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News and Politics | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Google’s gentrification shuttle

October 16, 2007

OPINION Cari Spivek thought it was wasteful that so many employees like her were driving to work in different cars. Her idea became the Google Shuttle, a private transit network made of biodiesel-powered, wi-fi-enabled, air-conditioned buses transporting employees from around the Bay Area to Google headquarters in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.

At first it was used by a hundred employees from the entire area. But Google has been growing and now shuttles more than 1,200 Googlers every day, many from the Mission District, which has recently added a second bus.

Anyone who has ever taken a population class knows that every migration has a countermigration. In addition to all of the Google employees already living in the city and doing less environmental damage by taking the shuttle, many employees are choosing to move to the city because there is now a comfortable shuttle to take them to work. And many want to be a short walk to one of the stops.

When one takes into account the cost of gentrification, which is destroying the arts in San Francisco and forcing many low-income workers out of the city, the Google Shuttle no longer looks so environmentally friendly. Low- and middle-income wage earners are forced to commute to the neighborhoods they can no longer afford to live in. Their commute can take more than an hour, and they can’t afford environmentally friendly cars.

It’s very possible the Google Shuttle is doing as much harm to the environment as good. And the young Google employees, many making well over $100,000 a year, who move to places like the Mission for the art and diversity, are unintentionally devastating the neighborhood they love. Soon there will be no economic diversity in the Mission, and the young rich who have driven the rents so high will wonder how they ended up living in a place that resembles Greenwich, Conn.

Ending the Google Shuttle is not the only solution. It’s not even the best solution. A much better alternative would be for Google to make substantial investments in low- and middle-income housing in the areas it’s transforming, like the Mission and the Tenderloin, where its employees are clustered.

Google could give back to the community by donating $5,000 per employee living in the Mission to a fund that offsets the costs incurred by tenants forced from their homes by owner move-ins or loss of primary leaseholder, with the rest of the money going to fund neighborhood artists and new middle-income housing. Annually, we’re talking between $5 million and $10 million, a cost Google could easily afford. It would be good for Google in other ways, keeping this an area its creative employees still want to live in, before they follow the rest of the artists to Portland, Ore., or Detroit.

It’s hard for people to admit that their mere presence is doing damage, that their ability to pay exorbitant rent is destroying the neighborhood they love. But the Mission cannot endlessly absorb renters with six-figure incomes. In many ways, including the use of biodiesel shuttle buses, Google has behaved like a responsible profitable corporation should. Now it has a responsibility to help the Mission maintain its diversity. Otherwise, Google needs to stop shuttling its employees from 24th and Mission and stop encouraging them to live in a neighborhood that simply can’t afford them.

Stephen Elliott

Stephen Elliott is the author of six books. He has lived in the Mission for eight years.

Green City: Meeting the Climate Challenge

October 16, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY It is easy to become discouraged by environmental problems, but a few San Franciscans are reminding us that we have collective power to make positive change. And we might even have a little fun along the way.

Paul Scott came up with the idea of the San Francisco Climate Challenge, a citywide contest to reduce household energy consumption. Scott is a lawyer and founding member of One Atmosphere — a nonprofit created by North Beach neighbors concerned with sustainability and conservation. "I think a lot of folks are concerned about climate change, but frustrated by the seeming inaction by the government to solve the problem," Scott told the Guardian. "The purpose of the San Francisco Climate Challenge is to give people something they can do right now."

A joint project by One Atmosphere, the Sierra Club, and SF Environment, the Climate Challenge officially starts Oct. 25 and registration ends the day before. Two top prizes of $5,000 (cash!) will be awarded for greatest overall energy savings and greatest percentage reduction in energy use. Winners will be determined by comparing last November’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bill with this November’s bill, so participants must pay their own utility bill and have lived in their current home — apartment, condo, or house — for at least a year.

Private residences account for about 20 percent of San Francisco’s carbon emissions, so the SF Climate Challenge is specifically focused on reducing household emissions. "Hopefully, this contest will increase people’s awareness of what they can do and the environmental damage done by normal activities," said Jonathan Weiner of One Atmosphere. "Simple changes can have significant impacts."

And what are some of these simple changes to make at home? Turn off lights when you leave a room, replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, wear a sweater instead of turning up the heat. And something that people often forget is that appliances use energy even when they’re turned off. So plug your television and stereo into a power strip and, when you’re done watching TV or listening to music, turn that power strip off.

"Eliminating unnecessary, wasteful use and being more efficient with the energy we do use is important," said Aaron Israel of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco chapter. "But you don’t have to eat in the dark or live like a monk. There are very easy things you can do if you’re just a little bit more aware."

Contest participants can sign up for the Climate Challenge as individuals or teams. So far, there teams have been created by neighborhoods, social groups, and sports teams. Even the Board of Supervisors has formed a team, with supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Aaron Peskin, and Sean Elsbernd already committed to participating. Word on the street is that even the Mayor’s Office may compile a team.

The Climate Challenge is also about building community. "This is an initiative to bring together a bunch of folks around how we, as residents in the city, can do things differently," said Mark Miller of One Atmosphere. "The more we see how we’re connected, the more we see how much we affect each other."

Making simple, painless changes at home is a great place to start taking responsibility for the health of our communities, city, and planet. Hopefully, the San Francisco Climate Challenge will inspire people to think about the environment in terms of the positive changes we can make instead of the overwhelming problems we feel helpless to fix.

"We need to paint a vision of our own lives that is better in the future than it is right now, so we are all motivated to take action," said Cal Broomhead of SF Environment. "How can we transform our neighborhoods so they’re more sustainable? We have collective power to make change."

To register for the San Francisco Climate Challenge, or to see a list of sponsors, prizes, and energy-saving tips, go to www.sfclimatechallenge.org. Or attend this upcoming event to learn more: ClimatePalooza, Fri/Oct. 19, 7 p.m., $12 or free with sign up for the SF Climate Challenge, at the Swedish American Hall, 2170 Market, SF. Live music by Ryan Auffenberg, Hyim, Valerie Orth, Sheldon Petersen, and Pixie Kitchen. Call (415) 861-5016 for more information. *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

41st Anniversary Special: Connect the Connects

October 16, 2007

› steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom has created an entirely new branch of city government that is private, funded by undisclosed corporate donations, staffed by volunteers who are often city employees or his campaign donors, and unaccountable to any internal controls or outside scrutiny.

Yet rather than being a cause for concern, Newsom has touted San Francisco Connect and its four subprograms — Project Homeless Connect, Tech Connect, Green Connect, and Project Children and Families Connect — as his proudest achievement, a model he is actively exporting to other cities.

According to its Web site, "The mission of SF Connect is to mobilize residents and sectors for a stronger San Francisco. SF Connect is about engaged residents volunteering their talent and time for the City, as well as innovative partnerships between the private, public, and social [nonprofit] sectors."

Green Connect (and "partners" that include Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Oracle), does cleanup and tree planting. Tech Connect (and partners Netgear.com and Hewlett Packard) works on "digital inclusion." And Project Homeless Connect (Gap, Visa, AT&T, Blue Shield, IBM, the Hotel Council, and Charles Schwab among its partners) does homeless outreach events.

During his endorsement interview with the Guardian, we asked Newsom about the programs and how they allow the private sector to take a more active role in delivering public services on behalf of city government, sometimes with the help of public resources. Is that a model he likes?

"Oh, you’d better believe that!" Newsom said. "Am I for actual responsibility and civic service and duty? You’d better believe it. I think it should be mandated for everyone who graduates from our public education system. I think they should be forced to give back and contribute in community service. What the Connects are all about is community service and connecting the dots. The Rec Connects, which may be what you’re referring to, is a way of leveraging resources and getting more of our [community-based organizations] involved."

All of those involved with SF Connect also seem to sing its praises. But there’s another side to Newsom’s feel-good approach to delivering public services: they often displace social services delivered by qualified providers, supplement underfunded city services with private providers rather than simply fixing and funding them, provide wedges for corporations to take over public spheres (as the Google-EarthLink wi-fi deal through Tech Connect very nearly did), and allow corporations to buy influence with unregulated contributions to a politician’s pet program.

"If you look at the ways of privatizing, volunteering is one, and it sounds nice," said Margot Reed, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

Yet that volunteerism sometimes replaces services that previously were provided by government or nonprofit agencies whose contracts and performance could be scrutinized. But Newsom’s approach through SF Connect doesn’t allow that kind of transparency.

To illustrate the problem, the Guardian made a Sunshine Ordinance records request to the Mayor’s Office, asking for a complete breakdown of the budgets of all the Connect programs. The office refused to provide the information, referring us instead to SF Connect, but that organization has a history of refusing to provide the Guardian and other media organizations with its budget and donor lists.

Last year the San Francisco Chronicle fought the Newsom administration for two months to get it to reveal the donor list, finally winning the release of the names of donors who had agreed to be disclosed (some asked for their money to be returned instead). SF Connect’s donors included PG&E, which gave $25,000; Google investor Ron Conway, who gave $100,000; Wells Fargo Bank, which gave $20,000; and Carmen Policy (the former 49ers top dog who was recently named to push a June ballot measure on a new stadium that Newsom wants to build), who gave $2,500. Other donors included Newsom appointees, contributors, and companies that do business with the city.

When we tried to get a current list of donors, staffers didn’t respond to Guardian phone calls or e-mails.

We also asked Newsom’s office for a complete breakdown of city staff time, money, and other resources that have gone into supporting the Connect programs, knowing that city staff have been involved in their events and e-mails have gone out from city offices.

"There is no line item in any budgets nor any reporting within our office on time spent coordinating with SF Connect," Joe Arellano from the Mayor’s Office of Communications responded by e-mail after repeated requests for answers.

That’s probably because there seems to be no clear line drawn between where the private SF Connect ends and where the public-sector Mayor’s Office begins. Call the phone number on the San Francisco Connect Web site for Project Homeless Connect, and it rings at the desk of Judith Crane in the Department of Public Health.

Even getting a list of privatization proposals by Newsom hasn’t been easy. The Mayor’s Office cited technical inadequacies when we asked it to search all of Newsom’s speeches, press releases, e-mails, and other documents for the words "public-private partnership," a favorite Newsom phrase.

We know that he’s unsuccessfully sought to privatize jail health services, security at the Asian Art Museum, and the city’s golf courses (see "Bilking the Links," page 22) and to create a citywide wireless Internet system run by Google and EarthLink.

But ask Newsom about it, as we did, and you’ll hear his semantic gymnastics: "Privatization is failing, so I’m not pro-privatization. I don’t look to privatize. I look for ways to manage more creatively and more efficiently."

John Barleycorn must die

October 16, 2007

› molly@sfbg.com

"There was three men come out o’ the west, their fortunes for to try,

And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die.

They plowed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, throwed clods upon his head,

And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead."

From an old English folk song

It’s a dark, rainy Friday night, and Larkin Street is eerily quiet except for one beacon of light: the John Barleycorn pub. Inside this almost 40-year-old watering hole, logs crackle in a fireplace built with cobblestones from old San Francisco streets.

Neighbors, law students from a nearby university, and longtime regulars cluster together on cable car benches and onetime church pews, tippling and talking quietly beneath a ceiling made from the beams of an old Petaluma chicken coop.

Behind the bar, owner Larry Ayre, with rosy cheeks hugged by a pair of spectacles, serves drinks and good cheer the same way he has for more than three decades. Some of his customers have been coming here for just as long.

"There’s only one bar you call your home bar, and somehow, they have to take you in," Ayre said. "In here, you can be whoever you want to be."

Unfortunately for the Barleycorn, its lease is up, and it’s part of a building that was recently purchased by Louisa Hanson, a controversial local entrepreneur who owns several other properties in the area, including Louisa’s on Union Street and Delaney’s in the Marina. Hanson refuses to renew the Barleycorn’s lease, and it’s rumored she plans to turn the building into a new restaurant.

So tonight the mood is bittersweet. Ayre’s birthday is tomorrow, and neighbors are already stopping by. But no one’s forgetting that the pub’s doom is imminent, and unless a miracle happens the beloved bar will shut its doors October 26. For good.

Pub supporters nonetheless began appealing to Hanson last December when they heard of her plans not to renew the ‘Corn’s lease. They tried to make the case that the popular pub is the right size and scale for the neighborhood, that any other venture would be hard to support in such a tough retail environment, and that the bar is so well loved, Hanson would alienate potential future customers by closing it.

But the notoriously elusive Hanson — who’s obtained licenses for more than 22 businesses in the past two decades, most of which closed within two years or never opened at all — wouldn’t discuss the future of the ‘Corn, much less consider their pleas.

In an effort to save it, weekend bartender and longtime patron Tony Antico helped found the Save the John Barleycorn Coalition. Volunteers gathered more than 4,000 signatures from friends and fans in 30 countries and 20 states. They staged a demonstration outside Hanson’s Union Street restaurant. They lined up formal support from the SF Appreciation Society, the Polk Corridor Business and Middle Polk Neighborhood associations, Lower Polk Neighbors, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, who represents the district. The Board of Supervisors even passed a resolution commending the pub and recommending it be kept open.

"In America you can be a mean nut, and if you own property, the law protects you," Peskin told the Guardian.

Despite all the effort, Hanson is heavily invested in the property and appears to have little incentive to back off now. Public records show that she first bought it for $2.3 million in autumn 2005 and then took out two loans against it totaling $2.5 million.

She seems so eager to develop the property, in fact, that in June city building inspectors found ongoing construction work being conducted at Barleycorn’s neighbor, the former Front Room, without a permit, including taking out a wall and removing fixtures.

But Hanson is no stranger to conflict. Superior Court records show that she’s been the target of a fairly steady stream of litigation since the 1980s, ranging from allegations that she refused to pay contractors or employees to charges that she disregarded contractual agreements with business partners.

One case, brought against Hanson in 2003 by the former owners of her Marina restaurant, alleged that she agreed to a purchase but then withheld payments in hopes of forcing a better deal when the sellers grew desperate. According to the suit, the "alleged secret intent" of Hanson "constitutes an intentional misrepresentation, deceit, or concealment of a material fact that has caused injury" to the former owners. A judge ruled against Hanson and demanded that she pay the plaintiffs $183,674.

That case didn’t surprise Vickie Hall, who had a similar experience when she tried to sell her coffee shop in Amador County to Hanson earlier this year. After agreeing to pay full price for Hall’s homegrown business, Hanson allegedly held the deal in escrow, and therefore off the market for sale to someone else, until Hall would agree to a lower purchase price.

Hall claims that when she begrudgingly agreed but asked for a higher deposit, Hanson simply never responded to the counteroffer. Hall says Hanson couldn’t be reached for six weeks to sign over the original deposit money.

"It was a bad situation with a woman who I think is ruthless and could give a hoot about how her business practices are handled," said Hall, now living in Arkansas, who only sold the business because she and her partner are now on disability.

Look Hanson up on Yelp.com and you’ll find a litany of complaints from former employees, neighbors, business partners, and customers. There’s even a blog dedicated to the "eccentricities and out-and-out weirdness of San Francisco’s worst entrepreneur," located at Luisaconfidential.blogspot.com.

In fact, Barleycorn supporter John Clark, who has lived in the city 25 years and worked in local restaurants for eight years, was warned by peers not to pursue a job in any of her restaurants, so he avoided them.

"She’s a bad businesswoman and unscrupulous," Clark said. And the Barleycorn "is a great little English pub. I’m tired of the character that makes this city what it is getting sucked out of it. This is just another long-standing neighborhood institution being closed because of greed."

So far, Hanson has refused to discuss the Barleycorn, not returning calls from Ayre, Peskin, or the Guardian for this story. Her response to the demonstration outside her Union Street business was to give pub supporters the Italian version of the bird (video posted at savethebarleycorn.org).

In fact, the only thing anyone, including government officials, can do now is make it hard for her to open a new business in the building by changing zoning laws or refusing permits — actions that may hurt Hanson in the long run but won’t change the Barleycorn’s fate.

For now, the ‘Corn’s supporters are trying to maintain their optimism while being realistic. At Ayre’s birthday party Oct. 13, patrons continued to add their names to the petition at the end of the bar while Ayre’s wife explained where in their house the couple would put the historic wooden countertop once the bar closes. But no one will be done enjoying the establishment, or fighting to keep it open, until the last minute of its last day.

"I always believe that little miracles can happen," Peskin said. "I’m waiting for one."

41st Anniversary Special: Bus stop

October 16, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

There’s a money room in the basement of 1 South Van Ness, where the Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni, is headquartered. Workers literally count by hand bags of cash and coins taken in as fares from passengers throughout the day.

When Muni recently needed to pull some of those unionized bean counters away from the money room to staff kiosks around the city where transit passes are sold, its managers hoped to replace them with workers from a private contracting outfit.

The plan unsettled the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which persuaded Muni against the idea and instead encouraged it to create 10 new full-time city positions to cover the work that was needed. But the MTA’s immediate turn to the private sector is telling.

Powerful local unions would no doubt fight it, but public-transit consultants working with the city have insisted that the outright privatization of San Francisco’s municipal transit system is worth consideration. Advisors to the Transit Effectiveness Project, first unveiled by Mayor Gavin Newsom during a 2006 speech, insist nothing is too controversial for debate.

"There’s nothing we’ve been told to take off the table," a consultant hired by the city told the San Francisco Chronicle late last year.

The Transit Effectiveness Project’s final recommendations are expected next year, when it’s likely Newsom will be starting his second and final term. Big segments of Muni have already been privatized over the years. In fact, Controller’s Office records show the MTA has privatized far more formerly public services over the past two decades than any other city department by far.

In 1983 voters passed Proposition J, authorizing the city to contract out services performed by city workers who’d passed civil service exams to prove their skills as long as the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution certifying a cost savings. The MTA issued $46.5 million worth of private contracts last year covering 689 positions, according to figures maintained by the Controller’s Office.

Muni has used private security guards since 1975, and 400 private workers handle paratransit services, which aid the disabled. Towing, janitorial, meter-collection, and citation-information services have all been privatized. In total, the MTA’s purported cost saving is as much as $20 million per year.

But that’s a sliver of MTA’s $680 million budget, and there are perennial fears of more privatization pushes. This fall’s Muni reform measure, Proposition A, nearly went to the ballot with language that could have allowed millions of dollars in new privatized work at Muni without review from civil service commissioners, but it was removed at the insistence of labor leaders.

San Diego privatized many of its transit services in the ’80s, gradually contracting out services as public employees retired. By last year about half of San Diego’s bus routes were managed by three private contractors, including Violia, an Illinois company that also runs Muni’s paratransit services. Labor leaders say service in San Diego suffered under privatization, and they oppose similar changes here.

"Whenever you contract out a department, whenever you let go of control, then you don’t have control of the product," Cristal Java, an organizer for SEIU Local 1021, told the Guardian.

Prop. A’s language was changed to preserve union jobs if new routes and lines are introduced that may otherwise have been susceptible to privatization, but there are no assurances that city officials won’t eventually point to Muni’s widely bemoaned system deficiencies and claim that further contracting out is necessary.

"We see the same operational problems, and hiring new full-time, permanent people is a way to deal with it instead of contracting out," Java said. "The unions, allies, and MTA got together to make Prop. A something that worked for everyone."

41st Anniversary Special: Privatize the airport?

October 16, 2007

› gwshulz@sfbg.com

In August 2006 the five commissioners who oversee San Francisco International Airport discussed renewing a small contract with a consulting outfit called John F. Brown Co.

The contract’s value doesn’t matter as much as the advice the outfit was giving. Brown is helping San Francisco prepare for 2011, when an agreement SFO maintains with several airlines is set to expire.

This, the folks at the airport realize, is a very big deal — one that could cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars and tempt city officials to try to privatize one of San Francisco’s most lucrative assets.

The contract that will expire four years from now is basically a lease the airlines pay in exchange for using SFO facilities like runways and terminals. The agreement was established in 1981 as part of a legal settlement with the airlines, and it permits the city to draw millions of dollars in concession revenue from the airport into San Francisco’s General Fund. Last year the city received nearly $22 million from the airport.

But San Francisco is one of the few cities in the nation that are allowed to take money that the airlines pay for landing and use it to subsidize other city services. And the airlines have shown little desire to keep paying fees that are above what the airport needs to break even on its operations.

Nobody is talking publicly about what will happen after 2011, but it’s entirely possible that the airlines, with the support of the federal government, will refuse to keep subsidizing San Francisco’s General Fund. So $22 million per year in city revenue could suddenly dry up.

If the mayor is someone like Gavin Newsom, he or she will be looking for an easy answer — and a lot of people will argue that San Francisco should follow the trend set by airports in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh and head toward a private management contract.

The Reason Foundation, a libertarian Los Angeles think tank, concluded in the 1990s that SFO could be worth as much as $888 million to the private sector; that number is almost certainly higher now. Imagine, for a moment, the deal the city would be offered: lose $22 million per year in revenue — or get close to $1 billion in cash by turning over the airport to a private operator on a long-term contract.

But the airport’s past experiments with privatization suggest that giving SFO to the private sector might not be such a good idea.

In 2001, Congress created a pilot program in which five cities, San Francisco among them, privatized their security screening of passenger, checkpoint, and baggage operations. Federal airport officials here hired Illinois company Covenant Aviation Security.

An investigation last year revealed that Covenant and SFO officials relying on surveillance cameras conspired to tip off personnel working at checkpoints when undercover federal inspectors were on their way to test possible security breaches.

A whistle-blower first revealed the scheme. Covenant, which partnered in the security venture with global weapons designer Lockheed Martin, was nonetheless rehired by the federal Transportation Security Administration late last year with a $314 million contract lasting until 2010, signed just weeks after an inspector general for the TSA’s parent bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, revealed the results of its probe.

What is perhaps the airport’s greatest privatization disaster began in 1997 and didn’t end until earlier this year. Managers at the airport formed a private, for-profit company called SFO Enterprises, which they hoped would join a consortium of other airports doing consulting and managing work around the world. The initial consulting contract was with a Honduran airport.

The plan turned into a disaster, leaving the airport in Honduras worse off. By the time San Francisco’s controller caught up with the scheme in an investigation completed in January, he declared the city could lose as much as $1.5 million, with much of it poorly accounted for.

Editor’s Notes

October 16, 2007

› tredmond@sfbg.com

These are some of the things that Mayor Gavin Newsom has moved to turn over to the private sector in the past four years:

Housing for the mentally ill

Public golf courses

Camp Mather

The entire city broadband infrastructure

The city’s new power plants

Homeless outreach

Environmental cleanup

Recreation programs

Jail health services

Security guards at public institutions

Development of tidal energy

Reconstruction of public housing

And, of course, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. still controls the city’s power grid (illegally).

Yet when we talked to the mayor about privatization recently, he told us he’s generally against it. "Privatization is failing," he said. "So I’m not pro-privatization. I don’t look to privatize."

What’s going on here?

Well, for starters, the mayor isn’t being entirely candid. Newsom’s administration has been moving aggressively to adopt programs with names like "public-private partnerships" to take over jobs that ought to be in the public sector. Even when there’s something that is clearly the job of government — like building the information highway that will be more important than roads and bridges in the future — the mayor tries first to get the private sector to do it. "I look for ways to manage more creatively and more efficiently," Newsom said.

That’s in part because, for all his talk of bold initiatives, the mayor is a timid chief executive. At a time when politicians of all stripes around the nation are afraid to talk about tax hikes, afraid to talk about the value of the public sector, afraid to do anything that might remind people that Ronald Reagan was wrong, letting the private sector take the lead is easy and painless. As Sup. Jake McGoldrick told us, "I suspect that [Newsom] succumbs to the path of least resistance there because of the tremendous amount of pressure that the private sector puts on trying to gain control over public assets."

It would take a fair amount of effort and public money to keep, say, the golf courses under city control. Giving them to a private company is easy. Maybe the courses ought to be turned into soccer fields; that costs money too. Perhaps the easiest thing is to let the Fisher family, of Gap fame and fortune, pay for it (the way the family paid for the new playing surface at Garfield) — and then put up big "Gap Field" signs with blue jean ads, let the Fishers hold private parties there on Sundays, or charge admission … or something else "creative and efficient."

That’s how it works these days: instead of taxing the rich and spreading the benefits around through a democratic system, we let the rich set the agenda. If Don Fisher’s willing to pay for new soccer fields, then we get new fields. Maybe he (or some other private outfit) wants to save the golf courses; OK, we’ll do that instead.

Newsom isn’t Reagan or Grover Norquist; he’s not a rabid ideological promoter of privatization. He’s just a tame elected official who won’t stand up and fight, who won’t make it clear that San Francisco isn’t for sale, who won’t put his immense political capital on the line to preserve the public sector for the public. And for that, he is a failure.

41st Anniversary Special: Blast from the past

October 16, 2007

33 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 5, 1974)

Dianne Feinstein takes off her gloves

By Katy Butler

White gloves still haunt Dianne Feinstein’s political life. She has been wearing them ever since she first went to dancing class, and fellow politicians have accused her of refusing to take them off for politics. Her old political allies bring up the image again and again: those little white gloves seem to crystallize their irritation with her Pacific Heights femininity, the world of the Junior League, the chauffeur and the Goody Two Shoes approach to politics. In 1971 during her disastrous campaign for Mayor, she did her best to reach beyond her background. She promised a Hunters Point crowd she’d never shuck or jive. But she was still wearing those little white gloves.

The white gloves are off now. Feinstein learned from her 1971 defeat and she doesn’t want to lose this time around. She is jostling with state senators Milton Marks and George Moscone for first place at the starting gate in next year’s Mayor’s race, and she is no longer a political dilettante operating on intuition and integrity.

The new Dianne Feinstein is a canny political animal, assiduously cultivating the "homeowner vote" in the foggy reaches of the Avenues while nursing along her original liberal constituency. "She’s dropped the Goody Two Shoes act and she’s willing to play hardball politics," one of her fellow supervisors says admiringly. "She’s moving toward the center and she’s getting very good advice."

"How can you be for the vice squad, for police helicopters, against nude shows and for gay rights?" asks Harvey Milk, a gay former candidate for supervisor. "It doesn’t add up."

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 8, 1976)

Staggering with Bukowski

By William Graham

The beer, the day, whatever the reason, [poet Charles] Bukowski is not reading well — with little enthusiasm, little animation, little inflection in his voice, save the long drawl on certain words. He rarely looks up from his script while reading, as if he hasn’t seen the poems before. Hunched over, his glasses reflect the two spotlights and act as mirrors, blocking the audience from his eyes. At his best he is poetical, distant. At his worst, he is an old man reading the news. And finally the warning, "This is going to be my next-to-last poem." A few say "No, no." Bukowski asks, "Are there any questions?" Again, mixed shoutings answer, a few voices mimic animals, and far from the rear, the high nasal voice says "Bullshit". Bukowski replies, "Lay off that cheeeeeep, rot-gut wine or you’re not going to live a weeeeeeek. If the wine doesn’t get youuuuuuu, I might." The crowd likes this. Shifting gears, the poet says, "Any young girls want my phone number — try Joe Wolberg." Several replies follow, many sound dubious, and the poet says, "Okay, Babe-A."

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 8, 1976)

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. By Tom Robbins. Houghton-Mifflin, $4.95.

Reviewed by Don McClelland

Tragedy ensues but is softened by the cosmic good humor that shines throughout the book. For this world and its languages, Robbins shows an infectious love that is constantly leading him into literary excesses guaranteed to get him hanged in more proper circles. Didactic, discursive, anthropomorphic, loaded with enough outrageous similes to send a basketful to each poet in the American Academy, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues operates on the refreshing premise that the whole world is alive. This book will make you laugh out loud in the elevator. This book should have champagne and tears spilled on it. This book is Cervantes born again. Thank you, Tom Robbins.

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 29, 1976)

The Film Festival

By Robert Di Matteo

The 20th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which was held at the Palace of Fine Arts Oct. 13-24, was another one of those Sacred Monster affairs that exist above and beyond almost anything that can be said about them.

For me, there was the added excitement this year of the Guardian‘s Banned-from-the-Festival status (see Guardian 10/8, 10/22/76). Because of our reporting on the Film Festival last year, the Guardian was not allowed to attend this year’s event on the same basis as the 98 acceptable representatives from the press. But we went ahead and bough some tickets on the sly, and on the nights of the showings I slunk in to take my place in the audience, glancing furtively around to make sure I hadn’t been spotted. As something of a natural-born outsider, I found the role of a party crasher to fit like a glove.

Still, my perspective on the festival has not really changed. I doubt that I could ever really resolve my attitudes about culture to fit the festival’s concept of Culture. Movies are still just movies to me, and charging an extra dollar to see them does not alter that fact.

26 YEARS AGO (NOV. 4, 1981)

From the personal ads:

Plug Me In

Says my refrigerator. Very attractive lesbian who lacks only cooking skills would like sympathetic Jewish woman to offer either her knowledge of the art or dinner for the rest of my life. Write P.O. Box 11528 SF CA 94101

Wanted: Wife

Long hours, no pay. For a good-looking San Francisco man, 29. Qualifications: must be beautiful, intelligent, easygoing. No experience necessary. Please, no Republicans.

WM, 38, angry, depressed, timid, gentle, understanding seeks similarly minded F with whom to wait for Godot and/or etc.

My Marriage Was No Fun

Finally my wife and I figured out that we would be happier if we weren’t together. Since then, I have discovered freedom, but it hasn’t been in single bars. It has been squeezing the toothpaste any way I please, or being able to change plans at the last minute. I am 44, nice-looking, secure, and I would be interested in meeting a woman, younger or older, who would like to share her freedom with me.

I am an R.C. priest who takes his religious calling very seriously. But God also made me a man. I have thought about leaving the Church, but feel that that would be very wrong. God didn’t create us to live half lives, He will understand. While I’m sexually inexperienced, I am attractive, accomplished and sincere. Obviously discretion is a must.

Women Are Taught to Say "No"

This one is happy, bright, and attractive, and she is ready to begin saying "Yes." Now, what are the questions?

41st Anniversary Special: The privatization of San Francisco

October 16, 2007

› tredmond@sfbg.com

William M. Tweed was one of the greatest crooks in American political history, a notorious Tammany Hall boss in New York who managed in the course of just a few years, starting in 1870, to steal more than $75 million (the equivalent of more than $1 billion today) from the city coffers. The way he did it was simple. As Elliott Sclar, a Columbia economist and expert on privatization, notes, Tweed took advantage of the fact that much of the work of city government was contracted out to private companies. Boss Tweed controlled the contracts; the contractors overcharged the city by vast sums and kicked back the money to Tammany Hall.

This is a rather extreme example, but not, Sclar argues, an atypical one: the worst corruption scandals in American history usually involve private contractors and public money. In fact, he argues, privatization is almost by its nature a recipe for scandal and corruption.

Nothing in the public sector — no incompetence, no waste, no bureaucratic bungling — begins to compare with what happens when private operators get their hands on public money. And the cost of monitoring contracts, making sure contractors don’t cheat or steal, and forcing them to act in ways that reflect the public interest is so high that it dwarfs any savings that privatization seems to offer.

That’s the message of the Guardian‘s 41st anniversary issue.

It’s relatively easy to investigate government malfeasance. The records are public, the players are visible, and the laws are on the side of the citizens.

But when Bruce B. Brugmann started the Guardian in 1966 with his wife, Jean Dibble, he realized that the real scandals often took place outside City Hall. They involved the real powerful interests, the giant corporations and big businesses that were coming to dominate the city’s skyline and its political life. The details were secretive, the money hidden.

One of the first big stories the paper broke, in 1969, involved perhaps the greatest privatization scandal in urban history, the tale of how Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had stolen San Francisco’s municipal power, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The famous Abe Ruef municipal graft scandals of the early 20th century, the Guardian wrote, were "peanuts, birdseed compared to this."

When I first came to work here, in 1982, Brugmann used to tell me that daily papers, which loved to try to expose some poor soul who was collecting two welfare checks or a homeless person who was running a panhandling scam, were missing the point. "If you look hard enough, you can always find a small-time welfare cheat," he’d tell me. "We want to know about corporate welfare, about the big guys who are stealing the millions."

And there were plenty.

In his new book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (Knopf), Robert Reich, the economist and former secretary of labor, argues that during the cold war, when American politicians railed against the socialist model of economic planning, this country actually had a carefully planned economy. The planning wasn’t done by elected officials; it was done by a handful of oligarchic corporations and military contractors.

Modern San Francisco was born in that same cauldron. During World War II, captains of industry and military planners took control of the city’s economy, directing resources into the shipyards, collecting labor from around the country to build and repair Navy vessels, and making sure the region was doing its part to defeat the Axis powers. It worked — and when the war ended the generals went away, but the business leaders stayed and quietly, behind closed doors, created a master plan for San Francisco. Downtown would become a new Manhattan, with high-rise office buildings and white-collar jobs. The East Bay and the Peninsula would be suburbs, with a rail line (BART) carrying the workers to their desks. Private developers, working under the redevelopment aegis, demolished low-income neighborhoods to build a new convention center and hotels.

Nobody ever held a public hearing on the master plan. And it wasn’t until the late 1960s that San Franciscans figured out what was going on.

By 1971 the fight against Manhattanization began to dominate the Guardian‘s political coverage. It would play center stage in San Francisco politics for two more decades. The paper ran stories about high-rises and freeways and environmental impact reports, but the real issue was the privatization of the city’s planning process.

Ronald Reagan soared into the White House in 1980, rolling over a collapsing Jimmy Carter and a demoralized, moribund Democratic Party. Reagan and his backers had an agenda: to dismantle American government as we knew it, to roll back the New Deal and the Great Society, to get the public sector out of the business of helping people and give the benefits to private business. "Government," Reagan announced, "isn’t the solution. Government is the problem."

The Guardian was firmly planted on the other side. We supported public power, public parks, public services, public accountability. We had no blinders about the flaws of government agencies — I spent much of my time in the early years writing about the mess that was Muni — but in the end we realized that at least the public sector carried the hope of reform. And we saw San Francisco as a beacon for the nation, a place where urban America could resist the Reagan doctrine.

Unfortunately, the mayor of San Francisco in the Reagan years might as well have been a Republican. Dianne Feinstein’s faith in the private sector rivaled that of the new president. She turned the city’s future over to the big real estate developers. She vetoed rent control and gave the landlords everything they wanted. And when the budget was tight, she ignored our demands that downtown pay its fair share and instead raised bus fares and cut library hours.

When gay men started dying of a strange new disease, there was no public money or service program to help them, from Washington DC or San Francisco. So the community was forced to build a private infrastructure to take care of people with AIDS — and years later, as Amanda Witherell notes in this issue, those private foundations became secretive and unaccountable.

In 1994 we got a tip that something funny was going on at the Presidio. The Sixth Army was leaving and turning perhaps the most valuable piece of urban real estate on Earth over to the National Park Service … in theory. In practice, we learned, some of the biggest corporations in town had come together with a different plan — to create a privatized park — and Rep. Nancy Pelosi was carrying their water. Every detail of the Presidio privatization made the front page of the Guardian — and still, the entire Democratic Party power structure (and much of the environmental movement) lined up behind Pelosi. Now we have a corporate park on public land, with that great pauper George Lucas winning a $60 million tax break to build a commercial office building in a national park.

And still, it continues.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a rising star in the Democratic Party, who told us he’s no fan of privatization, demonstrated the opposite in one of his signature political campaigns this year: he tried (and is still trying) to turn over the city’s broadband infrastructure — something that will be as important in this century as highways and bridges were in the last — to a private company. That’s what the whole wi-fi deal (now on the ballot as Proposition J) is about; the city could easily and affordably create its own system to deliver cheap Internet access to every resident and business. Instead, Newsom wants the private sector to do the job.

The Department of Public Health is running public money through a private foundation in a truly shady deal. The mayor’s Connect programs operate as public-private partnerships. Newsom wants to privatize the city’s golf courses, and maybe Camp Mather. He’s prepared to give one of the worst corporations in the country — Clear Channel Communications — the right to build and sell ads on bus shelters (and nobody has ever explained to us why the city can’t do that job and keep all the revenue). Housing policy? That depends entirely on what the private sector wants — and when we challenged Newsom on that in a recent interview, he snidely proclaimed that the city simply has to follow the lead of the developers because "we don’t live in a socialist society."

This is not how the city of San Francisco ought to be behaving. Because when you give public land, public services, public institutions, and public planning initiatives to the private sector, you get high prices, backroom deals, secrecy, corruption — and a community that’s given up on the notion of government as part of the solution, not just part of the problem.

You start acting like the people who have been running Washington DC since 1980 — instead of promoting a city policy and culture that ought to be a loud, visible, proud, and shining example of a different kind of America.

Bilking the links

October 12, 2007

By now, even most non-golfing residents of San Francisco have heard the dire refrain coming out of City Hall: San Francisco’s public golf courses are sucking millions of dollars from the city treasury! Dozens of media stories have trumpeted these bleak pronouncements, and city leaders are using the shortfall to push for outsourcing control of the century-old open spaces. But a Guardian review of the “Golf Fund” shows that the links are not nearly as down and out as pro-privatization forces have led us to believe.

Recreation and Park Department accounting documents we obtained show revenues at the city’s six publicly-owned golf courses last year were up nearly $1.5 million from 2005-2006 and over $2.2 million dollars from 2004-2005, an increase of nearly 30 percent. But the costs of a lavish contract with a large, out-of-state golf management corporation have risen precipitously over the same time frame and drained off most of these new funds.

For the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the city shelled out more than $3.25 million to Kemper Sports Management to operate the pro shop and clubhouse at the Harding Park Golf Course and its nine-hole neighbor, Fleming. By comparison, in 2004-2005, Kemper’s tab at Harding and Fleming was a still eye-popping $2.07 million, but that number was nearly $1.2 million less than what the city had to pay last year. These increased costs, as well as a hefty loan repayment for Harding Park’s botched remodel in 2002 and 2003, have eaten up the links’ improved revenues and forced the city to throw in an extra $1.4 million from the General Fund to keep golf solvent.

“What’s going on up at Harding is a disaster,” Bob Killian told the Guardian. Killian ran the city’s golf operations profitably for two decades until 2001. “When I was in charge, we had contracts with various managers for the pro shops and the restaurants and they made us money. They paid us. Now, Harding is run at a deficit. Where the fuck is the money going? What’s it for? Nobody knows. It’s all this big secret … It’s a scandal.”

Kemper’s seven year deal is unique, to say the least. At every other publicly managed course, the city leases control of the pro shops and clubhouses to outside companies. In exchange for a flat fee paid into city coffers, those companies bear all the risk, and reap most of the rewards, for operating the facilities. But at Harding, the city pays the Illinois-based Kemper $192,000 a year, regardless of their performance, to act as an on-site manager, plus a 5% “incentive fee” for gross revenues over $6 million. But those guaranteed sums are only the beginning of the bill.

Kemper hires staff, rents golf carts, and orders the supplies to be sold in the pro shop and the clubhouse. Unlike the city’s lease arrangements at other courses, though, they bear none of the risk. They simply invoice the city for their expenses and the city signs the tab. And the tab just keeps growing.

One public golf insider who declined to be identified for fear of retribution grumbled, “They’ve got this enormous staff there, managers and assistant managers and assistants to assistants of managers. It’s a golf course, not a hospital! I hear the payroll for the restaurant alone is like $600,000. And it’s only open for one shift a day … They stock their pro shop with top of the line gear that just sits there. If they order 20 Arnold Palmer shirts and only sell two, who cares? The city still pays for all 20.”

In an email to the Guardian, Kemper’s general manager at Harding, Steve Argo, told us they have between 60 and 80 employees, depending on the season. Citing this seasonal variability and “competitive reasons,” he did not break those numbers down between management and non-management, as we requested.

Both Argo and Katharine Petrucione, Rec and Parks’ Chief Financial Officer, attributed much of the added costs at Harding to the opening of a new “permanent clubhouse” there in late 2005. Argo said the increased revenues from the clubhouse have “more than covered the city’s increase in payments.” But while Rec and Parks’ ledgers do show that concessions revenues at Harding and Fleming have gone up since the clubhouse opened, the increase in Kemper’s bill has gone up nearly as much. All in all, with Kemper’s multimillion dollar deal and loan payments for the over-budget remodel at the course, accounts still put the course at more $500,000 dollars in the red – even though a round of golf there now costs well over $100 and Kemper is still making a handsome profit.

It doesn’t end there. Petrucione said Kemper’s contract actually costs taxpayers even more than meets the eye. Because the company submits monthly and yearly budget projections, as well as reams of invoices and expenses for reimbursement, Rec and Park staffers spend hours examining Kemper’s paperwork and activities – essentially managing the manager. When we asked her for an accounting of how much the Kemper contract costs the city in staff hours for these oversight duties, Petrucione replied, “It definitely requires more time and effort … than a lease agreement [like those at every other course] would.”

During a recent radio interview, Sup. Jake McGoldrick called Rec and Park’s deal with Kemper, “The worst contract I’ve ever seen…We don’t have a golfer problem,” he added. “Golfers are coming out and playing. We have an accountancy problem.”

The golf insider we spoke with echoed McGoldrick’s sentiments, “Business is up like 30% this year, but Kemper’s contract is jeopardizing the whole department … If we redid the greens, tees and fairways [at the other courses besides Harding], just Band-aid stuff like that, we would have the premiere municipal system in the country. But instead they’ve given this cushy deal to a company from Chicago with no connection to San Francisco. It’s so unfair.”

Despite the controversy over Kemper’s all-expenses-paid arrangement, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Rec and Park general manager Yomi Agunbiade, and others at City Hall have been using the deficits largely brought on by Kemper’s contract to push for more private control over the city’s links. In June, the Mayor’s office put forward a plan to outsource not just clubhouse and pro shop management, but all golf operations at the city’s premiere courses, including Harding. The proposal was tabled after several contentious hearings at the Board of Supervisors, but many observers expect that it will make its way back to the Board in the near future.

“In a perfect scenario the city could [manage the courses efficiently] but the city has proven that it doesn’t have the ability to do it,” Supervisor Sean Elsbernd told us back in July. Elsbernd has been one of the most vocal supporters of bringing in private golf management.

But McGoldrick, Killian and other opponents of the idea point out that the city provided quality, inexpensive golf for nearly 100 years. They worry that private managers will find profit in higher greens fees, more part time workers, and lower salaries and less benefits for full time staff. But beyond those concerns, they see the Mayor’s plan as yet another example of publicly owned assets being offered up for private gain.

The courses, McGoldrick told us, are “priceless … we can’t just dump [them] because you’ve got folks from the Mayor’s office and his Rec and Park department who don’t want to be bothered.”

To market

October 11, 2007

What better way to start your day than a trip to the farmers market — the ripe colors, local flavors, and fantastic people-watching give new meaning to dish. Operated by the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market showcases overflowing stalls full of fresh regional produce every Tuesday and Saturday at the eminently cool Ferry Building off the Embarcadero. It’s a veritable Bay Area Eden. Grab your reusable canvas bag and sashay through the thronging crowds in style.

Every year, CUESA spotlights the market’s regional organic goods at a fundraising four-course Sunday dinner prepared by teams of Bay Area chefs. The following mouthwatering recipes made it to the tables at the Sept. 30 event:

SAUTÉED CHARD AND KALE

Recipe by Joseph Boness, Alembic

2 strips bacon, coarsely chopped (you can substitute 2 tablespoons olive oil or unsalted butter)

1–2 shallots, minced (or onion; should total 2 tablespoons)

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup white wine

Salt and pepper to taste

1 bunch kale, center stalks removed, rinsed and drained well, coarsely chopped

1 bunch chard, center stalks removed, rinsed and drained well, coarsely chopped

1 baguette, sliced 1/4–1/2 inch thick, drizzled with olive oil and toasted until golden brown (optional)

1/2 cup goat cheese (optional)

In a large, heavy-bottomed sauté pan over medium heat, cook the bacon until most of the fat is rendered. Add the shallot and sauté in bacon fat until soft.

Add the garlic to pan and then immediately add the vinegar and wine, along with salt and pepper to taste.

Shake pan to combine flavors, turn down heat, and add the kale and chard.

Stir and cook until the greens are just tender. Remove from heat to serving bowl. Serve immediately. Or, if serving as crostini, top each piece of sliced, toasted bread with some of the greens mixture and a dollop of goat cheese. Serve.

RABBIT WITH BALSAMIC VINEGAR WITH A SIDE DISH
OF GREEN BEANS AND CHERRY TOMATOES

Recipe by Rick Hackett, executive chef of MarketBar Restaurant

Yields 4 generous servings

For the rabbit with balsamic vinegar:

4 tablespoons olive oil

5 rabbit legs

3/4 cup white wine

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons capers

1/2 cup black olives

2 anchovy fillets

1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

In a heavy-bottomed pan large enough to hold all of the ingredients, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Sear the rabbit legs until they are nicely browned, working in batches if you need to so as not to crowd them.

Add the wine and balsamic vinegar, scraping the pan to get the browned bits off the bottom. Turn heat down to medium and cook until liquid is reduced to a glaze.

Add the remaining ingredients and simmer over medium to low heat until the rabbit legs are tender, about 1 hour. Serve immediately.

For the green beans and cherry tomatoes:

1/2 lb. pole beans, blanched

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1/2 lb. cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped

Slowly heat the olive oil with the sliced garlic until the garlic turns a golden color. Add the cherry tomatoes and blanched pole beans until warm. Add parsley and serve.

WARREN PEAR SORBET

From Rebecca Courchesne, Frog Hollow Farms

2 lbs. pears, Warren or Comice or Taylor Gold

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)

1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup (or to taste) Tocai Friulano or muscat wine

Peel, core, and cut the pears into quarters. In a saucepan with barely simmering water, heat the pears until soft. (Cooking the pears before pureeing will keep them from oxidizing and will make for a whiter, lighter sorbet.)

Let cool. Puree the pears and the liquid in a food processor. Remove 1/4 cup of the puree and add 1/2 cup sugar in a small saucepan. Stir together completely, and then heat over low flame until the sugar is dissolved. Stir back into the remaining puree and add lemon juice and adjust sugar by adding sugar directly to the base. Add more lemon juice if needed.

Add Tocai or muscat wine. Chill thoroughly, and then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Best to use a soft pear, like a Warren or Comice or Taylor Gold (which is a Comice hybrid). A Tocai will work best here, but a muscat will do also. You could even try a sparkling wine. I recommend something sweet. The Ferry Building wine merchant recommended a Tocai that worked beautifully. Although that particular wine is not available, they or another knowledgeable wine merchant could help you find the perfect match.

MUSCAT GRAPESICLES

Find golden muscat or other sweet muscat wine grapes from the farmers market or from your own or a neighbor’s yard. Make sure they are gold in color, nice and ripe.

Wash, destem, and put in a small shallow container. Freeze (don’t worry — they won’t stick together when frozen).

You can use any grape for this, but the muscats work particularly well. The skin and seeds are a nice foil to the incredible sweetness of the grape and add an earthy texture.

So solid

October 11, 2007

What does it take to put two and two together — and come up with a chair? We caught local artist and craftsman Justin Godar of Godar Furniture (www.godarfurniture.com) in his studio just as he was about to carve some solid white oak into one of his unique custom-made designs, and asked.

SFBG You have a degree in fine arts from UC Santa Cruz. What made you decide to build furniture?

JUSTIN GODAR I just found it agreed more with my personality. I realized I wanted to make something with a function, something more than a thought. When you think about things we need to live, things we need to eat and breathe, art doesn’t usually factor in for most people. That’s the difference for me between design and art — design performs a daily function, and art is farther up on the scale of necessity.

SFBG Your custom-made designs use green materials like water-based finishes, and they sometimes push the "normal furniture" boundaries. Was it easy for you to build a clientele?

JG I get return customers, but it took persistence. I’ve been at it since 2000, so I get a constant stream of business now. I will say this, though: there is a better market for what I do here in the Bay Area than there is in other cities. There’s a lot of consideration given to art and local artists. It’s unique.

SFBG Do you have a favorite thing to build?

JG I usually like whatever I’m working on at the time. I love working in solid wood — walnut and oak. I also love the finishing process, adding the final coat, bringing the piece together. As far as items I prefer most? Cabinets I like the least, I guess. Tables and chairs make me feel more like a craftsman and less like a guy slapping something together.

SFBG How much time do you spend in the studio?

JG I’m in here five to seven days a week, usually between nine and 12 hours a day, but as I’m self-employed, it doesn’t feel like work. There isn’t someone telling me to work faster, what to work on, how to work. I do spend entirely too much time inhaling dust, but it’s what I love to do.

Local media form the Chauncey Bailey Project

October 10, 2007

When journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. was murdered Aug. 2, questions arose as to who could have committed such an act, in broad daylight, and what could have motivated the killing. Shortly after the slaying, police arrested Your Black Muslim Bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard, 19, and charged him with the crime. But deep questions remain, starting with who really called the shots in the killing — and what they were trying to cover up.

In an effort to pick up where Bailey left off, a rare coalition of media rivals and scholastic colleagues — more than two dozen reporters, photographers, and editors from print, broadcast, and electronic media — have formed the Chauncey Bailey Project, an investigative team that will continue and expand on the reporting Bailey was pursuing at the time of his death.

"We as an industry cannot stand for a member of the press to be gunned down in the course of doing his job. That’s a threat to democracy; that’s a threat to journalism," said Dori J. Maynard, president and chief executive officer of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Although several local media outlets have reported on the circumstances that may have led to Bailey’s death and his connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery, this project will delve deeper into his investigative work prior to his death.

The project promises to be the largest communal journalistic endeavor since the Arizona Project was formed 31 years ago in the aftermath of the murder of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles. The Guardian is committing the efforts of award-winning reporter G.W. Schulz and other resources to the project. Our media partners include the Bay Area Black Journalists Association, Bay Area News Group (including the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News), Center for Investigative Reporting, KGO-AM, KQED Public Radio, KTVU-TV, KPIX-TV, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, National Association of Black Journalists, New America Media, New Voices in Independent Journalism, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, San Francisco State University Journalism Department, San Jose State University Journalism Department, and Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California Chapter).

"This project is essential to Oakland and essential to us as journalists who wish to emphasize the point that you can kill the messenger but the message is still going to get through," said Pete Wevurski, executive editor of the Oakland Tribune.

The first stories from the Chauncey Bailey Project will be available at www.sfbg.com. For more information about the project and its collaborators, contact the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education at (510) 891-9202.

Always away

October 10, 2007

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION My social world is divided into two camps: people who use instant messaging and people who don’t. When I start my workday by booting up my computer, I consider myself to have arrived at the office when my IM program comes to life and is suddenly populated by dozens of tiny names and faces. In fact, it’s sometimes hard for me to work with people who aren’t on IM. E-mail just isn’t fast enough. And the telephone is too fast.

I find meetings on the phone frustrating because I can’t multitask easily while talking. Sure, I can check e-mail or browse the Web, but usually the person on the other end of the line notices. All of those awkward pauses between sentences make it obvious that I’m only giving this call 85 percent of my attention. That’s considered rude on the phone, but not so with IM. Sometimes I’ll be exchanging a flurry of messages with a colleague on IM when suddenly she’ll take five minutes to answer a question. And that seems normal. She’s dealing with another task and will get back to me when she can, and we’ll resume where we left off.

Although IM technology has been around for years, I feel like it’s reached a kind of singularity that early users of "chat" would hardly recognize. There’s an etiquette culture that’s grown up around IM, a set of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors that varies across groups of IM users. For example, most of the people I talk to via IM are colleagues. I work from home, so most of my human contact during the day comes via quick exchanges and meetings on IM. Nearly everyone on my IM list has their status set to "away," which is technically supposed to mean they’re not at the keyboard. But in reality most of us set our status to away because we’re at work and don’t want to be disturbed by random people or purely social messages.

That’s why every time I IM somebody who claims to be away, I discover they aren’t. Acknowledging this, we add custom messages to our away flags to tell the truth about our status; "work only pls" is a common message, as is "on deadline do not disturb unless urgent." Other people set their messages to explain where they are: "in a meeting" or "in New York" or "eating lunch." What’s great about the away flag, though, is that it gives you plausible deniability if you don’t want to talk to somebody who has messaged you. After all, you might really be away. Who knows?

For a couple of years Sun Microsystems researcher Nicole Yankelovich has been studying the habits of people like myself who work remotely. What she’s discovered is that people who don’t work in a physical office tend to miss the casual chatter and bonding that happen before meetings or at lunch. These social interactions wind up improving work flow because people come up with good ideas while chatting casually, and brainstorming is easier in an informal environment. IM is how many of us are filling the gap. IM is our office space, where work chatter can become casual chatter. Like a closed office door, the away flag means "Please knock." And once you’re in the office with the person, you can have a pretty interesting talk, even though you’re supposed to be concentrating on your work.

It’s funny how software that was first used primarily as a goof-around, social tool has become a way for people to have business meetings and talk shop.

Other groups of people who IM, however, do it mostly for social reasons. These people are generally flagged "available," and they have vast contact lists that look more like MySpace friend lists than office contact sheets. Occasionally, these social IM users and I have passed in the night, as it were: one of them will casually message me because they don’t consider it weird to approach a stranger on IM to chat. For them, IM is like a giant nightclub or a college campus. Usually my away flag wards these people off, but sometimes it doesn’t, and I have to politely tell them I’m busy. And I frankly refuse to respond to a repeated "Heya wassup?" from anybody whose name is something like SFKitty233. Unless, of course, SFKitty233 happens to be my colleague. Which she just might be.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who is probably messaging somebody on IM right now.

Scavenging’s new spirit

October 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

>>Click here to check out our Style 2007 Guide

It’s a warm September night, and I’m standing in a crowded art gallery in South San Francisco, staring at a metal octopus that moves its tentacles when you press a button. In many ways, it’s like every other reception I’ve been to: a table with snacks and wine, a healthy feeling of snobbery in the air, and a swath of hipsters blocking my view of everything. But as I walk around I notice some differences. The smell of decomposing flesh, the sound of heavy machinery, the walk-in "free shed," dozens of trash cans, and the mounds of refuse on the horizon all suggest that I’m standing in the middle of a landfill. Which, well, I am. It’s the site of the art exhibition "Waste Deep," by Nemo Gould, the San Francisco Dump’s artist in residence. And what’s most striking? I feel completely at home.

After spending most of September with junk collectors, vintage clothing nerds, and art diggers, I’m now completely accustomed to wallowing in trash and noticing freebies. For example, before driving to the SF Dump this evening I ate free baked goods at the X-rated Cake Gallery in SoMa, scrounged through leftovers at an estate sale in Bernal Heights, and knocked back pints of free Pabst at Broken Record in the Excelsior.

Yes, friends, I have become a bona fide freeloader. But like my newfound partners in grime I shun the connotations of the term. I choose instead to see myself as a sort of hip cultural revolutionary, one of the loose band of entrepreneurs and artists I’ve met over the past month who shamelessly revel in their personal gain because, at the end of the day, they know they’re "working" for a good cause. Not only are we getting a lot of cool free shit, but we’re also helping to transform the traditional hippy-dippy recycle-reuse-redistribute ethos into something more refreshing.

The freestyle movement is growing. Freeganism, a ragtag philosophy of cost-free living in a gift economy, has gained some national attention of late — especially in these economically challenging times — and the freegan ethos incubated in San Francisco, where groups like the Diggers gave away food during the ’60s. This city knows a thing or two about priceless give-and-take. And thanks to the freegan types I’ve been hanging out with, I now look at scavenging as an art form, a party, and a necessary lifestyle, one that has more to do with fashion, art, music, booze, and friendly competition than with fighting world hunger, globalization, or the war machine. Oh, most scavengers are concerned with all of that too, but creating awareness (about irresponsible consumption and the effects of wastefulness on the environment and humanity) is the fortunate by-product of the lifestyle, rather than its focus — which is, of course, copping free stuff.

THRIFTY EYE FOR THE HIP GUY

My journey from a life spent paying to consume to one consumed by the pursuit of freebies began two years ago, when I moved into a new building in the Mission. My neighbor was Aaron Schirmer — a reclusive artist who lives in a world of secondhand designer denim, seminew Macintosh computers, and used sound systems — whom I’d occasionally run into on my way to buy cigarettes and Jim Beam. Usually we’d smile and nod. But one day while he sat smoking on the stoop, he flagged me down. "Check out what I found today," he said.

At his side sat a large bag of American Apparel man panties and a crate of old-school electro cassettes. When I asked where they’d come from, he rambled on about free markets, dumpsters, and swap meets. Then he stopped abruptly, fished for the keys to his house, and said, "Here, I’ll show you."

I followed him into a hallway lined with half-finished paintings and strategically cracked mirrors, through a ’50s-style kitchen, and into his living room. In the corner, beneath a dangling gold and green Eames-style lamp, sat a 50-inch color television. His bedroom walls were lined with random bric-a-brac and outsider art, and his couch was a row of velvet-lined theater seats. Schirmer spread his arms and did his best Vanna White. "Here it is," he said. "I found all of this shit on the streets. People leave piles everywhere, and I just roam around all day and pick through them."

I quickly fell into a routine with Schirmer, a retired world-traveling DJ who now spends his days spinning rare records, tending his garden, and scavenging. I would come over to his house after work, crack a beer, and check out his finds, occasionally claiming certain items for myself. We’d then scroll through the Free section on Craigslist to devise a tentative map for the following day’s scavenge. I rarely had time to join him on his daily hunts, but I quickly learned that the free pot is virtually bottomless. And I was hooked.

These days I roam the neighborhood (corporate dumpsters are always a good bet) or scour the Internet anytime I need something. On my most recent search I found a stuffed bunny, a six-foot-tall stack of records, a pair of cowboy boots, and — I shit you not — Sharon Stone’s old couch. But I’m no expert. Anyone can search a Web site, but it takes a true connoisseur, someone like Kelly Malone, to build a business from scavenging.

FREE-MARKET ECONOMY

Malone, cofounder of the Mission Indie Mart, spent 10 years climbing the retail ladder at places like the Gap and Limited until she worked her way up to a glamorous life as a traveling designer. But then tragedy struck — in the form of ovarian cancer and its debilitating treatment process — and she had to quit. After spending the first few days of her indefinite vacation watching television, drinking too much at the Phone Booth, and watching old movies, she decided to revisit an old hobby: scavenging. "I just started over and kept positive," Malone said. "When I wasn’t sick from the chemo, I was trash-picking for cool stuff to sew and reconstruct." Malone began meticulously scouring estate sales, flea markets, and garage sales for that perfect owl clock or a one-of-a-kind sundress. She also got into interior and exterior design, grabbing spare paint and building materials off the streets, then enlisting her friends to help construct a backyard oasis.

Soon, though, Malone’s home had morphed into a retro junk museum. Her backyard was now dotted with old benches, barbecue grills, sculptures, and a sound system. Clothes were spilling out all over the place, and she had enough paint to cover a mansion. It was time to expand.

Malone began taking her stuff down to the flea market in South San Francisco. She set up a booth with music and goodies, offered free beer and hot dogs to friends, and spent whole weekends selling dolled-up vintage goods and making friends with others who did the same. It was there that she struck up a business relationship with Charles Hurbert, a public relations representative at a marketing firm who has a penchant for outsider art and found fashion. Soon Malone and Hurbert combined forces and decided to look beyond sanctioned venues. Malone’s backyard beckoned. The Mission Indie Mart was born.

The first mart went off without a hitch. Malone and Hurbert invited swap meet–interested friends to set up booths in Malone’s backyard. Cheapo flyers were designed, beer was purchased and resold at cost, and reimagined found apparel was offered for sale. It was a thrifty one-off that felt like an illegal rave, and people loved it. Mission District locals swarmed Malone’s backyard and nearly bought up her entire inventory. When she held it again the next month, the mart was even more successful and attracted more people — so many that her landlord threatened to evict her. So Malone sought sponsors and a new venue. The next Mission Indie Mart will be at 12 Galaxies and will feature a set by DJ Lovedust, extremely cheap Stella Artois, and an even bigger collection of vendors.

The mart’s success suggests that this model benefits its founders, who make some income from the event, and attendees, who get cheap goods, as much as it does San Francisco’s thriving community of independent designers, vintage-clothing dealers, and the recycling-scavenging movement in general. Malone and Hurbert are proving again that with a little effort and creativity, free shit can be turned into gold.

FRUGAL PHILANTHROPY

That’s also what Jason Lewis and Monica Hernandez, the founders of SwapSF, are doing at CELLspace — but for them the party and the product are more important than the money.

The couple started SwapSF a few years ago as a way to poach their friends’ unwanted apparel. "I had this friend who owned like a million pairs of limited-edition sneakers that he never wore," Lewis said. "The swap idea started as a way for me to get my hands on some of them." So Hernandez and Lewis, who have been throwing events since they met at a party five years ago, did what came naturally: they drew up a flyer, bought a bunch of cheap beer and pizza, and invited their friends to get down.

The idea has taken off, as I witnessed Sept. 22 when I threw a few shirts, a pair of pants, and some old hats in a bag and pedaled down to Bryant and 18th Street to volunteer at their recent event, the Most Hyperbolically Stupendous Clothing Swap Ever. It was to be a win-win situation: a little time in exchange for first dibs at free clothes. I arrived at CELLspace at 11 a.m. to find a DJ spinning downtempo hip-hop, a handful of kids sorting through bags, and Hernandez, who greeted me with a smile, a name badge, and a beer. I’d envisioned spending a leisurely afternoon sipping beer provided by Trumer Pilsner (the event sponsor) with about a hundred other scavengers, and the day seemed to be turning out that way.

But neither I nor the organizers were quite prepared for the four-hour clusterfuck that awaited us. Soon the volunteers were drowning in a mile-high volcano of pants, shirts, scarves, and underwear. By noon, the event’s official start time, a line wound around 19th Street. At 12:30 p.m. the place was packed. It was as if every hipster in the Mission had gotten wind of an opportunity for free music, beer, and dancing and had gathered up their unwanted clothes to join the party — a party that happened to result in free clothing for charity organizations like A Woman’s Place, the AIDS Emergency Fund, and San Francisco General Hospital.

FREE YOUR MIND

Since starting in Lewis and Hernandez’s apartment and then relocating, the SwapSF event has become so popular that it’s getting hard to handle. Even the duo have been surprised by its sudden and exponential growth. It seems that by using sarcastic graphic design on their flyers, guerrilla promotion techniques (word of mouth, stickers, blogs, etc.), and a refrigerator full of beer, Hernandez and Lewis have tapped into a new way to market charity events to a community of self-obsessed hipsters. Like Malone, the SwapSF duo see something wrong with the way our culture consumes and wastes, but they’re reluctant to jump on a soapbox — or even stand close to one.

Which may be why their parties have been garnering more attention and support than have the more traditional free markets that have been held across the nation for years. Malone and her contemporaries are creating awareness with no pretenses, no preaching, and no Hacky Sack–playing hippies. They are nurturing a world of gift exchange that speaks to a new generation of recyclers who enjoy the selfish thrills of scoring, a good party, and daytime drinking more than — or at least as much as — the satisfaction people find in collective self-sacrifice and charity.

Even San Francisco Dump artist Nemo Gould isn’t making his garbage art purely, or even mostly, as a political statement. "By virtue of it being made out of garbage, my art does make a statement about waste and overconsumption," Gould said. "But that’s not what it’s really about." Although Gould sees the danger in the complex environmental situations that create places like the SF Dump, his desire to work there had more to do with personal satisfaction than with changing the world. The dump’s Artist in Residence Program offers one of the most coveted positions in the city because it guarantees lifelong access to free garbage.

"There’s a scavenger spirit," Gould said. "Whoever has it is compelled to collect. Whatever comes after that is up to the scavenger."

The scavenger spirit is currently creating a subculture. Like skateboarders who view the city’s byways as a concrete playground, the new breed of scavengers looks at the urban environment from a different perspective. In their eyes the streets of San Francisco are aisles in a seven-mile-by-seven-mile warehouse of free shit. Their primary goal is to decorate their homes with one-of-a-kind furniture, dress their bodies in fly gear, and pad their pocketbooks, all while avoiding overdraft charges and, on the side, helping to generate awareness. In their separate and edgy styles, Gould, Malone, Hernandez, Lewis, and Schirmer have managed to turn this spirit into a lifestyle that doesn’t alienate people with its self-righteousness. I mean, everyone wants free shit, right? Who can’t relate to that?

THE (FREE) SHIT LIST

There’s a fine line between scavenging to make a statement and being a straight-up freeloader. Luckily, it’s up to the individual to decide exactly where that line is drawn. Here are some resources for learning more about the score.

FREEGAN.INFO

Information about strategies for sustainable living beyond capitalism; includes freegan hot spots in San Francisco.

freegan.info/?page=SanFrancisco

REALLY, REALLY FREE MARKET

A monthly alternate-economy festival and a really good place to get rid of your old stuff.

www.reallyreallyfree.org

MISSION INDIE MART

Kelly Malone and Charles Hurbert’s unique party take on the freegan ethos.

www.myspace.com/missionindiemart

SWAPSF

Jason Lewis and Monica Hernandez’s fabulous swap bonanza.

www.swapsf.com

MYOPENBAR.COM

A list of every open bar, happy hour, and extremely cheap alcohol event in the city.

sf.myopenbar.com

GOING.COM

A cross between MySpace and Yelp that focuses entirely on events, including a free section featuring happy hours, art openings, and concert ticket giveaways.

www.going.com

SAN FRANCISCO DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Official city site for recycling, disposal, and reuse information.

www.sfenvironment.org

SAN FRANCISCO DUMP

Learn about our city’s unique take on garbage and strategies for recycling.

www.sunsetscavenger.com

SCRAPEDEN SF

An art foundation dedicated to transforming trash into interactive public sculptures.

www.blackrockarts.org/projects/scrapeden-sf

ARTGOODHITLERBAD

Mission Indie Mart cofounder Hurbert blogs his best scavenger finds.

www.artgoodhitlerbad.com

NEMO GOULD

The latest artist in residence at the SF Dump has been making cool stuff from garbage for years.

www.nemomatic.com

Hurt!

October 9, 2007

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have recently discovered that I’m one of those lucky women who can ejaculate. Hooray! Except when it gets really wet and wild, I am plagued by a burning sensation. It isn’t enough to stop the action, but it’s annoying, and makes me think that I’m hurting myself. Could it be that my boyfriend’s super-rough hands are giving me microscopic little cuts? It gets pretty heavy at times. Why is too much of a good thing making me burn?

Love,

On Fire

Dear Fire:

Oh lord, I’m seeing those little wavy lines that Mike Myers used to do with his fingers on Wayne’s World right before the flashback scenes. I’d forgotten all about "Freshenup, the gum that goes … squirt!," a singularly unappealing product heavily promoted when I was in high school, but YouTube, of course, has not (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oWF2bSZjGM). Back then my friend Ted used to wander around pretending to wince in pain and muttering, "The gum that goes … hurt!" under his breath. This was before Ted went manic and wrote 150 songs in one week and ended up on a locked ward, but … oh, sorry, wavy lines. How could you have expected that your perfectly innocent question would cause that sort of reaction in me? I can’t be the only one who’s thought of that squirty gum over the years, though, especially when the topic of female ejaculation comes up, and done some wincing herself. So gross. Squirt! What were they thinking?

Anyway. I think you’ve answered your own question with the mention of super-rough hands. I’m not sure if you meant that he tends to play pretty rough with you or that his hands are literally alligatory, but either way, how can we begin to solve this if he’s roughing you up every time you get down? If it’s really skin roughness, then we (this includes me) are going to have to get comfortable with the idea of our guy getting a little Queer Eye with the self-care products and start using an oily scrub (these can be found in manly scents like eucalyptus or menthol or, I dunno, beer) in the shower and lotion after. A manicure wouldn’t hurt, either. If it’s the former problem and he’s just very grabby or pinchy or punchy, we’re going to have to ask him to cut it out. Of course, if you like it rough (you’d have plenty of company), this is going to be a little bit harder to solve.

If he’s actually tearing you up a little, the main culprit isn’t going to be pressure, it’s going to be friction, so see what happens if you use just a ridiculous amount of lube, preferably the space-age silicone stuff which is so antifriction it’s practically antigravity. This stuff is dangerous: it has magical container-escaping properties and once it’s on your floor it kind of wants to kill you, but it will make his gnarly fingers glide over you like a little swan on a glassy pond. With lily pads. Or it might, anyway. It’s worth a try. So is teaching him how to touch nice.

OK, so that’s why you might be hurt and how to stop it. The next question is why does it sting when you ejaculate and not when you, say, whistle "Dixie"? Well, we know why but nobody wants to talk about it except me, or so it seems sometimes. It’s stinging because the fluid that’s getting in there is a mite acidic, and it’s a mite acidic because it’s pee, sort of. We’ve been over and over this, but I always feel, afresh, like I’m popping the world’s sweetest child’s most favoritest balloon.

The quick version goes something like this: the glands rumored to be responsible for the squirt, the Skene’s glands, which cluster along the outside of the urethra, are too tiny to produce or contain the truly shocking amounts of fluid that some squirters can loose upon the world or their partner’s face. That can be about half a liter of stuff, a water bottle full, so no way. The awkward but so far scientifically supported truth appears to be that the bed-soaking stuff originates in the bladder and is expelled through the urethra, very much like another, more familiar fluid that we make and discard gallons of on a regular basis without giving it anywhere near this much thought. The stuff we’re privileging by calling it ejaculate is not, in fact, identical to the pee we pee when we need to pee. It’s much diluted, basically water, and we still don’t completely understand how a woman who emptied her bladder right before coming to bed can produce so damned much of it so soon after, but it does often contain pee’s signature substances: urea and creatinine. And where there’s pee and abraded skin, there’s a stinging sensation.

Try to avoid broken skin. Get your boyfriend in on the effort. It will work, and this will work out.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Port tack

October 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

The Oakland City Council made an unprecedented move toward environmental justice Oct. 2 by appointing Margaret Gordon to the Oakland Port Commission. It is the first time that a community activist, rather than a businessperson or a political insider, has been named to that powerful body.

The action was roughly equivalent to naming Michael Moore to the board of the National Rifle Association. For years Gordon has led an effort to hold the port accountable for poisoning the air in her neighborhood, where the American Lung Association has found that one in every five children suffers from asthma.

Gordon’s nomination, along with that of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers business manager Victor Uno, signals a clear call for reform from Mayor Ron Dellums, who issued a prepared statement commending the council "for recognizing the importance of appointing individuals who are capable of understanding both the economic and the environmental impact of the various Port facilities."

Gordon’s appointment almost didn’t happen. Dellums withdrew his two nominees from consideration at the council’s July 17 meeting after it became clear that Gordon would have trouble winning the necessary votes. Since that time Dellums has lobbied hard for their confirmation and finally saw Uno approved unanimously and Gordon on a 7–1 vote (Councilmember Desley Brooks voted no).

"The mayor has emphatically stood behind Victor and I," Gordon told the Guardian. "He has a vision for the port. He wants it to be efficient, to grow, but not to cost people’s health. The port is supposed to make money, but it’s not supposed to make people sick."

The appointments come at a critical time. The port is now drafting a long-overdue clean-air plan, while state regulators are developing stringent clean-air requirements for ports. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, a national consortium of labor and environmental activists, is also advancing a proposal at Oakland and other US ports that would radically change the way port trucking is structured.

The two appointees, who begin serving immediately, will play key roles in shaping the port’s proposal. The Port Commission could vote on a final comprehensive clean-air plan as early as December. Doug Bloch, coordinator for the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, told us he is "cautiously optimistic" that the seven-member Port Commission will approve his group’s proposal. "We have two votes now," he said.

The coalition seeks to clean the air by improving the sweatshoplike working conditions of port truckers, who often drive the cheapest, most polluting trucks. Its plan calls on the port to require trucking companies to maintain vehicles and hire truckers as employees. The California Trucking Association and the Pacific Maritime Shipping Association have aggressively opposed the plan, which could herald the return of the Teamsters Union. Since they are classified as independent contractors, it is illegal for truckers to join a union. As employees, they would receive benefits and have the option to organize (see "Importing Injustice," 7/18/07).

Uno told us, "Truckers becoming employees is definitely part of the solution. It is clearly one of the ways to address this issue." Asked in July if he thought a proposal could succeed without requiring trucking companies to hire truckers as employees, he said, "I do not see how that is possible, given the lack of regulations in the trucking industry. It’s a dog-eat-dog world among independent truckers."

Gordon told us she is in favor of any plan that improves air quality and truckers’ lives but is not convinced that making them employees is the only way. "All I’m worried about is that small businesses, unions, and community health organizations can work together," she said. "We have to be unified in resolving these issues."

Ray King, general manager of marine operations at the port, told the Guardian that a tentative outline of the port’s plan will be posted to its Web site in the coming weeks, after which it will accept public comments for 30 days.

City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente had been Gordon’s key opposition in July. He told the Oakland Tribune that an appointee was needed "who understands [the port’s] need to be competitive, to be efficient, and to grow. The fact is, we have the responsibility for balance." But at the Oct. 2 meeting, he called Gordon "a great asset" and said her appointment will lead to "the creation of a balanced Port Commission."

For the past year and half Gordon has sat on the cabinet-level working group appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that developed allocation guidelines and detailed clean-air requirements for more than $3 billion in Proposition 1B bond funds approved by California voters last year for port expansion and environmental mitigation projects. Port spokesperson Libby Schaaf told the Guardian that its success in securing these funds will play a central role in its expansion plans.

Councilmember Brooks, the sole vote against Gordon, worries that the plan could hurt the port’s fiscal viability. "This is the fourth-largest port in the US. This is the economic engine of the region. We need to ensure that we move in a direction where it will continue to grow. The port is getting ready to see some very tight times," she said at the meeting. "I told the mayor I hope he proves me wrong with this appointment."

The cold case of Brad Will

October 9, 2007

OPINION Oct. 27 marks the first anniversary of the assassination of New York Indymedia photojournalist Brad Will by police in Oaxaca, Mexico, under the thumb of a corrupt and tyrannical governor.

Will was gunned down just outside Oaxaca City while filming a pitched battle between supporters of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and members of the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO). Will, 36 at the time of the killing, was the only American among 26 victims shot by Ruiz’s police and paramilitary operatives during protests in that state in 2006. No one has been held accountable for any of these murders.

A year after Will’s death, those who killed him are walking the streets. No charges have been filed against them, despite graphic evidence of their culpability. Will, true to his profession, never let go of his camera; he inadvertently filmed his murder, and photos of five cops firing their weapons at him appeared in major Mexican newspapers the day after the killing.

Indeed, the Guardian and 25 other member newspapers of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies published a startling photograph of his killers on their front pages Aug. 8 along with a 5,000-word investigative report I wrote probing the circumstances of the independent journalist’s death.

Yet although there have been repeated public denunciations of the killing by such international human rights watchdogs as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, neither the Mexican government nor, more pertinently, the US State Department has demanded justice for Will. The case now molders in the cold-case file, and despite street protests on both sides of the border, a barrage of e-mails to both governments demanding a thorough investigation of the murder, and even a visit to Oaxaca by his bereaved family, no authority has been animated to revisit this travesty.

The failure of the US government to demand accountability from Mexican president Felipe Calderón and Governor Ruiz is appalling. During the past year the US embassy in Mexico City under the direction of George W. Bush crony Tony Garza has been conspicuously silent about Will’s killing. In fact, the embassy’s only response to this murder since last Oct. 27 has been to warn American tourists about visiting Oaxaca.

The night Will was killed, Garza used the opportunity to condemn the popular movement in Oaxaca, thereby green-lighting then–Mexican president Vicente Fox to send in federal troops to crush the rebellion.

Will was one of 20 journalists working in Mexico to have disappeared or been killed since 2000. According to a count kept by Reporters Without Borders, 81 journalists were killed worldwide in 2006. Murdering the messenger continues to be the modus operandi of repressive governments and their security forces.

Will did not work for the New York Times. He was an independent voice on the front line of social protest in Latin America, and he paid a terrible price for his valiant and necessary reportage. In Mexico and elsewhere, when those who work for social change are so martyred, we do not concede their deaths, because their work is always with us. A year after his as-yet unresolved murder, Will is still present.

"Brad Will, presente!"

John Ross

John Ross has been the Guardian‘s correspondent in Mexico for the past 22 years.

The unexpected altar

October 9, 2007

This year’s SomArts’ Day of the Dead installation includes one very unexpected altar. Jack Davis has died, and the remembrances are flowing in from all over the city and the world.

Most people knew Jack as a pivotal contributor to every important cultural scene in San Francisco, whether established or underground. But this is not the Jack Davis that I knew. My Jack Davis was a neighbor, mentor, friend and my captain at the Mission Creek Harbor Association (MCHA), the community of boaters down by the ballpark. He was perhaps less famous than the bad-boy political consultant who shared his name, but he was my political consultant. He never saw me without giving me a recommendation for what the national Democrats ought to do to win an election or, more profoundly, to change our democracy for the better.

Jack was my mentor at MCHA; he was the president for many of my years of residence. He conducted our monthly governing town-hall meetings with respect, efficiency and effectiveness. He forged the kind of consensus where each contributing member believed the final product to be his or her own. He would always discern the essential, and intuitively lead to the right course. No important project at the creek was ever done without his vision and hand.

He taught me how to deal with bureaucracy, to go with the flow. The only way to fight the immovable objectifier is to make her right and then lead him in your direction. The world of permits and inspectors is best negotiated with a Jack-like attitude of making them understand that the way you want to do something is exactly what they insist you do, never fighting, always agreeing — and then doing what you want.

Three years ago, when the home I share with Sean and Jasper sank into the creek, Jack presided over the raising and the salvage from a chair he set up on the shore. Like the captain on the bridge, he sat for hours and considered angles and depths, changes over time. He offered, rejected, revised and reviewed strategies for bringing her up from the bottom, and devised the successful one. The night she was raised, his daughter Sara and her partner Shawn bought over a vase of flowers, a ray of hope and beauty in the midst of all the destruction. Then on Sunday, Jack organized the cleanup and salvage of what was left of our belongings, an effort that my depression would never have let me put together.

It was that day he taught me how to teach. First you do a thing yourself. Then you figure out how to do it best. Finally, you show the way to someone else.

Once, I asked Jack for a recommendation for a small public address system that I wanted to buy. Two days later a set of web addresses arrived by e-mail with comments about each of three appropriate possibilities and two days after that, I was driven to Hayward for a demonstration and analysis of the unit he thought was best. Jack was a master of advice; somehow I thought I had made the decision.

Architect, designer, builder or consultant on many of the homes floating in Mission Creek, Jack moved into his last project just a few months ago. With his family, he built a boat that would house three generations on three levels. Like so much of his life, his home was a work in progress; the living was the finishing. In a day where the young move away from the old, Jack, Sara, Shawn, Olivia and Arthur formed a very traditional family unit with a very modern cast.

Jack was a classical renaissance man with his feet firmly planted in the future. He was an unsung hero of his many worlds. To paraphrase Malherbe, in his honor will the angels stand.

Philip De Andrade owns Goat Hill Pizza in Potrero Hill and is a longtime small-business and neighborhood activist.

Jack Davis, 1940-2007

October 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

Jack Davis was a relentless and often unheralded advocate for underfunded, outflanked, and ignored artists, community groups, social movements, and others shunted aside by mainstream venues and the art establishment.

Davis died Sept. 23 at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia from injuries sustained in a car accident. He was born Nov. 16, 1940, in Phoenix, Ariz., and came to California to attend the University of Santa Clara and San Francisco State University in the late 1950s and ’60s. He studied theater arts in Northern California, then was one of the directors and founding actors of the South Coast Repertory in Orange County. He married Judith Watson and returned to San Francisco in 1968.

Well known in the underground art world that he helped pioneer, Davis was a pivotal figure in the growth and public awareness of hundreds of uniquely San Francisco creative projects. For nearly 20 years he was director of the SomArts Cultural Center, which provides classrooms and work space for community-based programs and theater and gallery access to nascent and established artists.

But his contributions went far beyond SomArts. He and Rene Yáñez helped found CELLspace, a unique community and cultural center in the Mission. Davis was an early supporter of Burning Man and hosted its parties, meetings, and large-scale events at SomArts. He also provided technical support and counsel for the Day of the Dead and other San Francisco street events.

Under his leadership SomArts hosted myriad edgy and unconventional troupes and shows. Davis hosted early events by Survival Research Laboratories, which essentially created the machine-and-fire art scene that is now renowned around the world. Davis would often need to run interference with the Fire Department and other authorities who were concerned about the SRL’s seemingly dangerous experimentation.

Davis assisted in the evolution of that scene at every step, recently providing support services so the Flaming Lotus Girls could bring their massive Serpent Mother project to the "Robodock" festival in Amsterdam last month. Other SomArts projects Davis facilitated include the offbeat Naughty Santa’s Black Market, the Queer Arts Festival, Balinese shadow theater, DadaFest, the SF Electronic Music Festival, and the SF Indie Fest.

Davis also helped win national recognition for the alt-art movement by working with Eric Val Reuther, a panelist for and consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts, to bring many worthwhile (and underfunded) groups to the attention of the NEA. Davis also cofounded the Neighborhood Arts Program National Organizing Committee and helped set up its West Coast office in San Francisco.

Among the community-based groups Davis helped establish were the Bayview Opera House, the Native American Cultural Center, the Mission Cultural Center, and the Western Addition Cultural Center. He helped create a theater at Lone Mountain College, was director of Intersection for the Arts, and organized the San Francisco Blues Festival with Tom Mazzolini. In the summer Davis and his son Hayden and their friend Ernie Rivera built stages and performance areas for street fairs and other events.

As director of Intersection for the Arts, Davis hosted many unknown performers who went on to acclaim in the larger world of theater, including Diane di Prima, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Carroll, Ntozake Shange, Bill Irwin, Paul Dresher, and Rinde Eckert. Other groups Davis supported include the SF Mime Troupe, the Farm, the Pickle Family Circus, Make a Circus, and Dance Mission. Davis and George Coates were cofounders in the 1980s of the San Francisco International Theater Festival, which brought the early work of Spaulding Grey and others to the public’s attention.

"Jack was unflappable — nothing threw him," Coates once told me.

Davis lived on a houseboat — one of three he built over the years — with his daughter, Sarah, and his son-in-law, Shawn Lytle, in Mission Creek in San Francisco’s China Basin. As the longtime president of the Mission Creek Harbor Association, Davis fought developers and bureaucrats in a never-ending battle for the right of an organic, human-scale community to simply exist in this city. Many a weekend afternoon Davis could be found tinkering away on his or perhaps one of his neighbors’ boats. Due in great part to Davis’s efforts, Mission Creek remains one of San Francisco’s garden spots, even while surrounded by new development.

Davis was seen as a Buddha-like figure in the often-fractious world of community arts and politics. He was a bear of a man who exuded a preternatural calm. Composer, producer, and photographer Doug McKechnie noted once after a particularly rough MCHA meeting, "I was in awe of his ability to get things done with such grace, style, and simplicity. He could come into a crowd of bickering people, and they listened."

Davis was also instrumental in rejuvenating the Bay View Boat Club. "One day in 1984, Jack called me up and said, ‘Meet me at the Bay View Boat Club,’>" McKechnie said. "He showed me around the place and said, ‘I think this place has tremendous potential. Let’s join and see what we can do.’ Jack talked the club into having a special, one-year membership drive that allowed people who didn’t have a boat to join. We called everyone we knew, and before you could say ‘Bottle of beer’ the club had 200 new members, all of whom eventually got boats. Jack was elected commodore two years later and set the model for what is still one of the most astonishing, real, funky places in the world."

Davis is survived by his wife, Noriko Tanaka; ex-wife, Judith Davis; daughter, Sarah Coseby Davis; son-in-law, Shawn Lytle; son Arthur Fumiko Davis; daughter-in-law, Tesa Davis; grandchildren, Jordan Alexander Davis, Jacquelyn Rae Davis, and Olivia Davis Lytle; brother, Bill Davis; sister, Lynn Davis; and cousins, Patty Costello, Martha de la Cruz, and Amy de la Cruz. Jack’s mother, Jean Davis Mueller, age 94, resides in Scottsdale, Ariz. His son Hayden Carlos Davis died in 1999.

A celebration of Jack Davis’s life will be held Nov. 18 at the SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF, from 3 to 8 p.m. The family is establishing a scholarship fund for Arthur Davis. For information visit www.somarts.org.

Jack Davis will be deeply missed by all who were touched by his calm, generosity, and soothing presence over his 40-year involvement in Bay Area arts. 2

Mike Noland and Charlie Gadeken contributed to this report.

The price of the sweeps

October 9, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

The number of homeless individuals slapped with quality-of-life citations and the cost to the city of processing those citations reached new highs in the past 14 months, according to a study released by Religious Witness with Homeless People. San Francisco taxpayers have paid more than $2 million for more than 15,000 citations issued to people for crimes committed because they have no place to live.

"The quality-of-life citation … begins an extremely expensive process," said Michael Bien, a lawyer on the steering committee of Religious Witness, an interfaith activist group started in 1993 by Sister Bernie Galvin.

The study, released at an Oct. 4 press conference, was based on documents provided by various city departments. The authors collated the costs from the initial ticket issued by a cop through the entire court process, including the new price of prosecution by the District Attorney’s Office (see "The Crime of Being Homeless," 10/3/07).

The results are an update of a similar survey conducted last year (see "Homeless Disconnect," 9/5/06). Collectively, the two studies found that a total of 46,684 citations have been issued to homeless people, at a cost of more than $7.8 million, since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office.

But the mayor might not want you to know that. While Religious Witness was unveiling the study at a press conference in the South Light Court of City Hall, the mayor was hosting a simultaneous event about his heavily promoted Care Not Cash program, which provides homeless people with services and housing instead of the money they once received through the County Adult Assistance Program.

"What really bothers me," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told the crowd gathered to hear Religious Witness, "is that we learn at the last minute that Mayor Newsom decides to have a press conference at the exact same time. To me, that couldn’t be more base and exhibitive of bad form … to try and upstage a press conference like this." He said the mayor’s administration should be working with organizations like Religious Witness, not competing against them.

NEWSOM WON’T MEET

Galvin expressed dismay that the mayor chose not to attend, on top of scheduling a competing press conference on the issue of homelessness. "We’ve never had a press conference where we didn’t have full press coverage," Galvin said.

"We’ve been trying to meet with Mayor Newsom since the day he took office," Bien said. "He hasn’t even given us the dignity of a response."

Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard, said he knew nothing about the event until he returned from his boss’s fete at the Pierre Hotel, a single-room-occupancy hotel on Jones Street that houses some Care Not Cash recipients. He denied any intention to detract attention from Religious Witness’s study. "I chose to do this a couple of weeks ago. There’s no deep, dark conspiracy," Ballard said. The day was chosen to announce that Care Not Cash had "reached a significant milestone of housing over 2,000 formerly homeless individuals," according to a press release.

Actually, the Care Not Cash program exceeded the 2,000 mark in August, according to statistics posted on the mayor’s Web site.

This is not the first time the mayor has scheduled a competing press conference. In June, on the same day the Board of Supervisors passed the city’s Community Choice Aggregation plan for more city-owned renewable energy, the mayor announced a new partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric Co., to study tidal power (see "Turning the Tides," 6/27/07).

Religious Witness chose Oct. 4 to release the study results because it’s the Feast of St. Francis, a day celebrating the city’s patron saint, "a man known to have enormous compassion," Father Louie Vitale explained. "Does the mayor have compassion fatigue?" he wondered aloud.

The decisions about where a city spends money speak volumes about its values. "Every budget is a moral document," said John Fitzgerald, who enumerated many other uses to which the $2 million could have gone, from placing 1,028 people in three-month residential drug treatment to five new drop-in mental health clinics, 157 new caseworkers, or 10,230 preventable evictions.

THE NEW MATRIX

Sup. Chris Daly, who attended but did not sponsor the Religious Witness press conference, said, "Not only is the use of police to target homeless people uncompassionate and inhumane, but it’s also ineffective." He recalled the first Religious Witness press conference, which denounced then-mayor Frank Jordan’s Matrix program, which teamed police officers with social workers to remove homeless people from Union Square and later Golden Gate Park. That program was deemed a failure because it criminalized homeless people and alienated them from helpful services by teaming outreach workers with law enforcement.

"We’re repeating a policy that we know is a failure," Daly said. "It’s a complete lack of compassion."

Recently Daly made public a memo he obtained from the mayor’s office through a public records request. The document outlined a new "downtown outreach plan," similar in sound and structure to Jordan’s Matrix. In a Sept. 28 Weekly Report to Newsom’s chief of staff, Phil Ginsburg, deputy chief of staff Julian Potter wrote, "The pilot program includes three separate teams of officers and social service staff that work a 15-block area" in two separate shifts patrolling the SoMa district. "In each of the three teams an officer will work in tandem with two social service representatives. Any person committing a crime (littering, encampment, trespassing, urinating, defecating, dumping, blocking sidewalk, intoxication, etc.) will be asked to cease the behavior and enter into services. If the individual resists services the officer will issue a citation."

Though it’s reminiscent of the approach that Jordan advocated, both the Operation Outreach team, made of police officers who typically interface with homeless people, and the Homeless Outreach Team, operated by the Department of Human Services, have denied they would accept the approach as Potter penned it.

"I have to be very emphatic," said Dr. Rajesh Parekh, director of HOT. "We are not going to be teamed up with police officers." Though police officers often refer HOT to specific people, he said recent news reports are inaccurate and "in the interest of our clients we’ve never done shoulder-to-shoulder work."

Lt. David Lazar, who heads the San Francisco Police Department’s Operation Outreach, agreed that his officers won’t walk in lockstep with the doctors and social workers who are offering services. But the line can get a little fuzzy: "We’re there at the same time, but we’re not necessarily together," he said. "We’re separate in our approach."

"Basically what the memo is proposing is illegally arresting people," Jenny Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told us.

Under state law, people can’t be taken into custody for infractions like urination and littering. But camping illegally can be considered a misdemeanor, and a citation could eventually lead to an arrest and a jury trial. Prosecuting and imprisoning people is far more expensive than providing shelter.

While some see the coupling of enforcement with services as a way to encourage more people to get help, others contend it’s not a simple equation.

"I think some people are not always able to say yes the first time we do outreach with them," Parekh said. "I’m hoping that as time goes on we’ll be able to persuade them. It’s an ongoing process. It’s not a one-time thing." He said more than half of the help offered is accepted in some form, but it can take as many as 20 attempts to win over what amounts to a small number of people who require persuasion.

Representatives from the Coalition on Homelessness on Oct. 4 witnessed the first of the SoMa sweeps, or "displacements," as they’re more kindly called, and confirmed that the cops and service providers had some distance between them.

"That’s what they did during the first month of Matrix," Daly said to the Guardian. "That will change over time."

In the meantime, the supervisor has reintroduced a $5 million allocation for supportive housing for homeless people that was passed by the board last spring but defunded by Newsom.

Green City: Plugging into what’s next

October 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Hybrid cars — those that run on a combination of gasoline and electricity — are all the rage among drivers looking to go green. But imagine a car that could drive 100 miles on one gallon of gas. That’s what a hybrid could get if converted into a plug-in version, something Bay Area residents are starting to do themselves, filling a void left by the auto industry.

The California Car Initiative (a.k.a. CalCars) is on a mission to make plug-in hybrid electric vehicles widely available. In collaboration with organizations like Plug-In Partners and Plug-In Bay Area, CalCars is on a mission to persuade carmakers to mass-produce plug-in hybrid vehicles. The technology already exists, allowing our cars to be much more fuel efficient.

The first prototype PHEV was created by CalCars in 2004. This Palo Alto nonprofit converted a Toyota Prius into a Prius+, a plug-in hybrid able to travel more than 100 miles using only one gallon of fuel.

A PHEV is essentially a hybrid that has additional battery capacity and can be recharged from a household 120-volt electrical outlet. CalCars promotional materials explain the way a plug-in hybrid works: "It’s like having a second fuel tank that you always use first — only you fill up at home, from a regular outlet, at an equivalent cost of under $1 per gallon."

"Conversions are a strategy, not an end in themselves," Felix Kramer, CalCars founder, told the Guardian. "The game is all about getting hundreds of thousands of PHEVs on the road from carmakers."

Toyota recently announced it will be testing PHEV prototypes this fall in Japan, Europe, and the United States. General Motors has also announced it is working on a plug-in hybrid called the Volt, to be publicly released in 2010. A handful of other car companies have expressed their intention to produce PHEVs but haven’t given release dates.

Public support by municipalities — including San Francisco, which passed a resolution to support PHEVs in 2006 — is also putting pressure on car manufacturers. Until plug-in hybrids are put on the market, PHEV advocates are keeping the pressure on. CalCars has posted its Prius conversion method on EAA-PHEV.org, a wiki dedicated to discussing and documenting plug-in hybrid conversions.

The step-by-step instructions are continually being improved, part of the beauty of open-source material. Only 2004 or newer Priuses are capable of being converted with this process. And for now, only do-it-yourselfers who are "comfortable around high-voltage batteries and automotive workshops" should attempt to convert their cars.

One such person is Daniel Sherwood, an electrical engineer living in Berkeley. He is in the process of converting his Prius into a plug-in hybrid using CalCars’ open-source instructions.

"In a regular hybrid car, I couldn’t go two blocks without using gas," he told us. "With this conversion, I’ll be able to drive about 12 miles using only electricity." When he needs to drive longer distances or needs to drive faster than the 35 miles per hour allowed by the battery-only power, the gas engine will kick in.

Darren Overby, who operates a hostel in San Francisco (and has previously worked as an electrical technician), is also in the process of converting his Prius. He is thrilled at the prospect of owning a vehicle that relies mostly on electricity. "Electricity is the only alternative fuel that is both sustainable and scalable. It could actually grow to meet the needs of everyone in the country. "

Plug-In Supply of Petaluma is also creating conversion kits that have all of the necessary components already assembled. Everybody agrees that the conversion process isn’t cheap. But the price of oil — including greenhouse gas emissions and war — makes plug-ins an increasingly attractive option, at least until the car companies get in gear.

"Had it not been for the grassroots effort," Sherwood said, "backyard conversions wouldn’t be possible. Car companies wouldn’t even be thinking about making plug-in hybrids." But they’re thinking about it now.

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Editor’s Notes

-

October 9, 2007
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The Blue Angels buzzed the Castro Street Fair on Oct. 7, one of the planes missing the top of Twin Peaks by what looked like a few feet. And almost nobody seemed to notice.

The roar of the jets couldn’t possibly compete with the energy onstage, where Cookie Dough and the Monster Show were acting out a Wizard of Oz sketch to the sounds of "Boogie Oogie Oogie." I only saw one guy in the crowd even looking up, and he was just kind of shaking his head. Sailors are, of course, always popular in the Castro, but the United States Navy really isn’t.

A former Naval officer I know understands exactly why. She was drummed out years ago; the Naval Investigative Service followed her to a lesbian bar in New Orleans, and suddenly a talented and successful ensign who had just been promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) was tossed ashore, all benefits lost. She can joke about it now, but she’s still pissed.

The crazy thing of it all, she tells me, is that the Navy is "by far the gayest of all the services, and everyone knows it." If even this one branch just gave up the pretense and allowed queers to serve openly, she says, Fleet Week would take on a whole new meaning in San Francisco. But that’s not the only issue with Fleet Week, obviously. Like a lot of people in this town (and much of the queer community), I’m not terribly into the military, and I don’t like turning San Francisco into a giant, expensive recruitment ad. Besides, as we used to say about nuclear weapons, one Blue Angel can ruin your whole day: a few feet lower, a tiny mistake, and that F-A/18 flying toward Twin Peaks loaded with explosive jet fuel could have taken out hundreds of homes, killed thousands of people. It’s not as if it doesn’t happen; twice in the past year members of the Navy’s expert precision flying team have crashed.

There’s also the fact that this is a city overwhelmingly opposed to the war and to military adventurism in general. San Francisco’s idea of supporting the troops is bringing them home and giving them honorable discharges, medical care, and education benefits.

I’m always astonished that more local political leaders don’t just come out and say that. In fact, I’m astonished (although I probably shouldn’t be) that Mayor Gavin Newsom and Rep. Nancy Pelosi act as if Fleet Week is a wonderful San Francisco event, with no mention of the issues involved.

In fact, on June 11, after Sup. Chris Daly tried to ground the Blue Angels, Newsom wrote directly to David Winter, the secretary of the Navy, rolling out the red carpet. "My office and the community could not be more supportive of the Navy and their representatives, the Blue Angels," he wrote.

Nothing from Mr. Same-Sex Marriage about don’t ask, don’t tell. Nothing about the war. Nothing about San Francisco’s long and noble history as a center of the peace movement. Just praise for military might. He’s sounding a lot like Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

And by the way, on the contradictions beat: San Francisco is poised to give a huge, lucrative contract to Clear Channel Communications, one of the worst corporations in the country. Labor leaders are pissed, and they should be. I wonder: If there’s a lot of money to be made selling ads on bus shelters, why doesn’t the city just run the program itself? Why share the profits with the likes of Clear Channel?

Stop the homeless sweeps

-

October 9, 2007
0

EDITORIAL Sister Bernie Galvin and Religious Witness with Homeless People held a press conference Oct. 4 to release some remarkable data: since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office, San Francisco has issued 46,684 citations to homeless people, mostly for what are known as quality-of-life crimes. That’s cost the taxpayers $7.8 million.

Unfortunately, almost no news media showed up — the mayor, it turns out, somehow scheduled his press conference on homelessness at exactly the same time. As Amanda Witherell reports on page 15, Newsom’s staff say it’s all a coincidence — but it reflects how this administration is increasingly treating homeless issues.

Newsom, with the assistance of District Attorney Kamala Harris, is shifting the city back to a model that treats homelessness and poverty as crimes. But years of evidence prove that approach doesn’t work.

Newsom’s plan, outlined in a memo that Sup. Chris Daly made public last week, involves sending a team of social service and outreach workers through the Tenderloin with police officers. Now the cops and the social workers are saying they won’t patrol together, but the message and the impact are the same: people who commit the sorts of offenses that are almost inevitable when you don’t have a place to live — like sleeping on the streets and panhandling — will increasingly be dragged into the criminal justice system.

Frank Jordan, a former police chief, tried that when he was mayor in the early 1990s; he called the program Matrix, and it was an utter failure. The reason is obvious: most homeless people can’t pay the fines for these violations. So either the citation process is a waste of everyone’s time or, if the city pursues the nonpayment and piles on more and more citations, it winds up creating a criminal record for someone who already is going to have trouble finding work. The promise of services implied by the social workers’ involvement in Newsom’s plan means nothing if services aren’t there — and the city still can’t offer, say, substance-abuse treatment on demand or enough housing for all of the people who need it.

Yet despite all the evidence, Harris has now assigned a full-time staffer to do nothing but prosecute these low-level offenses. She and Newsom both say they want to help people use services — but the only service the DA’s Office offers to homeless people who wind up in court is a handout, a single-page list of referrals.

San Francisco has been down this road so many times before that it’s infuriating. Criminalizing homeless people is not only wrong; it’s expensive, inefficient, foolish, and morally offensive. It also clogs the courts and takes the cops even further away from working on serious crimes.

Daly says he’s going to reintroduce his measure allocating an additional $5 million for housing for homeless people. That’s a good move, of course. But the supervisors ought to think about something else: if Harris, Newsom, and the cops want to persist in counterproductive and cruel homeless sweeps, perhaps the supervisors should move to cut funding to those departments by a total of, say, $7.8 million. 2

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