Volume 41 Number 15 Archives — Page 2 of 2 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

January 10 – January16, 2007

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Careers and Ed: Hard on the job

January 9, 2007

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Just a short walk northeast from the Hall of Justice in SoMa lies an internationally renowned palace of forbidden pleasure.

The nondescript four-story stone building is the headquarters for Kink, an online enterprise specializing in the production of short, sexy, streaming BDSM videos, available for a monthly subscription fee. Started by British bondage aficionado Peter Ackworth about a decade ago, Kink is home to such fetish favorites as Hogtied, Fucking Machines, and Ultimate Surrender (in which the winner of a female wrestling competition in a Greco-Roman setting gets to fuck the loser). It’s also — perhaps surprisingly — a great place to work, according to the people who work there. And that’s not just those strapped down in front of the cameras talking.

Granted, when you were young and dreaming of a fabulous career in film, porn might not have been your chosen niche. But if you’re looking for a job in media and are unenthused by the paltry postings on Craigslist offering the opportunity to work in the lackluster world of industrial video production, you might want to broaden your options. There used to be a steadier stream of work shooting commercials and Hollywood films on location here, but the high costs have caused that flow to taper off. Still, the Bay Area harbors a vibrant industry creating DVD and Internet adult content.

Crack all the jokes you want about the sleaziness of the porn business, but there’s some real dedication behind it. I used to have a job where I regularly interviewed people about their jobs: dot-com jobs, to be specific. Most of the time, the Web guru, marketing guru, or whatever guru I was interrogating would stare at me with a Stepford wife’s eyes and tell me what a blast it was to work at blobbity-blah.com. All the while I could hear the voice in his or her head blaring, "If my stock options end up amounting to nothing more than toilet paper, I’m gonna be pissed!"

Many local erotica production studios, on the other hand, offer a positive and creative work environment, upward mobility, and good pay with full benefits for everyone from customer service representatives to IT workers and video editors.

ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB

As I’m guided through the maze of sets at Kink — a jail cell, a dirty bathroom, a dungeon with vaulted ceilings reminiscent of the Doom video game, even a sci-fi room — I pass workers who are going about the business of making naughty fantasies come to life. Production assistants in black jumpsuits prepare sets for shoots. Set builders in flannels construct a booth in the back lot for the imminent Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. A model naps in the green room before his close-up.

In the office space where the postproduction editors work with the directors to piece together videos on large, brilliant flat-panel monitors, everyone I see looks like someone who could be working at an indie rock record label. They’re hip, young, hard at work, and having a good time.

I get to interview some of them on the canopied roof deck, replete with a bar, heat lamps, and a hot tub. Kelly Schaefer, a young woman with jagged layers of blond locks jutting to her chin, tells me she’s worked at Kink for about a year. Now the lead production assistant, in charge of scheduling and training all the other PAs for shoots and making sure everything runs smoothly, she started out as a model, performing in Kink’s Ultimate Surrender. The former Good Vibrations sales associate still models, because she really enjoys the wrestling. But she’s also working toward becoming a full-fledged producer.

Schaefer has a rep around Kink for being motivated, which is partly why she was able to move into a different role with greater responsibility. Since she didn’t have a background in production, being a model helped her get a foot in the door. For those interested, Schaefer says, "It’s a great company if you’re just getting started in BDSM." Kink follows the BDSM credo of safe, consensual, and respectful play and trains its PAs to make sure that all models are treated well, taking care to stop the shoot when limbs fall asleep during difficult poses involving mouth gags and rope.

Her coworker Guillermo Garcia, a videographer and PA, got his start by taking a number of production and editing classes in Final Cut Pro at City College. In addition to gaining more experience in lighting a soundstage on the job, the dreadlocked musician from Medellín, Colombia, says he enjoyed scoring the theme to Ultimate Surrender. He also has to make sure all the gadgets for the Fucking Machines series are in proper working order and, truth be told, clean the sex toys.

PERKS AND PACKAGES

Over at Colt Studios, which is in a converted warehouse near Potrero Hill that also houses an accounting firm, a team of 19 people works hard to produce slick and beautiful photos, calendars, and videos of handsome, masculine guys.

President John Rutherford, who got his degree in broadcasting at San Francisco State, realized that making internal videos at Hewlett-Packard with straight guys wasn’t in his future. He started working at San Francisco’s famed hardcore gay porn company Falcon Studios just as he was coming out. Rutherford said he aims to run a team of creative and self-directed people who are serious about attaining company goals. He likens working with porn to a nurse working with blood. "I can’t even watch Nip/Tuck, but here I think, ‘Hey, that’s a great picture; that’s a big dick.’ " It’s all in a day’s work.

His business partner, Tom Settle, says, "Our customer service agents get the question at least once a day: ‘Well, what’s it like to work there?’ People have a fantasy that models walk around servicing our customer service agents all day…. We’ve had people come to work here looking for the forbidden fruit. When they find out it’s not what they expect, they think, ‘Well, I could never tell anyone I work here.’ "

Not that it’s dull working at Colt, a company with a 40-year history of male erotica production, mind you. The elegant offices are filled with fine art. Georgia, Rutherford’s beagle, roams freely. The staff is urbane and witty.

Kim Ionesco, a Colt customer service rep who is starting to work more in marketing, jokes that she never thought her career would flourish in male porn. "I didn’t hit the glass ceiling," she exclaims, sipping a Red Bull. When she started working at Colt, all her lesbian friends began clamoring for DVDs starring Chris Wide, a hot property in Colt’s exclusive stable. She had no idea her girlfriends would know who he was. Then again, she quips, "I appreciate nice, polite, good-looking gay men." So why wouldn’t other dykes feel the same way?

Even straight IT professionals such as Aaron Golub find working in male, mostly gay porn surprisingly refreshing too. Previously, he worked as an IT director at a multinational company but quit because, as he explains, "I did not feel like what I was doing was noble. I feel more guilty about generating junk mail. I’ve never sat there and said, ‘Oh, I need some advertising,’ but I’ve definitely felt like I needed porn. I feel like what we’re doing is for people who really, truly want it. Where I worked before, I didn’t feel like that was truly the case."

Aside from working toward the common goal of providing customers with images of Colt’s much-admired, wood-chopping manly men, the twentysomething IT whiz gets to work with technology on the cutting edge. "We’re doing things you don’t do when you’re developing a site for IBM." He wouldn’t tip his hand, but basically he means that by making downloads and streams seamless and infallible, online porn is on the forefront of content delivery.

When I ask him if working in porn might cause some stigmatization with future employers, he says, "I’m in a different boat than actors or directors, because my skills are very transportable. I’m not in a situation where I’m going to have to present a reel." He also echoes what every other worker I interviewed told me.

"I wouldn’t want to work for someone who has a problem with what I do." *

www.kink.com

www.coltstudiogroup.com

Nurturing the drive

January 9, 2007

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Sheri Wetherby was working at a casino in Tahoe when she decided to become a computer programmer. So she left Tahoe and came to the Bay Area to study. A few years later, she had a job at Microsoft.

Wetherby had hardly a lick of programming background before she got her MA in computer science at Mills College. Her undergraduate degree was in German and French. She’d taken some graduate courses at the University of New Hampshire, including a computer science course that inspired her to envision a second career in the field. But how, she wondered, could she find a program that would allow her to master computers, coming from a liberal arts background?

A friend told her about New Horizons, a reentry program at Mills that teaches computer programming to students with nontechnical backgrounds. "I found the small classes and individual attention helped me get a grounding" in computer science, she says, "before moving on to more advanced topics."

The New Horizons program is specially designed for grad students who don’t have an undergraduate degree in computer science. It consists of two undergraduate-level computer science classes per semester for students who also hold down jobs and family responsibilities. Students can choose to finish the New Horizons program with a certificate but most go on to pursue a master’s degree from the Interdisciplinary Computer Science program at Mills. The ICS program aims to build bridges between computer science and computer users and offers graduate coursework as well as a master’s thesis track.

Some New Horizons students find computer science too difficult or different than they expected, "but the majority are successful and happy," Mills computer science associate professor Ellen Spertus says. She recommends students with no CS experience try taking some community college courses in the subject first — to see if their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, in programming terms.

At a community college, students can take the prerequisite math and CS classes at a fraction of the cost before going to Mills, says Constance Conner, an instructor in the Computer Science Department at City College of San Francisco who studied in the ICS program at Mills. Community college "is also a good place to start if a student is not 100 percent sure" about a CS degree, she says. Then, if students’ appetites are still whet, the Mills program will guide them along a new career path.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Computer science is seen by many hopefuls as a lucrative but daunting field. In the public’s mind successful programmers are young, mostly male wizards who almost cosmically penetrate thickets of computer languages and database engineering to manifest unfathomable products. Spertus finds that many students going into her program suffer from low self-esteem — especially female students. She says they’ll be earning A’s in the program’s classes but will be convinced they’re not doing well and somehow "don’t belong." Her teaching style, simultaneously rigorous and nurturing, helps change their opinion, she hopes.

Introductory CS classes at most universities "act like weeder courses," scaring away all but the most confident students, Spertus says. Typically, up to half the students fail or drop out of introductory CS classes at other institutions. Spertus says this phenomenon hits women hardest because they may have less computer experience as well as less confidence.

Also, some students apologize for not having undergrad degrees in CS. Spertus always tells them computer scientists with a narrow focus are "a dime a dozen." But people like them, who know CS along with another field, are unique.

RIGHTING THE BALANCE

Erica Rios has been an activist since she was a teenager but became frustrated that activists were still using the same methods of organizing Martin Luther King Jr. employed back in the ’60s. She had a political science degree and a minor in Chicano studies from UC Davis. As a labor activist for small community nonprofits, she had to teach herself to use computers because nobody else knew how. She saw how technology was changing her native San Jose. She wanted to learn "how tech could be used to engage people in the issues that impact them but they don’t necessarily have a direct voice on."

Though Mills is a women’s undergrad college, it accepts male graduate students. Men typically make up roughly a third of the participants in the ICS program, but the majority-female environment creates a unique classroom culture. The different gender balance was helpful to Rios because she had a nine-month-old child when she started the program. She felt more comfortable bringing her daughter to her Java class than she would have in a male-dominated classroom — and less apt to fall behind on coursework.

The few men enrolled during Rios’s time brought a balance to the learning environment, she believes, while showing her that she need not feel uncomfortable as a woman in the computer science field. "There were two other men in class with me and about seven going through the whole program," says Barton Friedland, one of the men who just completed the ICS program. For him, it felt very different to study "with a preponderance of women, but that’s something you can learn from."

Friedland took some classes at Stanford before going to Mills. "There seemed to be this attitude where if you asked questions in class, people looked at you funny." If students admitted they didn’t know something, they would lose status, and they were supposed to figure out things on your own. Despite Stanford’s reputation as one of the top schools in the country, Friedland found Mills’s curriculum more thorough.

The smaller class sizes at Mills were also helpful, Rios says. At UC Davis the average class size is 300 in lower-level courses and 75 to 100 in upper-level classes; a class size of 12 to 15 students is more conducive to learning, she found.

It "felt like everyone belonged there and [was] equally capable of learning. I didn’t always feel that in larger classes."

The Mills professors "don’t throw too much jargon at you, making you feel like you’re not smart enough," Rios adds. Instead, the professors step back to observe how students approach problems, then help them learn to problem solve from a more hard-science perspective. Rios now works as an Internet project manager at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, using her activism background to "explore ways in which we can use technology to advance women."

"I felt comfortable speaking in class and asking questions, where in a typical classroom I would not," says former ICS student Lisa Cowan, who has a BA in anthropology and is now pursuing a computer science PhD at UC San Diego. "The professors taught class in a highly interactive way, asking questions and encouraging discussion, helping us solve problems together, making sure all students thoroughly understood the material being covered."

PAVING THE WAY

The ICS program at Mills isn’t the first reentry program of its kind in the Bay Area. UC Berkeley opened a program in 1983 as a pathway to graduate study in computer science for women and minority students who were underrepresented in Berkeley’s crowded and competitive program. Two female Berkeley graduates, Paula Hawthorn and Barbara Simons, noticed in 1982 that the number of female graduate students entering the CS program was actually decreasing over time as the requirements became more geared toward people who had pursued a standard math or engineering track.

The Computer Science Reentry Program at Berkeley gave 159 students a concentrated education in upper-level computer science classes. Ten of those students have gone on to get PhDs. But the program had to fold in 1998 when California passed Proposition 209, which prohibited any state-funded programs that discriminate based on gender and ethnicity.

MULTIPLE PATHS

The interdisciplinary part of the Mills College ICS program’s name means students combine computer science with another area of study to produce their master’s theses. "It gives you a really broad brush," says Wetherby, the former casino worker. When a student comes to Spertus with a thesis idea, she always asks how it uses what the student has learned about computer science. But she also asks why the thesis is something that she, a narrowly trained computer scientist, couldn’t do. She finds the interdisciplinary approach helps students make more of a contribution and also realize they can do things that Spertus, who has a PhD from MIT, can’t.

While still at Mills, Wetherby had internships at IBM and Apple Research. When she was job hunting after the program, someone from Microsoft called her because her studies had combined computer science and education. Microsoft needed someone who could write educational programs to teach programmers about Microsoft tools.

Another Mills student, Liz Quigg, had already been an applications programmer at science labs before joining the ICS program. She’d crunched high-energy physics and moon-walk data. But the program’s interdisciplinary focus also helped her get into writing educational software. Afterward, she was able to help create educational programs for the science center at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

"It was very useful because my job now is very interdisciplinary," Quigg says. "I work with scientists, teachers, and students. I cross different worlds." *

The deadline to apply for the New Horizons–ICS program this term is Feb. 1. You can find information and application forms online at www.mills.edu/admission/graduate.

Careers and Ed: Nurturing the drive

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Sheri Wetherby was working at a casino in Tahoe when she decided to become a computer programmer. So she left Tahoe and came to the Bay Area to study. A few years later, she had a job at Microsoft.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

RIGHTING THE BALANCE

It "felt like everyone belonged there and [was] equally capable of learning. I didn’t always feel that in larger classes."

PAVING THE WAY

MULTIPLE PATHS

"It was very useful because my job now is very interdisciplinary," Quigg says. "I work with scientists, teachers, and students. I cross different worlds." *

The deadline to apply for the New Horizons–ICS program this term is Feb. 1. You can find information and application forms online at www.mills.edu/admission/graduate.

Careers and Ed: Bio the people, fuel the people

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Cars suck. I have stickers that say so and a venerable beater of a bicycle that underscores the point. But for every one of the approximately 40,000 bicycle commuters in San Francisco, there are more than 10 registered car owners, and just wishing they didn’t exist won’t make it so. But I’m no hater. I’m sure glad my plumber drives a van, for instance, and my gardener roommate wouldn’t get very far without a pickup truck to haul all that gravel and mulch. Still, the environmental, economic, and just plain moral implications of using anything that relies on petroleum for fuel have become increasingly difficult to justify — especially since interest in and access to alternative fuels are on the uptick. Last year’s mayoral biodiesel directive, when implemented, will make San Francisco the national leader in biodiesel use for municipal vehicles. In fact, the demand for biodiesel in the Bay Area could soon outstrip the current supply, and as far as getting in on the ground floor goes, the time has never been better to be involved with biofuels.

Of course, a lot of people get into biodiesel not as a career move but as a form of activist self-sufficiency that hearkens back to the ’70s return-to-the-land movement. The notion that one can power a vehicle on homemade fuel made from recycled cooking oil and a few bucks worth of drain cleaner is nigh-irresistible to penny-pinchers and political progressives alike, and the accessibility of the technology is such that even the least mechanically minded can pick it up with minimum instruction. Some instruction could be beneficial, though. Considering that two of the three major ingredients of biodiesel are highly toxic and flammable (methanol and lye), it may well behoove nascent home brewers to hone their skills in a structured environment, which local biofuel advocates are conveniently providing.

BIODIESEL 101

Jennifer Radtke knows her biofuels. Despite an incongruous educational background in Slavic languages and poli-sci, she has become one of the Bay Area’s premiere authorities on brewing biodiesel and running a biodiesel station, and she has offered courses and internships in both since 2003. As one of the cofounders of the women-owned Berkeley cooperative BioFuel Oasis (which serves as a station for more than 1,600 regular customers) and an instructor for the Real Goods Solar Living Institute and the Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, Radtke is committed to the biodiesel community. She teaches five different classes covering almost every aspect of the biofuel biz for beginners and advanced users alike. Though many of her classes are held in Berkeley, you can occasionally find her holding forth in Golden Gate Park’s SF County Fair Building.

For tyros to the technology, Radtke teaches a one-day introductory class covering biodiesel usage, sustainability, and home brewing. At a typical class, she opens with a presentation on biodiesel basics, listing the benefits and drawbacks of using biodiesel. Even to a nondriver like myself, the benefits appear to outweigh the disadvantages by a hefty margin.

Lower emissions and a higher rate of biodegradability are things I take for granted when thinking about biodiesel, but I certainly didn’t realize it’s less toxic to the human body than table salt when ingested and less irritating to the skin than a 4 percent soap-and-water solution. Biodiesel’s flashpoint (the temperature at which it ignites when exposed to flames) is over 300 degrees Fahrenheit — the flashpoint of petroleum-based diesel is about 125 degrees. Most interesting to me and my low-to-no-maintenance requirements is finding out biodiesel is a natural solvent that cleans out the fuel tank and filters. (Can I get it to do my dishes too?) With bennies like these, who can fault biodiesel for its unfortunate tendency to burst through rubber fuel lines (discontinued since 1994) or eat through your slick new paint job? Such inconveniences seem minor in comparison to those created by toxic, flammable petroleum-based fuels.

After a comparison discussion of biodiesel to petroleum diesel and SVO (straight veggie oil), Radtke demonstrates home brewing and discusses the chemistry involved. After a lunch break, the students brew their own one-to-two-liter batch. Starting out with a quantity of recycled cooking oil, the class tests for water and free fatty acids, a process known as titration. (When water is present in the oil, the home brewer runs the risk of making soap instead of fuel.) Titration determines whether the used oil is too rancid or has been broken down too much by high fryer heat. If the oil is deemed usable, students concoct a test brew, mixing the heated oil with methanol (wood alcohol) and sodium hydroxide (lye). Here especially is where the presence of an instructor comes in handy.

Unlike the finished product, the chemical components of biodiesel have a very low flashpoint, and their toxicity is much higher. Methanol in particular can be harmful, even deadly, if improperly handled, and for this reason alone, many biodiesel advocates are still skittish about taking the last step toward home production. After walking beginners through a safe mixing procedure, Radtke discusses washing and filtering the biofuel and assessing its quality. She also discusses how to dispose of byproducts and offers additional educational resources. For people who want to practice brewing bigger batches (20 to 40 gallons) and a get a more in-depth overview of the small production industry, a three-day advanced course is occasionally offered, often on an on-demand basis.

ORGANIC MECHANICS

It doesn’t take long for the would-be home brewer to want to start tinkering with processors. For the mechanically unsavvy, Radtke offers an equipment-building workshop for five participants at a time (often in conjunction with co-instructor Alan Pryor of the Berkeley and Alameda Biodiesel co-ops or alternatively through Real Goods). Hoarding industry secrets doesn’t seem to be an issue for biofuel distributors teaching people how to make their product. In fact, a common denominator among backyard biodiesel advocates seems to be their genuine desire to spread the knowledge of their chosen vocation far and wide. Plus, as Radtke points out, most of her processor-builder students actually come from outside the Bay Area, some from as far away as Southern California, where stations like BioFuel Oasis and the SF Biofuel Cooperative have yet to materialize.

This is a paradox that Radtke and Melissa Hardy, also of BioFuel Oasis, hope to address in their upcoming five-day intensive class, How to Start Your Own Biodiesel Station (Feb. 18–23), walking students through the process, from procuring fuel and testing it to applying for the required permits and necessary funding. Other topics of interest to the budding entrepreneur include zoning and taxation laws, equipment building and maintenance, and even market development. By the end of the course, participants should have a clear vision and a working business plan to get them started in the distribution biz.

In addition to that course, BioFuel Oasis holds monthly fuel filter–changing workshops on-site (next scheduled for Jan. 21). Since biofuel has such a solvent effect, cars that have just recently switched over from regular diesel run the risk of clogging from the leftover residue dredged out by the introduced biofuel. For a $10 to $20 sliding scale fee and about 30 minutes of time, attendees learn to replace their filters, a much preferable option to waiting until they clog on the freeway. Registration and information for any of these classes can be found on the following Web sites: www.backyardbiodiesel.org, www.biofueloasis.com, and (for classes connected with the Solar Living Institute) www.solarliving.org.

MASTERS OF THE BREW

Of course, even the acknowledged masters of their craft were once beginners too. For Jennifer Radtke and dozens of other home brew aficionados in the Bay Area and around the country, the force behind their fascination is one Maria "girl Mark" Alovert. With a background in grassroots activism, girl Mark is one of the nation’s most vocal proponents of home-brewed biofuels and the inventor of the ubiquitous appleseed processor, which can be made cheaply from an old hot-water heater and a handful of hardware store components. Her self-published Biodiesel Homebrew Guide is considered the definitive guide to home brewing, and her two- to four-day seminars for beginners and advanced students alike fill up months in advance. In addition to teaching and touring, girl Mark is a member and sometime moderator of several biodiesel forums and the instigator of a peer-reviewed home-brewing and equipment-building Web site known as the Collaborative Biodiesel Tutorial (www.biodieselcommunity.org). A schedule of her classes and tour dates can be found online at www.girlmark.com and www.localb100.com.

For San Franciscans who’d like their introduction to biofuel to be a little closer to home, the San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative (www.sfbiofuels.org) offers once-a-month orientation meetings where interested parties can get practical advice on everything from where to buy a diesel car to how to advance the biofuel community’s agenda. More than 200 members strong, the co-op’s pumping station shares a location with Incredible Adventures (www.incadventures.com), a local adventure tour company that runs its biofueled fleet all the way to Baja. Co-op members can pay the premium price for biodiesel at the pump (currently $3.65 per gallon) or volunteer a couple hours per month to purchase their biofuel for less. Hailing from the old People’s Food System, former Rainbow Grocery cofounder and SF Biofuels Cooperative Board of Directors member Bill Crolius is also a driving force (with Ben Jordan and Trevitt Schultz) behind the People’s Fuel Cooperative (www.peoplesfuel.org), a biodiesel delivery operation. Taking the long view on energy sustainability, Crolius envisions a future in which even biodiesel will be obsolete, but for the interim, he and his co-op compatriots believe it serves an essential role in weaning people off fossil fuels.

David Dias, advanced transportation and technology project coordinator at City College, organizes workshops on a variety of alternative fueling technologies, including biodiesel, natural gas, and SVO. He also heads the Biodiesel Conversion Club, an extracurricular group dedicated to converting muscle cars such as El Caminos into biodiesel road warriors. Most of the workshops cost money but are open to the general public. Contact Dias for details at (415) 550-4455 or ddias@ccsf.edu.

For nondrivers this is something of a nonissue, but for people who aren’t quite ready to give up the family car or rely on their vehicle the way contractors do, the siren song of home brewing is a seductive one. It doesn’t take much space either: a corner of your garage or the back of a toolshed will do. In light of our national crude addiction and the wars being waged on its behalf, biodiesel is a compelling product; and while there is a San Francisco–based large-scale biodiesel production company in the works (www.sfbiodiesel.com), the reality is that low-cost biodiesel on demand is still a few years away — a reality that makes home brewing an attractive solution and, in time, perhaps even the ultimate answer. *

Careers and Ed: Cocktail frosh

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Swanky-ass bars, high-end restaurants, sex, drugs — they’re all great things to love about San Francisco, but they can be cruel and constant symbols of failure to the scrilla deprived. With one-bedroom apartments currently priced at about $1,600 a month, cell phone bills hovering in the $75 to $150 range, and PG&E. religiously raping us for half our salaries, it’s amazing anyone can afford to live in this city, let alone enjoy its vast array of entertainment. But San Francisco has a secret. Unlike most cities, San Francisco pays its waiters, bartenders, and bussers almost $10 an hour. Add to that a healthy tip stash, and there’s at least a little disposable income to hit the town with.

Of all the jobs the service industry has to offer, bartending rules. We’re talking potentially $200 to $500 for six hours of work. OK, count me in. The major problem, though, is acquiring the skills to qualify. San Francisco has almost as many service-industry schools as it does bars and restaurants. Would I get scammed if I enrolled in one? With the ultimate goal of becoming a bartender, I spent a month researching the cultlike world of barkeep education, starting with a quest for the perfect school.

THE SEARCH

In order to minimize any money and time investments, I first looked for Web classes and free tutorials. I should have known better. Looking for a free or relatively inexpensive online course in bartending turned out to be a bigger waste of time than the hours I logged scouring the Internet for free porn as a young man. The sites of my youth always promised girl-on-girl action, fist-fucking, and bizarre fetish acts but only generated advertisements for sketchy online subscriptions or outrageously expensive chat sessions. The same was true, metaphorically, of www.bartendingcollegeonline.com, www.ebartending.com, and www.zizoo.com. Each one taunted me with screen shots and personal testimonies but wouldn’t give up the goods without a credit card number. So I passed on the virtual cocktail-slinging and set about finding a real-world educator.

ABC Nationwide Bartending School (www.abcbartending.com, 1-888-262-5824) looked promising but seemed a little too corporate for my taste. Other schools, such as National Bartenders School (870 Market, suite 828, SF; 415-677-9777, www.nationalbartenders.com), seemed legitimate but didn’t quite have the attitude and style I associate with the glamorous life of a bartender. I want to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail, not the sad barkeep from Billy Joel’s "Piano Man." I want to serve mojitos, cosmos, and lemon drops to drunk yuppies, ending every night with fistfuls of easy cash and invitations to cologne-drenched orgies. Glamour! Eventually, I seemed to find perfection in the San Francisco School of Bartending (760 Market, suite 833, SF; 415-362-1116, www.sfbartending.com), a school run and taught by local SF bartenders — sort of a FUBU for mixologists.

It works like this: for about $300 (a slow night’s tips for the average SF bartender) you get hands-on training and insider information from a seasoned professional. The classroom simulates an average pub, with music, neon beer signs, and a supersize bar with a pouring station for each student. There’s homework every night, a daily quiz, and a final exam. Near the end of every minisemester, students get a consultation with a professional résumé builder who has magical contacts to the city’s premier restaurants and bars. It’s a boot camp for bartenders, taught by some of the toughest and most knowledgeable drill sergeants around. The slick Web site, affordable price, and sense of community won me over. After a few simple clicks I was all signed up for a two-week course ($295, financing available).

ORIENTATION

When I arrived at the SFSOB bright and early on a Monday morning, I was immediately greeted by Gretchen Mitchell, a veteran bartender who has served in more than 50 restaurants and bars in her 19 years in the industry. She wasted no time getting started. "All right class, answer me this: if someone comes up to my bar and tries to get a slow screw up against the wall, what am I going to do?" There were blank stares all around as the other students and I tried to think of the right answer. "Should I give a knowing smile and assume the position?" she said. "Hell no! I don’t think so. A Slow Screw Up Against the Wall is a mixture of sloe gin, vodka, and orange juice with a splash of Galliano. I know this, not because I have it memorized, but because I think like a bartender, and that’s exactly what we’re going to teach you to do over the next two weeks. Now get behind your stations and get ready for some action." She paused, then added, "You’re gonna thank me, guys. In no time at all you’ll be having ‘creamy sex on the beach’ with a whole gang of ‘redheaded sluts.’ And ladies, you’ll be serving up expert ‘blow jobs’ and ‘screaming orgasms.’ " With that, class had begun.

LEARNING TO POUR

I usually wait until around noon to have my first alcoholic beverage, but today was different. It was only 9:30 a.m., and here I was under the soothing neon lights of a real bar. Credence Clearwater Revival played in the background as I wiped down my section of mahogany, filled my ice chest, and got ready to make some drinks. Mitchell passed out laminated cards with pictures of simple drinks like tequila sunrises and screwdrivers and then drew our attention to overhead computer monitors. She was now the patron, and the other students and I were the all-powerful barkeeps. Laid out before us were soda guns, ice scoops, and quick-access mixers. Behind us were countless bottles of fake alcohol, glasses, and towels. We were ready.

"All right, guys, here’s how it’s gonna work: I’m going to walk you through the first couple of drinks, show you how to measure an accurate one-ounce shot without a cup, demonstrate the proper way to hold things, and so on. Then the computer is going to take over for a while. But before I do all that, I want to see what you already know." Mitchell took a breath, looked around, and then said, "Make me a screwdriver right now."

It seemed like an easy request, but as I fumbled around looking for orange juice and vodka, I realized I didn’t know how to mix them correctly. Mitchell watched as we tried to bullshit our way through the exercise. Some scooped ice with their glasses (a major no-no), poured in the orange juice, and then topped the concoction off with a haphazard shot of vodka. Others grabbed the vodka with two hands and then apprehensively poured it into an empty glass before adding the other ingredients. Our new sensei watched in disgust. Soon there were 11 crappy-looking screwdrivers sitting on the bar. The lesson behind the exercise was unmistakable: we didn’t know shit.

We spent the rest of the morning learning proper pouring techniques, standardized orders of mixing, and some light terminology. After lunch we came back and stumbled through a simulated happy hour during which the computer flashed orders while Mitchell marched to and fro shouting suggestions. I thought it would never end. With sweat pouring down my face, fake liquor soaking my shirt, and freezing hands, I poured drink after drink until Mitchell suddenly screamed, "Last call!" The computer stopped flashing. "Good job, guys," she said. "Shift’s over. Now clean up your stations and go home. Remember today’s lesson: bartending is a lot more complicated than you think. It’s not just Bukowski. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald too."

The rest of the week followed a similar pattern. Mitchell lectured the class on a particular aspect of bartending and then turned the computer on and paced back and forth as we struggled to make drinks. Her teaching style grew warmer over time; eventually, she replaced her cold commands with a soft hand and a helpful voice. Under Mitchell’s guidance mixing drinks became second nature. I could pour a mai tai in a second. Mojitos, cosmos, dirty martinis — I could shoot them all out with ease. By the fifth day I felt like a pro, but I wondered if it was going to work. Would a two-week bartending course be all I needed to get a job? I sought the advice of some experienced bartenders.

THE REAL WORLD

According to Cory Norris, a bartender at an Irish pub in the Mission, the answer is no.

"Man, people come in with those certificates, acting like professionals, but once they get behind the bar, they’re fucking lost. The only way to get good at bartending is to jump in the fire. Those classes only work for people with big tits and blue eyes."

Another bartender, Tommy Basso, owner of Delirium, reiterated Norris’s sentiments. "You can’t learn bartending at a fucking school, kid. You’re gonna get back here and choke. You’re gonna have five dudes mad doggin’ you in the corner ’cause you forgot their beers, two chicks at one end of the bar stealing your cherries, two others chicks distracting you with their tits in the middle, and 20 drinks to make. You’re not gonna know what the fuck to do. Those schools are bullshit."

Basso and Norris scared me. Had my $300 been spent in vain? Had I been duped? In an attempt to assuage my anxiety, I went back to the SFSOB and asked Shawn Refoua, one of the other instructors there, about the real-world difficulties of gaining a foothold behind the bar. Refoua was familiar with the antischool attitude. "There is a scholastic component to every trade." he said. "I mean, can it really be true that bartending is so magical that you can only learn it in the field? That line of thinking just doesn’t make sense." Refoua has been teaching classes at the SFSOB for almost two years and has seen hundreds of students get good jobs. Like most teachers there, he keeps in close contact with his students via the Internet, using his MySpace page to notify them of job openings and changes in the industry. "I wouldn’t worry about people who say bartending schools don’t work," he said. "It’s true that a lot of people either fall into bartending or lie their way in. Maybe that’s why there are so many shitty bartenders around here. Many states actually require certification, you know."

As an SFSOB teacher, Refoua could be a little biased, of course. And real-world bartenders naturally look down on newbies. Any smart-ass could conclude, though, that both have good points. A self-taught bartender knows how to deal with a drunken crowd, and a school-taught applicant comes equipped with a deep understanding of liquor ratios, bar etiquette, and efficient pouring techniques.

I now feel confident enough to submit my résumé to all the places in my SFSOB counselor’s little black book. I can shake, stir, pour, mix, blend, and guess the ingredients in foreign drink names with ease. As far as handling belligerent drunks — well, I’m not worried in the slightest. My friends have taught me well. Just last night I had to stop one of them from jumping out of a fourth-story apartment, slap another in the face for throwing an egg at my girlfriend, and convince yet another to not buy more cocaine at 4 a.m. Bar owners of San Francisco, prepare yourselves. There’s a new cocktail jock in town. *

Sci-fi made me do it

January 9, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Human beings are always bragging how cool we are because we plan for the future. That’s probably why a team of neuroscientists recently did a study on the anatomy of future thinking. Turns out that pondering an upcoming event like, say, the release of Windows Vista, activates a very specific part of the brain.

At least, that’s what researchers at the University of Washington in St. Louis observed when they stuck people in an MRI machine and asked them to think about their next birthdays. The area of the brain for futuristic thought is apparently different from the parts we use to think about the past. Published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their study is the first to detail an anatomical region associated with future-related thoughts. But it’s certainly not the first to explore the idea that humans have a special gift for thinking about what’s next — despite evidence that other animals obviously have tomorrow in mind when they stock up on food for the winter or build dams.

I often imagine the beginning of a scientific study as if it were a Hollywood pitch meeting. Scientist A goes to Grant Source B and says, "Hey, I’ve got an idea for you — it’s sort of a mix of Nancy Kanwisher discovering the facial recognition centers in the brain and Helen Fisher asking subjects to think about people they love while in an MRI. Except it’s about the future! We’ll ask our subjects to imagine seeing the faces of loved ones next week! It will be the best of neurology and psychology with a time travel twist!" And Scientist A may or may not get the money for the project.

What makes me want to Hollywoodize this grant-begging scenario is the fact that nobody ever seems to have a clear definition of what makes a project too ridiculous to get funded. I’m not saying this University of Washington study is particularly ridiculous, but it skirts silliness. Researchers asked subjects to imagine a past event, a neutral event, and a future event while studying their brains in an MRI. This technique is used in a lot of reputable brain function studies, but this particular version is error-prone and imprecise. What if people are thinking two or three things at once? What if they think about something so far into the future that it verges on fantasy rather than merely planning for next year? Certainly, there are ways to normalize the results, especially with multiple test subjects, but nevertheless, the whole thing is a messy business to say the least.

And as I was saying earlier, there seems to be no good way to articulate what makes this study different from something most of us would agree is patently silly, such as trying to find the science fiction center of the brain by asking people in an MRI machine to imagine a future full of spaceships and aliens. I mean, if we have a future-thought area of our brains, it certainly seems to follow that we might have a science fiction center. Perhaps it even overlaps with the future-thought area? Does that mean sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow and futurist Ray Kurzweil have bigger or more active science fiction centers in their brains? Let’s image them and find out! It would be like the University of Washington study crossed with Philip K. Dick. Want to fund it?

This study could also answer the crucial question of whether a taste for science fiction can be inherited. If it’s a structure in the brain, after all, there’s some set of genes responsible. Does that mean the human brain underwent an evolutionary mutation sometime in the 16th century, when foundational futurist Thomas More wrote Utopia?

One possible outcome of this study would be a way for science fiction writers, futurists, and their fans to explain their predilections as a fact of biology rather than a cultural preference. We can’t help being science fiction lovers and acolytes of the future, you see. We were just born that way. So you can’t reeducate us into liking literature or historical tales. Our brains aren’t suited for it. Moreover, science fiction may compel us to do things we can’t be blamed for, like playing video games and going to conventions full of people in costumes. Perhaps unhappy futurists can be given drug therapies to reduce the activity in the science fiction region of their brains. That way they can get back to leading regular lives that include planning only for birthday parties in the future, not intergalactic societies. Yes, I like the direction this research is going. Let’s get some funding. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who volunteers to think about artificial intelligence while getting an MRI during the next study of science fiction centers in the brain.

Off the record

January 9, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Among the mansions and box stores popuutf8g Silicon Valley are several major tech firms at the heart of a stock option backdating scandal that has metastasized through corporate America over the last two years.

The hall of shame includes Juniper Networks, McAfee, Nvidia, Brocade Communications Systems, and most notably for this story, a Mountain View–based firm called Mercury Interactive, which came under scrutiny in late 2004, making it one of the earliest companies identified for allegedly tampering with the lucrative stock options given to employees.

While some of the half-billion-dollar backdating mess at Mercury has appeared in the business press already, additional details contained in a civil lawsuit filed by investors are under seal in Santa Clara County Superior Court, and three news outlets want them opened up by a judge.

"These companies fleeced investors, and the public has a right to know," Karl Olson, an attorney for the outlets, told Judge James Kleinberg during a hearing Jan 5. Olson is representing the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg News, and the Recorder legal newspaper. He added the defendants have "not shown an overriding interest that supports sealing any of these records."

Attorneys for the company and its fallen former executives have not cited trade secrets or proprietary information — commonly used excuses in corporate litigation — as reasons for keeping the filings sealed. Instead, they seem to be worried the documents will paint an even more sordid picture of executive misdeeds than what’s already come out, and they want to block the press from telling the full story.

But there is an interesting irony to the Chronicle insisting it is entitled to access this information. The newspaper’s parent company, the Hearst Corp., asked a federal judge to withhold from the public some of its own company records unearthed amid a federal civil suit leveled against it and other media giants over the summer.

San Francisco real estate mogul Clint Reilly filed an antitrust claim against Hearst and its rival–cum–business partner, Denver-based MediaNews Group, owner of several Bay Area newspapers, arguing that a bid between the companies to share business expenses was illegal. The Guardian has joined an effort with the nonprofit Media Alliance to unseal records related to Reilly’s suit.

But in the Mercury case, attorneys for the company and its former executives complain individuals not listed as defendants "would have their identities revealed and be implicated in alleged misconduct."

Mercury certainly would like to forget its troublesome past. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is closing out its purchase of the company for $4.5 billion, taking on Mercury’s liabilities and obviously hoping to put the backdating matter to bed.

Nationwide, somewhere between 150 and 200 companies (reports vary) are internally investigating options problems or have received inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal agency charged with ensuring publicly traded firms reveal essentially every major move they make.

Mercury was founded in 1989 and produces business software for companies worldwide. In another bit of irony, Mercury specializes in making a group of applications designed to help corporate clients fully comply with the new federal financial disclosure rules passed by Congress as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act following Enron’s implosion.

Amnon Landan, the former Mercury CEO who resigned in November 2005 under pressure following an internal probe, is said to have exercised $5.5 million worth of options and sold 1.04 million company shares for a total of $73.6 million "during the period of wrongdoing," according to another suit filed by investors in federal court last spring.

Two additional executives resigned at the same time as Landan. The list of plaintiffs in the federal suit, which charges that Mercury’s backdating imbroglio greatly damaged the company’s market value, includes the retirement system for New Orleans municipal employees.

The value of a stock option is determined by its closing price per share on the day the option is granted. Instead of listing that particular date when the options are later exercised, backdating an option generally involves picking a spot earlier on the calendar. That way, employees of companies that make it big can reap huge windfall profits far bigger than they were entitled to receive. As Duke law professor James Cox somewhat famously described backdating, it’s like betting on a race and knowing who the winner will be.

Silicon Valley’s start-ups during the tech boom relied on hopes and dreams more than directly available cash assets to flashpoint their growth. To attract the best executive talent around, they offered stock options in exchange for hefty salaries. If the top suits performed well from the beginning, when the stock price was low, they could sell the shares much later when their value had climbed sky-high.

But some of the still relatively young companies that dot the fringes of Highway 101 where it weaves toward downtown San Jose are today being charged with failing to inform investors and government regulators just how many zeros were involved in those enriching IOUs.

Defense attorney James Kramer made an important point about backdating, however, to Judge Kleinberg during last week’s hearing. "There is nothing about backdating that is illegal," he said. "The issue is whether you properly account for it."

Yet Mercury didn’t properly account for more than $567 million in compensation expenses over a 12-year period in its SEC filings. And that’s what is illegal. The IRS heavily taxes earnings from backdated stock options, which are akin to tax-free bonuses that aren’t reported to the SEC. Investors say the failure to disclose the backdating exposed the company to heavy tax penalties, money that came from shareholders.

"Throughout the development of the options scandal, Mercury Interactive has been one of the most significant companies for the public to watch, due to both the primacy and seriousness of its options problems," Recorder reporter Justin Scheck wrote in a declaration to the judge last week. The Recorder, which serves about 20,000 readers in the state’s legal community, asked Jan. 5 for Kleinberg to open the records.

Recorder attorney Olson, who regularly represents the Chronicle in such open-records cases, argued in a memo to the court that the desire to shield top Mercury execs from "adverse publicity" and "potentially embarrassing corporate documents" doesn’t justify withholding up to 17 exhibits that Mercury wants to keep away from the press and the public. Petitions submitted to the court regarding the sealed portions of the case are public and were obtained by the Guardian last week.

The defendants’ attorneys said the investors signed a confidentiality agreement early in the suit so that evidence could be more freely exchanged with Mercury during discovery, and they want that promise kept.

"The plaintiffs in the [Santa Clara] suit are not roving attorneys general who are tasked with pursing every defendant who they believe has done something wrong or caused harm to someone else," Brandon Wisoff, a defense attorney in the case, said in a phone interview. "The purpose of a derivative suit is for a shareholder to recover on behalf of a corporation in which he or she owns stock, because he or she is indirectly impacted by any harm that allegedly occurred to the corporation."

The Santa Clara suit’s status as a derivative claim could lead Judge Kleinberg to toss it out, since HP has purchased Mercury. For that reason, Wisoff says, documents produced before the sale aren’t going to be used in court and so shouldn’t be accessible to the public.

"Non-defendant third parties also would have their identities revealed and be implicated in the alleged misconduct" if the records were opened, attorney Thomas Martin wrote in a declaration to the court. In other words, the documents could suggest how much was known about the problems with backdating at Mercury. And that might be of concern to more than just the company’s investors.

Martin, who declined to comment over the phone for us, is representing Kenneth Klein, a former Mercury chief operating officer who left the company in 2003 and has not officially been linked by Mercury to backdating problems but is nonetheless listed as a defendant in the Santa Clara suit.

Thomas and the other defense attorneys argue the investors’ court filings openly cite sealed discovery material, which presumably includes references to Klein’s alleged involvement in or knowledge of backdating, given his status as a defendant, as well as the names of others possibly listed in the documents. They’re arguing Mercury and its executive defendants could not publicly rebut suggestions made by the media about their involvement.

While Kleinberg seemed sympathetic to the notion that the press doesn’t always do the best job reporting on civil allegations, he said it’s a fact of life that most civil complaints — even ones that say "very outrageous things about people and institutions" — fall into the public domain.

But Amber Eck, an attorney for the investors who are now advocating for the filings to be opened, says the complaints made in the suit are far from frivolous and the company’s own board investigation identified who had participated in the misconduct and who knew about it. She said the whole story hasn’t been told.

"There’s a lot saying there was backdating and the amount of the [SEC financial] restatements," Eck said in a phone interview. "But what I was explaining to the judge was that as far as the details on the manner and the process in which it happened … that isn’t really out there yet, and that’s contained in our complaint and the exhibits."

Janet Guyon, an editor at Bloomberg News in New York who has watched the options backdating scandal unfold, told the judge in a declaration that the public deserves a "window into this litigation" to ensure fairness for investors who are expected to trust promises of transparency made by public companies.

"More than 80 companies have announced earnings restatements totaling over $8.8 billion, including $84 million most recently by Apple Computer, which admitted it forged documents recording a directors’ meeting to award its CEO backdated options," Guyon stated. "At least 65 executives or directors have resigned and 300 lawsuits have been filed against 100 companies. Yet little light has been shed on how this practice got started and why it continued." *

Declaration by Bloomberg News editor Janet Guyon to judge Kleinberg on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Declaration by local reporter Justin Scheck on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Application by attorney Jared Kopel for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Declaration by attorney Thomas Martin for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Taking on term limits

January 9, 2007

EDITORIAL It’s time to take a look at what legislative term limits are doing to San Francisco. Assemblymember Mark Leno, who is really just hitting his stride as one of the most effective members of the state legislature, is in his last term in office. Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who are two of the most effective members of the Board of Supervisors, are in their final terms. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who is the institutional memory of the left in city hall, will be gone in another two years.

In fact, Ammiano is a good case study for what’s wrong with term limits. The supervisor from District 9 has always been strong on the issues, but in his first few years on the board, he had trouble getting his bills through. That was in part due to a hostile board majority, but it was also, frankly, a matter of inexperience: over time Ammiano has convinced even some of his harshest critics that he’s a capable, reasonable lawmaker who can hammer out compromises that make good public policy. The recent universal health care bill is an example, something that might have been very difficult for a newbie supervisor to negotiate.

Ammiano has announced he’s running for State Assembly (when Leno is termed out), which is fine for him, but the board will lose an important presence when he’s gone. And losing Peskin and Daly (along with Sophie Maxwell, Gerardo Sandoval, and Jake McGoldrick) all within the next four years will shake up a board that has become the center of progressive policy development in San Francisco.

Term limits have been, by and large, the creature of conservative activists who want to increase the power of the executive branch and get rid of longtime liberal legislators, who, by virtue of representing safe urban districts, can often accumulate considerable seniority and power. (Witness Ron Dellums, Maxine Waters, and yes, Nancy Pelosi.) On a national level it’s well established that a strong (often too strong) chief executive can only be tempered by allowing members of Congress to serve long enough to develop the skills, contacts, and political bases to keep the presidency in check. On the state level six-year limits in the assembly and eight-year limits in the State Senate have shifted enormous political clout to the governor — and to the lobbyists, who have no term limits and now often know more about issues than newly minted legislators.

We’ve always been against term limits. If former assembly speaker Willie Brown hadn’t been so arrogant and corrupt, term limits for the legislature might never have passed in California. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez is working on a proposal to soften the limits slightly (possibly to allow 14 years of service in either house), and that’s a good idea.

Here in San Francisco, the board ought to start work on a charter amendment to modify term limits for supervisors. Ideally, we’d like to see an end to term limits altogether, but at the very least, the two-term limit should be extended to three terms.

The only credible argument for term limits was the threat of unaccountable incumbents running rampant. But with district elections and public financing, that’s not much of a threat in San Francisco. And San Francisco voters seem quite willing these days to vote people out who aren’t doing the job: it didn’t take term limits to get Dan Kelly off the school board.

It’s always tricky for incumbent politicians to do something that smacks of extending their own job security, but the truth is, term limits are bad for the public. The supervisors shouldn’t be afraid to come out and say that. *

Editor’s Notes

January 9, 2007

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The biggest challenge facing Democrats in Congress this year is probably also the most boring. They’re going to have to deal with taxes.

I’m not the only one obsessed with this. Really, I’m not. Edmund L. Andrews got into it in the New York Times on Jan. 4, noting that the new Democratic leadership is utterly ducking the question of how to handle some of the major fiscal headaches that are going to rear their ugly heads.

Bear with me while we run some numbers.

The Iraq War is going to cost $100 billion in 2007, maybe more if Bush gets his troop "surge." Fixing the problem that causes more and more middle-class people to shoulder an extra tax burden under the alternative minimum tax will cost $50 billion. The Bush tax cuts — which the president wants to make permanent — are another huge-ticket item, maybe $170 billion a year (based on estimates from the Brookings Institution).

So that’s $320 billion to deal with — even before the Democrats spend a penny on any new initiatives or so much as talk about making Social Security solvent.

And, of course, there’s a $340 billion budget deficit, which keeps adding to the federal debt, which is a number so big that nobody can really comprehend it, so I won’t bother here except to say that the interest payments alone are $400 billion a year.

The Democrats have already announced they want to see any new spending come with a revenue source and any new tax cut proposals identify reductions in existing spending that would pay for them. All well and good — except that the Iraq War isn’t part of the federal budget. Bush just keeps coming back for money every few months, and Democrats who don’t want to be accused of refusing to support the troops in the field wind up voting to give him all of it.

Now let’s go to the political calculus, which is even uglier.

The only major politician I know of in the last electoral cycle who talked honestly about taxes and government spending was Phil Angelides, who (as some of you may remember) ran for governor of California. He was slaughtered.

That’s why the Times reports the following:

"Even as Democratic leaders continue to accuse Mr. Bush of having a reckless fiscal policy, they have refused to discuss dismantling his tax cuts or even to engage in a debate with him about the best way to stimulate economic growth.

" ‘It’s always the same old tired line with them — "Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend," ‘ said Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. ‘We’re not going there.’ "

No, so far they’re not. They’re just moving ahead, making promises and proposing policy, without saying either that spending on Iraq has to be cut dramatically or that somebody has to pay more taxes to fund it.

Even by Bush’s most optimistic projections, the national budget will be in the red until 2012. By then he and his crew will all be safe on the golf course, their retirements secure.

And apparently, the Democratic leaders are willing to continue to duck, continue to go into debt, continue to screw up the economy, and continue to burden our kids with the results of our greed, fear, and stupidity.

Nancy? *

Some questions for the mayor

January 9, 2007

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. *

Mayor Chicken

January 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

The format is always the same: Mayor Gavin Newsom shows up at a carefully scouted location somewhere in the city with his perfect tie and perfect hair. He brings a cadre of department heads in tow, sending the clear message that he can deliver government services to the public. He takes a few questions from the audience, but the format allows him to deflect anything tough, to delegate any problems to department heads, and to offer a thoughtful “we’ll look into that” when the need arises.

There is no substantive discussion of anything controversial — and no chance for anyone to see the mayor debate contentious issues.

This, of course, is by design.

Newsom has made it very clear during his first term as mayor that he can’t take the heat. He is the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites, and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t established in advance.

He has become Mayor Chicken.

So don’t expect any leadership from Newsom during an upcoming series of what the Mayor’s Office is calling “policy town hall meetings” that have been hastily scheduled this year, beginning Jan. 13 in the Richmond District with a discussion of homelessness. The town hall meeting is just politics as usual for Newsom. Since taking office in 2004, he’s held eight of these stage-managed events.

“He does a good Phil Donahue shtick,” says Sup. Chris Daly, recalling one such town hall meeting Newsom held in Daly’s District 6 after he was elected mayor. “Scripted town hall meetings are smart politics for Newsom.”

Scripted events weren’t what Daly had in mind when he wrote Proposition I, which calls on the mayor to appear before the supervisors once a month to answer questions. And these campaign-style events certainly weren’t what voters had in mind Nov. 7, 2006, when 56.42 percent of them approved the Daly legislation, which asks the mayor in no uncertain terms to appear “in person at regularly scheduled meetings of the Board of Supervisors to engage in formal policy discussions with members of the Board.”

Examiner columnist Ken Garcia — a conservative hack who regularly sucks up to Newsom — recently dismissed the voter-approved measure as “a silly, obvious stunt to play rhetorical games with the mayor,” which is how the Newsom camp would like to spin things. But Daly recalls how when he first mentioned the idea of a mayoral question time — back when Willie Brown was still in Room 200 — he was sitting next to then-supervisor Newsom, “who thought it was a great idea.”

It’s hardly an unprecedented concept. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, meets with his city’s assembly 10 times a year and presents a detailed report on initiatives and progress. But now Newsom is mayor, suddenly Daly’s idea doesn’t strike him as all that great any more.

While it’s easy to accuse Daly of playing political games, it’s not so easy for Newsom — who loves to talk about the “will of the voters” — to dodge Prop. I. Newsom’s decision to snub voters and avoid real debate was so obvious that he got beat up on both the Chronicle and Examiner editorial pages, on several prominent local blogs, and in television broadcasts. Perhaps that’s why he decided this week to show up and give a speech at the Board of Supervisors inauguration Jan. 8, the first time in years he’s set foot in those chambers. He’s trying to look like he’s complying with voters’ wishes when he’s really doing nothing of the sort.

THE “KUMBAYA MOMENT”

It didn’t have to be this way. As board chair Aaron Peskin’s legislative aide David Noyola told the Guardian, immediately after Prop. I passed, Peskin tried to “depoliticize the issue” by becoming the sponsor of a motion to amend board rules.

Peskin’s motion aimed to make space on the board’s agenda for the mayor every third Tuesday so he could address the supervisors on policy matters — a matter he planned to discuss at the Dec. 7 meeting of the Rules Committee.

But two days earlier the mayor took his first jab at ducking the intent of Prop. I. He sent the supervisors a letter in which he claimed that to truly serve the public interest “we should hold these conversations in the community.”

Next, Newsom sent staffers to the Rules Committee hearing, where members discussed how not to force the implementation of Prop. I down the mayor’s throat — and the mayor’s staff claimed they’d be happy to work with the committee to that end.

As a result of this “kumbaya moment,” as Noyola calls it, the Rules Committee decided to continue the item to the following week to have more productive conversation. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to them, 19 minutes into the hearing, the Mayor’s Office of Communications issued a press release outlining Newsom’s intent to hold a town hall meeting in the Richmond District on Jan. 13 — which the mayor said would substitute for complying with Prop. I.

“The Rules Committee was blindsided by the mayor’s press release,” Noyola says.

The mayor, of course, said that all the supervisors were welcome to attend his town hall event and participate in the discussion, giving the appearance he was happy to debate but wanted to do so out in the neighborhoods. But that was a lie: Newsom and his staff knew very well that under state law, the supervisors were barred from participating in any such event.

According to the Brown Act, if a quorum of supervisors wants to be somewhere to discuss business that may be before the board in the future — such as homelessness — and if it wants policy interactions, the clerk must give notice that the supervisors intend to hold a special meeting.

The board actually discussed Newsom’s invitation, and board clerk Gloria Young estimated it would cost $10,000 to $15,000 to staff. It also raised serious procedural and legal questions for the board.

In other words, Newsom knew the supes couldn’t just show up and ask questions.

“But if the mayor wants people to just sit and attend a presentation in the background, like at a speech or a Christmas event, then special meeting notice isn’t needed,” notes Noyola, explaining why Peskin ultimately dismissed the mayor’s invite as “childish” — and why Peskin now says he’d support making question time a charter amendment, thereby forcing the mayor to comply with the will of the voters.

WHO’S PLAYING GAMES?

While the Newsom camp continues to dismiss the Daly-authored Prop. I as “political theater,” the supervisor is quick to counter it’s the Mayor’s Office that’s playing games.

“They claim political theater, but if that’s what it takes to get serious policy discussions going, then so be it,” says Daly, noting he has had one private discussion with the mayor in two years, while Sup. Geraldo Sandoval has not talked to him at all. “Newsom claims he has an open door to his office, but so do I — and he’s never been to mine. For the mayor to refuse to discuss important policy items and hide behind ‘I’m afraid of Chris Daly’ is pathetic. Willie Brown probably would have come.”

Daly also observes that San Francisco’s government is structurally unique within California because it represents a city and a county.

“It’s an awkward setup in which there is little formal communication between the board and the mayor,” Daly says, “other than when the board forwards legislation to the mayor for him to approve or veto.”

It’s a structural weakness that hasn’t been helped by the fact that in the three years since he was elected, Newsom only appeared before the board twice — this week and for the board inauguration two years ago — both times giving a brief speech but not engaging in dialogue. It’s an anomaly without precedent in the history of San Francisco. (It’s customary for mayors to deliver their State of the City speeches in the board chambers, but Newsom has done all his at venues outside City Hall.) Most mayors also make a point of occasionally appearing at board meetings (Willie Brown would sometimes even take questions from the supervisors).

On Jan. 8, Newsom slipped in at the last minute and sat next to Peskin until it was his turn to make some brief remarks, an opportunity that immediately followed public comment, during which a baseball-capped woman pleaded with the supervisors to “please kiss and make up with mayor.”

After Peskin welcomed “the 42nd mayor, Gavin Christopher Newsom, to these chambers where you are always welcome,” Newsom rose — and was hissed by a few members of the audience.

“This is a city that’s highly critical of its leadership and that expects greatness from its leaders,” the mayor said. “I have great expectations of 2007…. The key is to work together on the things that unite us…. I look forward to engaging with each and every one of you.”

WORKING TOGETHER

This isn’t just politics — there are serious issues involved. Without the monthly question time the Board of Supervisors requested and the voters approved, it’s hard for the city’s elected district representatives to figure out if this mayor actually supports or even understands the issues he claims to champion.

Last year, for example, Newsom was happy to take credit in the national press for the universal health care package that actually came from Sup. Tom Ammiano. But when Ammiano got blasted by business leaders, Newsom didn’t rush to defend the plan; it was hard to tell if he even still supported it.

Business leaders didn’t like that the proposal required employers to provide health care insurance. But Newsom’s own staff recognized that without that mandate, the plan would never work. Did the mayor support it or not?

The situation prompted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi to characterize the mayor’s proposal as “a one-winged aircraft that doesn’t fly,” and it was left to Newsom’s public health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, to confirm that both the voluntary and mandatory pieces of the legislation are joined at the hip. “One can’t successfully move forward without the other,” Katz said at a July 11 board meeting, which Newsom, of course, did not attend.

Since then, the mayor’s commitment to the amalgamated health care package has been thrown into question once again, this time thanks to a lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed only against the employer mandate aspect of the legislation.

The GGRA, which filed its suit the day after the election, is a Newsom ally that funneled more than a half million dollars in soft money into Rob Black’s unsuccessful campaign against District 6’s Daly and into Doug Chan’s coffers for his disastrous fourth-place showing in District 4.

Asked if he knows where the mayor stands on the city’s universal health care plan, Ammiano told the Guardian, “We’ll be meeting with Newsom in the new year and asking for a press conference in which we both pledge to give our continued support for all aspects of plan, but that’s not yet been nailed down.”

Ammiano’s experience is one example of repeated communication breakdowns between Newsom and the board, which have severely hindered policy discussions and the cause of “good government” to which Newsom so frequently pledges his fealty. As a result, Newsom has often ended up vetoing legislation only to reveal in his veto letter that all the legislation needed was a few minor tweaks — changes he might have just asked for had he been more engaged.

Consider how a year ago, Newsom vetoed legislation designed to limit how much parking could be included along with the 10,000 units of housing that were to be built in downtown San Francisco. The legislation was proposed by Newsom’s planning director, Dean Macris, and supported by every member of the Planning Commission but one.

When Newsom caught heat from downtown developers over the measure (see “Joining the Battle,” 2/8/06), he sent surrogates to muddy the waters and make his position unclear until after it was approved by the board. Newsom vetoed the measure, then proposed a couple prodeveloper amendments that hadn’t been brought to the board discussions.

“I’m trying to get the political leaders to come to an agreement because the city needs this,” a frustrated Macris told the Guardian at the time.

A few months later the board was similarly blindsided when it tried to approve legislation that would have created a six-month trial closure on Saturdays of some roads in Golden Gate Park. Newsom’s board liaison, Wade Crowfoot, worked closely with bicycle advocates and sponsor Sup. Jake McGoldrick to modify the legislation into something the mayor might be able to support.

Everyone involved thought they had a deal. Then, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, Newsom vetoed the measure. One of the reasons he cited was the fact that voters had rejected Saturday closure back in the 1990s, before the construction of an underground parking garage that still never fills up.

“For what it’s worth, what really sells it for me on this issue of the will of the voters was the shit I went through after Care Not Cash, when the voters supported it and [my critics] did everything to put up roadblocks. And I was making a lot of these same arguments, you know, so this hits close to home,” Newsom told the Guardian a few days after he vetoed Healthy Saturdays.

His words seem ironic: he loves the will of the voters when it suits his interest but not when it requires him to act like a real mayor.

This isn’t the first time Newsom’s been selective in honoring what the voters want: he also refused to hold up the Candlestick Park naming deal with Monster Cable, even though voters rejected it through Proposition H in 2004.

Last October, Newsom’s veto of Mirkarimi’s wildly popular foot patrol legislation led to a humiliating 9–2 override in November, but not before he’d dragged San Francisco Police Department chief Heather Fong with him through the political mud and created an unpleasant rift between himself and his formerly loyal ally Sup. Bevan Dufty.

Newsom has tried to spin his refusal to engage in question time as something other than defiance of voters by proposing the upcoming series of town hall meetings.

“Bringing these conversations to the neighborhoods — during nonwork hours — will allow residents to participate and will ensure transparent dialogue, while avoiding the politicized, counterproductive arguing that too often takes place in the confines of City Hall,” Newsom wrote in his Dec. 5 letter.

But even the Chronicle and the Examiner — neither of which have been supportive of progressives in City Hall — have condemned Newsom for ducking this fight. On Dec. 18, Chronicle editorial writer Marshall Kirduff opined, “There is no end of topics to discuss — a Muni overhaul, a new neighborhood coming to Treasure Island, police policies, the ever-with-us homeless. The city could do with more debate even at considerable risk of dopey rhetoric. That means the mayor should step out of his office, walk across City Hall and face the supervisors. It’s time to bring on the questions.”

Meanwhile, Daly notes the mayor has been spending excessive time out of state, not to mention making frequent trips to Southern California. “I think we should subpoena the guy; he doesn’t know what’s going on,” Daly quips.

A classic example of Newsom’s cluelessness about the local political scene occurred live on TV shortly after 59 percent of San Francisco voted to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Asked during a Nov. 16 City Desk News Hour interview with Barbara Taylor about Proposition J’s passage, Newsom said, “I am told Congress is going to come to a halt next week, and they’re going to reflect on this new San Francisco value. Before you impeach the president, you should consider the guy who would become president. Why don’t you start with the top two?”

Yup, it’s definitely time to bring on those questions. *

Newsom’s first town hall meeting takes place Jan. 13 at 10 a.m. in District 1, Richmond Recreation Center, at 251 18th Ave., SF.

A reporter stands up to the army

January 9, 2007

› sarah@sfbg.com

Oakland freelance writer and radio journalist Sarah Olson has a tall, willowy frame; long silky hair; and a clearly articulated understanding of the reasons she believes that testifying against a source, First Lt. Ehren Watada, would turn her into an investigative tool of the federal government and chill dissenting voices across the United States.

Watada faces a court-martial in February; he’s charged with one count of missing troop movement and four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer — charges that stem from interviews he gave Olson along with other reporters in 2006 in which he openly criticized the Bush administration and the war on Iraq.

Olson faces her own legal nightmare: if she doesn’t testify against Watada, the government can charge her with a felony. That’s potentially more serious than the contempt of court charges against freelance videographer Josh Wolf and San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada.

"My argument for being against having to comply with the subpoena is strictly journalistic, " says Olson, who has been covering the antiwar movement and the conscientious objector movement since 2003. "When the government uses a journalist as its eyes and ears, no one is going to talk to that journalist any more."

Beyond the fear that her own professional credibility will be eviscerated, the 31-year-old Olson objects to journalists, including herself, being asked to participate in the prosecution of free speech.

Although all the Army wants her to do is assert her stories quoting Watada are true, she’s not going along. "The problem I have with verifying the accuracy of my reporting is that in this case the Army has made speech a crime. Watada’s case raises incredibly important speech issues as to what is and isn’t legal for an officer to say. Can Watada’s defense put the war on trial? Can you bring the question of the legality of this war into the discussion? Normally, that wouldn’t be allowed into discussion in a military court, but since he’s been charged with speech issues, shouldn’t he be allowed to have the opportunity to put those statements in context?"

And while her stories and radio broadcasts are readily and publicly available to Army prosecutors, Olson points out, "Once they get you up on the stand, they can ask you anything."

What binds the Olson, Wolf, and Williams–Fainaru-Wada cases are the broader issues of press and speech freedom and the absence of a strong reporter’s shield at the federal level.

"The proposed federal shield laws offers poor protection to journalists, but they probably wouldn’t even cover me, and they probably wouldn’t cover bloggers ever," observes Olson, referring to the legislation currently under congressional consideration.

As for entering into a conversation about who is or isn’t a journalist (as the San Francisco Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office have sought to do in Wolf’s case), Olson says, "[That] is degrading for the whole profession. And what it doesn’t do is stand up for the civil liberties that are constitutionally afforded to everyone, nor does it protect a meaningful and independent press."

"My duty," Olson says, "is the public and its right to know and not to the government. I’m concerned that the Army is asking a journalist to participate in the suppression of free speech." *

12Page 2 of 2

Volume 41 Number 15

Careers and Ed: Hard on the job

ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB

PERKS AND PACKAGES

Nurturing the drive

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

RIGHTING THE BALANCE

PAVING THE WAY

MULTIPLE PATHS

Careers and Ed: Nurturing the drive

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

RIGHTING THE BALANCE

PAVING THE WAY

MULTIPLE PATHS

Careers and Ed: Bio the people, fuel the people

BIODIESEL 101

ORGANIC MECHANICS

MASTERS OF THE BREW

Careers and Ed: Cocktail frosh

THE SEARCH

ORIENTATION

LEARNING TO POUR

THE REAL WORLD

Quid pro shmo

Sci-fi made me do it

Off the record

Taking on term limits

Editor’s Notes

Some questions for the mayor

Mayor Chicken

THE “KUMBAYA MOMENT”

WHO’S PLAYING GAMES?

WORKING TOGETHER

A reporter stands up to the army

Calling all media nerds

Surging casualties