Print sections as they appeared in the early 2010s

To find articles by keyword or author, you may want to use our Search function.

Print Sections

Locals only?

-
0

BOOK REVIEW Not for Tourists Guidebooks has just released the fourth edition of its Not for Tourists Guide to San Francisco. Besides having a mad grip of inaccuracies, the title is problematic: this tome is definitely not not for tourists.

The first thing I found wrong with the book was its only foldout map. It’s a highway map, which is weird, since most city dwellers tend to stay clear of the damn things. They’re for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd and, uh, the tourists. And the map isn’t even detailed enough for you to see where on- and off-ramps are or tell which is which. And with San Francisco’s grand total of four highways, it’s hard to imagine why the NFT folks didn’t devote their largest page to a Muni map – just one of many things this book doesn’t have.

In all fairness, Muni routes are included in the 120 minimaps that comprise most of the book. But the layout is incredibly daunting! To follow one bus route, you might have to flip back and forth 20 times to see where the line will take you – shit most locals just don’t have friggin’ time for. I became further discouraged by the decision to devote pages to Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Pier 39. (If not for tourists, for whom?) But despite this and despite noticing an ad for Segway Tours of the Marina Green (insert sound of me retching here), I still gave the rest of the guide a whirl, determined to get some practical use out of it.

I attempted to find a liquor store when I was trapped in SoMa without rolling papers – only to discover the intersection I was at, Fourth Street and Mission, was on the corner of three maps. The bar I was in (my favorite) was nowhere to be found. I was in minimap limbo. Next I tried to wax nostalgic with the maps of neighborhoods where I used to live – only to discover that some bars listed on the neighborhood directories weren’t dotted on the maps.

So I tried using the guide to call my neighborhood grocery store, Eight-Twenty-Eight Irving Market, to see if it carried printer paper. Apparently, it falls somewhere between liquor store and supermarket, because it’s not in the book. (BTW: it carries college rule but not printer paper.) Finally, I called the Hotel Utah – only to lose an eardrum when that killer "bee-doo-eet!" sound alerted me to the fact that the number listed in the guide was disconnected.

Maybe, maybe buy the Not for Tourists Guide for first-year college students or other new SF transplants. But if you’ve been here for longer than six months, just hang on to your Muni map and your BART schedule and save the $14.95 (suggested retail) for 411 charges.

www.notfortourists.com

How to control my body

-
0

> annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION The biological functioning of my body is all over the news right now. Lawmakers and federal regulatory agencies are asking themselves whether I should be allowed to have abortions, and whether I should be allowed to take a drug that prevents me from menstruating. You probably know about the brouhaha over abortion, spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision, but you may not have realized that decision came as the Food and Drug Administration decides the fate of Lybrel, a birth control pill that could liberate millions of women from paying Tampax for "wings" every month. But these two issues are not unrelated. They are both symptoms of how much the government loves to regulate the basic functioning of my body. Still, there are some key differences.

Most arguments over abortion boil down to whether you think a woman’s right to control her future is more or less important than the much-debated rights of a potential human. Because the legal status of a fetus has become part of the abortion debate, it’s hard to cast abortion purely as a female reproductive rights issue (as much as I’d like to do that). These days the abortion debate is also about how we define human life and whether a fetus constitutes a being that deserves legal protection.

However, the issue of controlling menstrual cycles is unequivocally about the female reproductive cycle, untainted by questions of embryo civil rights. Why should there be any controversy over pharmaceutical company Wyeth marketing Lybrel, which is exactly like a birth control pill without the seven-day placebo cycle that creates a fake period? (In case you aren’t a Pill geek, the period women have while taking contraceptive pills is caused only by hormone fluctuation and not a biological need to flush out unused eggs – the Pill works by preventing the ripening of said eggs. So it’s purely a cosmetic menstrual cycle.)

There are good reasons to test Lybrel, since nobody is completely sure what might happen in the long term to women who stop menstruating. But now that Wyeth has demonstrated the safety of this pill, what’s the big deal? The New York Times recently published a much-discussed article about negative reactions to Lybrel and other drugs like it. Canadian psychologist Christine Hitchcock told the paper she didn’t like "the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap." Giovanna Chesler, who just made a documentary about "the end of menstruation," objects to the idea that taking a daily pill makes women appear defective. "Women are not sick," she said. "They don’t need to control their periods for 30 or 40 years."

It’s interesting that Chesler uses the word "control" in her comment. Why are women eager to relinquish control over their periods, arguably one of the most annoying parts of being a biological female? After all, we take calcium pills to control bone density; we take showers to control odor; and take ibuprofen to control pain. None of these things are necessary. We don’t do them because we are sick, and not doing them won’t kill us. So why shouldn’t we take control of our bodies and stop having periods if we want to? There are no fetuses being harmed here. Why should we reject Lybrel, if not for the dogma that it’s unnatural for women to control their reproductive functions?

Yes, Wyeth stands to make money on Lybrel, and I’m no fan of pharmaceutical companies, but women already pay to deal with their periods. We pump billions of collars into feminine hygiene products so Kotex can sell us more wings and soft applicators and superabsorbent crap. I say if we can take pills that free us from having to deal with the monthly goo and bother, then let’s do it. Nobody is saying periods are sick or wrong here. It’s just that they’re annoying and uncomfortable – and if women don’t want to deal with them, they shouldn’t have to.

The social rejection of drugs such as Lybrel – which the FDA has already turned down for approval once – is based on the idea that there is something about women’s bodies that women themselves should not be allowed to control. Even in the absence of the fetus debates, we’re still seeing women who are afraid to control their reproductive systems. As long as we are in thrall to this fear, we will never triumph in the struggle for abortion rights and effective birth control. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who gets horrible migraines from birth control pills, so she (alas) will remain trapped in a prehistoric female body.

Bury the Geary

-
0

OPINION Geary Boulevard transit riders deserve a real solution to the problems plaguing the busiest travel corridor west of the Mississippi River – not a short-term fix, such as bus rapid transit (BRT), that will waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money and create even more problems and congestion for the troubled street.

Transit experts have hailed BRT as cutting-edge technology and a cheaper alternative to light-rail and subways. They point to successes in countries such as Japan, France, and Brazil – and even some US cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Successful they may be.

But the streets these BRT programs operate on look nothing like Geary Boulevard.

More often than not, these streets have no parking – and eliminating parking is something we can’t do to the residents and merchants along the corridor.

These model corridors are extremely wide and remain so throughout the course of the BRT route. On Geary we face much more challenging lane widths throughout the Richmond and east of Van Ness Avenue, not to mention the daunting challenges of how to handle the Masonic and Fillmore interchanges.

The current study of BRT on Geary is in its final stages. After three years the transit authority staff has offered the Geary Citizens Advisory Committee "choices" to recommend to the full board.

These choices include different arrays of BRT and one non-BRT option that encompasses much cheaper repairs such as proof-of-payment boarding through all doors, transit signal priority, and other improvements.

None of these choices, however, contemplates the issues Geary and O’Farrell Street face east of Van Ness, and they all assume police and traffic control will step up their enforcement of the diamond lane.

But there’s one solution we have not considered. Yes, it is the most ambitious and the most expensive, but it also could be the most transformative and could spur more people to leave their cars behind and embrace public transit: bury the Geary and create a subway.

We owe Geary corridor residents and riders this solution. Why can someone in Berkeley or Hayward get to downtown San Francisco faster than some of our residents?

Big problems require big thinking, big solutions, and, most important, leadership. So far we’ve had none of that on Geary. It’s time for our city leaders to champion a solution that can grow along with the city and help solve the congestion issues that will only continue to get worse.

San Francisco holds itself out as one of the world’s finest cities. If that’s the case, we all should remember the world’s great cities move people underground – not in buses. *

David Schaefer

David Schaefer is vice chair of the Geary Citizens Advisory Committee.

The importance of being imported

-
0

If you think of Mateus or Lancer’s when you think of Portuguese wine, then you may soon be thinking anew. Portugal’s food and wines have been overshadowed by those of Spain, its larger Iberian neighbor, over the last generation or so, but the Portuguese viticultural tradition has its roots in Roman times and produces wines that compare favorably with any in the world. The issue at the moment is distributing them to that world – in particular, to us – and that means finding importers.

To judge by the offerings of a recent trade show, Portuguese winemakers aren’t going to have much trouble convincing the public about the quality of their wines nor about their value. I found myself, after rapturous sips of this and that, asking what a particular bottling might sell for at retail in Europe and repeatedly hearing, "2 euros 50" or "3 euros" – in other words, $3 or $4. I would have bought several cases on the spot if I’d been able to, the whites being especially appealing.

At least one wrinkle for Portuguese winemakers who want to sell their stuff here is that there is no restaurant infrastructure to serve as a wedge into public consciousness. Our Iberian restaurants are almost all Spanish, and there aren’t even that many of them; I am aware of only the Grubstake, a Polk Gulch hamburger salon, as an offerer of a full-scale Portuguese menu in the city, and even there you have to know what you’re looking for, lest you end up with a BLT from the regular menu. Some years ago, Stars, in one of its post-Jeremiah Tower configurations, made a point of featuring Portuguese wines, but that program went down with the restaurant.

Perhaps there will be a breakthrough wine, a Portuguese answer to gruner veltliner and albarino. (The Portuguese grow the latter, incidentally, as alvarinho.) I might place a small bet on white wines produced from antao vez, a grape indigenous to Portugal and grown in the Alentejo region southeast of Lisbon. The name looks a bit forbidding to the Anglophone eye – an unhelpful detail in a brand-name culture like ours – but the wines are bright and fresh, with a green fruitiness gently crisped by acid. Wines like these at $3 to $4 a bottle would be too good to be true – but maybe $5 or $6 is feasible?

Paul Reidinger

> paulr@sfbg.com

The unfolding story

-
0

Media trial to proceed — in public
Reilly anti-monopoly case goes forward
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Reilly’s right to sue
The “standing” argument keeps activists out in the cold — and monopolies flush
EDITORIAL

What we know now
New court documents show the big local dailies couldn’t handle competition — but never talked much about improving their papers
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Brown must fight the media monopoly
Now that this is all out in public, will California’s new attorney general, Jerry Brown, put a stop to it?
EDITORIAL

Barons of monopoly
Exclusive: Newspaper barons have history of anticompetitive talks, court records show
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Between the sheets
Are the Bay Area’s two big newspaper barons planning to carve up the region and end competition? We’re about to find out.
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge opens secret media merger files
Victory! Federal judge orders newspaper barons to open secret merger documents
BY TIM REDMOND

Off the record
Billion-dollar software company Mercury Interactive wants to keep details of a backdating scandal under seal
BY G.W. SCHULZ


Collusion blocked
EDITORIAL

Opening the secret files
Guardian, Media Alliance file legal motion to open key Hearst-Singleton newspaper-merger records
EDITORIAL

Unseal the court files
The lawsuit that seeks to stop the monopolization of daily newspapers in the Bay Area isn’t just a business dispute.
BY TIM REDMOND

Media moguls get cozier
Hearst and Dean Singleton say there’s no illegal deal — but just look at the evidence
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge slams daily-paper monopoly
Those lying newspaper barons — Hearst, Singleton — are nailed trying to wipe out competition.
EDITORIAL

The morning after
While drunk on big newspaper purchases, Dean Singleton promised competitive papers and no layoffs. Now he’s swinging the ax, cutting deals with Hearst, and decimating local news coverage
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Journalists need to fight back
EDITORIAL

The silent scandal
How does media concentration affect the news we read? Just check out the coverage of the latest newspaper merger
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Media blues
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Feds let Singleton off the hook
Justice Department refuses to block media mega-merger
BY TIM REDMOND

The judge misses the point
EDITORIAL

Hidden in the Chron
Story buried on page B9 explains the latest in the Singleton merger case
BY TIM REDMOND

The case against the media grab
EDITORIAL

On point

-
0

> sarah@sfbg.com

April has been an exceptionally busy month for the artists at the Hunters Point Shipyard. In addition to dusting off work spaces in preparation for the upcoming Spring Open Studio, the 300-member colony is scrambling to track the implications of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ever-shifting effort to keep the 49ers in town, particularly as it affects the artists who have rented space at the base for 30 years.

Newsom’s latest proposal involves building a football stadium in the shipyard rather than at Candlestick Point. That’s likely to displace a group that claims to be the largest colony of artists in the nation – unless the mayor can find a place for them in his hasty plans.

"Hellzapoppin’" is how shipyard artist Marc Ellen Hamel described the recent flurry of redevelopment-related meetings. Newsom says he needs to fast-track the transfer of the shipyard from the Navy to the city if he is to meet the 49ers’ deadline for being in a new stadium by 2012.

The blitz was triggered by the 49ers’ announcement in December 2006 that they were considering a move to Santa Clara – which team officials in part blamed on Newsom’s inattention – leading some Bayview-Hunters Point residents to complain that they’re paying the price for the administration’s fumble. Newsom has proposed folding Candlestick Point and the shipyard into a giant 2,000-acre redevelopment project – to be managed by the Lennar Corp., whose profits are nose-diving and which is being sued for alleged whistle-blower retaliation in connection with its failure to control toxic asbestos dust at the site.

"Newsom’s latest plan confirms his critics’ worst fears that this is a bait and switch," said builder Brian O’Flynn, who was part of last year’s referendum drive to put the city’s previous Bayview-Hunters Point redevelopment plan on the ballot and this year’s lawsuit to force a vote. "This latest plan is about political coverage for the mayor in an election year."

His group, Defend BVHP Committee, was already concerned about Newsom’s role in thwarting a vote on the old plan and has even more concerns about the new plan. "If the 49ers leave and the stadium plan is off the table, then Newsom’s latest proposal will make way for more condos for Lennar," O’Flynn told the Guardian.

Matt Dorsey of the City Attorney’s Office said that regardless of whether the city was right to strike down the referendum – as he maintains state case law required – the new plan will get more scrutiny. The Board of Supervisors voted in February to support Newsom’s approach to the shipyard but stipulated that the terms of any such transfer "require approval by the Recreation and Park Commission, the Board of Supervisors, and such other possible approvals, including voter approval."

The artists’ colony is waiting to learn the specifics of Lennar’s redevelopment proposal, which talks of creating "permanent space for the artists at Hunters Point Shipyard," along with new waterfront parks, 8,500 units of housing, and job-generating development. So far, Michael Cohen of the Mayor’s Office and Lennar’s Kofi Bonner are only shopping around what they call a "conceptual framework," which vaguely describes the parameters for merging the yard and Candlestick Point.

The city has promised to replace all existing low-income housing at the Alice Griffith projects and to phase in new units carefully so as not to displace current residents. The artists have not received such promises. They don’t know if they’ll end up paying double the price for half the space they currently occupy, which amounts to 248,400 square feet, according to building 101 artist David Trachtenberg.

But with Lennar announcing a two-year planning goal and talking about an arts-themed development, the colony is formuutf8g its own ideas about how such a plan could work.

"The shipyard is almost like an artists’ retreat," Estelle Akamine told us, as five colleagues spoke passionately about the light, desolation, and poppies that attract artists to the base.

"But it didn’t always feel like a retreat," recalled Akamine, who has rented at the shipyard for 18 years. "There was a lot of trauma in the 1980s when we thought that the USS Missouri was going to be home-ported here. So we’re very skeptical of plans. We were born out of politics."

The Mayor’s Office claims the city is working to expedite the cleanup and transfer of the shipyard not only to adhere to the 49ers’ timeline but also to "allow us to move forward with community benefits like parks, affordable housing, and jobs for the Bayview." Trachtenberg believes the mayor has a strong interest in keeping artists at the yard too.

Newsom promotes his proposal as a way to create jobs and revitalize the BVHP economy. Akamine said, "Artists are the tip of the iceberg. We’re the visible part of a huge, largely hidden industry." Recalling how artists in SoMa fell victim to the dot-com boom at the end of the ’90s, Akamine hopes such displaced organizations will be able to relocate to the shipyard.

"Why can’t we have galleries and suppliers down here too?" she asked.

April Hankins, who rents a studio in building 117, wants to see "performance space for productions, community theater and music, and touring groups. We are discussing space for classes. Ideally, it could make San Francisco a destination for the arts."

Dimitri Kourouniotis, who rents in building 116, is stoic about the inconvenience he’s already endured, thanks to the Navy’s radiological remediation on Parcel B, where his studio is situated.

"We have already had to leave temporarily," said Kourouniotis, explaining how a three-week project to remove radiological contamination from sewers and pipes ended up taking five months and left six buildings without running water or plumbing.

Hamel, who’s rented a studio in building 101 for 15 years, wants people to know that there’s "nothing wrong" with the artists at the shipyard. "We’re not contaminated, and none of the artists have had problems with illness from possible toxic elements," she says, while Hankins compares artists to the athletes that Newsom is apparently scrambling so hard to keep.

"Both need an arena in which to exhibit increasing skill," Hankins says. "An artist’s work and an athlete’s performance is their gift to their audience. In showing patronage, ball games with high ticket prices are attended; art is collected. In communities and teams, both nourish the culture of the city for which they perform. It would be a great loss to the Bay Area to have the shipyard artist community become a redevelopment casualty." *

Spring Open Studio runs April 28-29, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., at the Hunters Point Shipyard. For more information, go to www.springopenstudio.com.

Sunshine for Berkeley

-
0

EDITORIAL At long last the city of Berkeley is talking seriously about adopting a sunshine ordinance. That’s the good news, and it’s overdue: Councilmember Kris Worthington asked city attorney Manuela Albuquerque to start working on this six years ago.

The bad news is that Albuquerque has drafted a law that’s full of holes.

The biggest problem with the proposed ordinance is its lack of effective enforcement. Although the law sets (some) standards for open records and open meetings, any complaints about secrecy would go to the city manager. That won’t work: if we’ve learned one thing in covering politics for more than 40 years, it’s that city officials can’t police themselves on sunshine issues. What happens if the city manager is the biggest offender? What happens if the city manager doesn’t want to take on the mayor or the council members? What if the city manager winds up protecting city employees (who may be vioutf8g the ordinance with impunity)?

The ordinance needs a few other things – for example, mandatory time for public comment at City Council meetings ought to be written into the law instead of being left as a council rule that can change any time. There ought to be clear language stating that all requests for information are to be treated as public records requests, even if they aren’t in writing and didn’t come through the City Manager’s Office.

But if this ordinance is going to make any difference, it needs real enforcement – and that means having an outside, independent panel or commission that can handle complaints. In San Francisco, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force does that job – and the city still lacks decent enforcement. If Berkeley wants to adopt a real landmark ordinance, it should follow what Connecticut has done and create an open records commission with the authority to order city departments, agencies, and officials to release documents and open up meetings.

Worthington is a strong supporter of an independent enforcement body and has been struggling to get Mayor Tom Bates and Albuquerque to go along.

At this point, Worthington and the sunshine advocates would be better off letting Terry Franke of Californians Aware and Mark Schlosberg of the American Civil Liberties Union – both of whom have offered their time and expertise – simply write another draft. It should include a new sunshine commission, with teeth. Worthington says that might require a charter amendment and thus a vote of the people, and he’s prepared to push the entire package onto the ballot if necessary.

That threat alone ought to get Bates and Albuquerque in line – and if it doesn’t, the voters of Berkeley should have the final say. *

Editor’s Notes

-
0

> tredmond@sfbg.com

I knew a lot of sick puppies in high school and college – loners, misfits, and social nightmares who wrote short stories and poems about death and destruction and suicide and drew grisly cartoons of people with brains spattered and organs hanging out and strangely mangled genitalia. These days, I fear, a lot of them would have been sent to the campus counseling service. Back then it was all just art.

None of these people (to my knowledge) have ever done any physical harm to anyone. I’m almost certain that none of them have turned into mass murderers. Most are now successful and respected members of society.

And I think anyone who is attracted to the weirder elements and attended a liberal arts college probably has similar acquaintances.

So I’m not going to get all agitated about the fact that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, was never properly tracked and identified as a sociopath. That’s a tough nut – and if college campuses became places where everyone who bought and sold books about horror movies and wrote alarmingly dark stories in English class was forcibly psychoanalyzed, higher education would be a very different experience.

On the other hand, it’s hard to accept just how easy it was for this guy to get a pair of handguns – weapons of mass destruction that allowed him to kill more than 30 people. The thing is, he apparently did it all legally.

The fact that he was once sent for psychiatric observation didn’t make it into the Virginia database that tracks people unfit to buy weapons. But overall he was just another guy looking for a weapon that has no real purpose except to kill another human being – or in this case, large numbers of other human beings – and in his state, as in much of this country, that wasn’t a problem at all.

The thing that struck me the hardest, and most immediately, after the incident was the statement from President George W. Bush, who (of course) bemoaned the carnage and offered his prayers – but in the same few sentences made a point of saying that he supports the right to bear arms. It was kind of sick: Bush didn’t even have the tact to wait a single day before sucking up to the National Rifle Association.

Let’s be real: if Cho hadn’t been able to buy those guns, the odds are very good that 33 people in Virginia would still be alive today, teaching, studying, and thinking about their future. It’s about time we start dealing with that.

I have good friends who are hunters and own rifles. I’ve happily gorged on the roast pig that came from one hunter’s forays, and I’m not complaining. But hunting rifles aren’t terribly effective for the sort of killing we saw at Virginia Tech; for one thing, it’s pretty obvious when you carry one into class. No, the big problems are handguns and assault rifles – weapons that were not on anyone’s mind when the people who wrote the Constitution talked about a "well-regulated militia."

Don’t talk to me about self-defense, either. I’ve been studying and occasionally teaching self-defense for 15 years, and I can tell you that guns are, by and large, a rotten self-defense strategy, much more likely to be used against you or to be useless than to function properly at a time when you need them.

And yet there are handguns everywhere. God bless America. *

Another close one

-
0

Noise luminary Tom Smith’s nearly three-decade jaunt through the experimental rock abyss has been part of a sustained continuum of all his undertakings. Throughout the late ’70s and much of the ’80s, the main brain and entrepreneur of To Live and Shave in LA occupied his time in bands such as Of Boat, Pussy Galore, and Peach of Immortality, before TLASILA took its first few breaths in July 1990. After migrating to South Florida in 1991, the Georgia native quickly stumbled on bassist and engineer Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra and oscillator operator Ben Wolcott. Alongside contemporaries such as Harry Pussy and Tamato duPlenty, the threesome submerged themselves in Miami’s flourishing noise rock scene of the early ’90s, carving a sonic palette void of any real structure but fraught with their influences: Throbbing Gristle, UK glam, kraut rock, and the avant-garde.

"We had no overt goal in mind, but we knew what we loved and shared a particular excitement for the things we deplored," Smith wrote in an e-mail. "It’s all problem-solving, really – a race toward unknowing. I gravitate towards reproduction and demolition."

Wolcott agreed via e-mail, attesting to the Miami scene’s love-hate relationship with the band. "We were respected for our perseverance but hated by the public. We were just reaching out to like-minded people, looking to commune with fellow extremists in the arts," he explained. "There is a slight obsessive bent to spreading the Shave gospel. We logged a lot of hours touring, and it’s hard to believe we would drive so many hours to blast our pedagogy that would only last for 15 minutes in an empty bar."

Originally devised by Smith as a solo project, TLASILA’s history is about as labor-intensive as it is legendary. Diligent – and sometimes violent – performances, a steady flow of albums and tours, and a rotating cast of players and slayers from a miscellany of eclectic musical realms have included everyone from Thurston Moore to Andrew W.K. to the Bay Area’s own Weasel Walter.

"Tom is a very peculiar, singular talent," Walter noted in yet another e-mail. "He is an outsider artist essentially. He is an obsessive organizer, and his inspiration comes from a wide swath of cultural vantages, from the highest to lowest. He puts Xenakis and the Dark Brothers on an even keel, and that’s why his art is simultaneously so visceral and intellectual. His lyrics are almost James Joyce-like in their pure semantical deconstruction…. What he does is absorb, cut up, and regurgitate everything in culture and spit it back out."

Following a festival performance in 2000, Smith broke ranks with the group and formed OHNE with Swiss performance artist Dave Phillips. With Wolcott already out of the picture, Falestra soldiered on with TLASILA, from which numerous spin-offs and clones surfaced, including TLASILA 2 and I Love LA. Falestra and Smith reconvened in 2003 and shaped the band into its strongest lineup yet: an 11-member ensemble residing throughout the country, in Atlanta; Las Vegas; Northampton, Mass.; LA; Charleston, SC; and Adel, Ga. Guitarist-producer Don Fleming, Sighting’s Mark Morgan, stripper Misty Martinez, Chris Grier, and Andrew "Gaybomb" Barranca are some of the noiseniks, along with Moore, Wolcott, and W.K., rounding out TLASILA’s current incarnation. A touring version, of Wolcott, Graham Moore, Martinez, and Falestra, will undertake the group’s West Coast dates – its first since 1996 – and will support TLASILA’s great 2006 full-length, Noon and Eternity (Menlo Park), and the forthcoming Les Tricoteuses (Savage Land). But the ceaseless TLASILA work ethic won’t allow the ensemble to stop there: Smith promises that even more albums can be expected to materialize during the ensuing tour. Live, shave, live again.

TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN LA

With Rose for Bohdan, Tourette, and the Weasel Walter Quartet

May 3, 8:30 p.m., $6-$10

21 Grand

416 25th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-7263

Also with Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa and Rose for Bohdan

May 4, 9:30 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

Soft machines

-
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

Electrifying a thumb piano sounds about as unlikely as, say, strapping a jet engine onto a surfboard. That very action, however, explains the central mystery behind Congo’s Konono No. 1. But don’t expect an esoteric creation myth from founder and likembe virtuoso Mawangu Mingiedi, who explains that his feedback-rich music exists simply "because it’s a very soft-sounding instrument and Kinshasa is a very noisy town."

The likembe has a gentle, waterlogged twang, like a mouth harp encased in Jell-O. It is as native to the Congolese sound as the ancestral hum of the Bazombo trance music brought to Kinshasa by Mingiedi when he left his hometown on the Angolan border after the death of his father. Answering questions with producer Vincent Kenis via e-mail, Mingiedi describes Bazombo as "the cradle of our music. There’s a little bit of it in whatever we play."

Konono No. 1 aspired to bring those ancient polyrhythms to urban gatherings, but how to rock the party with one of the quietest instruments going? As the likembe was hardly a match for the squall of city life in Congo’s capital, amplification of Mingiedi’s chosen instrument became the order of the day. This was to be no small feat, considering the resource-poor and occasionally violent setting he found himself in. "Bad things can happen in Kinshasa," Mingiedi explains. "Even when there’s peace in the streets, it’s certainly difficult to lead a peaceful life in a place where the most basic commodities are absent or intermittent at best."

While matter-of-fact about the hardships of life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mingiedi is far more forthcoming when describing the trial-and-error process that ultimately led to the creation of Konono No. 1’s wall of plucks and feedback: "I started with cassette recorder microphones, but the feedback was difficult to control. Only later did I try electric guitar pickups, then reverse engineered them, then started to design my own models."

Mingiedi’s likembe hack is now the stuff of DIY legend, and it extends to more than just his particular instrument. Konono No. 1 is an ensemble of recycling genius – of wood microphones crowned with salvaged magnets, of percussion rendered from pots and pans, of car battery-powered amplifiers. Onstage the band is also flanked by massive lance voix, or voice throwers, megaphones originally used by Belgian colonizers. Yet even accompanied by dancers and armed with piercing whistles, Konono No. 1 has its heart in the three likembes that bob across the waves of rhythm like fragile tin boats. Mingiedi says these too have been modified: "First it was hollow, like the traditionally built likembe – then to suppress feedback I used a solid block of mahogany."

As years went by, word of Konono No. 1 trickled out, eventually reaching the ears of Crammed Records cofounder Kenis in the form of a culture broadcast in 1979. He remained enraptured by Konono No. 1, actually traveling to Congo to find them. As he writes in a letter to the music blog the Suburbs Are Killing Us, he was able to interact with other "tradi-modern" bands yet was told that Konono No. 1 had ceased to exist. Finally, in 2000 he received word that they had reunited – using the same equipment they had played years before.

Fast-forward to 2007, and Konono No. 1 have traveled the world, performing at the Kennedy Center, opening for Dutch legends the Ex, and most recently contributing to the first single off Bjork’s latest record, Volta (One Little Indian/Atlantic), titled "Earth Intruders." When I ask if Konono No. 1 will perform with Bjork, Mingiedi answers with hints of Sun Ra, "I hope it will happen. If it does, watch out for our special Earth intruder stage outfits." *

KONONO NO. 1

Sat/28, 9 p.m., $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

The paper trail

-
0

Below is a list of documents, in PDF format, that the Guardian obtained reutf8g to the Reilly case:

November 2006 memo from Reilly’s attorneys supporting motion for temporary restraining order against newspaper defendants. Originally filed under seal, this document contains a litany of internal memos and e-mails outlining distribution and advertising collaborations MediaNews and Hearst were discussing early last year. Famous April 26 letter appears on page six of this PDF, but plenty of other remarkable material is contained in this document as well.

November 2006 memo from Reilly’s attorneys supporting motion for temporary restraining order. Originally filed under seal.

November 2006 order from judge Illston granting Reilly’s request for a temporary restraining order related specifically to agreements between Hearst and MediaNews mentioned in the April 26 letter. On page 11, Illston notes that “increased efficiencies do not necessarily justify otherwise anti-competitive behavior.”

December 2006 memo from Reilly’s attorneys supporting motion for preliminary injunction. Originally filed under seal, this document showed that Hearst had once considered investing as much as a half-billion dollars in MediaNews stock. The temporary restraining order from November merely blocked the defendants from negotiating certain collaborations until Illston could decide whether to extend the ban until the time trial was scheduled, April 30, 2007, which Reilly’s attorneys succeeded in convincing her to do.

December 2006 memo from Reilly’s attorneys supporting motion for preliminary injunction. Originally filed under seal.

December 2006 memo from Reilly’s attorneys supporting motion for preliminary injunction. Originally filed under seal, this document contains the detailed September 2006 deposition of Hearst executive James M. Asher taken by the U.S. Justice Department during their probe of last summer’s major Bay Area newspaper transactions. The interview shows how Hearst had once breifly discussed selling the San Francisco Chronicle to MediaNews, and how for 10 years the two companies were pondering some sort of major investment opportunity.

December 2006 order from Illston granting Reilly’s request for a preliminary injunction against the newspaper defendants.

December 2006 motion by the Guardian and Media Alliance to intervene and unseal documents in Reailly’s suit against the newspapers.

April 2007 declaration from MediaNews president Joseph J. Lodovic IV asking Illston to keep under seal certain records tied to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

April 2007 motion from Gannet Co. also asking that records from the motion for summary judment remain sealed.

April 2007 proposed order from Gannet Co. and Stephens Group asking that certain financial documents in case be kept under seal.

April 2007 filing from MediaNews asking that records tied to the motion for summary judgment remain sealed.

April 2007 order denying the newspaper defendants’ motion for summary judgment and disputing their claim that Reilly had no standing to sue on antitrust grounds as a consumer.

April 2007 letter from attorneys of Media Alliance and the Guardian following up with Illston on open-records intervention.

April 2007 order from Illston proclaiming that key documents submitted as evidence at trial would largely be open to the public.

Give it a hand

-
0

> andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear readers:

Every few months some harried freelancer charged with coming up with a novel spin on something sexual or other contacts me for a pithy quote. And since I am all about the pith, I will oblige if at all possible. Most recently, the writer was a staffer at Details, which I used to read when it was sort of sceney and kinda gay back in the ’80s but which sunk beneath my radar when it morphed into some sort of younger, more metro GQ. What did I think, the writer wanted to know, about the demise of the hand job? Had the rise of more exotic pursuits among American teenagers sealed its fate, or was good old manual release doomed to fade into obscurity by dint of its own lack of pizzazz? What was the hand job’s appeal, if any? And by the way, did I know any really good horror stories, Indian burns, that sort of thing?

It got me thinking, first about horror stories. As a collector of (other people’s) horrible sex accident stories, I know that hand jobs hardly figure. Skin-to-skin virus transmission is possible, sure, but nobody ever seems to accidentally yank anybody’s equipment clean off or anything. Not even close. Even CBT, cock and ball torture, is rarely as grizzly as it sounds. I did once demonstrate my most successful technique, a two-fisted opposite swivel, for a friendgirl who’d had only girlfriends but was considering branching out. Damned if my little pantomime didn’t look very much like I was administering an Indian (sorry, Native American is it?) burn, something I’d never noticed when doing it for real. Of course, hand jobs are best administered with a generous shot of lube or, at the very least, a palmful of spit. It’s really hard to hurt somebody with a palmful of spit.

So, hand jobs are safe, I concluded, but are they sexy? Is nobody doing them anymore because there’s so much hotter stuff to do, or is it simply that they’re not worth doing? These I couldn’t answer because I’m not sure I buy the premise. There’s no question that there has been a steady trickle (ew) of articles and TV scare pieces about the oral sex "epidemic" among young people, going back at least 10 years. But not only do these fail to convince me that more young people (well, women – these articles are never about a cunnilingus epidemic) are going down, they never say a thing about them eschewing hand jobs in favor of blow jobs. If you compare The National Survey of Family Growth, the best recent research on Americans’ sex habits, published in 2005, with Sex in America, the last decent survey, done in the early ’90s, there isn’t much increase in the incidence of oral sex. Period. There is, intriguingly, an increase in the incidence of anal sex, potentially a much greater health risk. But it doesn’t say a thing about hand jobs, which are, presumably, relegated to the catchall category "any" sex. So no matter how many articles are published insisting that life for the typical American teen these days is one big blow job party (the parts that aren’t taken up with pornographically violent video games and being obese, anyway), I haven’t seen anything supporting it. And before people start freaking out about all those teenagers having anal sex, the increase there was among people in their 20s.

My own take is that hand jobs aren’t dead, they’re just boring. Or at least, boringish. Boringish to receive, depending upon the recipient’s level of desperation and the donor’s skill, of course; boringish to perform (at least compared to the raunchier, more dramatic blow job), and above all boringish to write TV magazine scare pieces about. Nobody dies from them, so nobody cares. Also, while the hand job may figure prominently in some gay male scenes, most straight people kind of forget about them as they leave their teenage groping days behind. This leaves me, an inveterate champion of the underdog, in the position of having to defend the poor, disrespected hand job. Besides the obvious safety issue, they’re, um, easy. They don’t make you gag, not unless something nearly unimaginable disgusting is going on. They’re a good way to learn about penises. This last is true, actually, since for some reason most girls start out believing that a penis ought to be patted gently on the head, like an elderly lap dog, while in truth they can, and ought, to be wrangled, roped, and thrown like a rodeo doggie. Only hands-on learning will do.

So this is what I told the writer from Details: "After its high school glory days, the hand job may go underground, but it’s rarely completely missing from a couple’s repertoire. It’s just that it becomes a tool, or a tool of a tool, rather than an act in its own right. Foreplay without any hand play, for instance, would become sort of a special trick, like writing a paragraph without using any e‘s."

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson teaches sex and communication skills with San Francisco Sex Information. She has been a theater artist, a women’s health educator, and a composting instructor, but not at the same time. She is considering offering a workshop on how to have and rear twins without going crazy, since she’s currently doing that too.

Web Site of the Week

-
0

Every day in San Francisco there are group bicycle rides or other events that peddle a healthy lifestyle, as this calendar shows. This week’s highlights: TV Turnoff Week is April 23-29, and there’s a much anticipated Critical Mass ride April 27. And stay tuned for www.bikesummer.org.

David Butcher rides a pedal-powered generator through Golden Gate Park on Earth Day, showing how human energy can be used to create usable electricity, as part of the Sustainable Living Roadshow during the Green Apple Festival on April 22.

Death of fun, the sequel

-
0

> news@sfbg.com

Fun – in the form of fairs, festivals, bars, art in the parks, and the freedom to occasionally drink alcohol in public places – is under attack in San Francisco.

The multipronged assault is coming primarily from two sources: city agencies with budget shortfalls and NIMBYs who don’t like to hear people partying. The crackdown has only intensified since the Guardian sounded the alarm last year (see “The Death of Fun,” 5/24/06), but the fun seekers are now organizing, finding some allies, and starting to push back.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city hall leaders have been meeting with the Outdoor Events Coalition, which formed last year in response to the threat, about valuing the city’s beloved social gatherings and staving off steep fee hikes that have been sought by the Recreation and Park, Fire, Public Works, and Police departments.

Those conversations have already yielded at least a temporary reprieve from a substantial increase in use fees for all the city’s parks. It’s also led to a rollback of the How Weird Street Faire’s particularly outrageous police fees (its $7,700 sum last year jumped to $23,833 this year – despite the event being forced by the city to end two hours earlier – before pressure from the Guardian and city hall forced it back down to $4,734).

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee will also wade into the issue April 25 when it considers a resolution warning that “San Francisco has become noticeably less tolerant of nightlife and outdoor events.” It is sponsored by Scott Wiener, Robert Haaland, Michael Goldstein, and David Campos.

The measure expresses this premier political organization’s “strong disagreement with the City agencies and commissions that have undermined San Francisco’s nightlife and tradition of street festivals and encourages efforts to remove obstacles to the permitting of such venues and events up to and including structural reform of government permitting processes to accomplish that goal.”

The resolution specifically cites the restrictions and fee increases that have hit the How Weird Street Faire, the Haight Ashbury Street Fair (where alcohol is banned this year for the first time), and the North Beach Jazz Festival, but it also notes that a wide variety of events “provide major fundraising opportunities for community-serving nonprofits such as HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and violence-prevention organizations that are dependent upon the revenue generated at these events.”

Yet the wet blanket crowd still seems ascendant. Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier now wants to ban alcohol in all city parks that contain playgrounds, which is most of them. Hole in the Wall has hit unexpected opposition to its relocation (see “Bar Wars,” 4/18/07), while Club Six is being threatened by its neighbors and the Entertainment Commission about noise issues. And one group is trying to kill a band shell made of recycled car hoods that is proposed for temporary summer placement on the Panhandle.

That project, as well as the proposal for drastically increased fees for using public spaces, is expected to be considered May 3 by the Rec and Park Commission, which is likely to be a prime battleground in the ongoing fight over fun.

 

FEE FIGHT

Rec and Park, like many other city departments, is facing a big budget shortfall and neglected facilities overdue for attention. A budget analyst audit last year also recommended that the department create a more coherent system for its 400 different permits and increase fees by 2 percent.

Yet the department responded by proposing to roughly double its special event fees, even though they make up just $560,000 of the $4.5 million that the department collects from all fees. Making things even worse was the proposal to charge events based on a park’s maximum capacity rather than the actual number of attendees.

The proposal caused an uproar when it was introduced last year, as promoters say it would kill many beloved events, so it was tabled. Then an almost identical proposal was quietly introduced this year, drawing the same concerns.

“These are just preliminary numbers, and they may change,” department spokesperson Rose Dennis told us, although she wouldn’t elaborate on why the same unpopular proposal was revived.

Event organizers, who were told last year that they would be consulted on the new fee schedule, were dumbfounded. They say the new policy forces them to come up with a lot of cash if attendance lags or the weather is bad.

Mitigating such a risk means charging admission, corralling corporate sponsorship, or pushing more commerce on attendees. This may not be a hindrance for some of the well-known and sponsored events such as Bay to Breakers and SF Pride, but consider how the low-budget Movie Night in Dolores Park might come up with $6,000 instead of $250, or how additional permit fees could strangle the potential of nascent groups such as Movement for Unconditional Amnesty.

The group is sponsoring a march in honor of the Great American Boycott of 2006. On May 1 it will walk from Dolores Park to the Civic Center in recognition of immigrants’ rights. The group wanted to offer concessions, because food vendors donate a percentage of their sales to the organization, but the permit fee for propane use from the Fire Department was too high.

“They couldn’t guarantee they’d make more than $1,200 in food to cover the costs of permits,” said Forrest Schmidt, of the ANSWER Coalition, who is assisting the organizers. “So they lost an opportunity to raise funds to support their work. It’s more than $1,000 taken off the top of the movement.”

ANSWER faced a similar problem after the antiwar rally in March, when the rule regarding propane permits was reinterpreted so that a base charge, once applied to an entire event, was now charged of each concessionaire – quadrupling the overall cost. ANSWER pleaded its case against this new reading of the law and was granted a one-time reprieve. But Schmidt says none of the SFFD’s paperwork backs up a need to charge so much money.

“They kept on saying over and over again, ‘You guys are making money on this,’ ” Schmidt said. “But it’s an administrative fee to make sure we’re not setting anything on fire. It’s essentially a tax. It’s a deceitful form of politics and part of what’s changing the demographic of the city.”

The Outdoor Events Coalition, which represents more than 25 events in the city, agrees and has been meeting with city officials to hash out another interim solution for this year, as well as a long-term plan for financial sustainability for all parties.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Robbie Kowal, a coalition leader and organizer of the North Beach Jazz Festival. But he’s still concerned about what he and the coalition see as a continuing trend.

“The city is changing in some way. It’s becoming a culture of complaint. There’s this whole idea you can elect yourself into a neighborhood organization, you can invent your own constituency, and the bureaucracy has to take you seriously. Neighborhood power can be so effective in fighting against a Starbucks, but when it’s turned around and used to kill an indigenous part of that neighborhood, like its local street fair, that’s an abuse of that neighborhood power.”

 

NIMBY POWER

Black Rock Arts Foundation, the San Francisco public art nonprofit that grew out of Burning Man, has enjoyed a successful and symbiotic partnership with the Newsom administration, placing well-received temporary artwork in Hayes Green, Civic Center Plaza, and the Embarcadero.

So when BRAF, the Neighborhood Parks Council, the city’s Department of the Environment, and several community groups decided several months ago to collaborate on a trio of new temporary art pieces, most people involved thought they were headed for another kumbaya moment. Then one of the projects hit a small but vocal pocket of resistance.

A group of artists from the Finch Mob and Rebar collectives are now at work on the Panhandle band shell, a performance space for nonamplified acoustic music and other performances that is made from the hoods of 75 midsize sedans. The idea is to promote the recycling and reuse of materials while creating a community gathering spot for arts appreciation.

Most neighborhood groups in the area like the project, and 147 individuals have written letters of support, versus the 17 letters that have taken issue with the project’s potential to draw crowds and create noise, litter, graffiti, congestion, and a hangout for homeless people.

But the opposition has been amplified by members of the Panhandle Residents Organization Stanyan Fulton (PROSF), which runs one of the most active listservs in the city, championing causes ranging from government sunshine to neighborhood concerns. The group, with support from Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s staff, has delayed the project’s approval and thus placed its future in jeopardy (installation was scheduled to begin next month).

“My main concern would be that this is a very narrow strip of land that is bordered by homes on both sides,” said neighbor Maureen Murphy, who has complained about the project to the city and online through the PROSF. “My fear is that there is going to be amplification and more people and litter.”

The debate was scheduled to be heard by the Rec and Park Commission on April 19 but was postponed to May 3 because of the controversy. Nonetheless, Newsom showed up at the last hearing to offer his support.

“Rare do I come in front of committee, but I wanted to underscore … the partnership we’ve had with Black Rock Arts Foundation. It’s been a very successful one and one I want to encourage this commission to reinforce,” Newsom told the commission. “I think the opportunity exists for us … to take advantage of these partnerships and really bring to the forefront in people’s minds more temporary public art.”

Rachel Weidinger, who is handling the project for BRAF, said the organizers have been very sensitive to public input, neighborhood concerns, environmental issues, and the impacts of the project, at one point changing sites to one with better drainage. And she’s been actively telling opponents that the project won’t allow amplified music or large gatherings (those of 25 or more will require a special permit). But she said that there’s little they can do about those who simply don’t want people to gather in the park.

“We are trying to activate park space with temporary artwork,” she said. “Guilty as charged.”

Yet any activated public space – whether a street closed for a fair or a march, a park turned into a concert space, or a vacant storefront turned into a nightclub – is bound to generate a few critics. The question for San Francisco now is how to balance NIMBY desires and bureaucratic needs with a broader concern for facilitating fun in the big city.

“Some people have the idea that events and nightlife are an evil to be restricted,” Wiener said. But his resolution is intended as “a cultural statement about what kind of city we want to live in.” *

 

Up against the police secrecy lobby

-
0

EDITORIAL On April 17 the full weight of the state’s secrecy lobby and police unions descended on Sacramento to prevent the public from having any access to the records of peace officers who have faced disciplinary charges. The tactics were brutal: Everett Bobbitt, a police lawyer, testified to the Assembly Public Safety Committee that allowing any sunshine whatsoever would instantly threaten the lives of hardworking cops and their families.

His argument was bizarre, reminiscent of some of the tortured claims that the Bush administration made in seeking support for the war in Iraq and the civil liberties fiasco called the USA PATRIOT Act. He suggested that criminal gangs might find out something that would allow them to threaten police officers (despite the fact that until a recent court decision these records had been open for more than 20 years in San Francisco and 30 in Berkeley, and not a single cop had been in any way physically harmed by the information). He claimed that peace officers have an extraordinary right to privacy (despite the fact that as public employees who are given guns and badges and extraordinary powers, they need at least some degree of public accountability).

And the committee, despite being dominated by Democrats, was utterly cowed. It was a disgrace, and public officials and law enforcement leaders in San Francisco and the East Bay need to make a point of joining the fight to ensure that police secrecy doesn’t continue to carry the day.

At issue was a bill by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) that would overturn an odious 2006 court decision known as Copley. In that ruling, the California Supreme Court concluded that all files and hearings reutf8g to police discipline must be kept entirely secret. The ruling "has effectively shut down virtually every forum in which the public previously had access to the police discipline process," Tom Newton, general counsel to the California Newspaper Publishers Association, wrote in a letter supporting Leno’s bill, AB 1648.

Newton added, "Copley represents nothing less than complete and total victory for the secrecy lobby in this state. In the ultimate perversion of legislative intent, the most powerful forces in government and their exceptionally creative and effective lobbyists have achieved a perfect storm of official secrecy – making it illegal to inform the public about official corruption…. These aren’t just any public employees that have achieved the holy grail of KGB-like official secrecy – they are the only public officials given the right by the public to affect the personal liberty of citizens and even take life, if necessary to protect the public peace."

Leno’s bill – which would simply restore the law to what it was for decades – had the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and a long list of grassroots organizations, including the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, La Raza Centro Legal, the NAACP, and the National Black Police Association.

And yet Leno didn’t have the votes in the committee to even move the bill to the floor. Not one of his four Democratic colleagues (Jose Solorio of Anaheim, Hector de la Torre of South Gate, Anthony J. Portantino of Pasadena, and San Francisco’s Fiona Ma) was willing to move the bill forward. Ma, apparently, was among those who bought the police line: she told the Guardian she was "not prepared to vote for Leno’s bill as it was" but would be willing to accept a compromise that "also protects the rights of family members." Remember, nothing in Leno’s bill in any way endangers or provides any information on any member of a police officer’s family.

The only good news is that a similar, slightly weaker bill, SB 1019, by state senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), has cleared the Senate’s Public Safety Committee and will go to the Senate floor – and if it passes, it will come before the Assembly. So there’s still a chance to pass some version of a police accountability and sunshine bill this year.

It’s crucial that public officials and particularly law enforcement leaders speak out in favor of this legislation. The city of Berkeley has formally endorsed the bill, but Mayor Gavin Newsom and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums have been silent and need to speak up. So should San Francisco sheriff Mike Hennessey (who told us he supports the idea in principle but thinks Leno’s proposal goes too far) and District Attorney Kamala Harris.

And Fiona Ma needs to hear, loudly, from her constituents: police accountability is a priority, and she can’t get away with ducking it. *

Small Business Awards: Previous Winners

-
0

PREVIOUS SMALL BUSINESS AWARD WINNERS

2006


1906 Earthquake Survivor

ANCHOR BREWING CO.

Chain Alternative

BROWNIE’S HARDWARE

Arthur Jackson Diversity in Business Award

FABRIC8

Small Business Activist

COMET SKATEBOARDS

Community Activist

BAY AREA FAIR TRADE COALITION

Creative Manufacturer

FAT DOG’S WORLD FAMOUS SUBWAY GUITARS

2005


Neighborhood Activism

NORTH BEACH MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION

SUP. AARON PESKIN, DISTRICT 3

TELEGRAPH HILL DWELLERS

Small Business Activist

PHILIP DE ANDRADE

Best New Business

MADRONE LOUNGE

Best Co-op

OTHER AVENUES

Best Chain-Store Alternative

FLOORCRAFT

Golden Survivor

SUPERIOR TRADING CO.

Unsung Hero

VERITABLE VEGETABLE

Community Service

ARTHUR JACKSON, 1948-2006

List compiled by Adam Brody and Angela J. Bass.

Small Business Awards 2007: A salute to small business

-
0

The Brugmann family has been continuously in small business for 105 years. My grandfather, the eighth child of German immigrants who homesteaded in the Midwest’s high prairie grass, came to Rock Rapids, Iowa, in 1902 to start a drugstore.

He and my father after him spent their entire working lives in that store, known throughout the territory as "Brugmann’s Drugs, where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902." I started at 12 selling stamps and peanuts and worked my way up to trimming wallpaper and waiting on trade. I also moonlighted as a writer for the Lyon County Reporter, an excellent hometown weekly under third-generation publisher Paul Smith.

My father would call on every new merchant and pass along his philosophy of how to make it in business in a small town such as Rock Rapids (population: 2,800). His message: play golf, go to church, do all your trading in Rock Rapids, and above all support the town and its community activities.

This philosophy always worked well for the Brugmanns, and ours was the only store on Main Street to make it through the depression.

When Jean Dibble and I founded the Guardian in 1966, we tried to operate with the hometown values of the Brugmanns in Rock Rapids, adding some San Francisco flair and later some Potrero Hill flair. We were delighted to find that San Francisco was a city with lively neighborhoods rich in small, locally owned businesses backed by merchant and residential associations and feisty neighborhood newspapers. From the start, the Guardian was a stand-alone independent newspaper that was of, by, and for small business. We still are.

And so when the Guardian moved to its new offices at the bottom of Potrero Hill, we were happy to join the Potrero Hill Merchants Association, meeting every month at Phil de Andrade’s Goat Hill Pizza. We pitched in on projects, from supporting the Neighborhood House and Potrero Hill History Night to instituting a real planning process to save the neighborhood. We also joined the endless battles to protect the hill and the southeastern neighborhoods from the Pacific and Gas Electric Co. and Mirant power plants and the encroaching Mission Bay complex and invasion of high-priced commercial and residential condos.

We like to say that the big downtown and chain businesses look upon San Francisco as a place from which to extract as much money as quickly as possible, much the way the strip miners saw the Sierra, whereas small, locally owned businesses see the city as a place to invest in human capital to build real community.

Jean and I and our staff are happy to salute the quiet heroes of small business with our third annual Small Business Awards. We congratulate the winners and all the small-business people in San Francisco who struggle daily against high taxes and daunting odds to keep their businesses going, their neighborhoods vibrant, and San Francisco an incomparably great city. *

The 2007 Small Business Awards

Die-Hard Independent Award
Clif Bar Co.

Golden Survivor Award
Hoogasian Flowers

Community Institution Award
Modern Times Bookstore

Solar-Powered Business Award
Oceanworks

Community Activist Award
Pet Camp

Chain Store Alternative Award
Waldeck’s Office Supplies

Cooperative Award
Woodshanti Cooperative

Previous winners

Small Business Awards 2007: Cooperative Award

-
0

Down near the dead end of Palou Avenue, beside the old Hunters Point Shipyard, whose claim to infamy is being the city’s sole Superfund site still rife with toxic waste and radioactive material, there’s a woodworking shop that goes against the grain.

Woodshanti, a worker-owned cooperative of custom-furniture builders, strives to be as peaceful as its Hindi-inspired name suggests – "not a negative but a positive part of the ecology," cofounder Shawn Berry says. He and Tom Clossey took over the shop in 1997, when it was still run-of-the-sawmill, and transformed it into an expression of their core values: responsibility, trust, and fun. That last one is underscored by the Ping-Pong table in the break room and a print from Where the Wild Things Are hanging behind Berry’s desk.

As members of a cooperative, Berry, Clossey, and their four co-owners – Todd Rowan, Laura King, Dave Dupuis, and Zac Rose – are directly vested in the business, divide profits based on hours worked, and carry equal amounts of responsibility. Becoming an owner requires at least a three-year commitment and an ability to mesh with the group culture.

Environmentalism and sustainability are the key values of this business, making it a rarity in an industry that depends on cutting down trees. Unlike most wood shops, Woodshanti has a thumbs-up from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a certification in the building trade similar to organic certification in the world of agriculture. Requirements are strict, and the shop is regularly inspected to ensure that the entire chain of custody – from the forest to the sawmill to the lumberyard – adheres to specific standards regarding how and where the trees are sawed. Wood must be responsibly harvested or "rediscovered," meaning it’s salvaged from windfalls, forest fires, or construction sites.

"We wound up doing it because there wasn’t a lot of credibility when we just asked lumberyards if the wood was responsibly harvested," Berry says. Though he believes that the field needs more improvements and the FSC certification isn’t perfect, it’s still above and beyond the conventional foresting industry, as there aren’t any restrictions on clear-cutting, mono-cropping, and using pesticides on privately owned land.

Health is also a part of the wealth of the work and workers. "This is by far the best-smelling finishing room you’ll ever be in," Berry says of the partitioned-off area where tables, bookcases, cabinets, and chairs await their departure. "This is what really sets us apart."

Most woodworkers use a petrochemical base for their finish, a fluid that dries into a slick, impermeable coat and feels more like plastic than wood. Woodshanti uses a linseed-oil-based blend of natural turpentine, rubbed into the wood by hand and designed to penetrate and protect in the way that moisturizer does dry skin. These finishes deepen, rather than stain, the arboreal hues and require additional applications over time. "We’re really up front with the customers," Berry says of the process. "If you’re not into it, there’s a shop around the corner that will do the standard finish."

They’re also forthcoming about their prices. As with most custom work, their products aren’t for the lighter purse. A basic furniture piece clocks in around $2,000; a kitchen on the cheap runs $30,000 and as much as $60,000 for more challenging joinery or costlier wood.

"Our clientele is more or less wealthy," Berry concedes. The co-op’s monetary success, in turn, allows for occasional generous donations of custom furniture to worthy causes and helps the co-op promote and foster its ideals for community outreach through such outlets as the Urban Alliance for Sustainability, an organization founded by Berry that is a clearinghouse of information for the sustainability-driven citizen and raises awareness of locally made goods and services. "What’s important is not to be individually self-sustaining," Berry says, "but to be part of a community that is." (Amanda Witherell)

WOODSHANTI COOPERATIVE

909 Palou, SF

(415) 822-8100

www.woodshanti.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Chain Store Alternative Award

-
0

Since it opened in 1954, Waldeck’s Office Supplies in downtown San Francisco has been a true neighborhood store. In spite of the growth of now-ubiquitous large chains such as Staples and OfficeMax, this family-run retailer has carved a niche with its host of regular local customers and businesses large and small in the neighborhood.

Of the supply shop started by his father, owner Cliff Waldeck says, "Neighborhood-serving retail businesses are why people live, work, and visit specific communities." For him, seeing regulars come in is the best part. "It’s like a scene out of Cheers."

Waldeck’s also leads its industry in being environmentally conscious. Two years ago it was certified as a green business by the San Francisco Department of the Environment.

As Waldeck, a former member of the Mill Valley City Council and a current member of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, puts it, "I always like to say, ‘In my industry we’ve killed a lot of trees, and I have sap on my hands.’ "

Having done environmental work and advocacy as a public servant, Waldeck decided to make the transition to green practices. To get green certified, he had to demonstrate to inspectors from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and Public Health Department that he uses good environmental practices, abiding by criteria including recycling and reusing products, conserving energy and water, and maintaining a healthy office space.

The office supplies retailer also stocks green products such as recycled copy paper, greeting cards made of recycled paper, and energy-efficient items. And you can drop off your fluorescent tubes, toner cartridges, cell phones, and other electronics for free recycling.

Survival is a constant issue for a small business, particularly one downtown, where Waldeck’s competes for retail rental space alongside billion-dollar companies. Waldeck points out, "You might have formula retail legislation that helps preserve places like North Beach and Hayes Valley, but the Financial District doesn’t have that. I have five Starbucks within five blocks." With national chains creating the market rate for retail space, he adds, "it’s extremely difficult to make it just on your foot traffic of people coming in paying cash."

Believing that green practices and the success of a small business can go hand in hand, the retailer has an interesting proposition for San Francisco’s political leaders: anyone bidding on a city contract for goods or services should be required to name seven or so green-certified San Francisco entities they do business with, which would encourage huge companies to work with small, green-certified businesses. "What I’m advocating is that since the city and county of San Francisco is the largest employer and purchaser here, they can lead by example," Waldeck says. "Procurement in SF is basically a cage match now. Whoever wants to sell a product at the lowest price is the one who gets the contract."

With a stockpile of past awards, including the San Francisco Urban Solutions Neighborhood Business Award, San Francisco Small Business Network’s Green Business of the Year, and one from the Environmental Protection Agency Region Nine, Waldeck’s plans to keep up the good work. (Julie Park)

WALDECK’S OFFICE SUPPLIES

500 Washington, SF

(415) 981-3381

www.waldecks.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Community Activist Award

-
0

When Mark Klaiman and Virginia Donohue opened Pet Camp, a kennel for cats and dogs, in 1997 in the Bayview, they wanted to do more than just make money housing pets.

"A lot of businesses drive in, do their work, and leave. They don’t actually get involved in the community," says Klaiman, who with his wife, Donohue, worked for the Environmental Protection Agency prior to becoming an entrepreneur. "We have taken a fundamentally different approach to doing business in the Bayview."

Wedged between Third Street and the Southeast Pollution Control Plant, in a large warehouse complete with a synthetic-grass outdoor play space and a doggie swimming pool, Pet Camp is a stridently green business. It uses huge low-power fans to circulate air, sends its animal droppings to an East Bay methane plant for electricity production, and gets 75 percent of its electricity from a solar-panel-lined roof.

"You get a great view of the settling ponds from our second floor," Donohue says wryly, adding that housing activists threw around the idea of redeveloping their block for new homes.

But the gaseous and chemical smell from the tanks permeates the air, and the housing advocates quickly realized the block might not make for the best living conditions.

The Pet Camp owners are glad about that. They want to stay in the Bayview and have put in countless hours working with others on community projects.

He’s the secretary of the Bayview Merchants Association, which works to ensure that the neighborhood creates and maintains a positive environment for small businesses. During the disruption caused by the construction of the new T-Third line, he helped the group push Muni to develop an ad campaign to let people know that businesses in the neighborhood were still active. They also successfully pressured Muni to speed up the project by making construction crews work weekends and holidays.

"While everyone now thinks the light-rail is going to be great, during the five years it was under construction, it really desecrated Third Street," Klaiman recalls.

The merchant association is also working with the national group Volunteers in Medicine to establish a free health care clinic for Bayview residents.

Pet Camp has a staff of about 20 and offers all employees full benefits and profit sharing. Klaiman says these and other industrial jobs are better than those offered by the tourist and service industries.

For this reason, Klaiman has worked with the Planning Department to retain industrial jobs in the Bayview. Housing activists and other neighborhood merchants have criticized him for that relationship.

According to Al Norman, president of the merchant association, he handles the flack well and takes everything in stride. "He’s levelheaded and evenhanded," Norman says.

At the same time, Klaiman is watchful of downtown developers who are working on changing the Bayview. He keeps track of their efforts through the Planning Department and the San Francisco Urban Planning Association, which has a hand in proposed plans for the area.

"They’re downtown think tank people," Klaiman says in reference to SPUR. "They’re the type of people from north of Market who say they know what is right for the Bayview."

In order to make SPUR sensitive to the needs of Bayview businesses, Pet Camp put together a bus tour for the group to familiarize it with the business community there.

"We should get together as businesses to improve our neighborhood, not just have everything go to downtown," Klaiman proclaims. "And that’s something I think we’ll actually achieve success in – getting better organized out here." (Chris Albon)

PET CAMP

525 Phelps, SF

(415) 282-0700

www.petcamp.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Solar-Powered Business Award

-
0

Going to a mechanic can be like paying a visit to a dentist. Sometimes it feels like they’ve done more harm to your grill than good. Needless to say, it can be a chore to find a good one. Bless your stars and garters that the steady-handed masters at Berkeley’s Oceanworks, which specializes in repairing Japanese cars, are the preeminent green and reliable mechanics around.

Since the current incarnation of the shop opened in 1991, it has developed a reputation for being affordable, trustworthy, environmentally thoughtful, and, most of all, competent. Words wished for in, but not always associated with, the world of automotive repair.

When you step into owner Angus Powelson’s small office, little details reveal that his West Berkeley shop departs from the typical automotive garage. Rather than Popular Mechanics, recent issues of the New Yorker rest on the coffee table, and the good old pot of coffee has been replaced by an antique-looking Italian espresso machine. Sure there are the smells and sounds found in any other garage, but this is about as bohemian an auto shop as you’re going to find.

It’s not only the decor that makes this place so great: Oceanworks consciously does all it can to limit the damage it causes to our beautiful bay biosphere. Upgraded in 1997, the garage receives roughly 75 percent of its power from the reflective solar panels that you see soaking up the rays on the roof. In the office the key word is reuse. Envelopes, boxes, plastic bags, Ziplocs, and cardboard continually find new raisons d’etre. The small amount of paper that is not reclaimed goes into the blue bin, along with any cans and bottles, and is sent off to the recycling yard.

In the garage the story is the same. Coolants get reused and engines are built from salvaged parts. Scrap steel and aluminum are either recovered or recycled. Salvageable car parts are sorted and stored for a chance to live again. When Powelson first took over Oceanworks, the garage filled a six-cubic-yard waste can daily. Today the can is three cubic yards and rarely gets full.

It seems hard to believe, but this mechanic and his shop tread as lightly as possible. Powelson may change oil and rebuild motors for a living, but his dedication to environmentally conscious auto repair is rivaled only by his commitment to traveling by bike as much as possible and using his truck only for work-related tasks.

While the outfit specializes in foreign cars, it’s also thinking ahead. Oceanworks deals in Swift bicycles, those nifty folding Xootr bikes that are superlightweight and can be readily stored without nuisance. "Anything to get people out of their cars," Powelson says. (Chris Jasmin)

OCEANWORKS

2703 10th St., Berk.

(510) 849-1383

www.oceanworksberkeley.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Community Institution Award

-
0

It started in 1971, with a handful of people who worked for Socialist Revolution magazine and wanted to sell books that would give the Movement – and back then it had a capital M – some historical and theoretical perspective. The magazine’s editor, Jim Weinstein, provided the rag with a free 900-square-foot space in a building he owned. With $5,000 in raised funds, the idealistic collective opened Modern Times Bookstore in the Mission.

A lot of similar projects were launched in San Francisco during that era – co-operative businesses and ventures founded by activists with a radical social vision – and most of them folded. Modern Times grew. And while independent bookstores around the country are failing by the day, Modern Times is thriving.

"I think it’s because we’ve always had the support of the community," Michael Rosenthal, who started at Modern Times just weeks after it opened and retired this year, told us. "We were always a community bookstore."

And unlike a lot of ’60s-era institutions, Modern Times was open to adapting and changing – while preserving its core beliefs. There have always been books for sale on Marxism and socialist theory, but as Rosenthal points out, "at a certain point, we realized we were just speaking to a coterie."

Taking a broader approach, Modern Times became one of the first bookstores in the country to offer a lesbian-gay section and one on women’s issues. And these days the store has an incredible variety of books from major and small-press houses in all sorts of different genres, including Spanish-language and children’s books, and an extensive rack of zines and cultural periodicals. New College, right down the street, uses Modern Times as its school bookstore, a deal that helps both local institutions.

Modern Times has maintained its worker-ownership structure – and has always been a community resource. Its back room is abuzz with local author book signings and queer experimental poetry readings. Political and community groups use the store for everything from panel discussions on the city’s wi-fi plan to workshops on economics and how-to sessions on bike safety. The site has hosted events featuring the storied radical feminist ’80s performance art and culture-jamming group the Guerrilla Girls, and San Francisco’s innovative Cutting Ball Theater is currently in residence there. Check out the events page on the store’s Web site for a fabulous list of upcoming eclectic and wonderful writers, speakers, and interactive programs.

Modern Times has become more than just a neighborhood bookstore for the Mission. It’s also a crucial part of San Francisco’s progressive community. And it’s a sign that independent bookstores can withstand gentrification and the assault of the big chains – and make a difference. (Tim Redmond)

MODERN TIMES BOOKSTORE

888 Valencia, SF

(415) 282-9246

www.moderntimesbookstore.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Golden Survivor Award

-
0

It didn’t seem like Harold and Larry Hoogasian were going to take up the family business, floristry. The brothers, exactly three years apart in age (both were born on Bastille Day), attended UC Berkeley in the ’70s – Harold studied genetics; Larry majored in architecture.

But a love of the customers and the family tradition drew them back into the fold. "We grew up in the business," says Larry, who remembers working with his older brother and father, Harold Sr., after school and on weekends at the flower stand that has occupied a spot in front of Gump’s on Post Street since Feb. 14, 1953.

Prior to establishing possibly the first stationary flower stand in the Financial District, the siblings’ grandfather was one of many small vendors of gardenias and violets operating a pushcart around the bustling downtown area. "One day he just got lazy and stayed in one place," Larry says, recalling what he’s always been told about his grandfather’s bold move.

It was their father who extended the reach of the business to the Cannery on Fisherman’s Wharf and Treasure Island, then a naval base. Both locations afforded the stand’s customers large doses of ’60s flower power. The tourists who flocked to the Cannery had all heard Scott McKenzie croon, "If you’re going to San Francisco …," and made sure to wear one of the Hoogasian blooms in their hair. The Treasure Island business was the spot where soldiers wired their last tokens of affection to loved ones before heading overseas.

After taking ownership, the sons brought the business to the next level. Harold took on marketing and promotions; Larry handled all of the designs and arrangements, then opened a storefront on Lombard Street, which closed shortly after he set up the current shop in South of Market six years ago.

It seems fitting that Harold and Larry, both fans of the city’s vibrant music scene as teens, would become an important part of the city’s music culture – florally speaking.

As the story goes, Harold entered a design contest at a flower show in 1976. Larry’s task was to build a gazebo. He pulled out all the stops, constructing a massive 1,000-square-foot structure. As he was nailing flowers over the trellises, a man strolled by and exclaimed, "My, my, my. I’ve never seen a pile of sticks so beautiful." That man happened to be Bill Graham. Not only did the siblings win the contest, but they also began a long relationship as the concert promoter’s florist, decking out dressing rooms for the Grateful Dead and Elton John and even putting together the wedding bouquet for Madonna’s "Like a Virgin" tour.

A career highlight for Larry, who was raised Catholic and had a contract with St. Mary’s for many years, came when he won the bid to make all of the arrangements for Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit. "I had to chase away all the nuns," he says, explaining that many habited women were trying to snatch keepsakes from the floral decorations that were being broadcast to millions of television viewers.

His brother, Harold, has received his fair share of accolades too. His efforts have put the company in online and telephone floral service FTD’s top 100 in volume sales since the mid-’90s. To keep up with the competition, Harold has sealed contracts with 30 Walgreens, where a lot of last-minute flower sales occur these days.

Larry foresees customers soon pouring into the location on Townsend and Seventh streets as more residents move into the increasingly residential neighborhood. It looks like Hoogasian Flowers will be creating beautiful arrangements for locals on their birthdays and for their weddings and funerals for many years to come. (Deborah Giattina)

HOOGASIAN FLOWERS

615 Seventh St., SF

(415) 229-2732

www.hoogasian.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Die-Hard Independent Award

-
0

In 2000, when Gary Erickson, founder and owner of Clif Bar and Co., told reps from Quaker Oats – the fourth largest consumer goods company in the world – that he needed to go for a walk before signing over his company for $120 million, they thought he was bluffing to secure a larger payout.

"He literally had his pen this close to the contract," recalls Sheryl O’Loughlin, outgoing CEO of the company, as she poises the tip of an ink pen a couple inches above a notepad at her desk. "The way he described it was that his hand started to shake. Something just didn’t feel right."

Erickson chewed over the life-changing dilemma as he walked the block surrounding his Berkeley office building. Did he honestly want to exchange an eight-year enterprise to produce and successfully market an appetizing assortment of energy bars and drinks for the life of an instant multimillionaire and all the attendant comforts it yields – mansions, shopping sprees, and exotic trips?

And how could the company founder not sell when the consensus among consultants, Erickson’s now ex-partner, and even some of his employees was that Clif Bar’s competitors would eat them alive if he didn’t? Deserting the Clif Bar empire before its fated downfall seemed to be the only logical move.

"Nestle had just bought PowerBar, which was really big at the time, and then Kraft bought Balance Bar," O’Loughlin explains. "So naturally there was a ton of pressure to sell, because we [supposedly] couldn’t make it on our own."

In spite of the risk or perhaps because of it, Erickson returned to his office with a new resolve and announced to the investment banker, lawyers, and his stunned partner that the deal was off. He then literally told them all to go home.

"I went from the darkest of dark to the highest of highs the moment I realized I didn’t have to sign that contract," marvels Erickson during a phone interview. The company founder – with his wife and partner, Kit Crawford – is resuming leadership of their company with just under 200 employees.

"I was more excited at that moment than probably any other moment of my life, aside from having children."

A year after ditching Quaker Oats at the altar, Erickson could identify another important reason why he did it. Although he and his partner were promised postacquisition roles in the company, as signing day neared it became clear that this was merely a typical sweet nothing often whispered in the midst of a seductive corporate takeover.

But once Quaker Oats unveiled its plan to move the Clif Bar operations to its offices in Chicago and told Erickson that his people in Berkeley would basically be out of their jobs, he got a whiff of the company’s true oats.

The decision invigorated Erickson and motivated him to define Clif Bar’s bottom line beyond its profits. He came up with what the company now refers to as the Five Aspirations: business, brand, planet, community, and people. This new mission galvanized the creators of Luna, Nectar, Mojo, and Builder’s bars to make 70 percent of each product organic and use biodiesel trucks between their bakery and destination centers.

On the community tip, Clif Bar donates approximately 1 percent of its net sales in the form of food, money, and volunteer time. Each employee volunteers at least 20 community service hours per year during paid work time, which can entail anything from assisting Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans to planting community gardens in Hunters Point.

Though a commitment to green practices and community service has boosted company morale, masseuses, salons, in-office rock climbing walls, personal trainers, and laundry facilities, among other staff perks, also serve to sustain Clif Bar’s people. How’s that for ulterior motives? (Angela J. Bass)

CLIF BAR AND CO.

1610 Fifth St., Berk.

1-800-254-3227

www.clifbar.com

1...434435436...493Page 435 of 493

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org