Vatican commission has recommended that Catholics be allowed to use condoms — but only married Catholics and only if the man is HIV-positive and his wife is not and only if the intent is to avoid the spread of AIDS, not to prevent conception.

ALLOWING PEDOPHILIC PRIESTS TO WATCH OVER THEM IS JUST FINE HOWEVER.

The Vatican announced that it would no longer approve of gay families adopting kids.

WE SAW WAY TOO MUCH. NOW WE KNOW WAY TOO MUCH.

After Britney Spears flashed her crotch for photographers while partying with Paris Hilton, she posted a poem on her Web site apparently aimed at her ex-husband, which concludes:

"You trick me twice, now it’s three / Look who’s smiling now / Damn, it’s good to be me!"

REPUBLICAN FAMILY VALUES: $165,200 A YEAR. THREE-DAY WORKWEEKS. CUT WELFARE BENEFITS. THEN WHINE.

When Democrats in Congress suggested that the House actually schedule work five days a week, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Georgia) complained, "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says."

HE, ON THE OTHER HAND, WILL LOOK LIKE A @#$&!!!

Bush told CNN that same day: the war in Iraq will look like "just a comma."

WOW — THAT’S TWO CONFIRMED INCIDENTS OF ACTUAL READING. MAYBE THIS ONE WILL TURN OUT BETTER THAN MY PET GOAT.

Bush told reporters the Iraq Study Group report was so important that "I read it."

AND IF WE CAN’T EXECUTE EVERYONE WHO TRIES TO TELL THE TRUTH, THEN THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON.

Attorney General Gonzalez told Sean Hannity that Bush is committed to bringing "the masterminds of the 9/11 Commission" to justice.

WE UNDERSTAND — THE REST OF THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN HAVING A LITTLE TROUBLE WITH THAT TOO.

Bush told Katie Couric that "one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

RELAX, LINDSAY — CHENEY SAYS HE’S GIVEN UP ON TORTURE.

Lindsay Lohan said she didn’t want anyone to know she was in favor of voting because "it’s safer that way."

SHE, ON THE OTHER HAND, MUST BE INTO ANAL — RAMPANT, UPTIGHT RIGHT-WING CHATTER DOES SHOW SOME LEVEL OF HAVING A STICK UP YOUR ASS.

Ann Coulter announced Bill Clinton was probably gay, since "that sort of rampant promiscuity does show some level of latent homosexuality."

COME ON, COULD THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD REALLY BE A DUMB FRAT BOY WHO NEVER GREW UP? NAH …

Bush addressed the prime minister of the United Kingdom as "yo, Blair."

ANOTHER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS — BILL CLINTON KEPT THIS SORT OF STUFF SAFELY IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

At a G8 summit meeting Bush inexplicably began to grope the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.

POOR GUY — IF WE HAD PALS LIKE ANN COULTER, OUR DICKS WOULD BE LIMP TOO.

Rush Limbaugh was arrested at the Palm Beach airport when a search of his luggage revealed a jar of Viagra pills with someone else’s name on them. Limbaugh said he had them prescribed under his doctor’s name to avoid embarrassment.

THEY DODGE THE DRAFT, START IMMORAL WARS, AND GROPE FOREIGN DIGNITARIES. GLAD TO KNOW THEY FART A LOT TOO.

Former Republican senator and Iraq Study Group member Alan Simpson indirectly criticized the Bush administration’s refusal to compromise on anything: "A 100-percenter is a person you don’t want to be around. They have gas, ulcers, heartburn, and BO."

THE PASSION OF THE SHIT-FACED BIGOT

Mel Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and told a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." He later asked a female deputy, "What are you looking at, sugar tits?"

PROVING ONCE AGAIN THAT THE US SENATE HAS PLENTY OF ROOM FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE BOTH RACIST AND STUPID.

Virginia senator George Allen referred to a Virginia native of Indian descent as a "macaca."

OF COURSE, BACK WHERE HE COMES FROM, IT’S SO MUCH EASIER TO FIGURE OUT WHOM TO HATE.

Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi told reporters that it’s hard for Americans to understand "what’s wrong" with Iraqis: "Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?"

NOW IF YOU COULD JUST GET YOUR FUCKING FOOT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.

Comedian Michael Richards, who played Kramer in Seinfeld, denounced a heckler at an LA comedy club by calling him a "nigger" and saying that "50 years ago, we’d have had you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass."

PERFECT — NOW HE’S READY TO RUN FOR THE US SENATE.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed that Cubans and Puerto Ricans were "very hot" because of their mixed "black blood" and "Latino blood." *

Blood in the water

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Mayor Gavin Newsom has long been considered a lock for reelection next year, a belief driven by his same-sex marriage gesture, hoarding of political capital, personal charm, and high approval ratings. Yet Guardian interviews with more than 20 political experts and insiders from across the ideological spectrum indicate that Newsom may now be more vulnerable than ever.
Just as San Francisco politicians are starting to calculate whether to run, the Newsom administration has suffered a series of political setbacks. In November alone, most of Newsom’s picks got spanked during the election, his veto of popular police foot patrol legislation was overridden by the Board of Supervisors, and he was caught off guard by the San Francisco 49ers’ announcement that they were moving to Santa Clara, taking with them Newsom’s hopes of landing the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“Until recently, I didn’t have a lot of hope,” Sup. Chris Daly, whom Newsom unsuccessfully worked to defeat, told us. “Now the progressives have a glimmer of hope. The mayor seems to be hurting from three or four episodes where he was caught with egg on his face.”
To many political observers — most of whom the Guardian allowed to speak anonymously in order to capture their most candid observations and plans — the defeats were indicative of a mayor who seems increasingly disengaged and out of touch. Even Newsom’s strategy of avoiding fights that might hurt his popularity has rankled many of his allies, who complain that this risk-averse approach has allowed the Board of Supervisors to effectively set the city’s agenda.
“This guy does not use one scintilla of his political capital on anyone or anything,” said former mayor Art Agnos, whose name has been dropped as a possible challenger to Newsom but who told us, “I’m not running.”
There are a number of strong anti-Newsom narratives out there, even on his signature issues, such as crime and homelessness, which persist as visible, visceral problems despite increased city spending on homeless services and controversial tactics like police sweeps and one-way bus tickets out of town for vagrants.
The mayor started his term by announcing during a radio interview that if the murder rate rose, he should be ousted from office. It did — remaining at 10-year highs through the past three years — handing his potential opponents a ready-made sound bite. The crime rate could be a powerful weapon when paired with Newsom’s failure to follow up on promises of police reform.
Newsom is still likely to offer up a long list of accomplishments in his usual statistics-laden style. But much of what he tries to take credit for was actually someone else’s initiative, such as the universal health care measure crafted by Sup. Tom Ammiano (who is running for the State Assembly and not taking a third run at the mayor’s office). Adding to Newsom’s problems in November was the lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — a Newsom ally — filed challenging the measure.
Almost everyone we interviewed agreed that if Newsom does have approval ratings of around 80 percent, as has been reported, that support is very soft and may significantly erode during the campaign. “His support is an inch deep and a mile wide” was how one political analyst put it.
“His ‘skyrocketing’ approval rating is irrelevant,” one downtown politico told us. “People approve of the mayor like they approve of the color beige. If you fill an arena with 50,000 people and ask them to decide on what color to paint the walls, that color will always be beige. It’s not that they necessarily like beige; it’s that they will accept it as long as those freaks who want hot pink don’t get their way.”
And then there are his personal foibles. Newsom’s choice of girlfriends — from the Scientologist actress to the 19-year-old hostess — has found its way into print and caused the mayor to lash out in brittle ways that have hurt his relations with once-friendly outlets like the Chronicle, which openly mocked Newsom’s televised comments last month about how hard his job is and how he might not run for reelection.
Finally, there are the new electoral realities: this is the first mayor’s race in which challengers will receive public financing from a $7 million fund (almost all of which, Newsom campaign manager Eric Jaye argues, will be aimed at doing damage to Newsom) and the first with ranked-choice voting, allowing candidates to run as a team and gang up on the mayor.
Add it all up, and Newsom looks vulnerable. But that’s only the first part of a two-part question. The trickier part is who can run against Newsom, and that’s a question to which nobody has any good answer yet.
THE FIELD
Among the names being dropped for a mayoral run are Dennis Herrera, Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Matt Gonzalez, Kamala Harris, Mark Leno, Agnos, Susan Leal, Angela Alioto, Lou Girardo, Warren Hellman, Jeff Adachi, Tony Hall, Leland Yee, Daly, Michael Hennessey, Quentin Kopp, and Carole Migden. That’s quite a list.
Yet most say they are disinclined to run this time around, and none are likely to announce their candidacies in the near future, which is when most observers believe a serious run at Newsom would have to begin. Here’s the catch-22: nobody wants to run against Newsom unless his approval rating sinks below 60 percent, but it’s unlikely to sink that low unless there are rivals out there challenging him every day.
Two candidates who already hold citywide office and could aggressively challenge Newsom on police issues are Sheriff Hennessey and District Attorney Harris, both of whom have mainstream credentials as well as supporters in the progressive community. But both have expressed reluctance to run in the next mayoral election, at least in part because they’re also standing for reelection this fall and would need to leave their jobs to run for mayor.
Public Defender Adachi is a favorite of many progressives and could also run on police reform, but his job of representing sometimes heinous criminals could be easy for the Newsom team to attack Willie Horton–<\d>style.
Many of the strongest potential candidates are thought to be waiting four more years until the seat is open. City Attorney Herrera can take as much credit as Newsom for gay marriage and is a tough campaigner and formidable fundraiser who has clearly been setting himself up for higher office. Assemblymember Leno has won over progressives since his divisive 2002 primary against Harry Britt and could be mayoral material, particularly because he’s termed out in two years. But both are allies of Newsom and reluctant to run against him.
Several supervisors and former supervisors would love to beat Newsom, but the road seems steep for them. Daly just got beat up in his own reelection, so his negatives are too high to run again right now. Supervisor Mirkarimi might run, but some consider him too Green and too green and are urging him to wait four more years. Board President Peskin could also be a contender, but some doubt his citywide appeal and note a few bad votes he’s cast.
Challenges from Newsom’s right could include Kopp, the former legislator and judge; Hall, the former supervisor whom Newsom ousted from his Treasure Island post; businessman and attorney Girardo; financier and philanthropist Hellman; and Alioto, who ran last time. But these would-be challengers are generally less liberal than Newsom, who pundits say is as conservative a mayor as a town with an ascendant progressive movement will tolerate.
Finally, there’s Gonzalez, who four years ago jumped in the mayor’s race at the last minute, was outspent by Newsom six-to-one, and still came within less than five percentage points of winning. Many progressives are urging him to run again, noting that he is still popular and has the political skills to highlight Newsom’s shortcomings. But Gonzalez remains cagey about his intentions.
“I don’t believe I’m running for mayor. The chances are slim,” Gonzalez told us. “But I think he needs to be challenged.”
TEAM NEWSOM
Newsom campaign manager Jaye says he’s definitely expecting a challenge. And unlike most observers whom we spoke with, who are surveying the field and not seeing many people jumping in, Jaye expects a crowded free-for-all and a tough race.
“Is it likely to be a highly contested mayor’s race? Sure. Is that a good thing? Yes, I think it is,” Jaye said. “Every race in San Francisco is tough. The school board races here are fought harder than some Senate races.”
But Jaye thinks the new public financing system — in which mayoral candidates who can raise $135,000 will get $450,000 from the city — will be the biggest factor. “That’s one of the reasons I think everyone’s going to run,” Jaye said. “That guarantees it will be a crowded field.”
One political analyst said that’s the best scenario for defeating Newsom. He said dethroning the mayor will be like a pack of jackals taking down an elephant. No single challenger is likely to beat Newsom, but if he’s being attacked from all sides, he just might fall.
As for Newsom’s weaknesses and missteps, Jaye doesn’t agree the mayor is particularly weak and doesn’t think people will turn away from Newsom because of his candid comments on how the job cuts into his personal life.
“One of the reasons so many people like Gavin Newsom is he’s not afraid to be human in public and to be honest,” Jaye said, adding that his candidate is up for the challenge. “He is running for real and will run a vigorous race.”
Jaye concedes that the 49ers issue is difficult: Newsom will be hurt if they leave, and he’ll be hurt if he appears to give up too much to keep them here. The high murder rate and inaction on police reform are widely considered to be vulnerabilities, but Jaye said, “Gavin Newsom gets up every day and works on that problem, and if voters think another candidate has a better solution, they’ll look at it.”
Everyone agrees that candidates will enter the race late — which is what happened during the last two mayor’s races and is even likelier with public financing. If Newsom takes more hits or can’t get his head into the game, the sharks will start circling. “The next three months with what happens with the mayor will be telling,” another political insider told us.
One test will be with Proposition I, the measure voters approved Nov. 7 asking the mayor to show up for a monthly question time before the Board of Supervisors. Newsom reportedly has said he won’t come, which could look cowardly and out of touch to the voters who approved it and to the supervisors, who might make great political theater of the no-show. And if Newsom does decide to show up, most observers believe he might not fare well in such an unscripted exchange.
If Newsom implodes or appears weak in late spring, suddenly all those political heavy hitters will be forced to think about getting in the fray. After all, as just about everyone told us, nine months is like an eternity in San Francisco politics — and Newsom has the best job in town.

Newsom should comply with Prop. I

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OPINION Much has been said about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s stunning defeat at the ballot Nov. 7. Newsom’s slate of endorsements went down in flames — from supervisorial candidates Rob Black and Doug Chan to the contenders he hoped would take control of the school board to a host of progressive ballot propositions, including worker sick leave and relocation assistance for evicted tenants. Every incumbent supervisor was also reelected, indicating an overall approval level of the Board of Supervisor’s performance. And the voters took a further unprecedented step with the passage of Proposition I, which asked the mayor to appear before the board in person once a month to discuss city policy. The voters sent a clear message that they want the mayor to work with the supervisors rather than against them.
Will Newsom respect the mandate and comply with Prop. I? It’s anyone’s guess right now. The measure is not legally binding, and he vehemently opposed it. Here are five reasons why Newsom should comply with Prop. I:
1. The voters asked him to. Newsom claims to care about the will of the voters. He cited the “will of the voters” as his basis for vetoing a six-month trial of car-free space in Golden Gate Park — even though a trial has never been voted on. Will he respect the voters this time?
2. The status quo is not working. The homicide rate, traffic deaths, and Muni service have gotten worse every year under the Newsom administration. Commissioners aren’t being appointed on time, police reform is off track, promised low-income housing is delayed, all bicycle improvements are on hold, and our roads are falling apart. Popular public events such as the North Beach Jazz Fest are under attack by a city government that can’t keep Halloween revelers safe. Meanwhile, the mayor focuses on political damage control related to his apparent loss of the 49ers in 2012 and the Olympics in 2016.
3. Newsom consistently opposes ideas coming from the Board of Supervisors but doesn’t seem to have any of his own. The homicide rate is at an all-time high and keeps getting worse. But Newsom has opposed every significant measure proposed by the supervisors, including funding for homicide prevention and assistance for victims’ families via Proposition A, as well as police foot patrols. Fare hikes and service cuts haven’t solved Muni’s problems, but Newsom sided with the local Republican Party in opposing Proposition E, which would have provided much-needed funding for Muni through an incremental increase in the car parking tax.
4. Newsom has been missing in action too long. The mayor spent almost the full first three years of his four-year term fundraising around the country to pay off his 2003 campaign debts. This busy fundraising schedule, combined with the demands of his relentless PR machine, has sent the mayor chasing photo ops in China; Italy; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Chicago; New York; and a host of other places. The majority of the voters are now siding with progressives, the Guardian, and even the San Francisco Chronicle in asking “Where is the mayor?”
5. The voters asked him to. Really, that should be enough. No? SFBG
Ted Strawser
Ted Strawser is the founder of the SF Party Party.

49ers aren’t worth public money

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EDITORIAL The prospect of the San Francisco 49ers moving to Santa Clara — and taking with them any hope of a 2016 Olympic bid for San Francisco — caught the Newsom administration off guard and has much of City Hall scrambling to figure out a way to keep the fabled sports franchise in San Francisco. It’s not a futile effort by any means: the deal to build a new stadium in Santa Clara still has a long way to go, and there are some very real issues (including the phenomenal parking and traffic problems and the utter lack of accessible transit).
But city officials need to keep a sense of perspective here: the loss of the Olympics was almost certainly a good thing, and the loss of the 49ers wouldn’t be the end of the world. So there’s no reason to even start to talk about handing out promises of more public money, tax breaks, or favorable land deals to keep the Niners in town.
We’ve never been terribly hot on the idea of hosting the Olympics. The last time the issue came up, with a possible bid for the 2012 games, we noted that cities hosting the Olympics tend to wind up with huge public debt and that the costs (typically including gentrification and displacement) aren’t worth the gains. Our articles infuriated local sports leaders, but we’re not the only ones raising questions these days. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Gwen Knapp, in an insightful Nov. 16 piece, suggested that the city might want to thank 49ers owner John York: “He might have saved San Francisco from a vanity project that often leaves ugly blemishes on a community’s bottom line.”
San Francisco is one of the world’s great cities, an international tourist destination, a place that’s already on everyone’s map. We don’t need the Olympics.
We may not need the 49ers either. That’s what Glenn Dickey, Examiner sports columnist, argued Nov. 14. Football teams, with a limited number of home games, bring very little to a local economy — and this is hardly a city that needs the name recognition of a National Football League franchise. “Mayor Gavin Newsom should spend his time on more critical priorities,” Dickey noted.
Of course, if the 49ers leave, something has to be done with the park formerly known as Candlestick — a white elephant that cost the city tens of millions of dollars in bonds. But almost any sort of new development there would do more for the neighborhood than a stadium filled by people who drive in, bring their own food, drive away, and spend almost no money at local businesses.
The San Francisco Giants managed to build a new stadium almost entirely with private money, and it’s been a huge financial success. The city shouldn’t be tempted to throw big chunks of public money at keeping the 49ers from moving. SFBG

Three stories, three papers, one reporter

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The merger of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times with Dean Singleton’s Bay Area newspaper properties has already had one clear impact: There are fewer reporters and critics covering the news.
A former senior staffer at a Bay Area daily has been following the post-merger dailies, and he told us that the same bylines are now appearing regularly in the Merc, the Times and the Oakland Tribune. Where there were once several reporters covering a news event, several critics writing about music and culture, several sportswriters covering local teams, now there is often just one.
“Three months after MediaNews Group added two major Knight Ridder dailies to its far-flung Northern California newspaper group, news coverage is well on its way to being homogenized in this formerly competitive market,” the former staffer wrote.
We did our own checking, and his thesis holds true.
Before this summer, when Singleton began to take control of nearly every daily paper in the Bay Area, it was routine to see three different reporters covering major stories for the Merc, the Times and the Trib. In April, for example, each paper assigned a different staffer to cover the news of reports of how vulnerable the Delta levees were to an earthquake. The Times had Betsy Mason on the story; the Merc had Lisa M. Kriger, and the Trib had Ian Hoffman. Three different movie critics covered the release in May of the “Poseidon Adventure,” Barry Cain from the Trib, Bruce Newman from the Merc and Rnady Myers from the Times.
These days, it’s very different. The three papers all reported on a triple homicide in Oakland Nov. 24 – but all three stories carried the byline of Kirstin Bender. On Nov. 22, all three had headlines trumpeting new plans for a 49ers stadium – but the same story, by Mike Swift and David Pollack, ran underneath all three heads. A controversy on BART accepting liquor ads merited one story – by Kiley Russell – that ran in all three papers. When “History Boys” was released in late November, all three papers carried the same movie review, by Mary F. Pols.
In fact, out of ten major news, sports and culture stories we examined in November, nine carried the same bylines in all three papers.
None of the senior editors at the three papers returned our phone calls for comment. But Tom Barnidge, the Contra Costa Times sports editor, was willing to talk about the staffing changes. He told us that the use of single stories in all three papers was the result of the consolidation, and he argued that there was no need for all three papers to have beat reporters covering exactly the same things.
The problem with that theory is that it’s wrong: Even on straightforward beat stories, different reporters bring different perspectives to stories, develop different leads and sources, and provide different information. So when the Times, the Merc and the Trib lose their own independent staff reporters, the Bay Area readers lose, too.

Margaret Cho on sex, Good Vibrations–and San Francisco’s answer to the 49ers leaving town

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By Sarah Phelan

There’s something deliciously violent about stand-up comedian Margaret Cho’s voice. Even when she picks up the phone in her hotel room in Philadelphia and says, “Hell-low? This is Margaret,” in that familiar Cho twang, you feel the tigress at the end of the line.
OK, maybe I’m just projecting. Because let’s face it: to call Margaret is to risk ending up as fodder in her next comedy act, especially if you have a British accent and work for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
But that’s OK, because I love this bitch, and I’m glad that Good Vibrations, San Francisco’s legendary retailer and distributor of sex toys and sex education, gave me an excuse to interview her by appointing her to be on their Board of Directors.
“I did it for the free vibrators,” jokes Cho, by way of explaining the Good Vibrations gig. “Seriously, I worked a long time ago at another sex store, Stormy Leather, in the retail store. Before it was just a leather company, making dildo harnesses and clothes and S&M gear, and then it opened a retail store. In fact, I think that was my last daytime job, other than stand-up comedy. Through working there, I learned about Good Vibrations, the sisters’ store, which had a different location, but with the same ideas and philosophies about women and sexuality that help empower us and learn. And I bought a lot of stuff at Good Vibrations. I love Carol Queen and I love the diversity of the people who work there. It’s very much my crowd, my queer friends, lovers and people I know. It’s so familiar. The people who work there are my cup of tea. I enjoy just hanging out there.”
Asked about the thumping the Republicans got in the November 2006 election, Cho laughs. “I’m glad. It only took a couple of all-time gay scandals to turn it around. It was about time. It should have happened a lot sooner. Homophobia is something that worked in our favor this time. Americans are so homophobic. They realize that Republicans could be closet gays –and so they don’t want to vote Republican any more. That’s fine right now. If it works in our favor, it’s gotta be OK. Hopefully, it will lead to people understanding the queer culture more, and at least there’s been some shift in balance.”
In light of the news that the 49ers want to leave San Francisco and SF Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wants to form a sports commission to keep teams in town, I asked Cho if she could think of any sports that might work better for our city, like competitive gay brunching, perhaps, as recently defined by the Bay Guardian’s cultural editor Marke B.?
.“How about a really bad-ass lesbian softball league,” suggests Cho. “No holds barred. Armed with weapons. Something violent, really empowering and kick-ass.”

Margaret Cho on sex, Good Vibrations–and San Francisco’s answer to the 49ers leaving town

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By Sarah Phelan

There’s something deliciously violent about stand-up comedian Margaret Cho’s voice. Even when she picks up the phone in her hotel room in Philadelphia and says, “Hell-low? This is Margaret,” in that familiar Cho twang, you feel the tigress at the end of the line.
OK, maybe I’m just projecting. Because let’s face it: to call Margaret is to risk ending up as fodder in her next comedy act, especially if you have a British accent and work for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
But that’s OK, because I love this bitch, and I’m glad that Good Vibrations, San Francisco’s legendary retailer and distributor of sex toys and sex education, gave me an excuse to interview her by appointing her to be on their Board of Directors.
“I did it for the free vibrators,” jokes Cho, by way of explaining the Good Vibrations gig. “Seriously, I worked a long time ago at another sex store, Stormy Leather, in the retail store. Before it was just a leather company, making dildo harnesses and clothes and S&M gear, and then it opened a retail store. In fact, I think that was my last daytime job, other than stand-up comedy. Through working there, I learned about Good Vibrations, the sisters’ store, which had a different location, but with the same ideas and philosophies about women and sexuality that help empower us and learn. And I bought a lot of stuff at Good Vibrations. I love Carol Queen and I love the diversity of the people who work there. It’s very much my crowd, my queer friends, lovers and people I know. It’s so familiar. The people who work there are my cup of tea. I enjoy just hanging out there.”
Asked about the thumping the Republicans got in the November 2006 election, Cho laughs. “I’m glad. It only took a couple of all-time gay scandals to turn it around. It was about time. It should have happened a lot sooner. Homophobia is something that worked in our favor this time. Americans are so homophobic. They realize that Republicans could be closet gays –and so they don’t want to vote Republican any more. That’s fine right now. If it works in our favor, it’s gotta be OK. Hopefully, it will lead to people understanding the queer culture more, and at least there’s been some shift in balance.”
In light of the news that the 49ers want to leave San Francisco and SF Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wants to form a sports commission to keep teams in town, I asked Cho if she could think of any sports that might work better for our city, like competitive gay brunching, perhaps, as recently defined by the Bay Guardian’s cultural editor Marke B.?
.“How about a really bad-ass lesbian softball league,” suggests Cho. “No holds barred. Armed with weapons. Something violent, really empowering and kick-ass.”

Board overrides Mayor’s foot patrol veto

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By Sarah Phelan
It hasn’t exactly been a good couple of weeks for Mayor Gavin Newsom.
His picks for Board of Supervisors got thumped.
The 49ers said they’re running away with Santa Clara but keeping San Francisco’s name.
Newsom nix sayed the city’s Olympic bid
And then the Board of Supervisors overrode Newsom’s veto of police foot patrol legislation in a 9-2 vote that means the city will go ahead with a one-year citywide pilot project.
Worse, the nine sups that defied his veto got to explain their reasons, which included slamming the mayor and the police chief for lack of leadership..
Sup. Ross Mirkarimi talked about giving the mayor and Chief of Police plenty to time to take action. When they didn’t, and the Board took the lead, Mirkarimi says he was surprised by the mayor’s veto.
As for SFPD Chief Heather Fong’s hastily announced counter plan, which was made public on Monday, Mirkarimi said, “An acute difference between the two plans is that ours calls for accountability.”
Sup. Bevan Dufty, citing increased incidences of violent crime and inadequate response in the Castro, said “the visible presence of foot patrols is helpful.”
“No one is higher than the chief of police but the chief needs to speak up and to speak clearly without regard for where the chips may fall,” said Dufty, alluding to a lack of morale in the SFPD. “This vote is not offered as a criticism of the Mayor or the Chief. This is the best we can do as a Board right now. Let us rise above that and recognize that we need leadership.”
Sup. Chris Daly couldn’t resist asking how the increased number of officers under the Chief’s plan (44 isntead of the 33 specified in the Board’s plan) “isn’t playing politics.”
Sup. Tom Ammiano wondered what kind of cooperation will be forthcoming, and Sup. Fiona Ma noted that if there was a garbage problem or a flu epidemic, this board would propose a plan, which is why the board reacted to crime wave with foot patrols.
Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who along with Sup. Sean Elsbernd voted to uphold the mayor’s veto, said one of the problems was the way the ordinance was written.”
Elsbernd argued that the mayor and police chief should make policing decisions, not the Board of Supervisors.
But Sup. Gerardo Sandoval was upset that SFPD Chief Heather Fong had said that if the Board overrode the mayor’s veto, she didn’t want to disobey the Board’s legislation, but her captains might ignore it.
“We need to be very protective of our roles in this city,” Sandoval told his colleagues.
“To have a Chief of Police say something like that should not go unnoticed.”
Sup. Sophie Maxwell, noting that she probably has the highest incidence of gun violence in her district, recalled walking the precincts this fall and people telling her that they wanted to see the police,
“I have no choice. I have to do this,” said Maxwell of supporting the legislation.
Board Chair Aaron Peskin, who previously voted against the Board’s legislation, but ultimately voted to support it found it ironic that the legislation embraced by the police and the mayor “supports the Board’s idea.”
Sup. Jake McGoldrick found the SFPD’s counter proposal, “a day late, a dollar short.”
“For 5 months, 7 months, 18 months , we were looking for tools, all we got was reaction, not action. But there’s something hopeful about this dialogue.”
After the historic vote, SFPD Chief Heather Fong told the assembled media that she would disagree about their being a morale problem in the department.
Acknowledging that the SFPD is currently 300 officers under its mandated staffing levels, Fong said, “ I believe the captains have to have flexibility.”
Noting that the SFPD’s plan would kick in Nov. 24 and involve 44 officers, Fong added,” I believe the deployment plan will be incompliance with the legislation.”
As for the mayor, it would have been interesting to be a fly on the proverbial wall of his office.

Oh, the fists!

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by Amanda Witherell

Mayor Newsom is getting pummeled left and right. (Actually, they’re probably all lefts.) Only one of his three acolytes won the election last Tuesday. The 49ers are waving good-bye after they promised they weren’t talking with any other cities. The Olympic bid went south with them. Supe. Aaron Peskin switched sides and Supe. Jake McGoldrick showed up for the Board of Supervisors vote for foot patrols.
Oh, what else…after Newsom said abolishing JROTC in public schools “sends the wrong message…” You guessed it: the Board of Education just voted to nix the program and send the military packing. What’s next for Mr. Popularity…

Goldies Lifetime Achievement winner Pandit Chitresh Das

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After a highly disciplined childhood, spending up to six hours a day practicing on a cement floor for his very demanding but revered guru, Pandit Ram Narayan Misra, Kathak master Chitresh Das moved from his native Calcutta (by way of a one-year stint in Maryland) to the Bay Area.
The year was 1971. Das had been hired by the Ali Akbar College of Music to teach one of the most ancient arts of India to young countercultural Americans eager to learn Eastern practices.
It was, at the very least, something of a cultural shock — for both sides. “This was the beautiful age of the flower children, the hippie generation,” Das remembers. “They were looking toward the East for answers, but I did not fit their idealized image of an Indian guru. Having been schooled in the old-world traditions — to respect and obey my teachers and elders and to assume a secondary stance in their presence — my amused bewilderment at my students’ behavior never ceased.”
Thirty-five years later Das and his American-born dancers, many of Indian descent, have more than reached harmony. His Chhandam School of Kathak has five Bay Area branches, plus outposts in Boston, Toronto, and Calcutta. The most accomplished of his Chitresh Das Dance Company members is the Floridian Charlotte Moraga, who stumbled into Das’s class at San Francisco State University — where he taught for 17 years — because the jazz dance class she wanted was full.
Das’s most important contribution to the Bay Area may well be the way he has woven Kathak into the fabric of local dance. Once an exceedingly esoteric art form, born at the Islamic courts of the Mogul Empire in northern India, Kathak now has a home in the Bay Area’s more egalitarian environment. In the ’80s, Das’s dancers were among the first participants in the SF Ethnic Dance Festival. His company regularly presents him as a solo dancer and as a choreographer of both traditional and unconventional work.
Now in his early 60s, an age at which most Western dancers have long retired from the theater, Das remains a stunning performer and the best advocate for his art. When he is onstage, you cannot take your eyes off him, whether he’s moving through the pure dance passages that require dizzying turns and mind-boggling footwork or the more expressive sections in which the dancer calls up a favorite story from the Mahabharata, impersonating all its different characters and sometimes the landscape as well.
Das thinks nothing of transforming a performance into something akin to a lecture demo if his audience will walk away with a better understanding of Kathak’s rhythmic intricacies and the vast world of the Hindu mythology in which the art is rooted. A “kathaka,” he likes to remind theatergoers, is a storyteller.
In September, Das organized “Kathak at the Crossroads,” the largest festival of its kind ever held outside India. The San Francisco event’s subtitle, “Innovation within Tradition,” could describe Das himself. A fierce traditionalist, he is also explosively freethinking. He embraces the improvisatory interaction between dancer and musician — a connection that takes place within given parameters but is never rehearsed. The way he talks about it, the dancer strives toward a kind of oneness, maybe a divine type of play that is both meditative and intensely joyful. His guru used to tell him to “dance in such a way that the sound of your [ankle] bells and the room become one.”
As traditional as Das can be, he is also an innovator. A few years ago he created a new genre of dancing, Kathak yoga, inspired by the ascetic traditions of the Himalayas. It is primarily designed as a spiritual and physical practice. Without music the dancer mentally counts the rhythms, recites and chants the embellishments aloud, and dances the footwork.
As a storytelling choreographer, Das has been a force for change ever since he first performed the clever and amusing The Train as a student at an international East-West dance conference in India. Choreographed by his guru, the piece imitates a train — traveling, speeding up, changing tracks, breaking, passing a railroad station.
Das has created traditional dance dramas (such as Darbar [1999]) but also less traditional ones, such as Impressions of the California Gold Rush (1990), in which a trio of 49ers perform in ankle bells and cowboy outfits.
Sadhana (2001) is a multimedia solo evening about different forms of practice — dance, life, meditation. For his 60th birthday he created the autobiographical Sampurnam (2004) for himself and his company.
But Das’s most innovative work has come with practitioners of other dance styles: The Guru (Bharata Natyam, 1991), Sole Music (tap and flamenco, 1986), Sugriya-Subali (Balinese, 2000), and East as Center (Kathakali and Balinese, 2003). His latest exploration in that direction is Jazz Suites, a collaboration with tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith that grew out of a friendly competition in the hallways of the American Dance Festival in 2004. The duo have been touring the piece around the country and will take it to India this winter.
While Das has been passionate about opening American eyes to the beauty of his art form, he is equally committed to doing the same for Indian audiences. He spends part of every year in Calcutta teaching, performing, and giving workshops. In 2002 he reopened his father’s old school, which had trained Kathak dancers in Calcutta even before Indian independence. Last year Das started a training program for the children of Calcutta’s sex workers; most recently he gave a lecture demonstration for professional Indian boxers about their connection with the Hindu goddess Kali and the monkey god Hanuman.
Clearly, one lifetime simply may not be enough to contain Chitresh Das, his artistry, his humanity, his passion. (Rita Felciano)

Do you support the Olympic Games?

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Olympic Question
BY Sarah Phelan
“Do you support the Olympic Games?”
That ‘s the question that Sup. Gerardo Sandoval believes Mayor Gavin Newsom should, but is afraid, to ask.

“”I love sports and I’d love nothing more than to have the Olympics come to San Francisco,” said Sandoval at the Aug. 8 Board of Supes meeting. “But as a supervisor I want to ask the voters whether it should be SF’s policy to host the 2016 Olymoics, given the costs and benefits.Why is the Mayor’s Office afraid to do so?” said Sandoval, noting that academic studies show only a “very modest gain,” whereas Chambers of Commerce-related reports cite “huge gains” for cities that are Olympic hosts.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to ask,” said Sandoval, criticizing the mayor’s “behind doors conversations,” on matters such as the financing of the 49ers stadium–a stadium, which as Sandoval noted, is to be included as an venue in the mayor’s vision for the 2016 Olympics.
“I’m happy the mayor has acknowledged that we need to ask the voters,” said Sandoval, adding that Newsom believes it’s “premature to ask right now”.
“Premature implies maturity,” said Sandoval, suggesting that the Olympic question will be asked some time in the future, as he tabled his own motion “to ask voters” for now. But feel free, SF, to tell us what you think about the plan . We’re not afraid to hear it. Heck, it might even reveal what people do and don’t know.

Do you support the Olympic Games?

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Olympic Question
BY Sarah Phelan
“Do you support the Olympic Games?”
That ‘s the question that Sup. Gerardo Sandoval believes Mayor Gavin Newsom should, but is afraid, to ask.

“”I love sports and I’d love nothing more than to have the Olympics come to San Francisco,” said Sandoval at the Aug. 8 Board of Supes meeting. “But as a supervisor I want to ask the voters whether it should be SF’s policy to host the 2016 Olymoics, given the costs and benefits.Why is the Mayor’s Office afraid to do so?” said Sandoval, noting that academic studies show only a “very modest gain,” whereas Chambers of Commerce-related reports cite “huge gains” for cities that are Olympic hosts.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to ask,” said Sandoval, criticizing the mayor’s “behind doors conversations,” on matters such as the financing of the 49ers stadium–a stadium, which as Sandoval noted, is to be included as an venue in the mayor’s vision for the 2016 Olympics.
“I’m happy the mayor has acknowledged that we need to ask the voters,” said Sandoval, adding that Newsom believes it’s “premature to ask right now”.
“Premature implies maturity,” said Sandoval, suggesting that the Olympic question will be asked some time in the future, as he tabled his own motion “to ask voters” for now. But feel free, SF, to tell us what you think about the plan . We’re not afraid to hear it. Heck, it might even reveal what people do and don’t know.

Why people get mad at the media, part l

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We have a tenant on the third floor of our Guardian building at l35 Mississippi St, at the bottom of Potrero Hill in San Francisco, called Digg.com, a new and bustling and highly publicized Dot.com operation.

It is getting lots of publicity these days and so I was highly interested to find that the company founder was displayed in full color on the front page of the Aug. l4th edition of Business Week magazine. He was a good looking young guy of 29, obviously full of Mexican jumping beans, wearing a T-shirt and some sort of earphones beneath a cap turned backwards. He was doing a jaunty thumbs up and between his thumbs in the middle of his T-shirt was the headline: “How this kid Made $60 million in l8 months, Digg.com’s Kevin Rose leads a new brat pack of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.”

I opened the magazine and read the lead: “It was June 26, 4:45 a.m. and Digg Founder Kevin Rose was slugging back tea and trying to keep his eyes open as he drove his Volkswagen Golf to Digg’s headquarters above the grungy offices of the SF Weekly in Potrero Hill.”

I was astounded. The article had three major factual errors in the first three lines of the opening paragraph. First: Digg.com, we are happy to report, is a good tenant on the third floor of the Guardian building. Second: the SF Weekly is our chain competitor, the Village Voice/New Times conglomerate based in Phoenix, Arizona, with offices on the other side of Mission Bay near the Giants ballpark. We are suing the VVM/NT for predatory pricing. Third: we don’t have “grungy offices.” Did this pattern of factual errors, I wondered, continue throughout the piece?

Well, to be objective and fair, I am known to have a grungy desk and many people have commented on it through the years and it has even attracted a bit of publicity. In fact, there is a photo of me, sitting amidst a mountain of papers and books, grinding away on my trusty Royal typewriter (which I call fondly my l876 Royal), in the l988 edition of the book titled “A Day in the Life of California.” There is a similar photo of me at my grungy desk, back in the early l970s, in an old National Geographic magazine, with the cutline: If a writer in San Francisco was going to write like Mark Twain, he would be writing for the Bay Guardian. Reporter Sarah Phelan, hearing me mutter the word “grungy,” immediately pointed out that “grungy” is cool. She may be right. I am not going to argue the point.

However, I was curious to know how a major national business publication, an ornament of McGraw-Hill publishing, could make three such major embarrassing factual mistakes in its lead story. I also wanted to know what McGraw-Hill was going to do about it and what its policy was on corrections and retractions. I was also curious to know the whereabouts and the credits of the two writers, Sarah Lacy and Jessi Hempel, so I could ask them directly how this happened. Perhaps I could orient them over a Potrero Hill martini at the
Connecticut Yankee.

So I went to the phone book and found a Business Week office at 160 Spear St., in San Francisco, phone number 260-5390. I called and gave my questions to the young lady who answered the phone. Oh, she said, you will have to call Elizabeth Moses, an editorial assistant, at our editorial offices in San Mateo at 650-372-3980. I promptly called the number and got one of those deadly you’ll-not-get-in-here-if-we-can-help-it computer answering systems. After some fumbling and bumbling, I did get through to a voice mail with a name that I could not quite distinguish who told me she was unavailable right now but directed me to leave my phone number and email so that she could contact me. I did so. And I am now waiting patiently for an answer.

I will file my next bulletin as soon as I get the word back from Business Week/McGraw-Hill. Good luck and good night, or was it good night and good luck, B3

P.S. l: Wow! “$60 million in l8 months?” I must be in the wrong line of work.

P.S. 2: You will note that I say Giants ballpark. After the name changed from PacBell park (bad enough), to SBC park (terrible) to AT@T park (godawful), I will never again use any formal corporate name of any kind for the ball park. In this blog, it will always be the Giants ballpark in San Francisco. I hope you understand. B3

Here is what happened to Lani Silver, a Bay Guardian reader and occasional Bay Guardian contributor in an e-mail she sent to me:

I am still waiting for a call back from the San Francisco 49ers. Six weeks ago I saw a headline in the S.F. Chronicle that announced the campaign to build a new stadium, for $600-800 million. The sub-headline, said that if anything fell through, the team reserves the right to move to Santa Clara.

As a native San Franciscan, I called John York’s office to suggest that they not make an announcement and threaten a population in the same breathe. After being transferred a half dozen times, I left a message on a voice-mail system meant for community feed-back. I wanted to tell York and others, but wound up telling a machine that it’s rude to launch a campaign and threaten a city in the same moment. I thought my comment to the 49ers would be a valuable p.r. tip for the company.

This is what happens with big companies. You can never reach the top managers. You’ll get transferred many times and then you’ll have to leave a message on a machine that will never get to the people for whom they were intended.

I left my message, something nicely put about jamming a stadium down a community’s throat, when there is a perfectly fine stadium already, and how a corporation should not say that if they don’t get what they want, a billion dollar stadium that they will move. I am still waiting for a call.

Olympic dreams

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By Steven T. Jones
So, Mayor Gavin Newsom tells the dailies that San Francisco is going to pull out all the stops to snag the 2016 Olympics, using Hunter’s Point to house the athletes and staging the games at a delux Candlestick Park (ie public subsidies for the 49ers new stadium). No wonder so many people worried that the new Bayview Hunter’s Point Redevelopment Area might be used to line the pockets of big corporations and developers instead of benefitting the people of the southeast. But Newsom tries some win-win spin by offering to let poor folks have the 4,000 apartments he wants to build when the athletes are all done — 10 years from now. A question: if we have the resources to build a bunch of publicly subsidized apartments, why don’t we do so now? Make no mistake, this is about our mayor’s ego and political ambitions more than the interests of city residents, particularly those of the southeast, which have already endured more than their share of capitalism’s hidden costs.

Paying for renewal

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

BayviewHunters Point residents have cause to be concerned about any redevelopment plan that would dramatically alter the face of their neighborhoods, particularly given the displacement and corporate subsidies that have resulted from past redevelopment schemes in San Francisco.

So when housing activist Randy Shaw reported on his Beyondchron.org Web site April 10 that "hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars" in revenue from the BayviewHunters Point Redevelopment Plan could go toward rebuilding Candlestick Park for the 49ers, his claim created a firestorm. The rumor quickly circulated among community groups and lefty media outlets already fearful of what SF officials had in store for the southeast section of the city.

But Marcia Rosen, executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, says Shaw got it wrong: The tax increment financing (TIF) the main source of redevelopment money from BayviewHunters Point was never intended for Candlestick Park. Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes the project area, also told the Guardian last week that there hasn’t been any talk of subsidizing the stadium project or its surrounding housing.

Nonetheless, Maxwell has spent weeks trying to respond to community concerns about the stadium funding, as well as a host of other concerns raised by a portion of the community that has been galvanized by the redevelopment issue. On April 20 she added an amendment to the plan that explicitly restricts any TIF money from outside the Candlestick Point Special Use District from going anywhere near the stadium.

But that’s unlikely to end the controversy over a plan that Maxwell has been working on for six years and that has been in the pipeline for nearly four decades.

"This plan didn’t just happen out of thin air," Maxwell said at the May 9 Board of Supervisors meeting. "It came from many different plans in the Bayview. It was an accumulation of many outreach efforts. The plan has been thoroughly vetted. The scrutiny and disagreements have only made it stronger."

The legislation before the board for consideration now contains two parts: a 136-acre area that includes the Hunters Point Hill residential neighborhood, and a much larger area, added in the ’90s, that would expand the Redevelopment Agency’s jurisdiction by 1,361 acres.

Inside the enormous widened area is the Candlestick Point Special Use District, which was created by voters in 1997 as part of a narrowly passed legislative package infused with $100 million in bond money for the construction of a new Candlestick stadium and shopping mall. The plan was stalled until last month, when public mutterings about an alternative plan with more housing units began to circulate.

The propositions (there were two in 1997) allocating $100 million for Candlestick are still technically in effect. The money was never spent, and the football club’s ownership has since indicated it may build the project without that bond money in order to focus on housing. A feasibility study is currently under way, and no plans have yet been made public.

According to a report released by the Budget Analyst’s Office in late April, the Redevelopment Agency is expecting to generate almost $300 million in TIF money from new property taxes over the next 45 or so years to pay for the redevelopment plan. Approximately $30 million of the money available for infrastructure improvements and low-income housing would be contingent on business activity inspired by a new stadium, meaning the agency could end up with much less if the stadium area remains in its current state.

TIF money generated inside Candlestick Point can still flow outward, new stadium or not. But Rosen clarified for us that TIF money could also go toward infrastructure improvements associated with the Candlestick project, such as roads, streetlights, green spaces, and housing at least 50 percent of which is required to be affordable to those with low incomes, a far higher rate than citywide requirements. None of this could happen, however, without board approval and considerable public oversight.

"There is the possibility that the board could allocate tax-increment financing to a park or other public space," Rosen said.

Other concerns residents had over the redevelopment plan have cooled somewhat as Maxwell has introduced a series of amendments, including a call for regular management audits during the plan’s implementation and increased public participation in approving "significant land use proposals," an amendment she introduced last week.

But some skeptics have continued to express concern about gentrification of the area and the displacement of its predominantly minority residents.

Shaw, who opposes the plan, told us his greatest concern now is no longer the 49ers but turnout at public meetings.

"The proponents have outnumbered the opponents," he said. "I haven’t seen the kind of turnout we would have expected." SFBG