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Pregnant men

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Thomas Beattie is actually not the first man to get pregnant. Almost a decade ago, a San Francisco transgendered man named Matt Rice got pregnant and had a cute son. Several years after that, I met another pregnant transman in San Francisco. He was telling his story, with his wife, at a feminist open mic. So why is Beattie getting all the credit, and why now?

Beattie is the first pregnant man most people will ever meet. He’s the guy in People magazine right now looking preggers and hunky, and the guy who was on The Oprah Winfrey Show last week. And it makes sense that he’s the first wonder of tranny obstetrics medical science to hit the spotlight. He’s a nice, small-town Oregon boy, married for five years to a nice, small-town lady, and his full beard and muscles make it quite obvious that he’s a dude. In other words: he’s not a freak from a freaky city like San Francisco. He is, as they say in the mainstream media, relatable.

And he’s playing his poster boy role perfectly. On Oprah, you could tell he was a friendly, shy person (albeit with a black belt in karate). Visibly nervous, obviously proud as hell of his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter, he didn’t try to make a political statement or lecture anybody about gender binaries being stupid. He had a hard time explaining why he had become a man, too. Often when Oprah asked pointed questions he would shrug and say, "It’s hard to explain." Exactly like a dude to be sort of inarticulate about his own dudeness. So another part of his appeal to the mainstream media is that he fits gender stereotypes.

Plus, he’s the guy every woman wants to marry. Not only is he cute and happy to build things around the house, he’s willing to have your baby for you too. As Beattie’s wife said to Oprah with a grin, "What woman wouldn’t want her husband to get pregnant?"

So we know the answers to the "Why Beattie?" part. Every new minority needs a friendly, relatable poster child: lesbians have Ellen, and I suppose you could say mixed-race people have Barack Obama. The real question is: why now? Or even: can it happen now?

In some ways, those are the same questions people are asking about a possible Obama presidency. Can the majority of people in the United States accept a mixed-race guy in a role previously reserved for white dudes? To return to the issue of Beattie, can the majority accept a man taking on a role (pregnant dad) they’d never contemplated before, except when watching a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi comedy called Junior?

I think they can, but not for the same reasons they might accept Obama. Beattie is not a political creation like Obama — he’s the creation of medical technology, pure and simple. Hormones and surgery made him male. Artificial insemination made him pregnant. There would have been no way to accept Beattie 10 years ago because he literally could not have existed. But contemporary medical technology has given us a chance.

Considering Beattie in that context — as the release version of a new kind of biotech-enabled man — makes it clear why this is happening now.

Of course, social changes have a lot to do with his emergence into the public spotlight. Gender roles are shifting, and it’s often hard to say what it means anymore to be a "real man" or a "real woman." The vast majority of people may have a common-sense definition of masculine and feminine, but even those definitions have changed a lot over the past 50 years.

So maybe medical technology is just now catching up with cultural shifts, or maybe cultural shifts are pushing us to use technologies we’ve had for a while in new gender-blurring ways. All I know is that biotechnology is making theories of gender fluidity concrete, making ideas into flesh. And we’re seeing a pattern that always emerges when we’re right on the edge of accepting a big social change. First, the ideas turn into something real that people can touch — or, in the case of Beattie, talk to. And then comes the next phase. Whatever that may be.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who has been a trannychaser since the second grade.

Play, don’t spray

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OPINION On Aug. 1, 2008, the California Department of Food and Agriculture plans to spray the San Francisco Bay Area from the air with a time-released pesticide in an effort to wipe out the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). There will be continuous spraying every 30 to 90 days for the next two to 10 years. We can’t leave town for the weekend and come back when it’s clear; there will be no "all-clear" to come home to. The CDFA claims that the spray "should be" safe, despite that it has never been independently tested and no environmental studies have been done.

We represent concerned families with children, pets, and loved ones with respiratory ailments. The more we research this proposal, the more upset and opposed we’re becoming. Thus far we’ve learned that the pheromone pesticide, Checkmate OLF-R, is untested, contains known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, and is delivered in time-released microcapsules that can be inhaled and lodged in the lungs, causing respiratory harm.

Here are some of the warnings on the Checkmate label:

KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN…. Harmful if absorbed through the skin. Harmful if inhaled…. IF ON SKIN OR CLOTHING: Take off contaminated clothing. Rinse skin immediately with plenty of water for 15-20 minutes. Call poison control …

The US Department of Agriculture announced emergency funding to combat the LBAM infestation in California, bypassing the normal safety and environmental studies, and asks us to take on faith that aerial spraying is necessary and safe. How many times have we been told something was safe only to hear a big "oops" a few years or decades later? Thalidomide, DDT, Agent Orange…. The most vulnerable populations include fetuses, pregnant women, and children.

Biologists and etymologists agree that aerial spraying will not accomplish the CDFA goal of eradicating the moth. Instead, they encourage focus on containment. Less invasive, integrated pest management solutions for the LBAM exist and are working for other countries such as New Zealand, whose climate and flora are comparable to California’s. Aerial spraying is expensive, outdated, unsustainable, and — ultimately — likely to be unsuccessful.

What is even more alarming is that the LBAM has not proven to be a devastating pest elsewhere. It has not caused crop damage in Hawaii over the past 100 years. Europe has no restrictions against it. According to a report published by horticulturalists Daniel Harder and Jeff Rosendale, the moth rarely penetrates fruit, does not defoliate plants, and at worst causes only cosmetic damage.

We don’t want to be the guinea pigs for this wasteful, thoughtless, and high-risk approach. Do not sit quietly.

Get educated, spread the word, and contact our elected officials to say that we will not stand by and let this happen. Email your supervisor here. Write to Assembly and Senate members here.

We are planning a peaceful "play-in" with children present on Monday, April 28 at 10 a.m. in front of City Hall to show our strength against this immoral and illegal plan. Play, not spray.

Check out these sites to learn more: www.LBAMspray.com and www.stopthespray.com

Nina Gold, Amy Lodato, Lynn Murphy, Patricia Ardziejewski

Nina Gold, Amy Lodato, Lynn Murphy, and Patricia Ardziejewski are members of Play Not Spray, a group opposed to the LBAM spraying.

A less perfect union

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› jesse@sfbg.com

By nearly every measure, the Service Employees International Union has become a juggernaut. As the rest of organized labor has seen its share of the American workforce continue to dwindle, SEIU has brought in some 800,000 new dues-paying members in recent years. With the Democratic Party taking over Congress in 2006, the 1.9 million-member organization, rich with campaign funds, wields enormous political clout, and it will only become more formidable if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama wins the White House in November.

But all is not well inside the labor giant. Andy Stern, the union’s president, has pushed hard for merging and consolidating local chapters into larger operations — and many SEIU members, especially here on the West Coast, say that’s turning the union into a top-down autocracy in which Stern loyalists wield undue influence and meddling officials from Washington, DC squelch dissent.

And now, the Guardian has learned, Stern operatives are using their money and organizing clout in a hard-hitting campaign — not to force an employer to the table or to toss out an anti-union politician, but to discredit another labor leader.

The campaign is part of a bruising power struggle between Stern and dissident local leader Sal Rosselli, who runs the Oakland-based SEIU affiliate United Health Care Workers West. In the past few months, union insiders say, SEIU officials, including a senior assistant to Stern, set up what one leader called a "skunk team" to undermine Rosselli’s efforts at winning key union delegate elections. At one point, the team — which involved a political consulting firm linked to big downtown businesses — discussed an opposition research file compiled on Rosselli by a health-care giant his union was fighting

And leading up to the delegate elections last month, SEIU staffers worked to promote Stern-supporting candidates, possibly in violation of union rules, while actively discouraging other union employees from campaigning. That’s led to a formal complaint alleging improper involvement by Stern’s staff in a local union election.

EMERGING TENSIONS


In 2005, Thomas Dewar went to work as a press secretary at Local 790, formerly SEIU’s biggest San Francisco outlet, which represented approximately 30,000 workers, most of them public employees. Local 790 was among the most politically progressive union shops in the country, supporting left-leaning candidates for office and progressive causes like public power. In early 2007, Andy Stern initiated a merger of 790 with nine other regional locals. The move was part of a larger consolidation in the state that saw the number of California union affiliates reduced by nearly half.

The new Northern California superlocal was dubbed 1021, as in "10 to one." Local 1021 has continued 790’s liberal activism. But right after the merger was finalized, Dewar and other sources told the Guardian, the atmosphere around the union changed for the worse.

"A lot of members had anxiety," Dewar recounted. Most troubling, he said, was the insertion of Stern appointees into leadership positions, including current president Damita Davis-Howard. "Members were upset. They saw co-workers whom they had elected unilaterally removed by a guy in DC and replaced by his handpicked appointments."

Ed Kinchley, a Local 1021 member who was appointed by Stern to the local’s executive board after the consolidation, shared Dewar’s memory of the tensions. "You had 10 different locals with 10 different ways of doing things. It’s difficult to merge all of that. A lot of people who had been elected to leadership positions were removed."

Dewar told us he struggled to adjust to his new working environment. But after his initial misgivings, he said he devoted himself to backing Stern’s vision for the combined local: "We were told over and over that change is hard. So I decided to give it an honest shot." Dewar said he worked to get good press for 1021 and to build Davis-Howard’s profile.

But early this year, tensions between Rosselli and Stern flared — and according to Dewar, top staffers at 1021 began to focus more and more of their attention on the feud.

"They were freaking out about Sal," he said.

Enraged at what he considered International meddling in the affairs of his Oakland-based local, United Healthcare Workers West, Rosselli resigned from SEIU’s executive committee in early February. He also began championing a "Platform for Change" to be voted on at the upcoming SEIU convention in June. Among other things, the Rosselli-backed slate of reforms would give local union outlets more say in proposed mergers and collective bargaining agreements. The platform, if approved, would also scrap the current delegate system for electing International officials and replace it with a one-member, one-vote structure.

According to Dewar’s account and to evidence obtained by the Guardian, top SEIU officials have been working overtime to counter Rosselli — even pushing the boundaries of the union’s own rules and colluding with political consultants who have often opposed organized labor.

‘THE ANTI-CHRIST’


In early March, Dewar said that in early March, Josie Mooney, a former Local 790 president who is now a top assistant to Stern, approached him about joining what she characterized as a "skunk team that Andy and I are putting together." Dewar recalls Mooney telling him that the purpose of the team was to counter Rosselli’s increasing popularity with the rank and file, and to sink Rosselli’s platform for the convention.

Dewar told us that Mooney asked him to join the skunk team during a brunch meeting at the Fog City Diner in early March. An e-mail exchange he shared with us shows that he and Mooney discussed having brunch at the diner on March 1.

Mooney did not return numerous calls for comment and, through an SEIU spokesperson, she declined to speak for this article. But Dewar told us Mooney promised him at the brunch that his assistance in her efforts would win him positive attention from Stern. The team, she reportedly told him, was directly authorized by Stern and "that resources would not be a problem."

Dewar said he vacillated about joining the team, torn about aiding what he considered to be an internal union smear squad. "In 1021, we’re conditioned to think that Sal Rosselli is the anti-Christ," Dewar told us. "But even still, he was still a part of the same union." A March 4 e-mail from Mooney’s SEIU e-mail account to Dewar shows her urging Dewar to make up his mind: "You have to give me your commitment. I am (as we speak) selling you at the highest levels. Don’t blow that :)."

Dewar eventually agreed to join Mooney, Tom DeBruin — an elected vice president of SEIU International — and someone Dewar said Mooney referred to as the team’s "silent partner" for a dinner meeting.

E-mails from Mooney and other attendees show that the meeting took place March 10 at Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland.

Mooney’s "silent partner" turned out to be Mark Mosher, of the enormously successful San Francisco consulting firm, Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter, and Partners (BMWL). John Whitehurst, another of the firm’s partners, also attended the dinner.

BMWL has worked for the SEIU since 2001. But its client roster also included Sutter Health and the Committee on Jobs. Both organizations have less-than-stellar reputations among organized labor. Nurses at 10 Bay Area Sutter hospitals recently walked off the job for a 10-day strike. The Committee on Jobs is one of the largest lobbying organizations for downtown San Francisco business interests and has fought against numerous union causes. Mosher told the Guardian by phone that, as of November of last year, the Committee is no longer a BMWL client.

THE ROSSELLI FILE


Dewar claims Sal Rosselli was the central topic of conversation at the dinner. At one point, he says, the participants discussed an "oppo research" file on Rosselli compiled by Sutter Health. The hospital giant has clashed repeatedly with Rosselli and apparently had sought to dig up dirt on him.

Whitehurst worked for Sutter in the 1990s. His efforts for the hospital chain during a ballot campaign in 1997 earned him a place on the California Labor Federation’s "do not patronize" list.

Mosher confirmed by phone that Rosselli’s file at Sutter did in fact come up at Oliveto that evening. But he said Dewar "baited" him and Whitehurst into discussing it. Furthermore, he said, Whitehurst reported that Rosselli’s file was "clean."

In fact, a March 12, 2008 e-mail from Dewar to Mosher suggests that the team focus on Rosselli’s "hypocrisy" and states, "Have we approached anyone at Sutter re: dirt on Sal? Have we been able to peek into their oppo file?"

Later that day Mosher replied, "John Whitehurst read Sutter’s whole oppo file on Sal in 1997." In a follow-up message, Mosher writes that the file "really supports the idea that he’s not motivated by money."

DeBruin did not return calls for comment. Kami Lloyd, communications coordinator for Sutter, disputed whether the oppo file even existed: "To my knowledge," she told us, "no such file exists at Sutter Health."

Reached for comment, Rosselli reacted angrily to news of the alleged "skunk team" and the fact that a research file on him, compiled by a corporation perceived to be anti-union, was being discussed among SEIU officials. "It’s shocking. It’s treasonous. For Andy Stern to be using our members’ dues money to finance [a smear] campaign against his own members in United Healthcare Workers, it’s fundamentally anti-union."

Mosher defended his firm’s involvement with SEIU. He told us that he and Whitehurst were "not brought on board to do negative things against Sal Rosselli." Instead, he said their mission has been to help tout the union’s accomplishments as it prepares to hold its convention from June 1-4 in Puerto Rico.

SEIU spokesman Andy McDonald echoed Mosher’s description of the firm’s duties. Both Mosher and McDonald brought up the fact that Whitehurst has also worked for Rosselli’s UHW union.

UHW’s Paul Kumar confirmed that Whitehurst is currently "on our payroll" to assist in a dispute against Sutter Health — the very company Whitehurst worked for in the 1990s and the same source that provided him with access to Rosselli’s research file. "These guys [BMWL] claim they are trying to reinvent themselves," Kumar said. "But to be on our payroll and to engage directly in executing a dirty tricks program … is about the most blatant violation of professional ethics I can imagine."

Whitehurst did not return calls for comment.

Dewar claimed he urged Mooney and the other attendees of the March 10 dinner to consider "appropriating" Rosselli’s democratic reforms. "The members would all wildly support it. And that way, if the International co-opted Rosselli’s ideas, then [the internal conflict] really would be about this clash of personalities, Rosselli versus Stern, instead of ideas." According to Dewar, Mosher and Whitehurst were receptive to the proposal to co-opt Rosselli’s initiatives, but that "Josie nixed it."

When we asked Mosher if he remembered this exchange from the meeting, he said his memory was "hazy" and that "a lot was being discussed that night."

Although Dewar was, by his own account, an active participant in the skunk team, he says he started to have second thoughts. The dinner at Oliveto, Dewar said, and the discussion of Sutter’s file on Rosselli, "made me want to take a shower … the cynicism I was exposed to was toxic."

One week later, he sent Mooney an e-mail informing her that, "Today’s my last day at SEIU … the circular firing squads that are now forming in the local and in SEIU nationally have left me jaded, stressed out, and depressed."

SEIU’s McDonald denied that the skunk team exists, or ever existed. He added that "the meeting [at Oliveto] was about talking about how [Mosher] could help SEIU communicate our message … within the context of the misinformation campaign being spread by Sal Rosselli and UHW’s leaders."

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE


The rancor between Rosselli and Stern has reached a boiling point in recent weeks. In compiling this story, we had to wade through reams of documents and endure long expatiations from officials and press flaks about the sins of the other side. Both factions have constructed slick, professional-looking Web sites to question the probity of their rivals, and both have coined kitschy names for their respective policy initiatives. The SEIU has countered Rosselli’s "Platform for Change" with what union leaders call a "Justice for All" platform.

But the internecine struggle may have driven Josie Mooney and other high-level SEIU staffers to do much more than vent about Rosselli or seek dirt on him from political consultants. E-mails obtained by the Guardian suggest that she and other SEIU officials worked to influence an important local delegate election last month — possibly in violation of union rules — and, some union members now allege, in violation of federal law.

Delegates selected in the election will attend the union’s international convention in June and will decide between the Rosselli’s "Change" and Stern’s "Justice" platforms. The outcome of that vote, and others like it, will shape the mammoth labor organization’s future for years to come. And the e-mails appear to show a concerted effort by Mooney and Stern loyalists to ensure that Rosselli’s dissidents don’t stack the convention and push through their set of reforms.

Referring to themselves in the e-mails as the "Salsa Team," SEIU staffers discussed strategy and coordinated campaign activity for the delegate election with high-ranking union officials like Mooney and Damita Davis-Howard, the president of Local 1021, the e-mails show. In a formal complaint, some members charge that these activities violated Local 1021’s Election Rules and Procedures — specifically Rule 18, which states that "while in the performance of their duties, union staff shall remain uninvolved and neutral in relation to candidate endorsements and all election activities."

While Rule 18 does not specifically spell out when union staff can advocate for candidates, other than proscribing such activities "while in performance of their duties," the e-mails in our possession are date- and time-stamped, and at least one was sent during normal business hours. Furthermore, the Guardian has obtained an internal memo from Local 1021 official (and apparent Salsa Team member) Patti Tamura in which she warned union staffers that the phrase "’performance of their duties’ goes beyond [Monday through Friday] and 9-5p."

One Local 1021 official who asked not to be identified told us that Tamura’s memo appeared to be a clear message that staff should stay completely out of the election. "They made it perfectly clear to the lower staff that your employment doesn’t stop [after hours]; you’re still staff. That means you don’t get involved. But now it turns out they themselves were doing it. That’s a double standard … it’s certainly not right."

The messages between Salsa Team members show them actively working to recruit potential delegates sympathetic to Stern’s platform and to aid Davis-Howard in her bid to represent the union at the June convention. One missive, dated Feb. 18, which appears to come from the personal e-mail account of Local 1021 employee Jano Oscherwitz and was sent to what appear to be the personal accounts of Tamura and Mooney, requests that a "message for Damita" be drafted.

A forwarded e-mail from that same day, from Oscherwitz to what appear to be personal e-mail accounts for Tamura, fellow 1021 staffer Gilda Valdez, and "Damita" includes a "Draft Message" with bulleted talking points, apparently for Davis-Howard to use as she "Collect[s] Signatures on Commitment Cards."

"Commitment cards" refers to pledges from union members to support certain delegates.

The e-mails go beyond merely aiding Davis-Howard and other Stern-backed candidates. They also include detailed strategy for opposing Rosselli and countering his message. A March 5 Salsa Team message includes an attached document with several talking points critical of the dissident leader. In the body of the e-mail, SEIU staffer Gilda Valdez advises Davis-Howard, Mooney, 1021 Chief of Staff Marion Steeg, and others to "Memorize the points in talking to folks." Valdez goes on to say in the e-mail that she "will be calling … about your assignments."

Reached for comment, Davis-Howard confirmed that the AOL e-mail account listed as "Damita" was hers. But she claimed no knowledge of the Salsa Team or the messages sent to her. "If you’re saying those e-mails went to my home computer, who knows if I ever even got them?"

Davis-Howard bristled at the suggestion that the Salsa Team’s activities violated union rules. "Are you trying to tell me that I can never campaign? Does it [Rule 18] say that I have to be neutral and uninvolved 24 hours a day?"

Calls to Mooney, Oscherwitz, Valdez, and Tamura were not returned. Through an SEIU spokesman, Mooney declined to comment.

A BAD AFTERTASTE


On April 4, three days after the Guardian first reported on the Salsa Team e-mails on our Web site, Sanchez and several other 1021 officials filed a formal complaint with the union’s election committee. In the complaint, they accuse Davis-Howard and the other team members of vioutf8g Rules 10 and 18 of the union’s election codes. Rule 10 forbids "the use of union and employer funds … to support any candidate."

Local 1021 executive board member and Stern appointee Ed Kinchley authored part of the complaint. According to the text, which was obtained by the Guardian, Kinchley wrote, "While telling other staff that they may be fired for any intervention in this election, Ms. Davis-Howard and the others involved secretly did exactly what they told other staff they were forbidden from doing."

The complaint was signed by 16 Local 1021 officials, including numerous members of the local’s executive board. It called on the election committee to remove Davis-Howard "from the elected Delegate list" and to bar Salsa Team members from attending the convention in June.

The issue also has landed in federal court, where UHW was expected to file against Stern and other SEIU officials, alleging interference in delegate elections.

More cynical sources both inside and outside SEIU told us they believe the Rosselli-Stern feud boils down to one thing: power — either holding onto or expanding it. But labor scholar and former Local 790 member Paul Johnston had a more nuanced perspective.

Johnston, who taught at Yale and, until recently, worked for the Monterey Bay Labor Council, told us he admired both leaders and the work each has done on behalf of the larger union. Calling the current strife "a huge can of worms," he added, "These are questions of principle and there are good ideas on both sides."

Stern’s push to increase the union’s bargaining and political clout through more consolidation, Johnston went on, "has some very positive aspects to it…. In the old days, many of these kind of mergers were done for purely political power. The mergers being conducted today [at Stern’s direction] are primarily strategic, though. But there are some power issues that inevitably arise." On the other hand, he said, Rosselli’s UHW, "is a dynamic organizing union that has [its] own issues."

The 100-yard diet

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Locavorism — the practice of eating only or mostly food raised with a 100-mile distance — has been a hot trend the past couple of years. It’s a concept that makes a lot of sense — even organic food grown hundred or thousands of miles away can hardly be considered sustainable once you figure in the resources used to ship it.

But a committed breed of urban farmers is challenging even the 100-mile definition of local food. These folks are cultivating their own cornucopia in their backyards and community garden plots, pruning their own fruit trees, raising their own chickens….

Hold on a minute. Chickens? In the city?

It’s true. Not only is it possible to raise your own small brood (four or less) in San Francisco, but it’s less labor intensive and materially more rewarding than caring for your household pets. Do you need to take a chicken out for walks? No. Does your Chihuahua lay eggs? No.

And you can expect to reap more than just eggs from your new feathered friends. As Walter Parenteau of the Panhandle puts it, "Chickens fill an important spot in the cycle of a sustainable backyard." From their nitrogen-rich manure (an excellent catalyst for compost) to their enthusiasm for pest control, chickens earn their keep — even without the dozen eggs a week you’ll get from each pair of first-year layers.

A major issue for raising chickens in your backyard is space. In San Francisco, the city’s Department of Public Health requires that chicken coops be situated at least 20 feet from all buildings — which rules out keeping chickens on your patio or in your living room. Chickens also need space to thrive in: their run should ideally provide a minimum of four square feet per chicken and include a predator-proof covering of chicken wire or nonmetallic "poultry netting," which also will prevent escapees (contrary to popular belief, chickens can fly, albeit clumsily and infrequently).

A fully enclosed chicken coop built of sturdier materials — plywood or bamboo — is also necessary. Interior nesting boxes should be about one square big foot — just large enough for one chicken. For cleanliness and insulation, a thick layer of straw or hay should be scattered over all the surfaces and changed every couple of months. The old, excrement-laden material can then be composted immediately.

The other main consideration for urban chickens is protection from predators.

"We never saw raccoons in our garden until they discovered we had chickens," says Walter, a San Francisco chicken farmer. "But when they did, we saw them in there every night for three weeks." The unwelcome visitors’ persistence finally paid off when the coop was left unlocked, and the coons made off with one of two hens.

Brian W., who raised chickens for 10 years in the Bayview District, also cites hawks as a major threat to chickens living in uncovered runs, and says that rats are attracted to unclean or unsupervised coops.

"You have to think hard about how you’re going to shelter your chickens from predators," agrees Paul Glowaski, who teaches workshops on raising urban poultry at SF’s Garden for the Environment. "You might need to get creative with your space."

These considerations aside, city-dwelling chicken farmers remain overwhelmingly positive about their experiences. Inexpensive to feed (kitchen scraps, garden snails, and cracked corn play the biggest dietary roles) and content, for the most part, with entertaining themselves, backyard birds provide a gentle gateway experience for novices to animal husbandry. They offer benefits to the ecology of their environment, and help restore a connection to the food production chain. Chickens are the missing link to perfecting what Novella Carpenter of Oakland calls "the 100-yard diet." Even as a hobby, raising chickens can impart an irresistible element of eco-chic to their respective owners.

"At the end of the day, you get to be the ‘guy with chickens in his backyard,’ " Walter says. "And that can be a lot of fun."

A big step for public services

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EDITORIAL The battle against privatization of public resources took a big step forward this week when Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced a measure to create a Public Services Advisory Board to monitor what he calls the creeping takeover of city government by private outfits.

The new agency would monitor outsourcing of public services and advise the supervisors on whether it makes fiscal and policy sense to turn city programs over to businesses and nonprofits.

It’s also a chance to push forward on public power, the disaster at the zoo, the move to privatize the golf courses and some parks, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to hand the city’s information technology infrastructure over to private companies, and the Presidio sellout.

The legislation is the first public effort of a new coalition called San Francisco Commons. The group includes labor, public power, neighborhood groups, and environmental activists and was formed to address the growing problem of the loss of public sector services. It’s a crucial new addition to the city’s political scene: the first organization specifically established to protect public services and public property.

The case against privatization is clear. Private entities aren’t required to make their finances public (even if they’re doing public service work with public money). And companies doing work on city contracts are motivated by profits, sometimes at the expense of the public interest. Typically, when private operators take over public services, the prices go up, worker pay goes down, and the quality of the delivery tanks. Just look at the Presidio, a national park that’s been turned into a private real estate development, or the zoo, where privatization has led to misspent funds, poor conditions for animals, and a tragic tiger escape. Or look at Edison School, the failed experiment in education privatization in San Francisco.

San Francisco ought to be in the forefront of the antiprivatization battle nationwide, and this new group and legislation is a good first step. The agenda for the new advisory board is extensive: the panel needs to look at every large and small privatization move at City Hall. It needs to evaluate and report to the supervisors on the flaws in the mayor’s schemes. It also needs to look forward actively at ways the city can bring more essential services under public control. That includes moving forward on community choice aggregation and then developing a plan to create a full-scale, citywide public power system. Public broadband service ought to be on the agenda, too.

The supervisors should approve Mirkarimi’s bill, and the sooner the better, before Newsom finds some more of San Francisco to put on the block.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Everybody knows the Democratic Party’s superdelegate problem: if Barack Obama wins the popular vote, as he probably will, and wins the highest number of elected delegates, as he almost certainly will, and the party leaders turn to Hillary Clinton instead, there will be a revolution in the rank and file that could damage the party for years to come.

But in San Francisco, that happens all the time.

The local Democratic Party is run by the Democratic County Central Committee, and 24 of the members are elected, democratically. But every Democrat who holds an elected office representing San Francisco, and every Democratic nominee for office, automatically gets a seat on the committee, too — so you’ve got another eight or so (it varies) people on the panel who are the local equivalent of superdelegates. US Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the county committee. So is Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and state senator Leland Yee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a seat. Rep. Tom Lantos was on the committee until he died; his replacement, almost certainly Jackie Speier, will take over his slot this week.

Of course, none of those high-powered types ever show up for committee meetings. They send proxies, either trusted advisors or staffers from their local offices. And often — all too often — those superdelegate proxies are the deciding votes on local issues.

See, the committee may not be the highest profile office in the land, but it has a fair amount of local clout. The central committee decides what position the Democratic Party takes on local issues — and that means both influence and money. The party endorsement on ballot measures can be influential, particularly when it comes with a place on the official party slate card.

These days the committee has a majority of elected progressives. But it’s not an overwhelming majority — since half the seats are apportioned by Assembly districts, half the grassroots members are from the west side of town and tend to be more moderate. And not all of the eastsiders are progressives.

So on key endorsements this year — for San Francisco supervisor, for example — the majority of the elected delegates will probably vote for the progressives. But a minority will support the slate backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom — and the superdelegates will mostly go along.

So the Newsom slate at the very least will block the progressives from getting the endorsements. In fact, for a progressive candidate or ballot measure to get the party nod in a contested race requires an almost impossible majority of the elected members.

It can be infuriating.

Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who often don’t get along, are working together to get a solid progressive slate elected to the DCCC this June. It’s a good idea, and there’s a good chance many of the 24 slate members will win. But the will of the voters won’t matter if the superdelegates can still weigh in and screw up any real reform.

I suppose it’s possible to change to rules to kick the superdelegates off the committee, but that would be a brutal battle. And there’s a much easier solution:

The committee needs to eliminate proxy votes.

Feinstein can’t use a proxy to vote on the Senate floor. Pelosi can’t send a proxy to vote in the House of Representatives. Proxies aren’t allowed in the state Legislature. Why should the DCCC be any different?

If Dianne Feinstein really cares about Gavin Newsom’s slate of supervisorial candidates this fall, then she can show up at the committee meeting and vote. Otherwise the grassroots, elected delegates get to decide. Seems fair to me.

After Home Depot

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EDITORIAL The proposal to build a Home Depot store on Bayshore Boulevard was a textbook example of terrible city planning. The community never asked for a big-box chain store; no city plans ever discussed how big-box retail would help the local economy. Instead, about eight years ago the giant Atlanta-based corporation decided it wanted a store in San Francisco, hired Jack Davis, a political consultant close to then-Mayor Willie Brown, and, after a brutal and unpleasant battle, got permission to build a giant suburban-style outlet of more than 100,000 square feet with a massive parking garage in a city where transit and pedestrian access are considered primary land-use values.

And now that Home Depot has decided, based on its business projections, that the whole thing was a bad idea and is backing out, San Francisco has a chance to turn the big empty lot on Bayshore into something that serves the community. There’s a chance to make this a model for city planning, an example of how to do economic development right for a change. The mayor, city planners, and the supervisors need to insist on a credible process.

From the start, the fight over Home Depot was toxic, pitting small business owners, who feared that the discount chain would destroy local merchants, and Bernal Heights residents, who feared the traffic, noise, and pollution a car-dependent outlet would bring to the area, against Bayview-Hunters Point residents who desperately needed jobs. Home Depot lobbyists did their best to push the divide, arguing that employment opportunities at the store would help spur economic development in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Lost in the rhetoric was the fact that the chain promised only about 200 new jobs, and would offer only a "good-faith effort" to hire half of those people from the neighborhood. In other words, at best, an eight-acre project — one of the biggest retail developments in the city — would lead to 100 new jobs for Bayview residents. That was, to put it mildly, an abysmal deal.

An environmental impact report on the project essentially dismissed all of the neighborhood concerns, even arguing that air-quality impacts from increased car exhaust wouldn’t count as an impact. The report tossed aside the fate of small businesses, particularly hardware stores, by saying that the store owners could simply start selling something else. Still, the supervisors voted to approve the project.

But now, after all that bitterness and expense, Home Depot is walking away, citing a sluggish market for home-improvement products. Mayor Gavin Newsom is begging the company not to abandon the plans altogether; he’s urging Home Depot executives to put the project on hold until the economy improves. That’s tantamount to saying that the Bayshore site should stay vacant for a few more years — which does no good for anybody. Instead of whining and begging a big corporation to bestow its blessings on poor San Francisco, Newsom ought to look at this as an opportunity.

Sup. Tom Ammiano, whose district borders on the site and who led the opposition to Home Depot, is calling for a community planning process that would bring the key stakeholders to the table to talk about how that land should be used. Sup. Sophie Maxwell, a Home Depot supporter whose district includes the site, ought to join with him. The goal ought to be a planning process that starts with the right questions: What sort of development does the community want? What use would create the most jobs that best fit the local labor pool and the employment needs of the area? What would benefit the city’s economy without damaging small business? Should part of the site be used for affordable housing?

There are all sorts of possibilities, but given Newsom’s pledge to be a "green mayor" and the value of new green-collar jobs, one obvious idea might be turning the place into a solar-energy center. Proper zoning, incentives, and public encouragement might attract solar manufacturing, solar installation services, and a solar hardware store with do-it-yourself kits for homeowners.

The city obviously can’t dictate what sorts of businesses would want to move to Bayshore, but planners can set criteria to steer development. That process ought to begin now, openly, with every interested party involved — and it should have a bottom line: no more suburban chain stores in San Francisco.

Endorsement: Barry Hermanson

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Let’s not fool ourselves: Jackie Speier, the former state senator from San Mateo County, will be replacing the late Tom Lantos in Congress. The odds are pretty good that she’ll emerge with enough votes in the special election April 8 to take the seat immediately, and she’s bound to win the Democratic primary in June and get elected to a full term in November.

And that’s not a terrible thing. Speier’s an experienced legislator, was a solid advocate for consumers and for privacy rights in Sacramento, and is already better on the war than Lantos was. Speier told us that she favors immediate troop withdrawal, and that she would was unlikely to vote for any more appropriations for the war unless the money was earmarked for drawdown and withdrawal activities.

But on a lot of issues, she’s something of a disappointment to progressives in the district. She talks about single-payer health care, but wants to keep the private insurance companies in the picture and she talked a lot to us about forcing consumers to limit medical expenses to contain costs. She wasn’t willing to commit to seeking to overturn the privatization of the Presidio and she supports Don Fisher’s plans to build a private museum there. Although she wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire, she was very, very shaky about raising taxes on the very rich (even capital gains taxes). When we asked her what she would do about preventing the financial-services mess that created the home mortgage crisis, she only said she would be “more willing to support an increased regulatory environment than not.”

In other words, she’s promising to be a mainstream Democrat who’s unwilling to push the edge on a lot of issues that people in her district care about.

So, if only as a protest vote (and to remind Speier that she has to be accountable to the progressives) we’re backing Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson.

Hermanson, who for years ran a small business in town, talks openly not just about ending the war but about dramatically cutting defense spending, which, he points out, sucks up more than 60 percent of the entire federal discretionary budget. He’s for government-run single payer, for tighter regulation of the financial sector and for a massive public investment in infrastructure and green technology.

Michelle McMurry, who is running as a Democrat, is a physician, a smart and articulate person with a thoughtful approach to health care. We’d love to see her stay active in politics, but she needs a bit more seasoning before she’s ready for Congress.

So we’ll go with Hermanson in the April 8 special election.

SEIU skullduggery

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>jesse@sfbg.com

As an internal power struggle wracks the giant Service Employees International Union, emails obtained by the Guardian suggest that SEIU officials may have violated union rules by working to influence an important San Francisco delegate election last month.

Delegates selected by Local 1021, based in SF, will attend the union’s international convention in June and will vote on a series of democratic reforms put forward by dissident labor leader Sal Rosselli. In recent weeks, Rosselli has clashed publicly with SEIU’s international president Andy Stern over Stern’s increasing consolidation of the 1.9 million-member labor organization.

And the emails appear to show a concerted effort by Stern’s senior staff and local loyalists to ensure that the dissidents don’t dominate the convention delegation.

Referring to themselves in the emails as the “Salsa Team,” SEIU staffers discussed strategy and coordinated campaign activity for the delegate election with high-ranking union officials like Damita Davis-Howard, the president of Local 1021, and Josie Mooney, a special assistant to Stern, the emails show.

Critics charge that these activities violated Local 1021’s Election Rules and Procedures – specifically Rule 18, which states, “While in the performance of their duties, union staff shall remain uninvolved and neutral in relation to candidate endorsements and all election activities.”

While Rule 18 does not specifically spell out when union staff can advocate for candidates, other than proscribing such activities “while in performance of their duties,” the emails in our possession are date and time stamped and several of them were sent during business hours.

Furthermore, the Guardian has obtained an internal memo from Local 1021 official Patti Tamura in which she warned union staffers that the phrase “‘performance of their duties’ goes beyond [Monday through Friday] and 9-5p.”

One Local 1021 official who asked not to be identified told us that Tamura’s memo appeared to be a clear message that staff should stay completely out of the election. “They made it perfectly clear to the lower staff that your employment doesn’t stop [after hours], you’re still staff. That means, you don’t get involved. But now it turns out they themselves were doing it. That’s a double standard … it’s certainly not right.”

The messages between Salsa Team members show them actively working to recruit potential delegates sympathetic to Stern’s vision for the SEIU and to aid Davis-Howard in her bid to represent the union at the June convention. One missive, dated February 18, which appears to come from the personal email account of Local 1021 employee Jano Oscherwitz and was sent to what appear to be the personal accounts of Tamura and Mooney, requests that a “message for Damita” be drafted.

According to the time stamp on the message, Oscherwitz sent it at 12:03 PM. Feb. 18 was a Monday. [Update: February 18th was the President’s Day holiday. However an email stamped 4:26 PM on the following day, Tuesday the 19th, shows Salsa Team members continuing to confer about Davis-Howard’s campaigning, as well as the recruitment of potential delegates.]

A forwarded email stamped 3:18 PM on that same day, from Oscherwitz to what appear to be personal email accounts for Tamura, fellow 1021 staffer Gilda Valdez, and “Damita” includes a “Draft Message” with bulleted talking points, apparently for Davis-Howard to use as she “Collect[s] Signatures on Commitment Cards.”

“Commitment cards” refers to pledges from union members to support certain delegates.

At the convention, scheduled for June 1 through 4 in Puerto Rico, delegates will weigh in on a series of reforms backed by Roselli, chief of the United Health Care Workers West. These reforms include eliminating the current delegate system for electing union leaders, giving local unions more authority in bargaining for their own contracts, and granting locals more say in proposed mergers.

Stern opposes Rosselli’s reforms. A March 5 Salsa Team message includes an attached document with several talking points critical of Rosselli. In the body of the email, SEIU staffer Gilda Valdez advises Davis-Howard, Mooney, 1021 chief of staff Marion Steeg, and others to “Memorize the points in talking to folks.” Valdez goes on to say in the email that she “will be calling … about your assignments.”

Reached for comment, Davis-Howard confirmed that the AOL email account listed as “Damita” was hers. But she claimed no knowledge of the Salsa Team or the messages sent to her. “If you’re saying those emails went to my home computer, who knows if I ever even got them?”

Despite her unwillingness to acknowledge whether she had received the messages, Davis-Howard bristled at the suggestion that the Salsa Team’s activities violated union rules. “Are you trying to tell me that I can never campaign? Does it [Rule 18] say that I have to be neutral and uninvolved 24 hours a day?”

Calls to Mooney, Oscherwitz, Valdez, and Tamura were not returned.

But some union members think there’s a serious problem here. In a written statement, Roxanne Sanchez, who was the president of the San Francisco local before it was merged with other Northern California locals to create 1021, accused Davis-Howard and the Salsa Team of “rigging the outcome” of the delegate election.

“This type of breach in ethical conduct – at such a high level – threatens the foundation of trust and confidence in our Union and in President Damita Davis-Howard’s ability to hold fair elections,” she said.

Sanchez informed us by phone that a formal complaint will be filed with the union’s election committee by Friday.

T-Ball

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

I’ve written aplenty about testosterone: for instance, the then-new research demonstrating that high testosterone does not make a male a winner as much as winning makes a male’s testosterone high; and the current vogue for prescribing T for everything formerly ascribed, with a shrug and a sigh, to "getting older." I’ve taught a bunch about hormones, describing estrogen — with its touch-and smell-sensitivity enhancing, "receptive" sexuality-producing qualities — as the "fuck me hormone," leaving chin-jutting, bad-boy testosterone to be described, inevitably, as the "fuck you" hormone. I’ve also been quick to explain that that’s a joke, son, and to debunk that characterization, emphasizing that women have and need T as much as men do (if in lower quantities), and that aggressive men do not turn out to have higher levels than their meeker brethren. Without testosterone, nobody gets laid — not even lesbians.

And then recently we took the kids to the children’s museum and I insisted that, naps and lunch be damned, we had to be in the car for the broadcast (actually a rerun) of This American Life’s testosterone episode. (Hear it for yourself at www.thislife.org, Episode 220.) You could skip producer Alex Blumberg’s introduction about coming of age while feeling guilty for even having testosterone, due to an early (and entirely uncalled-for) reading of Marilyn French’s "seminal" feminist potboiler The Women’s Room (Ballantine, 1988). Just don’t miss the segment on the man with no T (Act One: "Life at Zero") which will, in a mere seven minutes, turn everything you think you know about testosterone on its head. The interviewee, who had written an anonymous piece for GQ, developed an unspecified, rapid onset condition that shut down his T production entirely. But before he got a diagnosis, he simply … ceased wanting. Anything.

We know that T supplies the drive for sex and possibly for success, but with absolutely none in this guy’s system, he had no drive for anything. He stared at the wall, un-driven to get up. He could live on Wonder Bread spread with Miracle Whip and want nothing else, although he didn’t particularly want that, either. Everything looked beautiful because he lacked the will to judge it as anything else. He didn’t bother trying to see his girlfriend. He became, in short, a sort of bodhisattva, but without any sense of spiritual enlightenment — evolved, but in a meaningless way. An enlitened being, if you will. He sounded relieved, yet a bit let down to be reconnected, via supplementation, to the world of drives and wants and needs and giving a shit, rather the way people who have near-death experiences often describe resisting the pull to return to their heavy, duty-bound corporeal selves. An amazing story, implying as it does that without T life is, if not precisely not worth living, not worth caring about whether one lives it or not.

More familiar but in some ways equally startling was the interview with transman Griffin Hansbury, who, at the time, had entirely enough or possibly too much T in his system — enough to fuel a few bar fights and an inappropriate remark or two to a female coworker. Hansbury started out, like pretty much every F2M I’ve known, as a women’s college–attending, women’s studies–studying, "Take Back the Night"–type womyn’s wummin, and ended up … a pig. He is honest and extremely funny, describing how under the influence of massive amounts of T, he started dogging women around and getting turned on — literally — by the piston action of passing machinery. He said stupid stuff. He offended people; and moreover, felt entitled to do so. Most alarming, he became suddenly, uncharacteristically interested in and even good at math and science, like a sort of instant anti-Barbie. I hesitate to extrapolate from this (as does Hansbury). I hesitate to even think about it, if I can help it. If one of my kids (I have a boy and a girl, a built-in controlled experiment) asks, later, what makes somebody good at math, you better believe I won’t say "testosterone." Unless it’s true. I can’t wait to find out, I tell you what.

There’s also the story in a recent New York Times mag about the current and discomforting (to some; I think it’s kinda cool) phenomenon of women entering colleges like Bryn Mawr and Wellesley and leaving as men, a situation the gender studies departments can pretty much take either blame or credit for, depending. I can’t think of a handier way to break down the old dualistic gender paradigm, myself. The new gents ought to take a lesson from the humorous and self-depreciating Griffin Hansbury, though, and be mindful not to act like total buttheads while they still have to share the dorm showers.

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.

English is dead

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION By the time English truly is a dominant language on the planet, it will no longer be English. Instead, say a group of linguists interviewed in a recent article by Michael Erard in New Scientist, the language will fragment into many mutually-unintelligible dialects. Still, some underlying documents will supply the grammatical glue for these diverse Englishes, the way Koranic Arabic does for the world’s diverse Arabic spinoff tongues. English-speakers of the future will be united in their understanding of a standard English supplied by technical manuals and Internet media.

People like me, native English speakers, are heading to the ashcan of history. By 2010, estimates language researcher David Graddol, 2 billion people on the planet will be communicating in English — but only 350 million will be native speakers. By 2020, native speakers will have diminished to 300 million. My American English, which I grew up speaking in an accent that matched what I heard on National Public Radio and 60 Minutes, is already difficult for many English-speakers to understand.

Hence the rise of Internet English. This is the simple English of technical manuals and message boards — full of slang and technical terminology, but surprisingly free of strange idioms. It’s usually also free of the more cumbersome and weird aspects of English grammar.

For example, a future speaker of English would be unlikely to understand the peculiar way in which I express the past tense: "I walked to the store." Adding a couple of letters (–ed) to the end of a verb to say that I did something in the past? Weird. Hard to hear; hard to say. It’s much more comprehensible to say: "I walk to the store yesterday." And indeed, that’s how many non-native speakers already say it. It’s also the way most popular languages like the many dialects of Chinese express tense. The whole practice of changing the meaning of a word by adding barely audible extra letters — well, that’s just not going to last.

When I read about the way English is changing and fragmenting, it has the opposite effect on me than what you might expect. Although I am the daughter and granddaughter of English teachers and spent many years in an English department earning a PhD, I relish the prospect of my language changing and becoming incomprehensible to me. Maybe that’s because I spent a year learning to read Old English, the dominant form of English spoken 1,000 years ago, and I realize how much my language has already changed.

But my glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn’t entirely inspired by knowing language history. It’s because I want English to reflect the lives of the people who speak it. I want English to be a communications tool — like the Internet, a thing that isn’t an end in itself but a means to one. Once we all acknowledge that there are many correct Englishes, and not just the Queen’s English or Terry Gross’s English, things will be a lot better for everybody.

I’ll admit sometimes I feel a little sad when my pal from Japan doesn’t get my double entendres or idiomatic jokes. I like to play with language, and it’s hard to be quite so ludic when language is a tool and nothing more. But that loss of English play is more than made up for by the cross-cultural play that becomes possible in its stead, jokes about kaiju and non-native snipes at native customs. (My favorite: said Japanese pal is bemused by American Christianity, and one day exclaimed in frustration, "God, Godder, Goddest!")

For those of us who spend most of our days communicating via the Internet, using language as the top layer in a technological infrastructure that unites many cultures, the Englishes of the future are already here. In some ways they make a once-uniform language less intelligible. In other ways, they make us all more intelligible to one another.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd whose English is obsolete.

Chop from the top

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OPINION San Francisco officials released two very different documents last week. The first was a list of the 596 city employees making $150,000 a year or more in base salary. The second was a letter to the 334 patients of the Chronic Care Public Health Nursing program informing them that as of April 15 they will no longer have a public-health nurse helping them manage their illnesses.

You might expect that when the mayor proposes an "across the board" budget cut from city departments because of a looming budget deficit, almost any position in city government would be on the table. You might expect that maintaining services to the most vulnerable city residents would be a priority. But according to these two documents, you’re safe if your salary is $150,000 or more, and you are abandoned if you are poor, frail, and chronically ill.

Last week, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin suggested that instead of just cutting from the bottom, the city also consider cuts at the top. "So let me understand," the Chronicle quotes District Attorney Kamala Harris (No. 55 on the top-earners list), "Aaron Peskin is basically saying we should eliminate all the doctors and lawyers who work for the city."

But Harris didn’t understand. Peskin isn’t proposing to cut all of those 596 positions. He is proposing that in a fiscal crisis, the agenda should include some cutting from the top, not just the bottom.

As a public health nurse in the program slated for closure, I’ve been working to treat and make plans for my patients during the day, while working at night to keep the program open. I’m not worried about my job: nurses are in high demand and there’s comparable pay in many private hospitals. But private health care rarely serves the people I’ve come to know doing this job for the past year: frail, uninsured elderly folks with no families; patients who face language and literacy barriers who can’t navigate the system and use emergency rooms when they feel sick; long-time residents of Laguna Honda Hospital coming back to the community not knowing how to use a cell phone, let alone monitor their diabetes.

As the number of chronically ill people skyrockets, along with the costs of caring for them, it would seem a no-brainer to fund a group of nurses who are experts in keeping those folks out of the hospital. But our health care system still operates on an acute-care model. While Medi-Cal will pay the city much of the expense of sending a nurse to do brief wound care for a diabetic, it pays much less for a nurse to keep that same person healthy enough to avoid the next wound. Calcuutf8g future savings from chronic care health services is hard. So on paper at least, it’s a money-saver, if not the moral choice, to close the program.

When I was in nursing school, my public health professors told me, "in Public Health, you have to be an advocate, because your patients can’t be." But I bet those 596 top earners can defend themselves — and Peskin is right, some of them should be given the opportunity.

Stefan Lynch

Stefan Lynch, RN, is a public health nurse at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and a member of Service Employees International Union 1021.

Emeric Kalman, 1931-2008

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Emeric Kalman, a neighborhood activist well known for his decades-long work of bringing important issues concerning the city’s public services and infrastructure to officials at City Hall, died March 22, on his 77th birthday, after battling cancer for several months.

Trained as a mechanical engineer, Kalman fled communist Romania in 1968 with his wife, Valeria, settled in West Portal, and worked at Bechtel from 1970 to the late 1980s. After retiring, he used his considerable expertise and proficiency with highly technical documents to bring to light waste and inefficiency in numerous city departments.

"Emeric contributed his research, his knowledge from his engineering background, his sense of fiscal prudence and accountability, and his demand for transparency and sunshine to making the city a better place for its citizens," said Joan Girardot, head of the Marina Civic Improvement and Property Owners Association and a former president of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods.

In 1997, Kalman and fellow watchdog Girardot brought an important story to the Guardian — one that was critical to understanding why the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) had failed to make regular repairs to the city’s vast water system, which flows from Yosemite to San Francisco. Kalman and Girardot discovered that by using an accounting trick to create an artificial yearly "surplus," the PUC had been transferring millions of dollars annually since 1979 to the city’s general fund — an amount adding up to half a billion dollars. Instead of going toward the care of the system, the money went to sparing officials the political difficulty of having to raise taxes after the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 drastically reduced municipal coffers. (see "The Water Bond-doggle," 8/27/97).

By that time, Kalman had established himself as a trusted source, having discovered numerous problems with the privatization of Presidio National Park and the San Francisco Zoo earlier in the 1990s. In fact, it was Kalman and Girardot who convinced city officials to force the zoo to at least list all of the facility’s assets before they handed it over to the private zoological society.

Tenacious in his activism, Kalman never walked away from an issue. For example, he joined Girardot and other activists in taking the Recreation and Park Department to task in 1997 when it voted to end all public review of how the zoo spent its annual multimillion-dollar grant from the city. (see "The Secret Zoo," 11/26/97). Since the late 1980s, he dedicated himself, along with Girardot, to the ongoing fight against the city’s neglect of regular repairs to the Marina Yacht Harbor and its overly expensive proposal to overhaul the facility, making it more suitable to the owners of high-end yachts and possible privatization — and likely destroying the use of an important public open space in the process. (see "Bay Watch," 2/28/01)

On March 17, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution commending Kalman for his "outstanding contributions to the community." Sponsored by District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, with whom Kalman had worked most recently in an unsuccessful fight against the PUC’s proposal to raise water rates, the resolution recognized both Kalman’s stubbornness as well as his gracious demeanor (it was not unusual for him to kiss the hands of female city clerks). "Emeric’s old world gentility and grace, combined with new world zeal for justice and fairness in government, made him a force to be reckoned with and a real asset to San Francisco," Elsbernd said. "He was, in a word, undaunted."

Kalman is survived by his son, Ronald; his ex-wife, Valeria; his sister, Judith Ertsey; his nephew, Robert; and his two grandnieces, Elianna and Roxanna — all residents of San Francisco. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Kalman’s name to the National Alliance for Mental Illness. A memorial service will be held April 2, 12:45 p.m., at the Hills of Eternity Cemetery Chapel, 1301 El Camino Real, Colma.

Savannah Blackwell is a former Guardian reporter.

Labor’s merger pains

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› jesse@sfbg.com

Part one of a series on the emerging problems with labor mergers

For well over 100 years, San Francisco hod carriers — workers who assist stone, brick, and plaster masons — have gathered at the Local 36 hiring hall to find work. Though not as large and bustling as it was in its heyday, the hall, now situated in Daly City, still serves as an important social as well as professional gathering place for San Francisco and San Mateo County "hoddies."

But on Monday, March 10 and Tuesday the 11th, when the union’s members arrived to put in for jobs, they found the entrance shuttered and a paper sign taped to the door.

"This Office Will be Temporarily Closed Due to the Transition of the Separation between Local Unions," the sign read. Several South Bay phone numbers were listed below — one for the dispatch office at Local 270, a much larger South Bay chapter of the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA), and one for Carlos Lujan, 270’s business manager. When the workers tried to call the numbers to secure work, they claim officials at 270 told them they couldn’t help them.

Meanwhile, several told the Guardian they could hear the phone ringing through the hiring hall door as calls from contractors came into the office. Every phone call most likely meant a job that would not be filled by one of the willing workers left outside.

"I felt abandoned," 25-year union member Jerrold ‘JJ’ Jones told the Guardian. Jones told us he waited for nearly three hours for the hall to open on March 11, only to give up in frustration. "Here I pay dues six months in advance and because that hall is closed, I didn’t have the opportunity to go out for a job that day."

A LESS THAN PERFECT UNION


The reasons for the hall’s closure trace back to an ill-fated merger between Local 36 and Local 270. The story is more than just a tiff in a relatively small labor group; it’s symbolic of a much wider issue that’s beginning to explode in organized labor.

In recent years, unions across the country have been encouraging smaller locals like 36 to join with larger shops to increase their clout and negotiating power. Supporters say these mergers create organizations better able to stand up to giant businesses and institutions.

But the trend also has drawbacks: more members under the aegis of one organization means more power in fewer hands — and sometimes, a lack of union democracy.

Local 36 seemed a prime candidate for merger, with only 120 members. Local 270 had more than 4,000 dues-paying workers and hefty political and trust fund accounts. But high-placed sources within the San Jose local tell us that it’s had serious turmoil over the past year — and the members from San Francisco say they feel left out.

Local 270’s leader, Carlos Lujan, is the subject of an investigation by the international union’s inspector general. Documents provided to the Guardian show that the inspector general has been looking into several complaints about Lujan’s leadership, including his conduct of meetings. An official from the parent union has observed the last three executive board gatherings and is expected to file a report with the Washington brass in the coming weeks.

"Clearly there are troubles out there," attorney Bob Luskin of the Washington firm Patton, Boggs, told us. Luskin acts as the union’s special counsel. "The marriage [between 36 and 270] looked like a good idea at first," he said. "But in the end, it didn’t turn out so well."

Much of the current internal strife at Local 270 appears to have begun when Lujan announced his retirement at the end of March 2007. Two weeks prior to his planned departure, Lujan’s advisors proposed a post-retirement consultant’s job for him. According to a complaint filed with the Department of Fair Housing and Employment by former 270 employee Leslie Scanagatta, the consulting gig would have paid Lujan $500 a week, and the union would pay to fly him from his home in Texas to San Jose for meetings.

Scanagatta’s complaint states that Lujan became angry after she and several other officials voiced concerns with the plan. It alleges that Lujan declared to another union official that she would "be terminated by the end of the week" — which she was.

"It was devastating," Scanagatta, who now works for Santa Cruz County, said. "I was laid off for eight months and I’ve taken a 38 percent pay cut now."

Lujan did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

One of the people pushing for Lujan’s consultant job was Edgar Calonje. Calonje, who worked for the union as an independent contractor, said he met with Lujan before the boss announced his retirement, and that Lujan told him and Enrique Arguello, a member of 270’s executive board, that he was planning "to get his retirement [benefits] and consultant fees as well."

"We thought if we helped him [get the deal], we would be in good shape," Calonje said by phone from Nicaragua, where he was visiting family. "But that’s not what happened."

First, Lujan withdrew his retirement and decided to stay on. Then, in November 2007, Colanje lost his job — after, he says, a private memo he had written surfaced in which he criticized Lujan’s leadership and integrity.

Shortly after Colanje was let go, Arguello — who now says he didn’t actively support Lujan’s retirement plan — resigned from his job as a business agent rather than accept a demotion. A Nov. 28 letter from Lujan to Arguello obtained by the Guardian states, "the reason for the change in your position was because the pattern of actions made by you in the past could put this Local in a difficult position."

THE LOCK OUT


Early in 2008, the atmosphere of dissension in San Jose began to affect the hiring hall in Daly City, and eventually boiled over into physical confrontation. First, former Local 36 business manager Alex Corns clashed with Lujan and resigned in a huff from his new job at 270. Then Will Davis, who ran the Daly City hall after the merger, was dismissed. A March 6 letter from Lujan to Davis cites Davis’s "lack of commitment to work under my agenda as Business Manager" as the reason for his termination.

The following afternoon, Friday, March 7, Davis and Corns arrived at the hall to find the locks changed. That evening, they told us, a group of former Local 36 members met in a pizza parlor across from the shuttered hall and decided to petition the International to grant Local 36 back its independence. According to their account of what happened next, which was verified by Sgt. Ron Mussman of the Daly City Police Department, when Davis, Corns, and the other participants in the meeting emerged from the pizza parlor, they saw Lujan sitting in his pickup truck, which was parked in the restaurant’s lot. Across the street, two officials from 270 were inside the hiring hall removing computer equipment.

The now-dissident union members surrounded Lujan’s vehicle. Lujan fled the scene, according to worker and police accounts, allegedly striking one of the members in the forearm with his car as he backed up. The incensed crowd moved across the street and the workers from 270 barricaded themselves inside the hall. Lujan reportedly flagged down a police car as he drove away and the cops drove to the hall to escort the two men from San Jose safely out of the building.

Corns and Davis said they could not secure keys to the hall’s new locks by the time of Monday morning’s job call. For two consecutive mornings, out-of-work union members were turned away. Corns told us he finally called a local locksmith late Tuesday morning, March 11, so that members could be dispatched to jobs the following day.

HOW BIG IS TOO BIG?


For Corns, the failed merger with Local 270 is a personal as well as a professional tragedy: he was instrumental in helping 36 join with 270 after Lujan’s election as the bigger local’s business manager. Now he feels responsible for jeopardizing the organization he’s worked for since he was a teenager.

"I’ve been in the union for 35 years," Corns said, his voice choking up. "This is so heartbreaking to me."

Beyond the problems with one controversial business manager, Corns says the story is about the larger problem: increasingly top-down union management. In late February, he told us, 70 members of Local 36 voted unanimously to secede from 270 and become an autonomous chapter again. A representative from LIUNA was present at the vote and confirmed their version of the events for us. Despite the members’ calls for autonomy, officials in LIUNA’s International office in Washington, DC refused to go along; instead, on March 13, union brass granted their secession from Local 270 but immediately forced 36 into another merger — this time with a chapter based in Oakland, Local 166.

As a result of the two mergers, Corns says, the assets of Local 36 have been swallowed up by the larger chapters. He produced old bank account statements for us that showed well more than $100,000 in Local 36’s coffers before the organization joined with 270. Now, he says, he doesn’t know where that money is. Laborer’s International spokesperson Jacob Hay told us that the parent union is undertaking a "reconciliation process" to determine how much of Local 36’s money should go to Oakland and how much should stay in San Jose. Despite the apparent desire for independence among 36’s members, Hay argued that the union is making the right decision by forcing them into another merger.

"We think that it is in the best interests of smaller locals like [36] to join with larger, more powerful locals," he said. "You have more collective bargaining power with larger numbers [of members] … the goal here is to get all the hod carriers in the Bay Area into one local."

Will Davis and other Local 36 members do not share Hay’s bigger-is-better enthusiasm. "We’ve never gotten a good reason why we can’t just have the local back," Davis said. "We’ve never done anything wrong. We’ve never been under investigation. Why are we being punished for something we didn’t do?"

Editor’s Note: In the paper edition of this article, the Guardian misidentified two dates. Lujan announced his retirement in 2007, and the atmosphere of dissension began to affect the hiring hall in Daly City early in 2008.

Ditching the paper cup

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Statistics show that Americans drink more than 400 million cups of coffee a day. While most buy the average Starbucks and Folgers blends, a growing number of consumers are beginning to care more about what’s in their cup and where it comes from.

I work part-time at Coffee to the People in the Haight, which specializes in high quality, Fair Trade products, and I often field questions from customers about the origin and certification of the shop’s java. But no one ever asks about the flush capacity of our toilets, or the environmental impact of our cleaning products, or whether all of our appliances meet Energy Star standards.

In the past, if they’d asked about such things, I would have told them that the toilet ran constantly, the petroleum-based dish soap we used probably killed fish in the Bay, and that the two refrigerators behind the counter had been around since before I was born.

It’s not that the owners never cared about having a greener business — they just couldn’t afford to pay attention. Stocking gourmet coffee and tea is costly, not to mention the astronomical rent and power bills they have to pay every month.

That’s where the Green Café Network comes in.

Environmental educator Kirstin Henninger founded the nonprofit collective a year ago to help its members achieve higher standards of environmental stewardship. So far, the network is composed of 10 cafés, including Coffee to the People. Owners meet periodically to discuss and share business strategies. Recently they went in together to purchase compostable to-go containers. They hope to do the same with eco-friendly cleaning supplies in the near future.

Henninger, 39, originally wanted to open a green coffee shop of her own. After surveying shop owners on their business practices, however, she saw a better way to make a difference. Many owners told her they had the desire to be more environmentally responsible, but not the know-how, staff, or money to put anything into action. So Henninger decided to do something to help them.

"Instead of me opening one more café, I realized a way I could have much more of an impact," she told the Guardian. "I saw potential to actually support a new movement toward a green economy, and that was much more possible by affecting multiple cafés instead of my one café."

Henninger said she chose to focus on neighborhood coffeehouses because they are often the center of close-knit communities. "By the process of cafés becoming green businesses, we aim to educate everyone in the mix," she said. "The owners, staff, customers, neighbors, other local businesses — this is a necessary part of the process of supporting a local, green economy." She also offers consulting to any business, coffee shop or not, that requests it.

Joining the group didn’t make Coffee to the People’s toilet stop running, but we are at least heading in the right direction. Henninger acknowledged that while customers notice changes in the products they pay for, other aspects of a green business go unappreciated. The ultimate goal for cafés in the group is to become certified green businesses (all Bay Area counties have a green business program). But the certification process can be misleading. Most localities only require that a business conform to five out of 20 guidelines, and once the placard is placed in the window, the motivation to complete the next 15 steps can tend to flag. Henninger hopes the members of her network, by working together and helping each other, will be as green as they can be.

"We need people striving to make the extra effort because it’s the right thing to do," she said. "I think that’s the challenge of the entire environmental movement."

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

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was away with the kids and missed the state Democratic convention in San Jose, but from what I hear, it was quite the show. The big local news, of course, was that Assemblymember Mark Leno blocked State Senator Carole Migden from winning the party’s endorsement for her reelection bid. That’s a big victory for Leno, who is trying to unseat her.

And the way a lot of my favorite blogs told the story, it was also a victory for the grassroots activists in the party: the Sacramento establishment, they say, was working for Migden.

I don’t think that’s entirely true; both sides had their heavy hitters. And I’m going to sound a note of caution here: Leno and his team papered the hall with some nasty negative fliers attacking Migden, not just for her travails with the Fair Political Practices Commission but for her driving record.

Leno told me he had to educate the delegates in a short period of time and that the fliers contained "nothing but facts." Which is true. But I don’t think he needs to go negative on Migden; she’s doing a fine job of that herself. And the attacks open ugly wounds in the community and could help the third candidate, Marin’s Joe Nation.

Leno needs to keep a tight leash on his campaign team as this heads for the finish.

And now we pause for a brief reflection on the First Amendment.

Matt Smith over at the SF Weekly took a shot at us last week, arguing that our lawsuit would somehow damage his paper’s ability to produce good journalism. Migden was in court this week to argue that the state shouldn’t prevent her from spending campaign money in violation of campaign-finance rules. Both claims rely on a dangerous interpretation of one of the most important pieces of law in the history of the world.

Smith’s theory: since we nailed the Weekly and its corporate parent for predatory pricing violations, we are somehow guilty of seeking to force the chain to cut back its editorial staff.

We heard the same sort of argument in court, and I suspect the Weekly‘s lawyers will trot out the First Amendment on appeal. Gee, they will say, the government can’t tell a newspaper how much to charge for its ads. That’s unconstitutional.

In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that the Weekly, not the Guardian, has been the paper attacking the First Amendment. The whole notion that James Madison had in mind when he introduced the Bill of Rights was that a free marketplace of ideas made for a more free and democratic society. Big chains that swallow independent papers limit that marketplace, particularly if, like the SF Weekly‘s owners, they enforce ideological consistency. Chains that try to kill other papers are even worse. That’s what our lawsuit was about.

Then there’s Senator Migden, whose legal papers cite one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of my lifetime, Buckley v. Valeo, which says that money is speech and that the rich can spend whatever they want on political campaigns. Again, the problem is the marketplace of ideas: if one side can corner the market with cash, there’s no free exchange. Campaign finance laws, properly written, don’t diminish the First Amendment; they enhance it. So do fair-competition laws in the media. Because both promote what Madison had in mind — a level (or at least relatively fair) playing field of ideas.

Rip up the mayor’s club-violence plan

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EDITORIAL Back in January, 34-year-old Clarence Corbin was shot and killed during a fight outside Jelly’s Dance Café nightclub in Mission Bay. Mayor Gavin Newsom leapt into action, announcing that this sort of violence was unacceptable. We’re with the mayor on that, although we wish he’d shown the same kind of energy in dealing with the epidemic of shootings in the Bayview and Western Addition over the past few years.

But his solution — a crackdown on nightclub promoters — is unlikely to do anything about violence and will almost certainly damage the creative underside of the city’s entertainment scene.

Sup. Sophie Maxwell is carrying the mayor’s legislation, which she introduced March 4. Some of the provisions just seem silly: the bill, for example, would ban "loitering" within 10 feet of a club between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Of course, people stand outside clubs all the time — among other things, to smoke cigarettes — so the bill says smokers would be exempted. So would people who are waiting for cabs. People who simply wanted some fresh air or to make a phone call (or to make out away from the dance floor) would be subject to fines. The loitering law, like most similar laws, seems like a blueprint for discriminatory and illegal enforcement. (Will young African American men get cited more often than white people? Of course they will.)

How are the cops going to decide who’s really waiting for a ride (cabs can take half an hour to arrive on a Saturday night) and who’s just hanging out? Might potential troublemakers just light up a cigarette and thus be free from legal action? It’s hard to see the practical logic here.

Then there’s the provision that would require promoters who hold two or more club events a year to obtain a permit (and presumably, pay a fee). Applicants would have to have proof of $1 million in liability insurance.

That, frankly, would kill a whole lot of small-time events in San Francisco.

Although Newsom complained to the press about "fly-by-night promoters," the city’s full of well-established people who do shows at various clubs with various programs a few times a year or a few times a month — and most of them are small-time operators. Very few have ever had any problems with the law, or promoted a show that led to violence — but most of them would have to shut down, because the $1 million in insurance money would be too expensive.

The Bay Area Reporter suggested March 13 that the bill could harm nonprofit events promoters by forcing them to devote much of the charitable take from their shows to paying for insurance and security plans.

We just don’t see how any of this really addresses the problem of violence outside of San Francisco clubs (and we don’t really see that clubs are to blame for much of the violence in the city anyway). When Sup. Ross Mirkarimi tried to get Mayor Newsom to put cops on foot in high-crime areas, the mayor balked. When Sup. Chris Daly tried to create a violence-prevention program that might have actually gotten to the root causes of this horrible pattern of kids killing one another, the mayor rejected it.

Instead, he wants to create a strange and ineffective plan to give police an excuse to arrest the wrong people that will penalize the small promoters who every week give so much to the city’s cultural landscape.

If club owners are concerned about crowds fomenting violence outside their doors, then the problem needs to be addressed. But this is an ass-backward way to do it. The supervisors need to rip this plan apart and start fresh.

Sharing the pain

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EDITORIAL We’re generally not for cutting employee salaries to address the city’s budget deficit. And we’ve never been fond of claiming that doctors and lawyers who earn less-than-market wages working for the city of San Francisco should be penalized because they earn what appear in newspaper stories to be fat paychecks.

But Sup. Aaron Peskin was not on the wrong track when he suggested, only slightly facetiously, that Mayor Gavin Newsom ought to be looking for high-paid staffers to cut instead of slicing services for the poor. Peskin’s point was not so much that the top layers of city bureaucracy were outrageously overpaid (although a few of the mayor’s aides and some of the department heads he’s hired could fit in that category) but that all of the cuts have come at the bottom. Find 10 surplus bureaucrats making $150,000 a year and you could save the entire program that provides public-health nurse visits for chronically ill San Franciscans.

Sure, some of this is politics: Newsom is taking a stab at the mayor with a suggestion bound to win popular support. But it’s also a serious policy issue: when the city’s in the red, where should the burden fall? In Newsom’s current budget proposals, it falls almost entirely in the wrong places.

Eliminating a deficit of more than $300 million is daunting. Of course, the city wouldn’t have this problem if Newsom and his predecessors had been willing to look at obvious (and flexible) sources of new revenue. Public power alone would’ve brought in almost enough to cover this year’s shortfall (and would have earned the city so much cash during the better years that it could have been set aside in a rainy-day fund to prevent these kinds of budget roller-coasters). The city’s major taxes are a regressive mess; fixing the business tax alone (and making it more progressive) would help the economy and allow the city to raise cash from those most able to pay.

In other words, instead of axing nurses who help sick and housebound senior citizens, Newsom ought to be looking for money from the wealthy.

But right now, the mayor is talking only cuts — and for the most part, only cuts of lower-paid, front-line workers. The least the mayor could do is make a good-faith effort to share the pain. Looking for 10 useless high-paid execs in order to save public health nursing? How about former Sup. Bill Maher, who earns $144,838 out at the airport, where the last time we checked (see Here’s Bill; 5/26/06) he hardly ever showed up for work? Nine more patronage cronies, Mr. Mayor, and you’ll make the nut.

The price of gold

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› news@sfbg.com

Five years ago, the overseers of San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge were facing a $454 million budget deficit. That figure was larger than the gross domestic products of East Timor, the west African country of Gambia, and the Independent State of Samoa.

Investigative reporter Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times decided to try and figure out how a bridge in the United States could amass a funding shortfall that dwarfed the economic output of entire nations. For one, he reported in a 2002 story, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District used money from the tolls paid by motorists to bankroll an expensive transit system that includes a network of buses in Marin County and a fleet of ferry boats that collectively cost millions per year to operate.

Peele also discovered that the bridge’s 19-person board of directors, some members of which live far from the Bay Area, spent more than $56,000 over a two-year period just to cover trips — including meals, rental cars, and hotels — to regular meetings at the Golden Gate’s administrative offices in San Francisco.

The embarrassed district promised reforms and vowed to get its economic house in order.

But five years later, we’ve learned, very little has changed.

The district touts its substantial cuts in overhead, insisting everything possible has been done to avoid raising the toll on motorists. But the Golden Gate Bridge District’s financial problems aren’t going away — and the only solution the administration can come up with is perpetual toll increases.

Even that answer poses huge problems. The bridge doesn’t expect that the actual volume of toll-paying motorists, or the ridership on its buses and ferries, will rise in the near future at the same pace as its expenses, which are largely consumed by employee salaries, benefits, and other perks that the district’s hundreds of workers, including its board members, enjoy.

Public records show today that the district pays for health insurance for 14 of the (very) part-time directors. Last year alone, that insurance combined cost $48,000 — even though several of the board members, including two mayors and four county supervisors, are already eligible for insurance coverage in their home counties.

The bridge district’s projections show vast deficits stretching off into the next decade — and if the problem isn’t solved, a public transit system will be at risk. Riders, among them a high number of business commuters, make 9.4 million annual trips on Golden Gate’s transit system. If the fiscal mess continues unabated, the board will either have to hike tolls to larger numbers ($10, $15, $20?) or start cutting back on the buses and ferries.

The only alternative, says Golden Gate board member and San Francisco supervisor Gerardo Sandoval, may be to ask state lawmakers for the right to change the district’s charter so it can raise money a different way, such as through sales or parcel taxes.

But many of the board members, who benefit from the lucrative sinecure and the power of this bureaucracy, don’t want to take that risk. "Their fear is that if they go to Sacramento, no one’s going to ask them their opinion," Sandoval told us. "The end result is going to be some legislation that significantly changes the way the bridge is run."

BUY A BIB, SAVE A BRIDGE


Bridge officials say the projected deficit was a lot worse five years ago, before they instituted cost-cutting measures. The biggest cuts came in the form of eliminating nearly 200 positions, about a fifth of the workforce. The district also instituted a hiring freeze and forced workers to negotiate wage rollbacks and share more of the costs of their medical coverage.

Bus services from the district’s fleet of 200 were reduced by 22 percent in March and November of 2003, and taking a bus from Marin to San Francisco now costs 34 percent more than it did five years ago. The weekday fare for a ferry from Larkspur to San Francisco was raised a whopping 118 percent, and available ferry seats were reduced 23 percent by cutting trips. It can cost between $7 and $8 one-way to ride Golden Gate’s ferries and buses today.

But over the next five years, the district still anticipates its deficit will reach $91 million.

So after raising the toll five years ago, bridge officials want to do so again as soon as September. Motorists would pay $6 in cash, $5 if using a FasTrak prepaid device, and $3 instead of $1.50 for disabled drivers.

"It seems pretty clear that the [bridge’s] staff is driving the board of directors, and not the other way around, toward infinite toll increases," Sandoval said. "It’s a ludicrous idea, but that’s the only one they have right now."

Earnest bridge staffers point out in reports prepared for the public that they’ve implemented "revenue enhancements," such as putting out a donation box for visitors who might be willing to give up some pocket change and creating special sales programs at the gift shop.

Online trinkets for sale have even been expanded. At Goldengate.org you can purchase a piece of the bridge’s original cable for $175 or an $8 baby bib that reads "Golden Gate Bridge: Big, Strong and Awesome, Just Like My Dad."

But that’s not going to add up to $91 million.

Meanwhile, the anticipated deficit doesn’t even include capital projects like the nearly $185 million the district wants to spend overhauling and replacing its buses and ferries, or the $36 million it hopes to spend over the next 10 years deterring suicides, which are perhaps the second best-known feature of the Golden Gate Bridge after its aesthetic beauty.

And, of course, the bridge constantly needs repainting, thanks to the wind and salt air. "There’s more [required] maintenance on the Golden Gate Bridge than any other bridge in the country because of where it’s at…. It has to be looked after everyday by a crew of ironworkers and painters and whatever else is needed," said board president John Moylan.

The district’s largest operating expense involves paying the remaining 836 full- and part-time workers at the bridge and granting them fringe benefits like insurance coverage and supplemental pensions. This year alone salaries and benefits will cost about $100 million.

THE RED INK MOUNTS


About 60 percent of the district’s budget goes toward keeping its ferries and buses running, but key performance measures show that Golden Gate’s transit system does poorly in three crucial areas, including cost efficiency and effectiveness. When compared with national averages, Golden Gate Transit has one of the top five highest operating costs per "vehicle revenue mile" — a barometer of efficiency — out of the 150 largest transit agencies nationwide, making it more inefficient than BART, AC Transit in Alameda County, and the transportation authorities in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, according to 2005 figures maintained by the federal Department of Transportation.

It’s common for transit systems to rely on government subsidies, and few environmentalists have sympathy for drivers who whine about toll increases from the comfortable interiors of their automobiles. Mass transit is the future of urban living.

"The Golden Gate Bridge may not be as efficient as other comparable systems," Sandoval said, "but if we abandon the investment we have made in mass transportation, it will really leave us with poor options in the years to come."

Alan Zahradnik, Golden Gate’s director of planning, adds that the bridge’s buses and ferries are dissimilar to other transit systems around the country because they tend to carry fewer commuter passengers over greater distances mostly during peak hours compared to transportation authorities like San Francisco’s Muni and AC Transit.

"It’s more expensive to provide suburban, fixed-route transportation," Zahradnik said.

Nonetheless, without an increase in the toll for motorists, the bridge expects to sustain annual deficits for each of the next 10 years until the red ink reaches $290 million.

So it would seem that if the district is asking everyone to tighten their belts, its board of directors should probably do the same. The extraordinarily large 19-member Golden Gate board contains more than twice as many directors as the seven-member board that oversees Muni’s trains and buses and the nine-member board that governs BART.

That’s a throwback to history. When the bridge district formed in 1928, several counties north and south of the span were asked to participate in the $35 million bond issue required to construct a road across the Golden Gate, and although the bonds were paid off decades ago, each of those counties still receives representation on the board.

"There have been attempts to topple the bridge district in the past, but they’re so hard-wired, it’s been impossible," said Susan Deluxe, a Tiburon resident and long-time critic of the district.

The list includes two counties located far to the north, Mendocino and Del Norte — the latter bordering Oregon. But the board’s structure hasn’t been tinkered with since its formation.

When asked whether the far-flung board has outlived its usefulness, the representative from Del Norte County, Gerald Cochran, explained that the distant jurisdictions help diminish tension between the representatives from San Francisco and Marin, who frequently argue over who should contribute more to maintain the bridge. Besides, he said, Del Norte stepped up to help make the Golden Gate Bridge happen in the first place.

"It’s not what we do today," Cochran said, "it’s what we did 75 years ago to get this bridge built. We make our contributions."

The travel expenses of the two directors representing Del Norte and Mendocino counties were the highest board-meeting travel costs he found back when Peele first reported on the board’s budget — $42,404 to cover trips from their home counties to San Francisco for regular board meetings over two years.

In 2002, bridge officials told the public that the district’s top-heavy administration would spend less along with everyone else to save money. The newest $6 toll was proposed "with the understanding that staff will continue to focus on finding internal cost savings," one staff report promised.

But that’s not exactly what new numbers we obtained from the district through a public records request show. Transporting distant directors to district meetings over the past two years cost more than $54,000.

Exasperated district staffers respond that travel for board members to conferences around the globe has already been trimmed and the number of regular meetings they hold in San Francisco were cut to save on the $50 stipends board members traditionally earned per meeting for serving.

A HEALTHY PERK


A majority of the directors receive health insurance coverage from the district, either Blue Shield or Kaiser — a perk that few other part-time boards in the state offer. Last year, that cost $48,000.

But many of the directors already receive coverage from plans in their home counties. The bridge paid $1,200 last year to cover Mike Kerns; he is also a Sonoma County supervisor, where he’s on a second plan that includes life, dental, vision, and health coverage — and costs taxpayers there about $63,000 annually, the clerk of Sonoma County’s board told us. Kerns was on vacation when we called his office at press time.

Board member Albert Boro receives health insurance through the bridge, but taxpayers in San Rafael, where he’s the mayor, pay an additional $19,000 annually to cover him there, according to figures provided by San Rafael’s city manager.

But Boro told the Guardian that the bridge coverage is "secondary and it’s only utilized when my primary doesn’t cover something…. It’s not a premium in the sense that it might be through the city [of San Rafael]."

Three San Francisco supervisors participate in the plan offered here for county employees, which annually costs taxpayers approximately $10,500 per person, according to the controller’s office. But the bridge also covers those individuals. The list includes Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, and Gerardo Sandoval and costs a total of $14,000 to cover all three of them, according to district numbers we requested.

Ammiano said the benefit could be done away with if it truly became a burden on the bridge’s budget. "That would take the will of the board," he said. "[Doing away with it is] not something I would be against, but I can only speak for myself."

Board director Bevan Dufty, also a San Francisco supervisor, declined to sign up for the coverage when he joined the bridge’s board in 2005.

"I had insurance and it seemed duplicative to me … I meet with people every day who don’t have insurance from all walks of life and so I felt fortunate," Dufty said.

Only about 12 percent of the 450 or so special districts that responded to a survey two years ago asking about health coverage said they offered such benefits to their directors or trustees, according to Neil McCormick, head of the California Special Districts Association. The group represents around 900 waste management, utility, fire, and recreation districts across the state. The Golden Gate district is not a member.

The real problem here is that after the district retired its bond debt in 1971, it never came up with an adequate revenue source to cover all of its operating or capital costs. Bridge officials never sought from state lawmakers a mechanism, for instance, to borrow money at a fixed rate, like school districts do.

So what will the bridge do in five more years? Nobody seems to know. According to San Francisco board member Janet Reilly, "That’s the $64,000 question…. There’s only so much toll tolerance among drivers."

Careers & Ed: The Roots of it all

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› culture@sfbg.com

Standing at the gate of my great-grandfather’s house in southern China, I was dumbfounded by how similar the gate looked to that of a house near my own. But that seemed to be the only parallel to my home. As I stood on the street in my trendy designer jeans and swanky flats, all I could think about was how out-of-place I was there, and how dissimilar I felt from the young woman my age holding a baby a few feet from me.

It brought up all the quintessential second generation questions I’ve always hated to ask myself: Where do I belong? Am I more American or more Chinese? It reminded me of my classmate Johnny Ho, instructing me that speaking too often in class made me more white and less Chinese, which only elicited disdain for myself and the little knowledge I had of my culture.

Perhaps that’s why I was so adamant about learning more on my own, and integrating the two parts of myself that felt like opposites. If only I’d had the help of a program like Roots.

THE ROOT OF ROOTS


For the last 17 years, native San Franciscan Albert Cheng has devoted himself to helping young Chinese Americans discover their heritage and culture through the In Search of Roots program. The program, run by the Chinese Culture Center, helps those whose families hail from south China’s Pearl River Delta trace their genealogy and return to their ancestral villages. A fourth generation Chinese American himself, Cheng is an avid genealogy researcher who took his heritage journey to Zhongshan, China in 1988, and has since traced his own genealogy over 123 generations — a total of 2,700 years.

Upon his return from China, he found such a strong interest in his work that he created the Roots program. The yearlong internship, affectionately known as the "Rooting" process, beings with interviewing families for oral histories, researching at the National Archives, and attending lectures on Chinese-American and Chinese history. Each of the twelve interns, or "Rooters," typically explores either their maternal or paternal lineage. After this extensive preparation, the group hops on sponsored Cathay Pacific flights to Hong Kong and wends its way, by train, into China to spend two weeks visiting each of the Rooters’ ancestral villages. When they return, the participants present their experiences and reflections at an exhibition at the Chinese Culture Center.

I joined Cheng on a guided tour of the recent interns’ impressive exhibition — each of their stories mapped in photos, with Chinese artifacts like pipes, chairs, and genealogy book pages strung together to create vivid descriptions of their journey. He told me how each intern painstakingly raked through endless documents and personal stories to follow any clues that might lead them to the villages their families originated from. The process isn’t always easy. For example, one intern, Theresa Chan, managed to find the name of her village, but concluded that her family couldn’t have come from there based on official Chinese records showing no one with her last name lived there. For interns like Chan, it’s often up to the student’s ingenuity and persistence, plus a healthy dollop of serendipity, to find out where they were from — and therefore where they’d be going on their trip.

For Chan, that serendipity came after many days of uncertainty as she attempted to find her village by way of a man on a bike. By chance, this man not only lived near the village, but confirmed that the surrounding area had many families with a surname similar to hers.

This kind of dilemma and happy resolution has been familiar to Cheng during his years of Rooting. For him, each Rooter’s predicament has been a challenge worked through as a group to help all of the interns learn more about their culture. "You have to know where you’re from. Strong roots leads to a strong character, and a strong character leads to a strong community. Strong communities make for a strong country," Cheng says.

Kristina Lim remembers how distinct, yet relatable, each of this session’s 12 Rooters’ journeys were. "Everyone’s story was different and everyone’s village was different, but there were similar themes of identity, sadness, and gratefulness," she says. "Something about going through that all together, and all 12 of us, that’s not really something you can do all on your own. They’re there for you in a sense that makes it a unique experience."

Another intern, Frank Lee, agreed. "It gives you the opportunity to compare and contrast," he says. "Sometimes you miss the full effect, the big picture, ’cause you’re so caught up in your own rooting experience. When someone else is rooting, you’re still a part of it, but you’re not the focal point — you can wander off and talk to other people, and see everything."

Rooters say they find understanding and acceptance about who they are while they’re abroad, and they bring it home with them — often resulting in unexpected, but strikingly similar, discourses with friends and family when they return. For Lim, the interaction was most significant with her family. "At family gatherings, we’d actually go through photo albums and bring up family stories. It became a dialogue my family was very excited about. And now they’re all talking about going back and visiting the village," she says. "Before I started the program that never would’ve even been talked about."

In many ways, the program opens doors that many young Chinese Americans are afraid to open themselves.

As I listened to each of the interns’ stories about their journeys through China — meeting the woman who carried your mother to the ship that eventually took her to the United States, or sitting on a ledge your mother once sat on — I sensed their pride and gratitude. They’d picked through endless documents and artifacts. They’d studied genealogical trees. They’d surmounted emotional conflicts. And they did it all in the pursuit of the essence of their heritage, the history that had always been with them but — until now — was invisible to them.

As Cheng says, "In the rooting process, you never know what’s going to happen, but you just learn to trust your instincts and go…. This is part of American history; we are a part of American history that needs to be learned." In Search of Roots helps to hone those instincts by imparting these individuals with a stronger sense of self, an ability to continue exploring who they are, and an opportunity to learn and teach others about a Chinese American history that is ever-changing and growing.

It’s worked for me. After hearing about these interns’ experience, the confusion I felt as a girl standing outside her great-grandfather’s gates feels further away. Knowing about others who are finding their way through the cross-cultural divide gives me faith to keep pushing to find out more, because for once I can say they’re just like me.

Careers & Ed: Photo pro

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A line snakes down Fell Street on a Friday evening in front of the Rickshaw Stop, where Meleksah Jurgenson cradles a large camera and surveys the over- and underdressed revelers in Hayes Valley. A man in bright sneakers and slouchy jeans calls her over: "Dude, Meleksah! You gotta take a photo of this!" He gleefully points to a poor shlub on the curb resting a weary head on his knees. The guy’s been there, immobile, for at least 20 minutes.

Jurgenson smiles apologetically. With her long brown hair pulled back and bangs cut straight across her forehead, her face is girl-next-door lovely: sweet, a little sly, and essentially nonthreatening. Like the sidewalk lush, her camera remains fixed in her hands. She doesn’t shoot.

"I want everyone to look back at the pictures and be just as excited [to see them] as I was to take them," she explains later. A native of Washington, DC — her mother is a photographer at the White House — Jurgenson is now a resident cameraperson at Mezzanine, as well as at the weekly Frisco Disco and Blow Up parties cohosted by her husband, Jeffrey Fare, at the Transfer and the Rickshaw Stop. (Fare, a former member of postpunk dance purveyors the Rapture, DJs at these parties under the names DJ Jefrodisiac and Jeffrey Paradise.)

A rigorously spontaneous career track — "I never make plans for the future," she says — found Jurgenson working as both a model and a party planner. "So it was a natural progression to move from booking and throwing parties to [hosting] nightclubs," she says. "And to move from shooting fashion editorials to being on the other side of the camera. I just fell into it."

As she walks around the Rickshaw Stop, the regular disco kids light up. Hugs and air kisses are exchanged; everyone poses, happily and extravagantly. The photos, tagged with a hot-pink stripe signed "Lady Meleksah," then pop up on the various outlets where she serves as contributor or founder: Blow Up’s official Web site, Jurgenson’s makeshift party-photo outlet friscodiscofever.blogspot.com, and electro-music blog Missingtoof.com, in addition to her personal MySpace and Flickr accounts.

But Jurgenson isn’t on the typical photographer career track. These days, young arts professionals are pushed to consolidate their work online, have extensive multimedia experience at their fingertips, and create profiles on sites such as LinkedIn to attract employers. So there’s something old school about what Jurgenson does: take photos, make friends, and get hired. The ease of social-networking sites comes along with random and uneven exposure, so she figures if you’re not being seen around town having a legitimately good time, then maybe you’re not the right person for the job.

In fact, Jurgenson, who only began shooting professionally two years ago, doesn’t even — gasp! — have an online portfolio. Despite this, she’s done some band shoots and magazine work. But her bread and butter is the nightclub scene. "I love the people, I love the music, I love the sex. I love the dancing. I love everything about it," she says. "Having the camera is almost secondary. I come home after these parties with bruises and beer spilled all over me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way." And the parties keep getting bigger: she shot the Winter Music Conference in Miami last month and will shoot at Coachella.

Perhaps one reason Jurgenson is so successful is that she has a slightly different take on club photography from the norm. For example, sites such as Los Angeles’s Cobra Snake or New York’s Last Night’s Party often court controversy for their photographers, who are criticized for taking advantage of the subjects’ inebriated states as much as for their photos. Visually, the images feature the short-range flash that briefly illuminates bleary-eyed faces and exposed bodies. Every so often, these bodies are shown lying next to a pool of their own vomit. But Jurgenson wants to capture people looking good and having a great time.

She also manages to get more intimate photos of people — and receives less criticism about her photos exploiting women — than most photographers (typically male) can get.

"I’m not an imposing guy shoving a camera in somebody’s face," she says. "I don’t think people are as threatened by me."

The people in her nightclub work appear as radiant as they must have felt at that very moment. Instead of featuring closed house parties and backstage antics with celebrities, her photos, laced with dazzling lights and brilliant colors, mostly take place on the open dance floor. Rather than exploiting blotto hipsters, Jurgenson shoots buoyant clubhoppers and exhibitionists unlikely to regret the posturing. "I don’t particularly like Cobra Snake or any of the other party photographers out there," she says. "I don’t want to capture pictures of a girl standing there making a silly face."

Jurgenson doesn’t bother photographing the aftereffects of the parties — the three-day hangover or the sore throat and lungs. Her work puts the most exuberant parts of the night on display — the parts that evoke carefree and careless times. It’s gloriously unapologetic and unabashedly playful. "Look, stop worrying about the ‘misspent youth,’" the faces seem to shout. "Just dance with us!"

"I think that’s what separates me from a lot of photographers," Jurgenson says. "I immerse myself in the festivities and shoot. To capture a party like I do, you have to be a part of it, not a photographer."

But when you’re a consummate hostess connecting and socializing with everyone around you, there’s no doubt that observing and participating in the environment changes it. But Jurgenson isn’t concerned with keeping photojournalistic distance. She likes to shake things up.

Other photographers are "sort of like birdwatchers," Jurgenson says. "But I’m on safari."

Careers & Ed: Degrees of separation

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Julia Cosart spends her days attending to San Francisco’s skin woes — unwanted hair, unwelcome wrinkles, and clogged pores — at Spa Radiance. Her calm, self-assured, soothing demeanor is not unlike the atmosphere of the spa in which she works. Which is why it’s hard to imagine her in the fast-paced, cutthroat world of advertising.

But that is where Cosart imagined herself ending up, having graduated in 2004 from the University of Nevada at Reno with a combined degree in advertising and journalism. After college, she tried her new career on for size with an advertising internship. "I realized I hated it," she says.

After working a few other jobs, including a stressful stint at a home for troubled youth, she decided to become an aesthetician by training at Miss Marty’s School of Beauty in San Francisco. Now, she says, "I love what I do. I only work three days a week, but make enough to live in a beautiful San Francisco apartment. Most importantly, I don’t go to a job I hate every day. There is very little stress in my life, and that’s no accident."

Cosart isn’t alone. According to experts like Alexandra Robbins, author of Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis: Advice from Twentysomethings Who Have Been There and Survived (Perigee, 2004), Cosart represents a current movement among recent (and not-so-recent) college graduates who are entering jobs that have nothing to do with their degree(s), or with a traditional four-year college at all. Generation Y is not one that leaves college to head straight for the embrace of the corporation that will keep them until retirement; people now in their mid-twenties will most likely change careers several times throughout their life. They are also delaying getting married and having children, deferrals that make it less appealing or necessary to immediately seek out a career-track job.

"I know someone who went to an Ivy League school and then became a mailman," Robbins says. "People are starting to realize that college isn’t a direct segue to the ‘real world.’"

TIME IS MONEY. SO IS MONEY.


For many college grads following this path, the appeal is both more money and more free time. While their newly graduated classmates work 50 hours per week to earn $25,000–$45,000 per year in typical post-BA employment, grads who take jobs that don’t require degrees (such as in the service industry) can earn much more.

That’s why Bert Ladner slings sushi to the Gucci-clad Financial District masses instead of using his degree in finance from San Francisco State University to be an entry-level accountant. In an ironic twist, he says, "I’ll definitely be waiting tables until I pay off my student loans. It would be impossible to pay those off on an entry-level salary."

It’s hard to track a server’s average "salary" — pay varies widely from restaurant to restaurant (and temperament to temperament) — but it’s estimated that a server could make $60,000 per year in a high-end restaurant. Ladner makes as much as $50,000.

Even better, he says, the lack of a set salary provides greater control over how much you make. "Need more money? Pick up an extra shift," Ladner says.

These jobs also provide more freedom about how you spend your time. Servers, aestheticians, and massage therapists all have control over the balance between money and time — and many seem to value the latter even more than the former.

"Quality of life is the top priority for the new generation for twentysomethings," explains Robbins. "It ranks higher than salary or prestige."

Some say this proves that Generation Y, widely considered to be navel-gazing, fun-loving, and responsibility-shirking, isn’t self-indulgent and lazy. It’s just that they’ve abandoned a Gordon Gecko-esque pursuit of status for a greater sense of equilibrium in life.

REAL CONNECTIONS


Another reason that service jobs seem to appeal to grads more than office jobs do is the increased level of human interaction.

"A trend I see a lot is students joining us after a few years in an office," says Rocky Hall of the San Francisco School of Massage. "In those jobs, they get tired of communicating electronically through e-mail, phone conferences, et cetera. They crave a genuine sense of connection with other people, which they find through massage."

Michelle Hamer, director of admissions for Miss Marty’s School of Beauty, agrees. "In a corporate world, it’s all done over e-mail and phone. There is an electronic wall between people. We are the last profession to touch people."

And even if grads aren’t actually touching people, they are meeting, talking to, and potentially spending social time with people they wouldn’t see in office jobs — both the clients they meet on the job and the friends they have more time for afterwards.

Riley Salant-Pearce says this is the benefit of waiting tables (he declined to name the restaurant). After earning his degree in biology from University of California, San Diego and guiding tours in Ecuador for a year, he found himself serving when he moved to San Francisco. Now, it’s hard for him to imagine doing a science job.

"I love the freedom of a restaurant job. I see my friends in 9-to-5 engineering and science-related jobs, and it’s too restrictive. They’re not having any fun. I make an equal amount of money, but I only work four nights a week," says Salant-Pearce, who estimates he makes about $40 an hour. "I make enough to live comfortably in San Francisco. Better than that, I can take time off to enjoy it."

He also likes the social environment of working in the service industry. "The restaurant was a great way to meet people," he says. "We all go out together when we get off. I realized I’m just too social to work in a lab."

Another selling point is that the interaction in these types of jobs tends to be of a happier, more relaxed sort. More often than not, those in the corporate world are stressed-out people dealing with other stressed-out people during work hours. The service industry sees those same corporate drones, but with their ties loosened at the bar or completely removed at the spa. Waiters and beauticians are salespeople, true, but they’re selling you something you already want. People want to buy drinks, eat lavish meals, enjoy massages, haircuts, and facials. This makes these industries sustainable.

"Beauty is a recession-proof industry," Hamer says. "People are always going to get their hair done. We maintain every other profession."

WHAT I COULD’VE BEEN


Yet many of these twentysomethings are consumed with self-doubt about "wasting" their college degrees. "Guilt does cause conflict for twentysomethings," Robbins says. "How do I weigh doing what I love with making enough money? A big part of that is image, thinking people judge them. It can take a big leap of faith to say, ‘You know what? This is how I’d like my life to be.’"

Christine Hassler, author of 20 Something Manifesto (New World), has been there. "After graduating from college, I became a successful Hollywood agent. By my mid-twenties, I had my own assistant," she says. "Agents are salespeople, and I don’t like sales. I was a nerd in high school, and the entertainment industry was the adult version of the popular crowd. I didn’t feel passionate about what I was doing. Now that I’m older, I realize that passion doesn’t come from external circumstances. But back then, I just felt lost."

So she decided to become a personal trainer.

"But I still felt lost. With all that education, I was counting to 12 in a gym all day. When people would ask what I did, I’d say, ‘I used to be an agent in Hollywood.’ I didn’t give value to personal training because it was frowned upon," she said.

Experts say part of getting over the guilt of having nondegree jobs is understanding they’re not just fun, easy, and carefree. Succeeding in them may not require a traditional degree, but they do require a certain amount of smarts and/or skill.

"Cosmetology requires an artistic background. You have to know people’s face shapes and what colors work on them," Hamer says. "Aestheticians approach skin from a medical perspective; they nurture and heal people with bad skin. And not everyone can do it. To be good, you have to be articulate and speak well to sell your product."

Cosart, who has been an aesthetician for three years, says she is "just now getting to the point where I’m really proud of it, where I’m not a little ashamed that this is what I’m doing with my college degree."

At the same time, Cosart is realizing that if she ever does want to rejoin the career track, it’ll take more than a BA to get her there. Since bachelor of arts degrees have become a dime a dozen, many twentysomethings feel pressure to get more advanced degrees to earn the prestige a BA might once have given them — and to distinguish themselves from the bachelor’s-holding lumpen. Cosart figures she’ll eventually go back to school, though she’s not sure what she’ll focus on. But if she does, she knows she’s learned a valuable lesson from this time outside the white-collar world.

"I’m grateful to have figured out early in life that in choosing a career, you must decide what you want your life to feel like, not what you want it to look like," she said. "Some people live for stress. I know because I listen their Blackberries buzz in their purses every 30 seconds even as I meticulously work the stress out of their pores and their shoulders. I’m not cut out for that, and I often wonder if they are."

Careers & Ed: Pedalheads

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For many of us, reminiscing to the warm spring days of childhood can be a tour adorned with dreamy bike rides through old neighborhoods or feverish races in back lot trails. But at some point, sadly, those plywood jumps crumbled, the mudholes dried up, our skinned knees healed, and ultimately, we bought cars and began our lifelong battles for parking. Well, at least some of us did. Others, such as the Oakland-based founders of Broakland Bicycles — Jason Grove, Jason Montano, and Steve Radonich — made biking their passion, zipping past the norm and into the bipedal future of urban transportation.

Handmade in Oakland, Broakland bicycles are fixed-gear bikes professionally designed to be sold for both the track and for everyday commutes. Reviving the triple-triangle frame made famous by GT Bicycles, the boys at Broakland have unleashed a uniquely Bay Area flavor of bike, complete with custom paint jobs by local graffiti artists. The old-school style and unquestionable quality of the work entrusted into these bikes dial them into that nexus where "great" separates itself from "good." But what really makes these cycles so special is the way the three unique personalities of Broakland’s classically East Bay designers shine through in their finished product.

BIKES BY THE NUMBERS


Jason Montano, also owner and chief mechanic of upbeat Oakland bike shop Montano Velo, is the numbers guy. He tweaks the fork rakes, offsets, bottom bracket drops, head angles, and seat angles, even if you don’t know what those things are. He hasn’t owned a car in eight years.

He’s as unlikely to be behind the wheel of a car as he is behind a desk. He’s more likely to be out riding his beauties or working on bikes at the shop. He admits that he doesn’t fit the classic model of a businessowner. "I don’t wear a suit," he said. "I am who I am. But if I couldn’t live doing what I’m doing, I wouldn’t do it."

So far, so good. The shop’s been open for four years and is doing well. And the Broakland line, unveiled a little over a year ago, has been garnering great reviews.

BIKE BUILDING AS SCIENCE


The ridiculously talented craftsman of the Broakland crew is Jason Grove, who is also the man behind Emeryville’s El Camino Fabrications. A welder who developed and refined his skills at the Seattle aerospace juggernaut Boeing, and he’s been building bikes for almost 18 years. Armed with his TIG welder, Jason prudently fashions the Broakland frames from high-grade aluminum and titanium tubing, utilizing a technique that fills the tubes with argon during welds to ensure extra durability and a longer shelf life.

His solar-powered shop, which doubles as his studio apartment, is impressively clean. He claims that clean air helps the welds gel. Confucians claim that a clean house creates good energies that help the mind think. In that vein, Grove prides himself on putting good energy into his product. "It’s all about good karma," he said. "And I think that goes into these bikes and makes them better for it."

THE ART OF THE BICYCLE


Broakland’s jack-of-all-trades is Steven "Stevie" Radonich. He’s the energetic hype man who makes sure that the bikes are as stylish as they are functional. Stevie, rider and art consultant for Broakland, has brought in East Bay graffiti artists Soul from the TDK crew and widely-known Goser to create custom paint jobs for these rides. Sleek marble, quintessential custom flame paint jobs, or graffiti-style lettering topped off with a beautiful finish elevate these high-end bikes beyond transportation or sport: they ascend into the realm of art.

THE PRODUCT


The prices on these masterpieces start with the Street Fighter model, a traditional track bike that runs about $1,350, including a base paint job. Things get pricier as you continue to trick them out. In the past, naysayers argued that spending so much moolah on a street bike is a fool’s errand for gearheads and overgrown kids whose cash burns a hole in their messenger bags. But that was before gas hit $4 a gallon. Now it makes as much sense to shell out for a bike you love as it ever did to do the same for a car.

And these designers are making sure their products are worth it. "Our bikes have to live up to our standards," Montano said. "If we build a bike we like to ride, then other people will like to ride them too."

The Broakland crew unveiled their first design in San Jose just over a year ago at the 2007 North American Handmade Bicycle Show, the four-year-old exhibition of the nation’s top designers and bikemakers. In February, the Broakland crew set up a display, including the cream-and-magenta-marbled Meat Wagon, now on exhibit in the window of Montano Velo, at the 2008 NAHBS in Portland, Ore.

When asked what these bikes mean to him, Jason Grove just laughed. "It’s nice having a solid ride."

Check out Broakland’s designs or pick up some gear at Montano Velo, 4266 Piedmont Ave., Oakl., (510) 654-8356, or at www.myspace.com/broaklandbicycles

Careers & Ed: Symphony of instruction

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It may have been San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, but at times it felt more like a Pentecostal revival meeting. Forget about rules or decorum: when the spirit moved them, this crowd let loose. Imaginary batons twirled. Heads tick-tocked. Feet tapped. Giggling and applause burst out at all the wrong times.

You haven’t really experienced the symphony until you’ve sat among 2,200 first and second graders at their first live orchestra performance, hundreds of them conducting the orchestra from their seats.

"Movement is exactly what we want," says Ronald Gallman, director of the San Francisco Symphony’s Education Programs, Youth Orchestra and Adventures in Music (AIM) program. "We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if they were sitting with their hands folded in their laps."

Not everyone acts like inspired little savages; others revel in acting like adults. One girl watched the performance through a pair of improvised opera classes — tiny binoculars she brought from an explorer’s kit at home.

It’s somewhat of a relief to learn that kids of the iPod generation can still appreciate classical music. It helps that musicians in the AIM program understand a few basic principles of child psychology: keep performances short, allow plenty of opportunities to shout out and move around, and throw in a fart joke or two for good measure (the tuba player who introduced his instrument with a flatulent blast got the biggest laughs of any joke in the performance).

Founded in 1988, the AIM program serves first through fifth graders at every public elementary school in San Francisco — an impressive 75 schools — as well as third through fifth graders in some private and parochial schools, totaling more than 22,000 children. Beyond the innovation, this is only possible because the AIM program is funded entirely by private donors, foundations, and events like the Black and White Ball — which means that it’s offered at no cost to the schools. According to Gallman, this level of commitment to building equitable access to music education in public schools makes the San Francisco Symphony stand apart as a national leader.

The symphony performance is just one piece of the larger AIM curriculum, which includes four ensemble shows per year at each school as well as comprehensive materials to help teachers build interdisciplinary lesson plans around the AIM performances. Each school is able to choose the ensembles it wants — with options including jazz and all varieties of world music — thus allowing for culturally appropriate programming at different schools.

At the Claire Lilienthal School in the Richmond District on a recent school day, the Drei Brass trio had been chosen to perform for a gymnasium full of first and second graders seated on the floor, each of whom had been given a brightly colored plastic kazoo.

"Our show today is about three brass instruments and vibration!" announced Alicia Telford, the Drei Brass french horn player, her eyes wide and one eyebrow arched. She showed the kids how to feel the vibration in their vocal chords when they sung by placing a hand on the front of their neck.

Each of the brass players introduced himself as "an ambassador of ppppfffft," demonstrating that the music coming out of their instruments begins with a simple pppfffft blown into the mouthpiece — the same ppppfffft sound that the kids blow into their kazoos.

They also peppered their classical performance with recognizable tunes that the kids could intuitively follow, like the finger-snapping Pink Panther theme.

Kazoo-induced hyperactivity aside, it seems that teachers by and large are nothing but grateful for the AIM programming in their schools.

"Music is a great way to keep some children engaged who might not be the best readers or [who are] a bit behind. It’s a great way to keep them in the school system through high school."

According to JR Jowkalsky, a reading teacher at Willie L. Brown Jr. elementary school in the Bayview, the number of students who pursue orchestra or band in middle school has "mushroomed" as a result of the AIM Program.

Keith Jones, who has been teaching for 20 years and currently runs the 40-piece band at Willie L. Brown, reports that about one-sixth of the potential band students participate in the music program. Anything over 10 or 15 percent participation is considered good.

"AIM has given me 10 violins, symphony tickets for the kids, concerts here at school," he said. "It provides things that I could never provide to my students."

While the AIM program alone cannot revive public-school music education in an era of restricted funding, it’s not a far stretch to say that exposing every single public school student by the end of fifth grade to five symphony visits and 20 ensemble performances must help pick up the slack.

Now, if only there was something AIM could do to preserve the sense of wonder and complete abandon with which these kids enjoyed the symphony for the first time, conducting wildly from their seats like no one is watching.

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