Volume 41 [2006–07] Archives — Page 52 of 64 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Volume 41 Number 52

Girls and monsters

December 20, 2006

› johnny@sfbg.com

Impish skittering insect fairies, horned Jean Cocteau–<\d>spawned romantic beasts, lascivious frogs that make Jabba the Hutt seem schooled by Jenny Craig, and murderous monsters with hands on their eyes — no doubt about it, the baroque and neo-Raphaelite splendor (or Splenda, since it’s largely CGI-based) of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth leaves the majority of 2006’s unimpressive prestige movies looking drab and mechanical. But as Del Toro’s rich pageant attempts to shove what feels like 12 dozen solemn manifestations of Cate Blanchett aside in order to make a valid, exciting run for the Academy Awards, it’s important to realize that the director’s vision, while creative, has a definite antecedent: one of the least-known greatest movies of all time, Víctor Erice’s sublime 1973 The Spirit of the Beehive. Like Erice’s movie, Pan’s Labyrinth is an allegorical look back at Francisco Franco–<\d>era Spain, as seen through the eyes of a little girl.
Del Toro has admitted that The Spirit of the Beehive has seeped into his soul — though not, to some detriment, into his filmmaking style. Its influence is evident even in the architectural emphasis of his movie’s title, which trades Erice’s honeycombs for a maze. Within the movie itself, however, this labyrinth overtly evokes Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, as young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) races through corner-laden leafy and stony passages away from the murderous clutches of her stepfather, Franco minion Captain Vidal (Sergi López). Her fight for life traverses the film’s narrative — a much larger labyrinth that ultimately connects her imagination to the lives of others.
The bittersweet outcome of that struggle won’t surprise anyone familiar with Shakespeare, not to mention Del Toro’s past movies or his enlightened, enthusiastic love of John Carpenter — a rare Hollywood director who doesn’t think a pigtailed child with an ice cream cone is above the ruthlessness of the streets. In Del Toro’s 1997 mutant cockroach thriller, Mimic, an orphan in the sewers meets a fate similar to that of a sewer orphan in Bong Joon-ho’s upcoming The Host, the only movie to outdo Pan’s Labyrinth as a politicized genre entry at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Both Bong and Del Toro measure the sins of the world against a girl’s heroism, and while they’ve learned about the power of spectacle from Steven Spielberg, they haven’t swallowed his saccharine formulas — or pursued his nationalist and reactionary political tendencies.
In Del Toro’s case, this means the Mexican-born director repeatedly returns to Spain under the Fascist reign of Franco to construct fantastic but critical parables in which children represent resistance. In this regard, Pan’s Labyrinth is a sister film to 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone, with Ofelia serving as a solitary counterpart to the boys of that film’s haunted school. It’s a mistake — made by at least one pan of Pan — to attribute the film’s fairy-tale quality to sexism on the part of its director; without question, Del Toro is paying homage to Erice’s Spirit, perhaps the greatest movie ever made about a child’s — not just girl’s — consciousness.<\!s>SFBG

PAN’S LABYRINTH
Open Fri/27 in Bay Area theaters
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com
www.panslabyrinth.com

Ringing it backwards

December 20, 2006

SUPER EGO Hustlers are like trees — you can usually tell how long they’ve been around by the number of rings around their eyes. Or how many teeth they have left, if trees had teeth, which they don’t, but hey, I’m never one to not stretch a simile to Andromeda and back. They pay me to do it! It’s my elastic destiny.
I was counting the rings on a hot tattooed man-product at the bar closest to my heart, Mr. Lee-ona’s in the Tenderloin, when a thought attacked me: maybe, Miss Marke B., you should do one of those year-in-clubs retrospectives and try to relive, in a Swiss-cheese-brain way, 12 hard months’ worth of gadabouting. The highs, hangovers, hilarity, hurling, what have you.
Suddenly, I was attracted both ways. Retrospectives can be lame, but no one really does them about clubs here. So there’s originality. Plus: I had a coherent thought! I should run with it. Maybe I’ll even earn another ring.

BREAKOUTS
There were oh-so-very many success stories in 2006, not all of them pretty. Here are some. Bootie (www.bootiesf.com), the horrendously wonderful mashup monthly, moved to DNA Lounge and became a secret guilty favorite. Tipsy zombie Santas dancing to Kanye West and Beethoven — ’nuff said. Also: Hard Eight at Crash (www.crashnightclub.com) with DJ Tommy Lee blew the roof off retro and introduced a whole new generation of Marina chicks to porn and torn rock T’s. A sight to ponder heartily. The Transfer (415-861-7499) attempted to transform a beloved biker-dyke bar into the most forward-thinking semiunderground party stop on every cool clubber’s night train and ended up being a little of both, which — who knew? — proved to be an addictive combination.

FLAMEOUTS
Megaclubs, no doubt. San Francisco had already moved away from cavernous supastar showcase spots by the start of ’06. Even that infamous security-wracked techno black hole, 1015 (www.1015.com), was making good on its intentions to remodel itself into a more intimate, lounge-type joint. Mezzanine (www.mezzaninesf.com) found it drew more crowds as an edgy concert space than as a circuit host. And while the ever-delayed opening of “super club” Temple (www.templesf.com) teased me with inklings of controlled experiments (would the ability to plug your own headphones into a DJ booth be enough to tempt folks to pay $20 door fees and find their way through 10 rooms?), the nightspot’s had too many permit problems to get off the ground. We’re edging toward a time when a “DJ” walks into a bar and plugs a cell phone into the speakers — we’re obviously in need of some intimacy.

TRENDS
In a weird reversal of the ’70s, mushrooms have tied cocaine as the bad-girl head party, but neither of them can beat prescription drugs yet. The bathroom stalls are like freakin’ Canadian pharmacies. The whole ’70s rare-groove gay bathhouse trend is still our most exportable original trend — breakbeats, who? — thanks to Bus Station John and a host of new gay musicologists. Circuit is dead, house keeps taking a beating, and no one’s too snobby about music anymore (too much of a good thing? I’m so puke over the easy ’80s). Club Neon (www.neonsf.com) and Brigitte Bardot (www.myspace.com/brigittesf) are doing wonders with bringing back the ’90s, with original remixes and a glam-grunge aesthetic. Trash drag and its backlash, trashier drag, are merging at an alarming pace. And seedy dives — complete with the occasional hustler — are back for their trademark naughty luxury. No more lava lamps and pod chairs, people! SFBG

MR. LEE-ONA’S
301 Turk, SF
7 a.m.–2 a.m.
(415) 292-9803

The art of the cart

December 20, 2006

› paulr@sfbg.com

The romance of street-cart food might not be high romance, but it is romance and does cast its spell, particularly in big, rich cities — like ours — with elaborate infrastructures of fancy restaurants and a concomitant epidemic of some as-yet unnamed cultural autoimmune disorder that attaches inordinate worth to the prosaic.
Street-cart chic reflects, I would say, a recognition among the high rollers that immaculate table linens and Limoges china aren’t all there is to the gastronomic life, that occasionally a little mayonnaise running down the sleeve is in order, though maybe not mayonnaise from an actual street cart, because the cart-keeper probably hasn’t washed his hands and you might get salmonella. I tilt toward this view largely because several recent street-cart-food undertakings of note have connections to glossy, big-name places, and these connections do carry a certain brand-name reassurance. Two examples: the Ferry Building’s Mijita, which serves Mexican street food with regional accents, is related to swank Jardinière by way of a shared owner-chef, Traci des Jardins, while Charles Pham’s hugely upscale the Slanted Door has given birth to a pair of Out the Doors (the latest in the Westfield San Francisco Centre, the great mall of tomorrow), which bundle up take-out packages of Vietnamese street-cart food for those on the run or on deadline.
Yet not all street-food emporiums are modest little places with richer, grander siblings that can sluice their rich patrons downstream every now and then for some edible absolution of wealth-guilt. Bodega Bistro, for instance, has a kind of dual identity; it’s a quite elegant Tenderloin restaurant that gives a section of its menu over to the street-cart food of Hanoi. And now we have the seductive Regalito Rosticeria, which combines a gleaming Pizzeria Delfina look, of warm wood, glass, and stainless steel, with a menu (by chef and owner Thomas Peña) largely given over to versions of Mexico City’s street-cart food.
The extreme makeover of what was once a pupusería is stunning in practically every respect, but its most striking feature is the long bar, or counter, which runs most of the length of the restaurant, can seat at least a dozen, and is backed by the busy kitchen, with its gas-fired ovens, mortars and pestles, and busy chefs filling stainless-steel bowls with fresh salsas and guacamoles. It’s like the Mexican version of a sushi bar. The dark side of the moon, of course, is that table seating is a little sparse.
As the glistening treasures in the chefs’ stainless-steel bowls suggest, las salsas are not only excellent but makers of dishes. Guacamole ($6) can and does stand alone, of course; it’s creamy-chunky, made with perfectly ripe avocados sliced up by hand rather than processed or pounded, and it’s served with whole tortillas (of wheat) fried to a bronze crispness. You break off a piece, as if it’s pappadam, and dip. If you want the same thing with tomatoes instead of avocados, you will opt for the tostadas with salsa fresca ($3), the crispy disks presented this time with a classic salsa made with voluptuously ripe tomatoes, finely diced, whose sweetness balances the sourness of the lime and the bite of the garlic and chiles.
But to say that other sauces play supporting roles is not to diminish them. The torta ($7.50) — a Mexican sandwich featuring roasted pork or chicken on wondrously puffy bread swabbed with refrijoles and Mexican crema (a close relation of crème fraîche) — benefits from the presence of a sharp pico de gallo, while the quesadillas ($7.50), deep-fried half moons, like empanadas depend on a red salsa, waterier and hotter than its fresca cousin. Even the sauces you can’t see, such as the vinaigrette that dresses the chopped lettuce accompanying the taquitos ($7.50), add a charge. There is nothing quite like undressed lettuce, sitting there like a pile of hay in a barnyard, to let the air out of the balloon of anticipation, and yet this seemingly minor oversight is common practice in many Mexican restaurants. If nothing else, the kitchen crew at Regalito sweats the details.
The only sauce I didn’t respond to was the roping of red-pepper coulis across the enchiladas rojas ($7.50), flaps of corn tortillas also topped with white pipings of crema, like decorations on a birthday cake. The sauce’s rich rust red color belied its undersalting. On the other hand, the tortillas weren’t deep-fried — a small mercy.
Many of the small dishes, of bar and side food, are remarkably tasty: brilliant little pirouettes of flavor and texture you could easily choreograph into a light, leisurely meal or an extended cocktail hour. If you’ve ever saved the seeds from your Halloween pumpkin and later tried to roast them, only to meet with disappointment, you will find the pepitas ($2) — pumpkin seeds toasted with chili, salt, and lime — to be revelatory. Mostly they are tender and melt in the mouth without leaving behind that terrible cud of fiber.
Beans, of course, are available in a variety of guises. Among the possibilities are stewed pinto beans ($2.50), mild and meaty, and ejotes ($3.50) — green beans — sautéed with delicate ribbons of white onion and finished with a squeeze of lime. And while we are on the subject of limes: the house-made limeade ($1.95) is a phenomenon of dense sweet-sourness. If you’re tired of lemonade and you want a bit more excitement than the usual aguas frescas can provide — or you seek the grease-cutting power of citric acid — you will be happy with it. Think of it as a little gift to yourself — a regalito, as Spanish speakers say.<\!s>SFBG

REGALITO ROSTICERIA
Tues.–<\d>Fri., 11 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.
3481 18th St., SF
(415) 503-0650
www.regalitosf.com
Beer and wine
AE/DISC/MC/V
Pleasantly noisy
Wheelchair accessible

Breakthroughs

December 20, 2006

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS My new favorite superheroes are my old pal Mod the Pod and her social-working podner, the Kat Attack. Together they comb the streets and psyches of the Bay Area, looking for people to help, and in many cases that turns out to be me!
If I had a nickel for every time one or the other or both of them together have untied me from figurative railroad tracks or snatched me up in midair as I was falling into snaky pits or the abyss or … well, in this case, I was bummed about having been Just-Friended, yet again, the night before. Not a lot of sleep, and morning found the chicken farmer kind of crying into her coat collar down at Java Supreme.
My coffee was this close to being cold, literally, when out of nowhere our superheroes swooped down in their superminivan, and Earl Butter helped load me into the back. Wasting no time, Mod the Pod gave me a squirt of our favorite perfume, and the Kat Attack told a great joke in which a bear walks into a bar and says, “Gimme a shot and a … beer,” and the bartender goes, “Why the big pause?”
After about a beat, I laughed real hard and rolled on the floor, mostly because there aren’t any seats in the back of this van.
Earl Butter, still choking over my squirt of perfume, was groping around like a mime in a box, trying to open real windows that didn’t really open. (Note: this seemingly innocuous detail is what we writers call “foreshadowing,” so don’t forget to remember it later, OK?)
Well, Jelly’s was “closed for the season,” whatever that means. As if San Francisco has seasons. So we had to go to the Ramp. And we had to sit outside, even though it was practically raining and cold. All the inside tables were taken.
I was thinking: coffee. Hot coffee. But before I could say so, Mod the Pod ordered us four Bloody Marys, and I went with it, reasoning: she’s the social worker.
Sure enough, the sun came out! And food! Huevos rancheros ($10.95), a bacon avocado omelet ($9.75), bacon and eggs ($8.75 times two), and more Bloody Marys (way, way too much money to even think about) … and I told my sad story, and the Attack was her supersweet self, and Earl Butter made jokes and poked me, and the Pod, you know what Mod the Pod did, being a superhero?
She gave me some of her bacon.
To think, to think that earlier in the week I’d almost killed her! But that’s another story.
Did you hear? I shattered glass during my very first session of speech therapy! We were sitting at a long wooden table, Coach Freidenberg and me, and I was saying things into a microphone and she was monitoring my pitch on a computer screen, like the opposite of the limbo: how high can you go? My eyes were mostly closed, not in concentration, but because it was of course excruciating to hear my own voice being played back to me.
“Many men making much money in the month of May,” my voice said. “The murmuring of doves in the memorial elms.”
It was worse than excruciating. It was traumatic. It was psychologically damaging. Stanley Kubrick could prop toothpicks in my ears and make a movie out of it. I was this close to losing my will to live, and then I opened my eyes to see what time it was — because it seemed like an important moment to mark, the losing of one’s will to live.
But instead of seeing clocks I saw, down below on the sidewalk outside, loitering, looking for someone to save, guess who? Mod the Pod! Me, I thought. Save me.
To get her attention, I tried to open the window, which was one of those old out-opening ones with a crank. I wanted to say, “Lunch?” That’s all. And I turned the crank ever so slightly, but it broke. At 11:41 in the morning. The window, glass, shattering, crash, bang, boom, and time stood still for idiot chicken farmers and for pedestrians pushing perambulators filled with gurgling children, and for loitering superheroes.
Would she save the day? Could she? How? With bacon? This being the story of my life and my life being basically a comic book, time stands still for you too, dear reader, until next time, while foot-long shards of glass hang in thick air like enemy arrows.<\!s>SFBG

RAMP
Mon.–<\d>Fri., 11 a.m.–<\d>3 p.m.
Sat.–<\d>Sun., 8:30 a.m.–<\d>4 p.m.
855 China Basin, SF
(415) 621-2378
Full bar
AE/DISC/MC/V
Wheelchair accessible

Pee on a stick

December 20, 2006

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:
We use a fertility monitor for birth control — my partner pees on a stick and inserts the stick in the monitor, and it tells her when she’s fertile. This device is designed to tell you when you are likely to get pregnant — we are using it to abstain on the fertile days. This would seem to be more accurate than the rhythm method. Do you think this might be a valid (and less invasive) method of birth control?
Love,
Sticks Not Pills

Dear Stick:
Sure, of course it is. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they wouldn’t sell such a thing if it weren’t valid (“they” sell all kinds of stupid stuff), but there’s good science to support fertility awareness, both as a contraceptive method and a conception aid. In truth, you don’t even need the monitor, since a woman’s body will tell her what it’s up to if she knows how to listen. I can’t say the manual version is really for everyone though. It requires both obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a high tolerance for low-level grossness, which is to say, it suited me perfectly, but your partner is under no obligation.
If you (the generic you, not the specific, biologically male you) want to do fertility awareness without a monitor, you will need a cheap digital thermometer and some paper or a spreadsheet program. There’s a very slight, like a couple tenths of a degree slight, rise in temperature after a woman ovulates, best recorded first thing in the morning before she does anything else, like even sit up. Any given temperature reading is meaningless in itself, but over a few months a pattern tends to emerge. Some very nutty data queens get a kick out of making charts with multiple colored pencils; others enjoy downloading charting software to their PDAs. Normal people will just consider it another dull but necessary maintenance task, like flossing.
Perhaps the most meaningful, and certainly the ickiest, of the fertility awareness signs is the state of one’s cervical mucus. Toni Weschler, the queen of fertility awareness methods, likes to tell the story of how she was unable to get herself booked on any of the wholesome morning talk shows and was completely flummoxed — the audiences are mostly women! Women are very interested in birth control, particularly free or cheap, totally safe, and quite reliable birth control. Then she tried telling the producers that she’d be talking about cervical fluid. Nobody wants to hear about mucus, particularly right after breakfast. Anyway, cervical fluid runs free and clear like a mountain stream (except ickier) when a woman is fertile and dries up and becomes inhospitable, if not downright rude, to sperm when she is not.
There are other signs and wonders to marvel at and to record obsessively with colored pencils. The Internet is full of detailed instructions, as is Weschler’s widely read book, Taking Control of Your Fertility. I myself am a fan of obsessive charting combined with ovulation predictor kits, which are basically just the sticks without the little computer to read them out for you. The only real difference is that the monitor, when it determines that a woman is fertile, produces a wee hen’s-egg-shaped icon, which always bothered me a little. If I’m finding nursing a bit disturbingly bovine, I found that picture just a little too … chickeny. Now that I actually have kids, there are enough things around here that cluck and moo, thanks.
Love,
Andrea

Dear Andrea:
I am in a long-distance relationship. Sometimes when I see my girlfriend, she’s on her rag, and so we can’t have sex. She suggested buying some medicine to control her rag or at least delay it. I don’t know anything about pills: can they cause people to be unable to get pregnant? I know that she’s getting the pills because sex is important to both of us, but I’m worried about her health. Is there a pill that you could suggest?
Love,
Pill or No Pill?

Dear Pill:
You know that “on her rag” is not the proper technical term, right? I worry that you might approach a pharmacist or doctor with questions about rag control, and I’m sorry, I just don’t see that going well.
The “medicine” you’re looking for is just plain old birth control pills. While they certainly can cause people to be unable to become pregnant, that should not be a problem later (I hope much, much later) when your girlfriend is ready to have a baby. Regular pills will work if taken all month long, as will the fancy new ones sold specifically to limit a woman’s period to four times a year (sold as Seasonale). Any of these will require a doctor’s prescription, and I couldn’t be happier about that. You guys sound a little unclear on a number of concepts, which is fine as long as you’re not messing around with anything that could seriously screw up parts of her body if mishandled, like, oh, her endocrine system.
Love,
Andrea

Looking up

December 20, 2006

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In late 2006 several major art-market events — record-breaking auctions and 14 Miami Beach art fairs — provided a bracing contrast to a slew of exhibitions concerned with the immaterial, experiential, mystical, and social. These instances clearly illustrate the exciting, age-old tensions between the thrill of commerce and the quest for artistic integrity.
In November a Christie’s sale of impressionist and modern art yielded nearly half a billion dollars. A good chunk of that auction money was laid down for recovered Nazi art loot, a noble corrective yet one rooted in economic conditions, not necessarily philosophical or penitential ones. Big money seems to obliterate the pure intentions of art, though record price tags do have a way of speaking to a broader audience.
Meanwhile, the fanfare and brisk sales at the recent Miami art fairs — Art Basel Miami and satellite events — attest to a healthy market and, hopefully, the ability for artists to forge self-sustaining careers, not to mention allow San Francisco galleries to expose their wares to international collectors. In her heartening reportage on the Miami fairs, New York Times critic Roberta Smith noted how the events level the field of information and offer a platform for market resistance, pointing out artists who conceptually dare collectors through assaulting video and purposeful repetition of mundane imagery.
Much like the rest of the economy, flush with stock market upticks and the national budget’s creative accounting, art sales are solid, similar to those in the so-called go-go 1980s. Part of the thrill of the boom is the anxiety of a crash lurking in the future. So how does a thriving market — and all the commercialism that goes with it — affect the creation of new art and its reflection of contemporary culture?
In 2006 you didn’t have to look far to find examples of artists aiming to tackle our collective anxieties, either politically or spiritually, through their quest to envision the intangible. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s current Anselm Kiefer show, “Heaven and Earth,” embodies that idea as it surveys a German artist whose paintings are informed by alchemy, mythology, and Jewish mysticism. Kiefer makes large works addressing even bigger themes. He also has firm political convictions — he has consistently refused to enter the United States in protest against George W. Bush’s policies. It’s worth noting that Kiefer’s work hasn’t exactly seemed fashionable in recent years. Is his appearance now coincidence or zeitgeist?
“Heaven” inhabits the same gallery space that hosted “Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint,” a sprawling exhibition as steeped in the artist’s celebrity and sex appeal as it was in Shinto references and other lofty themes. A hushed, almost religious vibe pervaded the proceedings as viewers looked up at the video monitors in quiet awe — or perhaps disbelief. Both Barney and Kiefer are comfortably blue chip, and their work sells even when they strive for deeper meaning.
A new strain of alternative art is being fostered at Southern Exposure, which this year put an emphasis on social interaction and artwork that unfolds in public places. Packard Jennings’s lottery tickets, available in local corner stores, offer scratch-off prizes to feed the mind, not the bank account, and Neighborhood Public Radio’s broadcasts traffic in community and dialogue. These programs have been driven by a seismic upgrade and the need to work off-site, but the thrust of the gallery’s program also revealed that bias in its actual building.
Taking on a more conventional gallery form was “Ghosts in the Machine,” the inaugural show in SF Camerawork’s impressive new space. Curator David Spalding expanded on the topic of shared history to suggest a sense of cultural haunting by unresolved past actions — those related to the Vietnam War, suicide bombings, and US racial tensions. The range of work was serious — and very much engaged in a yearning for art with staying power.
Mexico City curator Magali Arriola’s “Prophets of Deceit” at CCA Wattis Institute for the Contemporary Arts probed the troubling charisma of cult leaders like Jim Jones, as well as the persuasive qualities of cinema. It was a disturbing counterpoint to the wispy “Cosmic Wonder” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which included artists who, according to their press literature, “explore trance, ‘alternative’ realities, and the psyche.” While a major curatorial misfire that raised serious questions about the YBCA’s programming choices, “Cosmic Wonder” nonetheless points to interest in and tension between otherworldly themes and art world trends. The show, organized by neophyte curator Betty Nguyen, included young gallery darlings — a fair number of whom likely partied themselves into altered states in Miami Beach. It all goes to prove: there are multiple roads to artistic, financial, and spiritual enlightenment. SFBG

GLEN HELFAND’S ARTY TOP 10
•The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan (Penguin)
•Phil Collins, dünya dinlemiyor, SF Museum of Modern Art
•Andrea Bowers, “Nothing Is Neutral,” Redcat, Los Angeles
•Tavares Strachan, “Where We Are Is Always Miles Away,” Luggage Store
•Battle in Heaven, directed by Carlos Reygadas
•This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes (Viking)
•Maquilopolis, directed by Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre
•Julia Christensen’s www.BigBoxReuse.com
•Takeshi Murata, “Silver Equinox,” Ratio 3
•Kathryn Spence, “Objects and Drawings,” Stephen Wirtz Gallery

Wikipedia vs. women

-

December 20, 2006
0

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Two years ago tech entrepreneur Joi Ito was spending a lot of time with the managers and editors of the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia, and he noticed that there were far more women wikipedians than women bloggers. In late 2004, Ito wrote in his blog:
Wikipedia seems much more gender balanced than the blogging community…. I wonder what causes this difference in gender distribution? Is it that the power law aspect of blogs is inherently more competitive and appeals to the way men are “trained” in society? Or is it that we’re just talking to the “head” of the blog curve and that the more interesting blogs are actually by women in “the long tail”? Or is it something about Wikipedia that attracts powerful women?
He received a handful of comments, almost entirely from men, which all boiled down to “I don’t know” or “maybe women are just more collaborative.” As far as I know, Ito never got any good answers to his questions.
But last month a group of women finally provided an unexpected rejoinder to Ito’s long-ago musings. Dozens of long-term contributors to Wikipedia formed the WikiChix, a group modeled after the female-dominated Linux Chix. WikiChix, who of course have a wiki (wikichix.org/wiki/WikiChix), say they are sick of how male-dominated Wikipedia has become.
One example of this problem, which isn’t explicitly discussed on WikiChix, is the “feminist science fiction” entry on Wikipedia. All wikis like Wikipedia are Web sites that can be modified by people browsing them. Contributors create an account, hit an edit button on any page, and then add their own information. Certain entries, however, get ensnared in “revision wars” — battles between editors who keep changing information back and forth to reflect what they consider true. “Feminist science fiction” was one such entry. Although this is a legitimate genre of science fiction and many famous SF writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson consider all or part of their work to be feminist, the entry was subject to such an intense revision war that at last administrators determined that it should be removed and replaced with “women in science fiction” in 2002. Obviously, “women in science fiction” is hardly the same thing as feminist science fiction, in the same way an entry on “operating systems” could hardly be said to replace an entry on “Linux.” It wasn’t until June of this year that the category “feminist science fiction” was created again, after a great deal of agitation.
As I said, this particular entry wasn’t cited specifically by the WikiChix as their reason for creating the group. But many issues like this one led them to form a women-only wiki to discuss Wikipedia and wiki management more generally. The question their move raises is as old as feminism itself. Is it better for women to segregate themselves or stay in the male-dominated realm of Wikipedia and fight to be given an equal voice? In the WikiChix FAQ, the group writes to men who don’t like the idea of separatism:
Instead of feeling excluded, try to see [WikiChix] as an opportunity to hear a conversation you would not hear otherwise. If men are not talking, what women say to each other becomes a different conversation. When we as women can stop defending ourselves and explaining that bias, sexism, or patriarchy exist, then we can move further in discussion and support of each other.
Is it really separatism if these women are posting in a public forum? I think not. They’ve simply created a public forum where all the speakers are women.
More than that, though, I want to know what happened between 2004 and 2006 that turned Wikipedia from gender-balanced to gender-imbalanced. Glancing at the gender distribution of contributors who list themselves on Wikipedia, it looks like the ratio is nearly equal (as of this writing, there are 77 women and 80 men). That only captures the people who bother to list their names and genders, however. Still, I want to know: Did something change? Or was it just that there were problems all along and the only change is that women are finally speaking out about them? SFBG

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thanks Laura Quilter for fighting to keep feminist science fiction in Wikipedia.

City College’s latest abomination

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December 20, 2006
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OPINION Battles to preserve the unique character of San Francisco’s neighborhoods are nothing new. Indeed, most of the current crop of supervisors were elected in large part as a reaction to east-side development battles that raged during the first dot-com boom a half dozen years ago.
In the northeast corner of San Francisco, I have long been part of the struggle to preserve the character of some of the city’s oldest, most historic neighborhoods against the onslaught of incompatible development.
Decades ago, as downtown was expanding northward, gobbling up thriving, diverse communities and destroying dozens of historic buildings, community activists won a monumental zoning battle by drawing a bright line down Washington Street. On one side is the massive Downtown Business District, where the Transamerica Pyramid sits. On the other side are the human-scale neighborhoods of Chinatown, North Beach, and Jackson Square, San Francisco’s first historic district.
We have fought hard to maintain this barrier against the Manhattanization of our neighborhoods. In the late 1990s I joined with neighbors to successfully prevent the destruction of the landmark Colombo Building at the gateway from downtown into these historic neighborhoods. So when more than 200 neighbors showed up at a recent public meeting to protest the threat of yet another high-rise encroachment, I certainly took notice. Who was it this time? Not a private developer but our very own City College is now proposing a 17-story, 238-foot glass monstrosity at the corner of Kearny and Washington streets. And the college is arguing that, as a state agency, it can ignore San Francisco planning and zoning codes.
As the city’s Chinatown Area Plan states, the proposed site, which is located diagonally opposite Portsmouth Square, one of the city’s most heavily used parks, is not an appropriate setting for tall buildings. Seventy-five percent of the structures in Chinatown are three stories or less in height. The permitted height of buildings at this site is 65 feet. In addition, the proposed building would overshadow Portsmouth Square and likely condemn it to significant shading.
While I support a new campus for the Chinatown–<\d>North Beach area, City College administrators have failed to reach out to the community — and now they appear to be jamming through their latest proposal, ignoring objections from their neighbors and simultaneously committing millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to the project well before the completion of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
Plans for the site were hurriedly submitted for environmental review in September without prior community input or consideration of alternatives such as a combination of smaller buildings or a location of adjunct campuses in underserved areas of the city — the Richmond, the Sunset, or Visitacion Valley. Moreover, the college’s construction bureaucracy apparently tried to stifle public comment by providing little notice and scheduling the only environmental scoping hearing immediately after Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, just a week after that meeting the college’s Board of Trustees approved a $122 million budget for the project, which can only be interpreted as a clear sign that they have already made their decision regardless of what impacts are identified in the EIR. And perhaps, most ominously, administrators may be pushing to make the project a fait accompli before newly elected Sierra Club leader John Rizzo is inaugurated.
It’s time for City College to listen to its neighbors and go back to the drawing board.

Aaron Peskin is president of the Board of Supervisors.

The next big fight

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December 20, 2006
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› steve@sfbg.com
San Francisco’s eastern neighborhoods — the Mission District, Potrero Hill, Showplace Square, Dogpatch, the Central Waterfront, and SoMa — are shaping up to be a prime battleground in the fight over who will determine the city’s future.
Can city officials, working with community groups, set development standards that will create adequate housing for all income groups, protect the job-generating businesses that use light-industrial property, and include enough open space and other community benefits? Or will the community have to, for the most part, simply accept what the market forces are willing to provide?
This is the basic dichotomy at the heart of the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, which has been in development for years and will be unveiled by the Planning Department sometime in 2007. In anticipation of that release, members of the Board of Supervisors are attempting a preemptive strike in the form of a resolution demanding the plan prioritize affordable housing and other public needs.
The 11-page resolution — which was sponsored by Supervisors Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano — restates policies from the city’s General Plan, particularly its Housing Element, and emphasizes the need for the Planning Department to ensure those policies are reflected in land-use decisions for the eastern neighborhoods.
The problem is that the city isn’t meeting its goals, particularly in the realm of affordable housing. The resolution notes that the Housing Element calls for 28 percent of new housing to be affordable to people with moderate incomes, 10 percent affordable to low-income residents, and 26 percent affordable to those with very low incomes.
Yet the city’s inclusionary housing law calls for developers to offer only 15 percent of their units below market rate, and a study associated with that law’s recent update indicates most developers won’t build if asked to contribute more (see “Homes for Whom,” 6/18/06, at www.sfbg.com). The vast majority of what’s now being built isn’t affordable to even middle-class San Franciscans — a far cry from the 64 percent of such housing called for in city policies.
“We do not have a housing crisis in San Francisco,” Maxwell declared during a Dec. 12 hearing on the resolution. “We have an affordable housing crisis.”
Most of the progressives who constitute the board majority agree with Maxwell’s statement, which has been made before by housing activist Calvin Welch and some of the community groups pushing the resolution. They all want the eastern neighborhoods, where a disproportionate number of low-income San Franciscans live, to be where the city begins to correct its housing imbalance.
“We need land specifically set aside for affordable housing, and the best place to do that is in the eastern neighborhoods,” Maxwell said at the meeting. “Let’s make this official city policy.”
Or as McGoldrick told the Guardian, “What we’re talking about here is a paradigm shift of major proportions.” He sees the eastern neighborhoods as the ideal place to create and protect working-class housing with aggressive affordability goals, and he said, “Those developers who can’t meet those goals will have to build in other parts of the city.”
But real estate speculators and developers who have spent years waiting to move forward their projects in the neighborhoods have attacked the resolution and its goals. The stakes are extremely high. The plan will set standards for the 4,800 housing units already proposed in the eastern neighborhoods, including 11 projects in the Showplace Square area that total 1,800 units, and more on the way.
“Our projects are being held hostage,” Residential Builders Association president Sean Keighran told us, saying of his members, “They were speculators, but they were playing by the rules.”
Keighran insists RBA builders will help bridge the affordable housing gap if the city works in partnership with them and uses incentives like density bonuses and height variances rather than strict limits and set-asides. But the resolution, he said, “will be interpreted as a tool to stop market-rate housing.”
That’s something even progressive Sup. Chris Daly doesn’t want. Daly emerged as the primary critic of the resolution during the Dec. 12 meeting, blasting it as unnecessary and offering a list of confusing amendments that set the stage for Sup. Bevan Dufty to successfully continue consideration of the resolution to Jan. 9, 2007.
Welch and community leaders such as Tony Kelly of the Potrero Hill Boosters were unhappy with Daly’s maneuver. Kelly told us, “It’s the community groups of the eastern neighborhoods who pushed for this.” He felt it was important for the board to give planners specific marching orders. “It’s meant to say this is what we’ll accept.”
Daly said he supports the basic goals of the resolution — and even said at the meeting that he will ultimately vote for it — but he told the Guardian he would rather find creative ways to work with developers on increasing the amount of affordable housing than draw bright lines that might block market-rate housing.
“I’m not sure it’s the right resolution at the right time,” Daly told us.
During the meeting he also questioned city planner Ken Rich on what impact this nonbonding resolution would have and concluded that it’s merely symbolic, although Rich did say it might spur planners to investigate and present more mechanisms for meeting affordable housing goals.
Daly then suggested a complete revision of the Housing Element to overcome the “balancing act” Rich said planners must perform between competing imperatives, such as facilitating jobs, open space, and housing.
“The General Plan asks us for a lot of different things,” Rich told the board.
“If that’s a weakness in the General Plan, we need to work on that,” Daly said, making the motion that the resolution also require planners to develop a list of “contradictions in the General Plan that will require them to balance conflicting mandates.”
“That could be a thesis topic in itself,” Peskin responded.
Daly’s motion was discussed among the supervisors, clouding and sidetracking the discussion, but it was preempted by Dufty’s motion to delay the matter until the next board meeting. Maxwell said she’s not giving up on the measure, which she sees as necessary to focus planners who feel constrained by market forces.
“Affordable housing seems to be last on the list, and we want it to be a priority,” Maxwell said at the meeting.
It’s an open question whether she has enough votes to win approval and what kinds of pressures and distractions the RBA and its allies will bring to the debate. But the heated division over this simple resolution is a harbinger of what’s to come next year, when the real fight over San Francisco’s future socioeconomic makeup begins.
Or as Peskin said at the hearing, “This is just a preamble to our receipt of the plans themselves.” SFBG

Eleventh-hour Christmas shopping

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December 20, 2006
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› deborah@sfbg.com

Last year you waited until you heard Santa’s sleigh bells ringing overhead before you started your Christmas shopping. You ended up at the corner store purchasing smokes and PBR for your friends and loved ones. You felt about as festive as warm champagne in a can.
The fact that you’re a procrastinator doesn’t mean you can’t round up some rockin’ gifts in time to scoot them under the tree. We made the rounds and found some easily accessible shops for you to hit up. Follow our lead for 11th-hour shopping, and you’ll have gifts galore without the headaches. Most of these places are open extra hours this week and are definitely open on Christmas Eve. For you real snowflakes, a few will be open even on Christmas. Careful though: some places close when the flow of shopping traffic peters out.
BEAT MUSEUM
This recently opened, perfect postespresso stop is in the heart of North Beach. Buy a beret for your bongo-playing poet friend or a “Fuck Hate” Charles Bukowski poster for your dearest misanthrope. And where else are you going to find limited edition signed posters by the Grateful Dead and Fillmore poster artist Stanley Mouse?
540 Broadway, SF. Wed.–Sat., 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Christmas, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. (415) 399-9626, www.kerouac.com
BUENA VISTA GIFT SHOP
Make your cable car destination the Buena Vista, a bar and grill by the bay. Here you can sip the famous Irish coffees, then head into the gift shop, which sells Irish coffee–<\d>scented candles. Toss in a bottle of Buena Vista whiskey for a more intoxicating package.
2765 Hyde, SF. Wed.–Sat., 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 474-5044, www.thebuenavista.com/giftshop
CLIFF’S VARIETY
The Castro’s hardware store isn’t just a place to buy nuts and bolts. At Cliff’s you can get everything from quality cookware and napkin rings to board games and mittens. But if someone in your life is really hankering for a power drill, you’ll find a good one here.
479 Castro, SF. Wed.–Sat., 9:30 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 431-5365; www.cliffsvariety.com
ELEPHANT PHARMACY
Also known as “the gourmet pharmacy,” Elephant has fancy items you won’t find at Walgreens. For the powder room denizen, grab a spa kit filled with naturally scented candles, soap bars, and body butter in blood orange or Tahitian gardenia fragrances. Your ecoconscious associates will appreciate sustainably grown kitchen products such as the bamboo cutting boards and salad bowls. Creative teens will be wowed by the pinhole camera kit.
1607 Shattuck, Berk. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 8:30 a.m.–<\d>11 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 9 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m.; Christmas, 8:30 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (510) 549-9200, www.elephantpharmacy.com
FABRIC8
Probably the coolest shop in the Mission District, Fabric8 specializes in unusual gifts made and designed by local artists. Jenn Porreca has stick-on iPod skins and small, reasonably priced paintings for sale. C. Lee Sobieski designed a washable matching dog collar and owner wrist cuff with a cute skull-and-heart motif. And DJ Romanowski’s wall of knickknacks has something for everyone.
3318 22nd St., SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>11 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas, 11 a.m.–<\d>2 p.m. (415) 647-5888, www.fabric8.com
FRIEND
Embracing the moderne can be quite an expensive proposition at this posh Hayes Valley housewares shop, but you can most likely afford to buy your mate some good cheer in the form of the “The Good Book,” which is actually just a hollow cover for a flask.
401 Hayes, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas Eve, noon–<\d>5 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 552-1717, www.friend-sf.com
HEARTFELT
You’ll find just about anything under the exposed beams of this Bernal Heights store: picture frames, stationery, organic cotton baby jumpers, candles, and something we would all like to wipe our asses with — toilet paper printed with George W. Bush’s face and quotable remarks.
436 Cortland, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>5 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 648-1380, www.heartfeltsf.com
JEFFREY’S TOYS
You’ll have an easier time getting gifts for kids at this well-stocked downtown toy store than fighting the crowds at the not-so-near big box. Stimulate the developing brains of youth by getting Lego sets and human anatomy puzzles here. The tarot jigsaw provides some alternative spiritual guidance to Christianity, and the porcelain unicorns are just plain cute.
685 Market, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 9 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (or earlier, depending on business); Christmas, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (415) 243-8697
KID ROBOT
You’ll please collectors big and small with limited edition toys from this hipster enclave in the Haight. Little anime items such as Munny zipper pulls, a paperweight-size pile of poo known as Superduex Shikito Brown, and figurines of the band Gorillaz will all be worth a fortune some day.
1512 Haight, SF. Wed.–<\d>Fri., 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–<\d>3 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 487-9000, www.kidrobot.com
NATHAN AND CO.
This petite and stylish shop on Piedmont Avenue has gifts for the ankle biter in your life, whether it be a friend’s dog or your sister’s teething toddler. You can also find gifts for grown-ups, such as the Hostess Twinkie Cookbook and sets of self-adhesive mustaches. The handmade bike-messenger bags made with vinylized pages of the New York and Los Angeles Times are a real find.
3820 Piedmont, Oakl. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 10:30 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10:30 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (510) 428-9638
PEKING BAZAAR
You can’t beat the hours at this emporium of gifts in Chinatown. Many of the store’s bagatelles come in beautiful silks: totes and wallets, lanterns and pillows, kimonos for him and her. It also specializes in iron tea sets and houses a large jewelry section.
826-832 Grant, SF. Open Wed.–<\d>Mon., 10 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m. (415) 982-9847, www.pekingbazaar.com
PLAIN JANE’S
Keep the people you’re closest to smelling good. This West Portal store has one of the best soap and bath product selections in town.
44 W. Portal, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 9 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 9 a.m.- 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 9 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 759-7487 www.plainjanesgifts.com
POSTER SOURCE
After visiting the sea lions and taking a spin on the carousel, you can get a gift that doesn’t say “I Went to Pier 39 on Christmas Eve and All I Got You Was This Lousy Alcatraz T-shirt.” Poster Source has movie posters, scenic shots, fine art and photography prints, and sports cars pics to accommodate everyone’s decorative tastes.
Pier 39, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 10 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m.; Christmas, call for hours. (415) 433-1995
THERAPY
The Mission District retailer has cozy sweaters, handsome leather-band watches, and purses in a variety of shapes, sizes, and prices. For that special headbanger in your life, pick up the Metallica book Nothing Else Matters: The Stories behind the Songs.
541 Valencia, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 11 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>10:30 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>9:30 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 861-6213
WINE MERCHANT
One way to really take the edge off Christmas shopping is to have a drink first. Enjoy a pour at the Ferry Building’s Wine Merchant, then point yourself directly toward the “Great Wines for under $20” section. You’ll find everything from fussy California pinot noirs to fruity Belgian and German whites. Spending more than $150 entitles you to free delivery.
Ferry Bldg., stall 23, Embarcadero and Market, SF. Wed., 10 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Thurs.–<\d>Fri., 10 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Sat., 8 a.m.–<\d> 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 391-9460, www.fpwm.com<\!s>SFBG
Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman and Laura McCaul did research for this story.

Editor’s Notes

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December 20, 2006
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San Francisco is spending $250,000 to create an economic development plan, and that’s probably a good thing. The city’s economy is changing; development pressure is threatening small businesses and light industry; local people can’t find jobs; and more and more residents are working out of town — it’s exactly the sort of situation that calls for some intelligent planning.
The current project, sponsored by the Mayor’s Office, is the result of a ballot measure approved two years ago that requires the city to measure the economic impact of policy decisions. For the most part, the legislation, by Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, is aimed at stopping progressive initiatives, but if it gets San Francisco headed in the right economic direction, that will be well worth a quarter million dollars.
If.
See, I’ve talked to the economist who is heading up the study and to the person in the Mayor’s Office who is coordinating it, and I’m afraid that they’re coming very close to missing the point.
The final study won’t be completed until the end of January, but the Board of Supervisors got a sneak preview a couple weeks ago, complete with a PowerPoint presentation and lots of the kind of talk that seems coherent only to academic economists. (Under “Conclusions,” the summary recommends that we “invest in and diversify the engines of innovation in the knowledge sector.” Whatever that means.)
The actual research in the preliminary documents seems fairly solid, and the evidence, while not surprising, is still alarming: San Francisco has lost thousands of families, jobs that don’t require a college degree are vanishing, and the income gap between the increasingly wealthy high end of the population and the increasingly squeezed middle and working classes is growing.
But missing from the study so far are what I consider the two most important factors in economic development in this city: housing and land use.
I work for a small business, and I have to hire people, and I can tell you that every small businessperson in this town (except the ones who have vast stores of venture capital to spend) is facing the same problem I am: it costs too much to live here. And if their businesses are operating in the eastern neighborhoods, they’re also facing the very real prospect that they may lose their leases and their places of business to make room for more million-dollar condos that their employees can’t afford, which will fill up with more people who work in Silicon Valley.
Last week I spoke with Ted Egan, the Berkeley economist who is heading up the project for ICF Consulting. He understands that locally owned businesses are the key to the local economy and that replacing imports and expanding exports is a crucial goal. But he also said that “housing outcome isn’t on our plate.”
That, I guess, is because the city defined the study that way. Jennifer Matz, who is deputy director at the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, told me that her office would be coordinating with city planners but that housing and land use were beyond the scope of this report.
If that’s the case, it won’t be a terribly useful document. SFBG

Gavin Newsom’s datebook

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December 20, 2006
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EDITORIAL Kirsten Gillibrand, a newly elected member of Congress from Hudson, NY, has made a simple promise that could have dramatic impacts — and that should serve as a model for public officials like Mayor Gavin Newsom. Gillibrand, according to the New York Times, has promised to post her work calendar — all of it, including the names of lobbyists she’s met with — on the Web at the end of every day. It’s hardly an onerous task — any competent staffer can do the work in a matter of minutes. And it will, she says, give her constituents a clear idea of what she’s doing to earn her public salary.
There’s a broader benefit, of course: by releasing a full account of how she spends her time, Gillibrand will go a long ways toward eliminating what the Times calls “the secrecy that cloaks the dealings of lawmakers and deep-pocket special interests.” A broad-based move like this will help restore voters’ faith in government — a huge deal for the Democratic Party and for the future of American politics. Incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi ought to join Gillibrand and direct the rest of the House Democrats to do the same.
And we hope Mayor Newsom is paying attention.
Newsom is not a terribly accessible mayor. His public appearances are typically crafted to give him the spotlight without any potential for embarrassment. He’s refusing to comply with the will of the voters and appear before the Board of Supervisors to answer questions. And despite the provisions of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, he continues to resist publicizing his full schedule.
Wayne Lanier, a retired scientist who lives in the Haight Asbury, has been trying for some time to get the mayor’s calendar and on Dec. 11 filed a complaint with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. What Lanier wants ought to be pretty straightforward information: there’s no reason the mayor can’t provide a list of whom he met with last week and whom he’s scheduled to meet with next week. But even when the mayor has provided that sort of information in the past, it’s been limited and spotty: all kinds of supposedly private meetings don’t make the list. It’s a good bet he’s involved in all manner of talks with lobbyists and deep-pocket interests who are never publicly identified.
Newsom is up for reelection next year and so far has no visible challengers. So it’s even more important that he not duck public requests for information. He should do exactly what Gillibrand promises to do: tell the public, promptly and without undue redaction, just how he’s spending his time.SFBG

Pass Maxwell’s housing bill

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December 20, 2006
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EDITORIAL Every city in California has to keep a general plan on its civic shelf, and every 10 years the plan — a detailed outline of future growth and development goals — has to be dusted off and updated. Most of the time, nobody pays much attention: when decisions on individual projects are made, conformance with the general plan means a lot less than the political connections of the developers.
But hidden in those documents are often some fascinating and potentially important bits of information — and that’s the case with the Housing Element of San Francisco’s plan.
According to that report, San Francisco has a critical need for more housing, which everyone knows and accepts. But the details matter, and in this case, the document says that all housing isn’t alike — and that, in fact, the city needs comparatively little of the sort of market-rate (read: million-dollar) condos that developers want to build. What the city’s official planning guideline actually says is that given San Francisco’s population, economy, and job mix, 64 percent of all new housing built in the city should be sold at below-market rates.
That’s right: the carefully researched conclusion of the professional city planners is that almost two-thirds of all new housing has to be affordable to working San Franciscans — which means only one-third of new housing should be luxury condos for high-end buyers.
That’s a pretty radical concept — but when you actually read the Housing Element, it makes perfect sense. Only a small fraction of the city’s current residents can afford the mortgage payments or rents required for most new market-rate units. And most of the jobs that will be created in this city in the next 10 years won’t pay enough to allow workers to afford those new condos. Instead, what San Francisco is becoming is a bedroom community for people who live elsewhere — and that’s not part of anyone’s planning goals.
So Sup. Sophie Maxwell has introduced a resolution that would make it official city policy that all new housing built in the eastern neighborhoods — ground zero for new development in the next decade — meet the goals of the San Francisco General Plan. That would mean that city planners could only approve new housing if 64 percent of the units were sold for prices that working San Franciscans can afford.
Her legislation isn’t perfect — for one thing, it’s just a policy resolution, which means that Mayor Gavin Newsom and the City Planning Commission can ignore it. But it’s a powerful statement about the extent of the city’s housing crisis, the utter failure of the mayor’s housing policy, and the complete inadequacy of virtually every new private housing development proposal now on the table.
As Steven T. Jones reports in this issue, the resolution has set off something of a furor, even on the left — and the fact that Maxwell was forced to continue it for a month is a signal that the Residential Builders Association (RBA) — which wants to turn the eastern neighborhoods into a jungle of luxury condos without strong affordable housing requirements — still has disturbing political influence.
Sup. Chris Daly, who expressed a lot of concerns about Maxwell’s resolution (and helped force the delay), argues that the measure actually calls for a total moratorium on new housing in the eastern neighborhoods, since it’s unlikely any private developer will build projects with 64 percent of the units at below-market prices.
That may be true. It’s also fine with us. San Francisco doesn’t need to build more housing that’s totally out of sync with what residents and small businesses need. And a moratorium would force Newsom, city planners, and developers to talk seriously about how to meet the affordable housing needs.
We are not convinced that building units that sell for, say, $300,000 is an impossible venture for the private sector, and we’re totally convinced that with a little vision, the city can expand dramatically its affordable housing stock. For starters, the city needs to protect its existing rental housing by making Ellis Act evictions prohibitively expensive and tightly controlling evictions and condo conversions (something Daly has called for).
Daly also says that what the city really needs is a better Planning Department and a more visionary commission and director. We agree. But the question on the table is simple: should the city, as a matter of policy, abide by the housing goals in its own General Plan? That’s a no-brainer.<\!s>SFBG

Unseal the court files

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December 19, 2006
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The lawsuit that seeks to stop the monopolization of daily newspapers in the Bay Area isn’t just a business dispute. Real estate investor Clint Reilly argues that he would be personally harmed by the deal (which gives him standing to sue), but in reality, this is about the future of mainstream news media in one of the nation’s largest and most politically active markets. If the Hearst Corp. and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group have their way, it’s entirely possible one corporate entity could effectively control every single significant daily paper in San Francisco, southern Marin, the East Bay, the South Bay, and the Peninsula. And since TV and radio news stations tend to take their cues from the daily papers, that means one corporate entity would decide, to a great extent, what sort of local news will be available to several million people.
It’s more than a legal issue. It’s a major public policy issue — and that’s why the papers shouldn’t be allowed to fight this out in secret.
On Dec. 21 the Guardian and Media Alliance, a nonprofit media activism organization, filed a motion in federal court seeking to intervene in the Reilly lawsuit and asking Judge Susan Illston to unseal the key records in the case. Our point: this is a huge national story, and the public interest in knowing what the biggest and most powerful newspaper chains in the country are planning for the Bay Area is clear and overwhelming.
But the way the big chains have set things up, there’s no way for the public to find out much of anything — except what Hearst and MediaNews want us to know. Under the terms of a court order the chains wrote and got approved, anything — evidence, briefs, depositions, even legal motions — the newspaper barons want to mark secret is automatically sealed. Of course, the newspaper lawyers can decide to publicize anything they want to put out to bolster their side of the story. In other words, the newspapers — which, after all, are accused of trying to violate antitrust laws and create a media monopoly in the region — have complete control of what information does and doesn’t come out of the trial. That’s exactly how they want it — and exactly how things will go if they get away with their merger plans.
It’s hard to fight the big chains. Almost every experienced media lawyer in town works for or has partners who work for one of the chains, so they all have conflicts of interest. The news media organizations, like the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the California First Amendment Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists, all have board members who work for the chains.
And of course, the big newspapers themselves, which love to fight to unseal court records in other cases (like billionaire Ron Burkle’s divorce case), are all either involved or have allies who are involved, so they won’t touch the case.
So it’s fallen to the Guardian, an independent paper, and Media Alliance, an independent activist group, to work with the First Amendment Project, an independent public interest law firm, to promote the public interest in unsealing the records.
We know there’s a lot of information that ought to be out in the light of day. Already, one document discussed in open court shows that Hearst, which owns the Chronicle, has discussed ad sales, printing, and distribution deals with Singleton’s group — which is supposedly a competitor. What else do these companies have planned for the Bay Area? Will Hearst and Singleton wind up in some sort of joint operating agreement? Is this the end of daily newspaper competition? Will one billionaire publisher be able to put a conservative spin on all editorial coverage in the region? The public has a right to know.
Court documents are presumed public, and the newspaper chains have shown no reason why anything other than a few narrowly defined records should be kept secret. Judge Illston should revoke the secrecy order and open up the key documents in the Reilly case.
PS Where is the federal Justice Department? Where is outgoing state attorney general Bill Lockyer or incoming AG Jerry Brown? We haven’t heard a word from any of the public officials who ought to be intervening in this case. At the very least, they should support our efforts to open the records.
PPS: If Hearst and the big chains get away with sealing these documents, it will set a terrible precedent for future cases in which business interests want to keep secret information that ought to be in the public domain. How can any of these big media companies ever go into court in the future (as they have done in the past) to push for unsealing court record when they have gone to such lengths to seal their own records?
PPPS To see our legal brief, press release, and links to media coverage, go to www.sfbg.com.

Margaret Cho’s Good Vibes XXX-Mas striptease

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Powell, Baker, Hamilton — Thanks for Nothing

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December 18, 2006
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When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on “Face the Nation,” it was another curtain call for a tragic farce.

Four years ago, “moderates” like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton are refueling the U.S. war effort by depicting it as a problem of strategy and management.

But the U.S. war effort is a problem of lies and slaughter.

The Baker-Hamilton report stakes out a position for managerial changes that dodge the fundamental immorality of the war effort. And President Bush shows every sign of rejecting the report’s call for scaling down that effort.

Meanwhile, most people in the United States favor military disengagement. According to a new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll, “Seven in 10 say they want the new Congress to pressure the White House to begin bringing troops home within six months.”

The nationwide survey came after the Baker-Hamilton report arrived with great — and delusional — expectations. In big bold red letters, the cover of Time predicted that the report would take the White House by storm: “The Iraq Study Group says it’s time for an exit strategy. Why Bush will listen.”

While often depicted as a rebuff to the president’s Iraq policies, the report was hardly a prescription for abandoning the U.S. military project in Iraq — as Baker was at pains to repeatedly point out during a whirlwind round of network interviews.

Hours after the report’s release on Dec. 6, Baker told PBS “NewsHour” host Jim Lehrer that the blue-ribbon commission was calling for a long-term U.S. military presence: “So our commitment — when we say not open-ended, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be substantial. And our report makes clear that we’re going to have substantial, very robust, residual troop levels in Iraq for a long, long time.”

Baker used very similar phrasing the next morning in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” — saying that the report “makes clear we’re going to have a really robust American troop presence in Iraq and in the region for a long, long time.”

That was 24 hours into the report’s release, when media spin by Baker and Hamilton and their allies was boosting a document that asserted a continual American prerogative to devote massive resources to war in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. And, in a little-noted precept of the report, it said: “The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise.”

In short, the Baker-Hamilton report was a fallback position for U.S. military intervention — and for using Pentagon firepower on behalf of U.S.-based oil companies. But the report’s call for tactical adjustments provoked fury among the most militaristic politicians and pundits. Their sustained media counterattack took hold in short order.

President Bush wriggled away from the panel’s key recommendations — gradual withdrawal of many U.S. troops from Iraq and willingness to hold diplomatic talks with Syria and Iran. War enthusiasts like Sen. John McCain denounced the report as a recipe for retreat and defeat. The New York Post dubbed Baker and Hamilton “surrender monkeys.” Rush Limbaugh called their report “stupid.”

By the time its one-week anniversary came around, the Baker-Hamilton report looked about ready for an ashcan of history. Bush had already postponed his announcement of a “new strategy for Iraq” until after the start of the new year — a delay aimed at cushioning the president from pressure to adopt the report’s central recommendations. Even the limited punch of the report has been largely stymied by the most rabidly pro-war forces of American media and politics.

But those forces don’t really need to worry about the likes of Colin Powell, James Baker and Lee Hamilton — as long as the argument is over how the U.S. government should try to get its way in Iraq.

“We are losing — we haven’t lost — and this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around,” Powell told CBS viewers on Dec. 17. That sort of talk stimulates endless rationales for continuing U.S. warfare and facilitates the ongoing escalation of the murderous U.S. air war in Iraq.

Powell’s mendacious performance at the U.N. Security Council, several weeks before the invasion of Iraq, is notorious. But an obscure media appearance by Powell, when he was interviewed by the French network TV2 in mid-September 2003, sheds more light on underlying attitudes that unite the venture-capitalist worldviews of “moderates” like Colin Powell and “hardliners” like Dick Cheney.

Trying to justify Washington’s refusal to end the occupation, Powell
explained: “Since the United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women — and we have a large force there now — we can’t be expected to suddenly just step aside.”

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Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

Is the USA the Center of the World?

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December 13, 2006
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Some things don’t seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever:

WASHINGTON — There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world.

The White House had no immediate comment on the reports, which set off a firestorm of controversy in the nation’s capital.

Speaking on background, a high-ranking official at the State Department discounted the possibility that the reports would turn out to be true. “If that were the case,” he said, “don’t you think we would have known about it a long time ago?”

On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties were quick to rebut the assertion. “That certain news organizations would run with such a poorly sourced and obviously slanted story tells us that the liberal media are still up to their old tricks, despite the current crisis,” a GOP lawmaker fumed. A prominent Democrat, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that classified briefings to congressional intelligence panels had disproved such claims long ago.

Scholars at leading think tanks were more restrained, and some said there was a certain amount of literal truth to the essence of the reports. But they pointed out that while it included factual accuracy in a narrow sense, the assertion was out of context and had the potential to damage national unity at a time when the United States could ill afford such a disruption.

The claim evidently originated with a piece by a Lebanese journalist that appeared several days ago in a Beirut magazine. It was then picked up by a pair of left-leaning daily newspapers in London. From there, the story quickly made its way across the Atlantic via the Internet.

“It just goes to show how much we need seasoned, professional gatekeepers to separate the journalistic wheat from the chaff before it gains wide attention,” remarked the managing editor of one news program at a major U.S. television network. “This is the kind of stuff you see on ideologically driven websites, but that hardly means it belongs on the evening news.” A newsmagazine editor agreed, calling the reports “the worst kind of geographical correctness.”

None of the major cable networks devoted much air time to reporting the story. At one outlet, a news executive’s memo told staffers that any reference to the controversy should include mention of the fact that the United States continues to lead the globe in scientific discoveries. At a more conservative network, anchors and correspondents reminded viewers that English is widely acknowledged to be the international language — and more people speak English in the U.S. than in any other nation.

While government officials voiced acute skepticism about the notion that the United States is not the center of the world, they declined to speak for attribution. “If lightning strikes and it turns out this report has real substance to it,” explained one policymaker at the State Department, “we could look very bad, at least in the short run. Until it can be clearly refuted, no one wants to take the chance of leading with their chin and ending up with a hefty serving of Egg McMuffin on their face.”

An informal survey of intellectuals with ties to influential magazines of political opinion, running the gamut from The Weekly Standard to The New Republic, indicated that the report was likely to gain little currency in Washington’s elite media forums.

“The problem with this kind of shoddy impersonation of reporting is that it’s hard to knock down because there are grains of truth,” one editor commented. “Sure, who doesn’t know that our country includes only small percentages of the planet’s land mass and population? But to draw an inference from those isolated facts that somehow the United States of America is not central to the world and its future — well, that carries postmodernism to a nonsensical extreme.”

Another well-known American journalist speculated that the controversy will soon pass: “Moral relativism remains a pernicious force in our society, but overall it holds less appeal than ever, even on American campuses. It’s not just that we’re the only superpower — we happen to also be the light onto the nations and the key to the world’s fate. People who can’t accept that reality are not going to have much credibility.”

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Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For information, go to www.WarMadeEasy.com

TUESDAY

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Dec 19

PERFORMANCE
I, Mascot

Michael Capozzola really knows how it feels to hit the streets as a mascot. For four months he traveled back and forth across the country in costume for a dot-com company before the boom went kersplat. More than you or me, he has a sense of what it might be like to be a giant chicken tackled by an irate sports fan or a Disney mouse sued for sexual harassment. In his one-man show, I, Mascot, Capozzola – an excellent cartoonist who says he lives on a decommissioned tugboat off the SF coast – is ready to bring the pain. (Johnny Ray Huston)
7 p.m.
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission, SF
$10 ($5 for members)
(415) 227-8666
www.cartoonart.org
www.capozzola.com

MUSIC
Full On Flyhead

Full On Flyhead plays metal — the type of metal made by people who understand that sometimes the best way to rock a crowd is with a double kick drum and a well-placed scream, people who understand that metal doesn’t have to be overtly ironic or painfully serious if the music is good – and, hot damn, the music is two clicks north of awesome. (Aaron Sankin)
With Hippie Grenade and Gold Star Morning
9 p.m.
Hotel Utah
500 Fourth St., SF
$6
(415) 546-6300
www.hotelutahsaloon.com
www.myspace.com/fullonflyhead

MONDAY

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Dec. 18

VISUAL ART
“Artworkers”

What could possibly get you more worked up than the ultra-dirty-hot combo of towel boy-artist? Admire these searing talents up close at the all-employee “Artworkers” show at Eros, a safe sex club for dudes. Staffers leave the terry cloth behind and invite everyone, including us with the boobs, to gander at rainbow-saturated skyscapes brushed by Jack X Taylor, portraits of ruggedly Mad Maxy hunks painted by Lance Victor Moore, and photos of drag performers snapped by the always utilikilt-clad Michel St. Germain (a.k.a. Rev. Michel). (Deborah Giattina)
6:30-6:30 p.m. reception (show continues through Feb. 28, 2007)
Eros – the Center for Safe Sex
2051 Market, SF
Free
(415) 255-4921
www.erossf.com

SUNDAY

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Dec 17

MUSIC
Blind Boys of Alabama
The Blind Boys of Alabama have been around since the 1930s, when they joined together at the Talladega Institute for the Deaf and Blind in Alabama in 1937. They’ve been making top-notch gospel music ever since. In recent years they’ve risen to greater prominence through their collaborations with Peter Gabriel, Ben Harper, and Moby. This is their Christmas show, and it should be a great time for everyone. (Aaron Sankin)
2 p.m.
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness, SF
$15-$53
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org
www.blindboys.com

MUSIC
Family Album

A hundred and fifty years ago, California’s Nevada City was the bustling heart of the Gold Rush. These days it’s known more for Joanna Newsom than mining. The harpist has described her hometown as “swarming with artists and hippies and old prospectors,” and on the Family Album compilation, Marc Snegg’s Grass Roots Record Co. takes a snapshot of some of the most talented among the first two camps. The release party will feature several of the contributors playing in revue format. (Max Goldberg)
4 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$8
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.grassrootsrecordco.com

SATURDAY

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Dec 16

FILM
Industrial Culture Film Festival 1.0
If you’re a fan of transgender Genesis, as in P-Orridge, and you don’t have the time or funds to fly out to London on a whim, then your chance has finally arrived to witness Throbbing Gristle’s first concert in 23 years. The concert movie RE~TG – at the Astoria Theater, London, 2004 receives its West Coast premiere as part of the Industrial Culture Film Festival’s first installment, an event that also includes a sure-to-be-prickly film of skin piercer and flesh stretcher extraordinaire Fakir Musafar and a panel discussion including V. Vale. (Johnny Ray Huston)
6 p.m.
Recombinant Media Labs
763 Brannan, SF
$15-$23
(650) 255-8947
www.recombinantmedia.net

FRIDAY

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December 12, 2006
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Dec 15

MUSIC
DeVotchKa

After I got sick of the glitzy world of ankle modeling, I decided that I needed to shake myself up a bit. Call it kismet, but just as I’d finished my last photo shoot, a circus parade rolled by. DeVotchKa showed me everything: how to make grown men weep over a Ukrainian melody, how to send the crankiest babushka back to the breathless twirls of her childhood, how to uncross the arms of jaded hipsters with a CBGB’s-worthy squeeze of the accordion. Honestly, they did. Unless, of course, I made this story up, ankles and all. I mean, that’s what extraordinary music does, right? It makes all our stories possible. (Todd Lavoie)
With Eric Bachmann
9 p.m.
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
$18.50
(415) 346-6000
www.livenation.com
www.devotchka.net

BENEFIT
Sweet ‘Stache 2006 contest

Help raise money for the Homeless Children’s Network at the “Sweet ’Stache 2006” competition, at which the city’s most accomplished mustachios compete for the title of Sweetest ’Stache. (Deborah Giattina)

7 p.m.
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
$5 suggested donation
(415) 845-1041, www.hcnkids.org, www.m4ksf.org

THURSDAY

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Dec. 14

MUSIC
And a Few to Break

While local quintet And a Few to Break might be a far cry from vintage R&B and funk, the connection’s not without merit: at the base of the band’s ambitious, melodic songs – which hit upon aggressive metal and hardcore, spacey post-rock, and everything in between – lie drums with a strut and sway that would make any so-called dancepunk group blush. This show celebrates the release of their Tiny Telephone-recorded full-length debut, Procession (Relatively Conscious), which does justice to the band’s live-show MO of carefully rendered chaos. (Jonathan L. Knapp)
With Sholi, We Be the Echo, and A Pack of Wolves
9 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$7
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.myspace.com/andafewtobreak

EVENT
Lusty Lady Holiday Party

XXXmas might come but once a year, but you don’t have to follow suit. Indulge in a little holiday cheer with the strippers of San Francisco’s favorite unionized, worker-owned co-op – and their feisty friends – at the annual Lusty Lady Holiday Party. Your Hanukwanzaamas stocking just won’t feel properly stuffed until you’ve spent an evening in the convivial company of the Lusties – whose promised performances range from lube wrestling to lap dancing and of course some good ol’-fashioned burlesque. Live bands, dauntless DJs, Fudgie Frottage, and others will raise your seasonal spirit to a fever pitch. (Nicole Gluckstern)
With the Grannies, Thee Merry Widows, and Die by Light
9 p.m.
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
$10
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com
www.lustyladysf.com

WEDNESDAY

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December 12, 2006
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Dec 13

MUSIC
Public Enemy

“Once again back is the incredible rhyme animal – D! Public Enemy number one!” Yeah, that’s right: PE, perhaps the most creative, powerful, and downright shit-disturbing act in hip-hop are back, bringing the noise circa ’86-stylee, boyeeee. That includes Chuck D, Flava Flav, Professor Griff, and the S1Ws. When you feel Chuck’s voice booming through the Mezzanine’s system after all these years, you’ll know this shit is for real. (Duncan Scott Davidson)
With X-Clan and the Banned
9 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$27.50
(415) 625-8880
www.mezzaninesf.com
www.publicenemy.com

VISUAL ART/MUSIC
“Twenty-Three Years of Hernia Milk and Ergot Dreams: A Retrospective of Caroliner and Its Homage to a 19th-Century Singing Bull”

Mysterious, mythic, perhaps even blessedly myopic in focus – that’s the highly influential band Caroliner and its leader, er, Bonnie Banks, who goes by as many names as your average deity. Banks and buds create a sure-to-be-mind-melting exhibition space embellished with props, costumes, instruments, records, books, and ephemera plucked from storage, thanks to CCA’s Echo de Pensees Sound Series organizers, Museum of Viral Memory collectivists, and show curators Marcella Faustini and Pierre Rodriguez. Caroliner give their first performance in a year and a half at this academic coming-out party of sorts. (Kimberly Chun)
Through Jan. 19
Jan. 13, 6-8 p.m. reception followed by a Caroliner performance at the CCA Graduate Center, 188 Hopper, SF
PLAySPACE Gallery
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth St., SF
Free
(415) 551-9213
www.cca.edu/calendar/play/1189

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