SFBG Blogs

Chiu mailer highlights Guardian praise, despite our Campos endorsement

Sasha Cuttler
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Chiu mailer highlights Guardian praise, despite our Campos endorsement

Politics is dirty business, and I should never underestimate the willingness of politicians to turn any editorial praise they receive into an electoral advantage, distorting the context as needed, a lesson that I was reminded of this week.

Several Guardian readers have called me this week to complain about a mailer dropped on voters by the David Chiu for Assembly campaign, which includes long quotes from Chiu’s endorsements by the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area Reporter, as well as positive quotes from the Bay Guardian and San Francisco Examiner.

Although neither the Guardian nor the Examiner has endorsed Chiu — we enthusiastically endorsed David Campos in that race, while the Examiner is waiting until the fall rematch to do endorsements — our readers said the flyer left the impression that we had.

Chiu campaign spokesperson Nicole Derse disputes that view. “It definitely did not leave that impression,” she told me. “We were very clear about who has endorsed.” She said the Examiner and Guardian were included because “it’s important to highlight objective sources like newspapers.”

The Guardian quote was from a July 23, 2013 blog post in which I indeed wrote, “It is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislation lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city.”

It was certainly true at the time, although I received a lot criticism for what I wrote from the progressive community, which pointed out how Chiu had maneuvered himself into the swing vote position on key issues such as condo conversions and CEQA reform. And the compromises Chiu forged actually allowed fiscal conservatives to erode San Francisco’s standing as a progessive city while burgeoning his own political resume.

So I ran another blog post to air those concerns, and then we ran a hybrid of the two in the next week’s paper that closes with this line, “In the end, Chiu can be seen as an effective legislator, a centrist compromiser, or both. Perspective is everything in politics.” BTW, in that original post, I also noted that the Airbnb legislation Chiu was working on should challenge his political skills and reputation, and indeed it took many more months to introduce and has been met by a storm of criticism, becoming the marquee political fight of the summer at City Hall.

After that first post, I also heard from Campos and his supporters predicting that the Chiu campaign would use my well-meaning praise to convey support from the Guardian in a misleading way, a prophecy that has now proven prescient.

But I also think that Campos has done a good job at undermining Chiu’s greatest strength in this election, that of being an effective legislator, by hammering on the reality that things have gotten worse for the average San Francisco because Chiu and his allies have been most effective on behalf of the tech companies, landlords, and other rich and powerful interests that are undermining the city’s diversity, affordability, and progressive values.

“Effective for whom? That’s what’s important,” Campos told us during his endorsement interview, noting that, “Most people in San Francisco have been left behind and out of that prosperity.”

Chiu’s campaign counters by overtly and in whisper campaigns saying that progressives can’t be effective in Sacramento, blatantly overlooking the fact that the incumbent he’s running to replace, Tom Ammiano, has been both a consistent, trustworthy progressive, and an effective legislator who has gotten more bills signed than most of his colleagues, even as he takes on tough issues like reforms to Prop. 13 and prison conditions.

And Ammiano hasn’t just said good things about David Campos, his chosen successor — Ammiano has actually endorsed Campos. 

Agnos offers waterfront development history lesson during SFT speech

Sasha Cuttler
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Agnos offers waterfront development history lesson during SFT speech

[Editor’s Note: This is the text of a speech that former Mayor Art Agnos gave at San Francisco Tomorrow’s annual dinner on May 21. We reprint it here in its entirely so readers can hear directly what Agnos has been saying on the campaign trail in support of Prop. B]

I am delighted to speak to the members and friends of SFT about the waterfront tonight…and a special shout out to Jane Morrison as one of the pioneer professional women in the media and one of the finest Social Service Commissioners in our City’s history.

I also welcome the opportunity to join you in honoring tonight’s unsung heroes: Becky Evans, with whom I have worked closely over the past year and half; Tim Redmond, the conscience of the progressive community for the past 35 years; and Sara Shortt and Tommi Avicolli Mecca from the Housing Rights Committee, who stand up every day for poor and working people who need a voice in our city.

Twenty-four years ago, in 1990, I made one of the best decisions of my mayoralty when I listened to the progressive environmental voice of San Francisco and ordered the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. That freeway was not only a hideous blight but also a wall that separated the city from its waterfront.

Hard to believe today, but it was a very controversial decision back then. Just three years before, in 1987, the voters had defeated a proposal by Mayor Feinstein to demolish it. The Loma Prieta Earthquake gave us a chance to reconsider that idea in 1990.

Despite opposition of 22,000 signatures on a petition to retrofit the damaged freeway, combined with intense lobbying from the downtown business community led by the Chamber of Commerce, North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, and especially Chinatown, we convinced the Board of Supervisors to adopt our plan to demolish the freeway, by one vote.

And the rest is history — until today.

After a period of superb improvements — that include a restored Ferry Building, the ball park, two new public piers where one can walk further out into the bay than ever before in the history of this city, the Exploratorium, the soon to be opened Jim Herman Cruise Ship Terminal, Brannan Wharf Park — there is a new threat.

Private development plans that threaten to change the environment of what Herb Caen first called “our newest precious place,” not with an ugly concrete freeway wall, but with steel and glass high-rises that are twice as tall. Today, the availability of huge amounts of developer financing, combined with unprecedented influence in City Hall and the oversight bodies of this city, the waterfront has become the new gold coast of San Francisco.

Politically connected developers seek to exploit magnificent public space with high-rise, high profit developments that shut out the ordinary San Franciscan from our newest precious place. We love this city because it is a place where all of us have a claim to the best of it, no matter what our income, no matter that we are renter or homeowner, no matter what part of the city we come from.

And connected to that is the belief that waterfront public land is for all of us, not just those with the biggest bank account or most political influence. That was driven home in a recent call I had from a San Franciscan who complained about the high cost of housing for home ownership or rent, the high cost of Muni, museum admissions, even Golden Gate Bridge tours, and on and on.

When he finished with his list, I reminded him I was mayor 23 years ago and that there had been four mayors since me, so why was he complaining to me? “Because you are the only one I can reach!” he said.

Over the past few weeks, that message has stuck with me. And I finally realized why. This is what many people in our city have been seeking, someone who will listen and understand. Someone who will listen, understands, and acts to protect our newest precious place, our restored waterfront.

You see, it was not just about luxury high-rise condos at 8 Washington last year. It was not just a monstrous basketball arena on Pier 30-32 with luxury high-rise condos and a hotel across the street on public land. It’s about the whole waterfront that belongs to the people of San Francisco, all seven and a half miles of it, from the Hyde Street Piers to India Basin. And it must be protected from the land use mistakes that can become irrevocable.

This is not new to our time: 8 Washington and the Warriors arena were not the first horrendous proposals, they were only the latest. Huge, out of scale, enormously profitable projects, fueled by exuberant boosterism from the Chamber of Commerce, have always surfaced on our waterfront.

Fifty years ago, my mentor in politics, then-Supervisor Leo McCarthy said, “We must prevent a wall of high rise apartment along the waterfront, and we must stop the filling in of the SF bay as a part of a program to retain the things that have made this city attractive.”

That was 1964. In 2014, former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said it best this way: “It seems like every 10 years, every generation has to stand up to some huge development that promises untold riches as it seeks to exploit the waterfront and our public access to it.”

Public awareness first started with the construction of the 18 stories of Fontana towers east and west in 1963. That motivated then-Assemblyman Casper Weinberger to lead public opposition and demand the first height limits, as well as put a stop to five more Fontana-style buildings on the next block at Ghirardelli Square. This was the same Casper Weinberger who went on to become Secretary of HEW [formerly the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan.

In 1970, the Port Commission proposed to rip out the then “rotting piers” of Piers 1 – 7 just north of the Ferry Building. They were to be replaced with 40 acres of fill (three times the size of Union Square) upon which a 1200-room hotel and a 2400 car garage would be built.

It passed easily through Planning and the Board of Supervisors. When the proposal was rejected on 22 to 1 vote by BCDC [the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission], Mayor Alioto complained, “We just embalmed the rotting piers.”

No, we didn’t, we saved them for the right project. And if one goes there today, they see it, the largest surviving renovated piers complex with restaurants, walk-in cafes, Port offices, free public docking space, water taxis, and complete public access front and back. In 2002, that entire project was placed on the U.S. National Historic Register.

But my favorite outrageous proposal from that time was plan to demolish another set of “rotting piers” from the Ferry Building south to the Bay Bridge. And in place of those rotting piers, the plans called for more landfill to create a Ford dealership car lot with ,5000 cars as well as a new shopping center. That too was stopped.

So now it’s our turn to make sure that we stop these all too frequent threats to the access and viability of our waterfront. In the past two weeks, we have seen momentum grow to support locating the George Lucas Museum on Piers 30-32 or the sea wall across the Embarcadero.

I love the idea, but where would we be with that one if a small band of waterfront neighbors and the Sierra Club had not had the courage to stand up to the Warriors and City Hall two years ago. Once again, they used the all too familiar refrain of “rotting piers” as an impending catastrophe at Piers 30-32.

Proposition B will help prevent mistakes before they happen. Most of all, Prop. B will ensure protection of the Port on a more permanent basis by requiring a public vote on any increases to current height limits on Port property. All of the current planning approval processes will stay in place — Port Commission, Planning Commission, Board of Permit Appeals, Board of Supervisors, all will continue to do what they have always done.

But if a waiver of current height limits along the waterfront is granted by any of those political bodies, it must be affirmed by a vote of the people. Prop B does not say Yes or No, it says Choice. It is that simple. The people of SF will make the final choice on height limit increases on Port property.

The idea of putting voters in charge of final approval is not new. In the past, the people of San Francisco have voted for initiatives to approve a Children’s budget, a Library budget, retaining neighborhood fire stations, minimum police staffing, as well as to require public authorization for new runway bay fill at our airport. And at the Port itself, there have been approximately 18 ballot measures to make land use and policy decisions.

So we are not talking about ballot box planning, we are talking about ballot box approval for waivers of existing height limits on public property. Opponents like Building Trades Council, Board of Realtors, and Chamber of Commerce are raising alarms that we will lose environment protections like CEQA by creating loopholes for developers. Astonishing!

Prop B is sponsored by the Sierra Club. Tonight we honor Becky Evans of the Sierra Club who sponsored Proposition B. That same set of opponents are joined by city bureaucrats issuing “doomsday” reports stating that we will lose thousands of units of middle class housing, billions of dollars in Port revenues, elimination of parks and open space on the waterfront. Astonishing!

These are the same bureaucrats who issued glowing reports a couple of years ago that the America’s Cup would mean billions in revenue for the Port and the city. And they wanted to give Oracle’s Larry Ellison 66-year leases to develop on five of our Port piers for that benefit! Now, how did THAT work out? So far, City Hall will admit to $11 million in known losses for the taxpayers. Another opponent, SPUR [San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association], says any kind of housing will make a difference and there are thousands in the pipeline, so don’t worry. Astonishing!

We have not seen one stick of low income or affordable housing proposed on the waterfront since the ‘80s and ‘90s when Mayor Feinstein and I used waterfront land for that very purpose. Hundreds of low-income housing dwellings like Delancey Street and Steamboat Point Apartments, affordable and middle class housing like South Beach Marina apartments and Bayside village, comprise an oasis of diversity and affordable housing in the midst of ultra expensive condos.

For me, that was part of an inaugural promise made in January 1988. I said, “At the heart of our vision is a refusal to let San Francisco become an expensive enclave that locks out the middle class, working families, and the poor. At the center of our strategy is a belief in the basic right of people to decent jobs and housing.”

Yes, that was the commitment on public land on the waterfront by two mayors of a recent era, but not today. Indeed, San Francisco has been rated the #1 least affordable city in America, including NY Manhattan. That is one of the many reasons we see middle class people, as well as working poor, being forced to leave San Francisco for Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area.

That reality was reinforced in the February 10, 2014 issue of Time Magazine. Mayor Lee said, “I don’t think we paid any attention to the middle class. I think everybody assumed the middle class was moving out.”

Today, an individual or family earning up to $120,000 per year — 150 percent of the median in this city — does not qualify for mortgage and can’t afford the rent in one of the thousands of new housing units opening in the city. The Chronicle reported a couple of weeks ago that a working family of three who have lived in a rent-controlled studio apartment in the Mission was offered $50,000 to leave.

That is what the purely developer-driven housing market offers. And that philosophy is reinforced by a Planning Commission whose chair was quoted in December 2013 issue of SF Magazine saying, “Mansions are just as important as housing.”

Prop B changes that dynamic by putting the citizen in the room with the “pay to play” power brokers. That is what it is all about my friends: Power.

Former SF city planning director and UC School of City Planning Professor Alan Jacobs recently related what he called the Jacobs Truism of land economics: “Where political discretion is involved in land use decisions, the side that wins is the side with the most power. And that side is the side with the most money.”

Prop B will ensure that if developers are going to spend a lot of money to get a height waiver on Port property, the best place to spend it will be to involve, inform, and engage the citizen as to the merit of their request, not on the politicians. Today that power to decide is in a room in City Hall. I know that room. I have been in that room.

You know who is there? It is the lobbyists, the land use lawyers, the construction union representatives, the departmental directors, and other politicians. You know who is not in the room? You. The hope is that someone in that room remembers you.

But if you really want your voice to be heard, you have to go to some departmental hearing or the Board of Supervisors, wait for three or four hours for your turn, and then get two minutes to make your case. Prop B changes that dynamic and puts you in the room that matters. No more “advisory committees” that get indulged and brushed off. No more “community outreach” that is ignored.

It will all matter. That is why today there is no opposition from any waterfront developer. They get it. We are going to win. It is easy to see how the prospect of Prop B on the ballot this June has changed the dynamics of high-rise development along the waterfront.

The Warriors have left and purchased a better location on private land in Mission Bay. The Giants have publicly announced that they will revise their plans with an eye to more appropriate height limits on Port land. Forest City is moving with a ballot proposal to use Pier 70 to build new buildings of nine stories, the same height as one of current historic buildings they will preserve on that site for artists.

The Pier 70 project will include 30 percent low-income, affordable and middle class housing on site, along with low-tech industries, office space, and a waterfront promenade that stretches along the entire shoreline boundary. A good project that offers what the city needs will win an increase in height limits because it works for everybody. A bad one will not.

My friends, I have completed my elected public service career. There will be no more elections for me. And as I review my 40 years in public life, I am convinced of one fundamental truth: The power of the people should, and must, determine what kind of a city this will be.

It must not be left to a high-tech billionaire political network that wants to control City Hall to fulfill their vision of who can live here and where. It starts with you, the people of this city’s neighborhoods, empowered to participate in the decisions that affect our future. You are the ones who must be vigilant and keep faith with values that make this city great.

This city is stronger when we open our arms to all who want to be a part of it, to live and work in it, to be who they want to be, with whomever they want to be it with. Our dreams for this city are more powerful when they can be shared by all of us in our time.

WE are the ones, here and now, who can create the climate to advance the San Francisco dream to the next generation. And the next opportunity to do that will be election day June 3.

Thank you.

 

Watch: Papercuts’ “Life Among the Savages”

Steven T. Jones
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Papercuts, the indie-folk output of San Francisco songwriter-producer Jason Quever, has been a San Francisco staple for a decade now. By turns stark and raw and layered, lush and atmospheric, Papercuts’ newest album, Life Among the Savages is full of excellent songs for a long, moody solo drive.

Pick up the Bay Guardian that hits newsstands tomorrow to read an in-depth interview with Quever about what went into the album’s making, ahead of his show at The Chapel on Sat/31. But while you wait for that (I know, it’s tough for me too), you can watch this pretty, throroughly San Franciscan video for the album’s title track.

Student protesters file claim against City College and SF citing injuries, defamation

Erica Hanna
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Student protesters file claim against City College and SF citing injuries, defamation

Student protesters filed a claim against City College of San Francisco and the city and county of San Francisco today, citing excessive use of force by San Francisco Police Department and City College police officers.

The claim is a first step before filing a lawsuit against San Francisco, and was announced at a press conference earlier today [Tues/27] at City College’s Ocean Campus. The two students filing the claim, Dimitrios Philliou and Otto Pippenger, may seek over $10,000 in damages, according to the claim. They allege they were physically and emotionally injured by police violence in a March 13 protest against City College’s state-appointed Special Trustee Bob Agrella, who entirely replaced City College’s elected Board of Trustees. 

The two students also asked for the college’s chancellor, Arthur Q. Tyler, to retract his public statements they say casts blame for the violence on the protesters.

“I think everyone on the City College campus and in the larger community agree that violence is not a means to solving disagreement,” Tyler wrote in an email addressed to the college’s student body, faculty and staff shortly after the protest. The two students said they were defamed publicly to students and faculty.

“The public statement blaming protesters reached tens of thousands of people at the school I go to,” Pippenger said at the press conference.

Tyler was not available for comment as he is on a business trip in Texas, his staff told us. City College spokesperson Jeff Hamilton would not comment due to the pending litigation.

The two students are represented by Rachel Lederman, the president of the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area chapter.

The protest erupted in response to the special trustee allegedly curtailing democracy at City College. The school is in a fight for its life, and Agrella’s role is to see the college maintains its accreditation. But he said the urgency to save the school was sufficient reason to halt public meetings and public comments which used to be standard practice under the college’s board.

dfornone

Previous coverage: Check out “Democracy For None,” recounting the March 13 City College protest and the state of democracy at the school.

That removed an important place for students to decry policy changes, such as class cuts that harm the most vulnerable, Philliou and Pippenger alleged. Eventually, the protesters’ cries reached Agrella and he partially restored public board meetings, though they are not broadcast nor recorded. 

It’s a small victory, and it took the injuries of the two students filing claims, Phillou and Pippenger, to draw media attention to their plight. Philliou said students and faculty at the protest “were met by attacks from police and were beaten, brutalized, attacked, and arrested.” 

He later experienced sleep deprivation, emotional torment, and has since felt unsafe while at school. Agrella refused to speak to him, Phillou said, and he was instead “met with brutality.”

Pippenger described how he sustained his injuries speaking slowly, and methodically.

“At the height of the violence, right there,” he said at the site of the conflict, pointing behind him to where he was beaten, “I was first struck repeatedly with fists, and then thrown to the concrete and restrained by a number of officers. I was then beaten on the pavement, insensate and unbreathing beneath five or six bodies, as one officer punched me in the back of the head and against the pavement. My fists were broken, and I sustained a concussion.” 

coppunchesstudent

 

In the animated GIF above, student protester Otto Pippenger is held on the ground, face against the cement, while an officer throws a punch to the back of his head. The full video is at the bottom of this post.

It is SFPD policy not to comment once a claim has been filed, police spokesperson Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian. The City Attorney’s Office, who would represent the city and the police, had not yet seen the text of the claim. 

 

Since the protest, Tyler convened three open meetings aimed at improving campus discourse, and to gain insight into how to handle student demonstrations in the future. A newly formed school task force on “Civil Discourse and Campus Climate” has been appointed and will soon have its first meeting.

For more background, see our previous coverage of the bloody protest in “Democracy for None [3/18].”

Memorial Day: Remembering the good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa, circa 1940s to 1950s

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 Bruce B. Brugmann

(Reprinted and updated by popular demand)

When I was growing up in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, a farming community of 2,800 in the northwest corner of the state, Memorial Day was the official start of summer.

We headed off to YMCA camp at Camp Foster on West Okiboji Lake and Boy Scout camp at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota. The less fortunate were trundled off to Bible School at the Methodist Church.

As I remember it, Memorial Day always seemed to be a glorious sunny day and full of action for Rock Rapids. The high school band in black and white uniform would march down Main Street under the baton of the local high school band teacher (in my day, Jim White.) A parade would feature floats carrying our town’s veterans of the First and Second World wars, young men I knew who suddenly were wearing their old uniforms. And there was for many years a veteran of the Spanish American War named Jess Callahan prominently displayed in a convertible. Lots of flags would be flying and the Rex Strait American Legion Post and Veterans of Foreign Wars would be out in force. We never really knew who Rex Strait was, except that he was said to be the first Rock Rapids boy to die in World War I and the post was named after him.

After the parade, we would make our way to our picture post card cemetery, atop a knoll just south of town overlooking the lush green of the trees and the fields along the lazy Rock River.A local dignitary would give a blazing patriotic speech. A color guard of veterans would move the flags into position and then at the command fire their rifles off toward the river. I remember this was the first time I ever saw a color guard in action, with a sergeant who moved his men with rifles into position with strange “hut, hut, hut” commands.

After the ceremony, everyone would go to the graves of their family and friends and people they knew and look at the flowers that would be sitting in bouquets and little pots by the headstones. The cemetery was and is a beautiful spot and many of us who are natives have parents, friends, and relatives buried here. It is one of the wonderful things that connects us to the town, no matter where we end up.

And so this year I got my annual telephone call from Dorothy Bosch, at the Flower Village florist in Rock Rapids, reminding me about the flowers I always place on Memorial Day  on the graves of my relatives in the Brugmann plot. I always get a kick out of doing business with Flower Village because it once was in the Brugmann Drugstore building on Main Street that had housed our family drug store. (“C.C. Brugmann and Son, where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902.”)  Flower Village  later moved across the street to the building that once housed the Bernstein Department store and is now known as Home-ology.  Dorothy always fills me in on the latest Rock Rapids news, which is particularly important this year because I will be back in Rock Rapids in June for Heritage Days, the annual celebraton for the town and county and the alumni for high school reunions Last year was my 60th reunion of the dream class of 1953, a class of 32 with 16 girls and 16 boys. 

I always ask Dorothy to get the most colorful flowers of the season and she then sees that they are displayed near the headstones in the Brugmann plot a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day. This year, I called Pauline Knobloch to pick up the flowers and put them in her garden.  Pauline and I go back to 1947, when she was a young clerk, just in from Lester, in the store.  I started clerking at age 12  that year, selling stamps and peanuts in the front of the store.  Pauline and I worked together all my school years and she continued on until my dad sold the store in the late 1970s. Pauline at 92 is still going strong, as they say in Rock Rapids.

Ours is an unusual plot, because it holds the graves of my four grandparents, my parents, my aunt and uncle and someday my wife and I. My grandfather C.C.Brugmann and my father C.B.Brugmann spent their entire working lives in Brugmann’s drugstore, which my grandfather started in l902. My father (and my mother Bonnie) came into the store shortly after the depression.
My grandfather A. R. Rice (and his wife Allie) was an eloquent Congregational minister who had parishes throughout Iowa in Waverly, Eldora, Parkersburg,  and Rowan. He retired in Clarion. My aunt Mary was my father’s sister and her husband was her Rock Rapids high school classmate, Clarence Schmidt. He was a veterinarian and a reserve army officer who was called up immediately after Pearl Harbor and ordered to report to Camp Dodge in Des Moines within 48 hours. He did and served in Calcutta, India, as an inspector of meat that was flown over the hump to supply the Chinese forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in Kunming. 

Through the years, Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger, the police chief when I was in school, would say to me, “Well, Bruce, you and I have to get along. We’ll be spending lots of time together someday.” I never knew what he meant until one day, visiting the Brugmann plot, I noticed that the Sheneberger family plot was next to the Brugmann plot. Every Memorial Day, Shinny took pictures in color of the flowers on the Brugmann and Sheneberger family graves and would send them to me in San Francisco.  I would send on them on to my sister Brenda in Sun City, Arizona, and the families of the three Schmidt boys John in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Conrad and Robert in Worthington, Minnesota. Well, Shinny died three years ago and alas I no longer get his annual batch of pictures. But he was right. We will be together for a long, long time.

Every year the rep from our American Legion Post puts a small American flag on the grave of every person buried in the cemetery who served in the Armed Forces. Chip Berg, who was three years ahead of me in school, performed this chore every year. My uncle gets one. And, Chip assured me, I will get one someday. I earned it, I am happy to report, as an unhappy ROTC soldier for two years at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (1953-55), as a cold war veteran (1958-60), as an advanced infantryman at Ft. Carson, Colorado, as a survivor of two weeks of miserable winter bivouac in the foothills of the Rockies, and as bureau chief of the Korea Bureau of Stars and Stripes (carrying my favorite byline: SP5 Bruce B. Brugmann,  S and S Korea bureau, Yongdongpo, Korea.) I am proud of the flag already. B3, who never forgets how lucky he is to come from the best small town in the country.

P.S.1: As the years went by, I became more curious about how my uncle Schmitty, as he was known, could leave his three young boys and his veterinary practice in nearby Worthington, Minnesota,  and get to Camp  Dodge so fast and serve throughout the entire war. I asked him lots of questions. How, for example, did he handle his veterinary practice? Simple, he said, “my partner just said let’s split our salaries. You give me half of what you make in the Army and I’ll give you half of what I make in veterinary practice.” And that’s what they did and that’s how the veterinary practice kept going throughout the war. Schmitty returned to a healthy practice, retired in the 1960s, and turned it over to his second son Conrad.

P.S.2: Confession: I was not drafted. I enlisted in the federal reserve in the summer of 1958, which amounted to the same thing. Two years of active duty, two years of active reserve, and two years of inactive reserve. I did this maneuver so that I could formally say that I beat Elmer Wohlers. Elmer was the local draft board chief who had spent a little time in World War I, “the big one,” as he would say. The word around town was that he never got out of Camp Dodge in Des Moines but you would never know it by his rhetoric. He had a bit of black humor about his job and we had a running skirmish for years.

Whenever he would see me on the street in Rock Rapids, he would say, ” Bruce, I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you.” And I would reply, “No, no, Elmer, you’ll never get me.”  I think he was particularly annoyed when I escaped his grasp and went off for a year to graduate school at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. I would send him cards through the years, from an ATO  fraternity party at the University of Nebraska, or from my hangout bar in New York City (the West End Bar, across from the Columbia Journalism building.) I would write in effect, but with elegant variations, “Elmer, having a wonderful time. Keep up the good work. Wish you were here.” When I was in town and we would spar on the street,  I would invite Elmer over to the Sportsmen’s Club for a martini, but he always refused, most testily. 

And so I joined the federal reserve and ended up with the initials FR instead of  US on my dog tags that hung around my neck for two years. I was officially FR17507818 and rose from lowly  recruit in the 60th infantry at Ft Carson, Colorado, to the lofty position of  E-5 and bureau chief of the Korea edition of Stars and Stripes bureau. But my big accomplishment was that Elmer didn’t get me. I still feel good about beating Elmer at his own game.

P.S. 3 Here’s how things work in Rock Rapids.  One year, in sending my annual Memorial Day drill in an email note to Rock Rapids alumni of my era,  I recounted the Shinny anecdote and placed the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots in the southeastern corner of the cemetery. I promptly got an email note back from Joanne Schubert Vogel (class of ’49). She wrote that she had sent my note to her brother Dale Schubert in Rock Rapids (class of ’55, who was a halfback when I was a quarterback on the celebrated Rock Rapids Lions football team. Dale called her and said that I had made an error and that the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots were in the southwestern corner of the cemetery, not in the southeast corner. Amazing. He was right and I was wrong. Joanne softened the blow by saying she was sure that this was the first error I had ever made.

(Bruce B. Brugmann, or B3 as he signs his emails and blogs, writes and edits the Bruce Blog on the Guardian website at SFBG.com   He is the editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012, now retired. He can be contacted atBruce@sfbg.com [1].)

Source URL: http://www.sfbg.com/bruce/2013/05/26/memorial-day-remembering-good-old-days-rock-rapids-iowa-circa-1940s-1950s

Links:
[1] mailto:Bruce@sfbg.com

The strange, unique power of San Francisco mayors

Erica Hanna
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The strange, unique power of San Francisco mayors

Mayor Ed Lee wields a strange and unique power in San Francisco politics, passed down from Mayor Gavin Newsom, and held by Mayor Willie Brown before him.

No, we’re not talking magic, though mayors have used this ability to almost magically influence the city’s political winds. 

When elected officials leave office in San Francisco and a seat is left vacant, the mayor has the legal power to appoint someone to that empty seat. A study by San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission conducted March last year shows out of 117 jurisdictions in California, and ten major cities nationwide, only seven jurisdictions give their executives (governors, mayors) the ability to appoint an official to a vacant seat. The other jurisdictions hold special elections or allow legislative bodies to vote on a new appointment. 

The power of a San Francisco mayor then is nearly singularly unique, the report found, but especially when seen in the context of the nation’s major cities.

“Of the 10 cities surveyed here,” the study’s authors wrote, “no other city among the most populous grants total discretion for appointments.” 

The study is especially relevant now, as Sup. John Avalos introduced a charter amendment to change this unqiuely San Franciscan mayoral power, and put the power back in the hands of the electorate.

His amendment would require special elections when vacancies appear on public bodies like the community college board, the board of education, or other citywide elected offices. He nicknamed it the “Let’s Elect our Elected Officials Act,” and if approved by the Board of Supervisors it will go to this November’s ballot.

Avalos touched on the LAFCo study while introducing his amendment at the board’s meeting on Tuesday [5/20]. 

“One of the striking results is how unique San Francisco’s appointment process is,” Avalos said. “There’s no democratic process or time constraint when the mayor makes these appointments.”

He pointed to then-Assessor Recorder Phil Ting’s election to California Assembly in 2012. Camen Chu, his successor, was not appointed by the mayor until February 2013, he said, a longstanding vacancy.

So what’s the big deal? Well, voters notoriously tend to vote for the incumbents in any race, so any official with their name on the slot as “incumbent” come election time has a tremendous advantage. In fact, only one supervisor ever appointed by a mayor was ever voted down in a subsequenet district-wide (as opposed to city-wide) election. This dataset of appointed supervisors was culled from the Usual Suspects, a local political-wonk blog:

Supervisor

Appointed

Elected

  

Terry Francois

1964

1967

  

Robert Gonzalez

1969

1971

  

Gordon Lau

1977

1977

  

Jane Murphy

1977

Didn’t run

  

Louise Renne

1978

1980

  

Donald Horanzy

1978

Lost in 1980

Switched from District to

Citywide elections.

Harry Britt

1979

1980

  

Willie B. Kennedy

1981

1984

  

Jim Gonzalez

1986

1988

  

Tom Hsieh

1986

1988

  

Annemarie Conroy

1992

Lost in 1994

  

Susan Leal

1993

1994

  

Amos Brown

1996

1998

  

Leslie Katz

1996

1996

  

Michael Yaki

1996

1996

  

Gavin Newsom

1997

1998

  

Mark Leno

1998

1998

  

Alicia D. Becerril

1999

Lost in 2000

Switched from Citywide to

District elections.

Michela Alioto-Pier

2004

2004

  

Sean Elsbernd

2004

2004

  

Carmen Chu

2007

2008

  

Christina Olague

2012

Lost in 2012

Only loss by a district

appointed supervisor.

Katy Tang

2013

2013

So mayoral appointments effectively sway subsequent elections, giving that mayor two prongs of power: the power to appoint someone who may agree with their politics, and the power to appoint someone who will then owe them.

A San Francisco Chronicle article from 2004 describes the power derived from appointees former Mayor Willie Brown infamously enjoyed.

Once at City Hall, Brown moved quickly to consolidate power, and using the skills he honed during his 31 years in the state Assembly, gained control of the Board of Supervisors. Before the 2000 election, he appointed eight of the 11 members, filling vacancies that he helped orchestrate, as supervisor after supervisor quit to run for higher office or take other jobs.

The board majority was steadfastly loyal, pushing through Brown’s policies and budget priorities with little debate. In a 1996 magazine article, he was quoted as likening the supervisors to “mistresses you have to service.”

Voters may soon choose what elected officials they want in offices. The mistresses of the mayor, or the mistresses of the people.

Graph of the LAFCo study produced by Guardian intern Francisco Alvarado. LAFCo looked at California jurisdictions as well as ten major cities nationwide.

Thieves! Duboce Triangle free library stolen, replaced

Erica Hanna
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Thieves! Duboce Triangle free library stolen, replaced

Thievery! The little free library on Noe went missing Wedenesday, and initially in its place was only a chalk outline decrying its loss.

“I was pissed,” librarian Jamison Wieser told reporter (and Bay Guardian freelancer) Sara Bloomberg for her blog, A Room with a View in San Francisco.

The little free library sits outside 233 Noe, and people can freely borrow from its collection of 20 or so books. No checkout system exists, it’s all based on the honor system. Unfortunately, someone decided to act less than honorably.  After the case was stolen, chalk outlines were drawn on the ground where the books from the stolen bookcase were thrown.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending.

The book case was shortly replaced, with books already filling the shelves, Bloomberg reported. There was one new addition though, a sign, reading “These books may be freely borrowed. (Please do not take bookcase).”

The Duboce Triangle little free library is part of the Little Free Library network, with 15,000 participating little libraries and counting. The Duboce Triangle little free library is taking donations at Paypal using the email noesocute@gmail.com, or you can leave cash with the librarians right on Noe.

littlelibrary


Panda Bear brings the Grim Reaper to The Fillmore

Steven T. Jones
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0

By Ryland Walker Knight

The last time Panda Bear/Noah Lennox toured through the Bay as a solo act, he played The Fox in Oakland, offering the crowd a swamp of bass in waves of noise that probably wasn’t what most of those in attendance wanted to see and hear that night. Nobody complained, of course, and did their best to dance, but it was more an evening of sounds than songs.

Last night, at the Fillmore, Lennox played songs. He also layered sample on sample of himself, of synths, of squibs, of bass, of beats, but he seemed determined to work through the very real structures of all new songs (until the encore), getting bodies moving and people smiling. Perched behind a table of electronics and a blue-foamed mic, Lennox started slow, drawing in the ears with a simple organ progression and tremolo-effected vocal swoops of unrecognizable words. Not that the words matter, per se. The first “single” off this new record was first called, simply, “Marijuana,” and the refrain, such as it was, went something like “Marijuana makes my day.” Not very deep, though kinda funny; the thing that made the track was the vibe, the feeling. That sounds just as goofy as the lyrics, but psychedelia is, in one way, about getting beyond language.

pb

Furthermore, these new songs seem designed to look beyond the stage, beyond the instruments and private practices of making the music that typified Tomboy and its tour. The repetition remains, the loops and strategies aren’t terribly different, but the tone is brighter, with more snare drums in the mix, and Lennox’s voice, sometimes just making vowel sounds up and down scales, seems pointed backwards to the Brian Wilson styles found on Person Pitch and his guest spot on Daft Punk’s “Doin It Right” from last year. In fact, it seems like this batch of concoctions has been designed to pick apart harmony, to sort of suspend its pieces in a kind of constellation that brightens here, dims there, and pulses forward always.

A lot of that is simple arpeggios, and I’m not going to argue that Lennox is some Bach-level genius writing symphonic fugues for a digital age or some mumbo jumbo, but there is a certain kind of genius to syncopating things just right — letting silence space out a jam, even on an eighth note, or knowing when to push your voice beyond its range is okay, when it’s okay to break down your own capabilities, only to let a breakbeat bounce in underneath that cloud of yearning and get your betters lifted once again.

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There’s a new song he’s playing about midway through his set that begins with a harp melody lilting up, bellow to bright, and builds variations of Lennox caroling “in the family” on that towards a hook (of sorts) wherein he chant-cries “You won’t come back, you can’t come back” that brought the house so quiet in awe it felt like we were all holding our breath. I don’t think it’s an accident that those words stood out, or that he made them the most accessible. One of the more ingratiating aspects of all the Animal Collective music, across their varied catalogs, is how naked they are about pain. It was around this time that I remembered the working title for the new album: Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper.

That’s when the visuals started to make sense, too. The projections were great from the start, a series of shifting fields as ever, this time marked by cherries and waves of cranberries (in my eyes), changing to skin, and then a kaleidoscope of one nude, blue dancer, arranged Busby Berkeley-style into a wave of flesh from one point of perspective, like a shell’s curves, which rhymed with the strings of light roping across the screen at other times, and her face reappearing, quite large, painted like death. Later in the show she emerged from behind Lennox in a red cowl, carrying a sickle, coming for all of us, as she will, only to be multiplied and fed ice cream (?), which she then regurgitated. It was beautiful, hilarious, stupid, hard not to love.

pb

After roughly 10 songs, there was a break, of course, and when he came back out, Panda Noah Bear Lennox gave the goons what they wanted: something to sing along to! And it made me think about necessity. My favorite art is made, rather simply, out of the artist’s innate drive, some might say compulsion, that makes it a necessary outpouring. It doesn’t need an audience, though art without an audience is a fool’s errand, and if music only exists to trigger familiarity, what’s the reason you’re paying your money to experience this arrangement? Is it vanity? Simple distraction? I know I revel in the new, no matter how much a return may appeal, especially if it’s pleasure circling back, as a gift, to swim through me. But pleasure isn’t necessarily necessary; or, it’s only necessary to alleviate pain.

I suppose this is the old catharsis idea, and that may be the basic desire for live music, to transport, which this show certainly did. But what truly great art, and truly great experiences might offer is a picture of those poles suspended as if in either hand, both present at once. So a Grim Reaper makes sense, again: If you want sky, like Lennox once sang, your only route to the clouds is down, into the dirt.

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Intersection for the Arts lays off staff, halts programming

Erica Hanna
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Intersection for the Arts lays off staff, halts programming

Intersection for the Arts, one of the city’s most established alternative arts venues, is the latest casualty in a city slowly strangling its arts and music scene. 

The decades-old studio and artists space will lay off most of its staff and program directors by the end of the month, and will no longer produce its own arts programming.

“With the specific shifts in the economy and culture of San Francisco, it has been increasingly difficult to operate and sustain a community-based nonprofit arts organization like Intersection,” ousted program directors Kevin B. Chen, Rebeka Rodriguez and Sean San Jose wrote in a joint statement. “For the decade-plus that we have been able to work together, we have collaborated and worked for varied and multiple voices – the marginalized, under-represented, young, immigrant, queer, people of color, disenfranchised voices.“

The layoffs were confirmed by Intersection for the Arts’ Board of Directors Chair Yancy Widmer in a post on Intersection for the Arts’ website.

“Our financial situation is deeply challenged,” he wrote, “and it has become apparent that the current business model is no longer sustainable.”

He explained the move in the post:

Our financial situation has always been fragile. Like many non-profit, grassroots arts organizations, it has been a perpetual struggle, dependent on “angel donors,” “heroic” leadership and unpredictable trends. The move from our long-time home in the Mission to an improved facility in SOMA was a significant effort to address this issue, but it was increasingly clear that they were not enough to build the financial foundation we need not merely to survive, but to grow and thrive.

Recognizing that the organization needed fundamental change to sustain its contributions to community life, the Board embarked on a deep organizational examination that led to a substantial rethinking of our role in the community and a refining of our mission.

The layoffs follow a sold-out run of Chasing Mesherle, a play tackling white privelige and the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station, in Oakland. 

Intersection’s own programming will end, but they’ll still play host for other art shows. Additionally, Intersection’s Incubator programs will remain unaffected. The incubator spawned Litquake, Youth Speaks, Cutting Ball Theater, and many other arts programs and organizations are still being brewed there even now. 

artgallery

An art show on prison life at Intersection for the Arts.

In his post, Widmer invited the public to weigh in on the changes at Intersection by emailing transitions@theintersection.org.

We’ll post the full text of Chen, Rodriguez and San Jose’s email below.

We want to personally write you as our work and time at Intersection is suddenly coming to a close. As of June 1, Intersection will be undergoing substantial changes. As part of these changes, the three of us, in addition to other staff, will be laid off at the end of May. With the specific shifts in the economy and culture of San Francisco, it has been increasingly difficult to operate and sustain a community-based nonprofit arts organization like Intersection.

It is truly miraculous that we were able to exist for so long and be able to thrive with programs for as long as we did. Working together with Deborah Cullinan and other amazing colleagues for all the years we did, it worked not just because of the genuine investment and dedication of all at Intersection and us as a staff, but rather, it worked because of YOU — your creative vision, your zeal for social justice, your enthusiasm to collaborate, your desire to communicate and connect. We can not thank you enough for how much you have inspired us, changed us, and taught us.  We are proud, still inspired, and ever changed by being able to support, develop, produce, and premiere new works of the highest order by artists and collaborators of the utmost amazing quality, originality, creativity, and heart – more than 15 years of new works and voices. Thank YOU. We look forward to witnessing more.

For the decade-plus that we have been able to work together, we have collaborated and worked for varied and multiple voices – the marginalized, under-represented, young, immigrant, queer, people of color, disenfranchised voices. We are proud of the work we have accomplished, birthing countless beautiful, resonant, and profound projects. Our work with community based organizations, schools, after-school programs, lock down facilities, coalitions, and individuals has allowed us to collectively flourish and grow.

We look forward to seeing you, experiencing new work, hearing and being part of dialogues, and partaking in both action and reaction to this world we all live in together. If you feel strongly about this kind of work that has happened at, with, and through Intersection over these past 15 years, we ask of you all:

DO IT!

MAKE IT HAPPEN!

TELL PEOPLE!

TELL OUR STORIES!

SUPPORT COMMUNITY!

CREATE ART!

In continued solidarity,

Kevin B. Chen 

Rebeka Rodriguez 

Sean San Jose 

 

San Franciscans join international Ride of Silence to honor fallen cyclists

Sasha Cuttler
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70
San Franciscans join international Ride of Silence to honor fallen cyclists

Nearly 100 San Francisco bicyclists joined thousands of pedal-powered citizens from more than 300 cities around the world yesterday [Wed/21] evening for the Ride of Silence, honoring cyclists killed by motorists by riding to the collision spots to leave flowers and signs noting their deaths.

The event started in Dallas in 2003 and it has grown into a global phenomenon in an age when global warming, air pollution, and a mounting death toll have done little to change the dynamics on city streets, where bad design, impatient attitudes, and biased law enforcment continue to give a pass to dangerous, automobile-centered conditions.

San Francisco’s ride came at a particularly poignant moment following a year when a modern record-tying four cyclists were killed by drivers in San Francisco last year: Dylan Mitchell, Diana Sullivan, Cheng Jin Lai, and Amelie Le Moullac. None of their killers faced criminal charges, with the District Attorney’s Office deciding just last week not to charge the delivery truck driver who ran over 24-year-old Le Moullac, despite high-profile attention on the case and a recommendation of criminal charges by the San Francisco Police Department.

Local Ride of Silence organizers Devon Warner and Robin Wheelwright called for greater public awareness of cyclists on the roadways and for drivers to slow down and drive carefully — particularly the commercial vehicle drivers who are responsible for 66 percent of the 34 cyclist fatalities in San Francisco since 2007.

“These are precious humans who are no longer with us, and we want to advocate for change,” Wheelwright said during a pre-ride presentation in the basement at Sports Basement.  

Also speaking at the event was Karen Allen, the mother of Derek Allen, a 22-year-old San Franciscan who was run over and killed by a Muni bus on Oct. 7, 2010. “I’m so honored to be here tonight. I’m honored by the people who put this together,” Allen said.

Escorted by a phalanx of 15 SFPD motorcycle cops, who Wheelwright told us had been tasked for the occasion by an officer who supports cyclists and had heard about the event, the mass of cyclists rode through SoMa, the Mission District, and the mid-Market area to make more than a half-dozen stops honoring fallen cyclists, including some where memorial bicycles or other signage already marked what had happened there. 

The legacy of Harvey Milk, and remembering the “Twinkie Defense”

Erica Hanna
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The legacy of Harvey Milk, and remembering the “Twinkie Defense”

Today is Harvey Milk’s birthday, but are we celebrating the life of a champion for social justice, or only remembering his assassination? As San Franciscans mourn the city supervisor who fought for gay rights and other progressive issues in San Francisco and statewide, we thought we’d share with you selected articles from our “Milk Issue, [11/18/08]” that discussion his death by examining his life. 

The year was 2008, and to commemorate the opening of the biopic film, Milk, we devoted an issue of the Bay Guardian to honoring the man who gave ’em hope.

In the first selected piece, Guardian founding publisher Bruce Brugmann recalls his first brush with Milk, and the last time he saw him alive. In our second piece, the Guardian’s current Publisher Marke B. asks if the LGBT movement canonizes Milk’s death without honoring what his life stood for, an important lesson to remember now. The third selection by current and former Guardian Editors-in-Chief, Steven T. Jones and Tim Redmond respectively, who remember Milk’s progressive politics. Our fourth piece, penned by soon-to-be termed out Assemblyperson Tom Ammiano, a Milk political ally who dissects the oh-too-familiar tone of discrimination rising up from the opposition to naming San Francisco Airport after Milk. Lastly, a reporter who covered the Milk assassination takes us through a first person account of covering the trial of Milk’s killer, Dan White.

And as an extra bonus, we’ve embedded the issue from after the Dan White trial as a PDF at the bottom of this page.

Check them out below, and remember Milk not only as a man who died, but as a man who lived, and raised hell. 

The Bay Guardian “Milk” issue, circa 2008:

 

I REMEMBER HARVEY

Toward the end of the supervisorial campaign in 1973, I got an intercom call from Nancy Destefanis, our advertising representative handling political ads. Hey, she said, I got a guy here by the name of Harvey Milk who is running for supervisor and I think you ought to talk to him.

Milk? I replied. How can anybody run for supervisor with the name of Milk?

Continued here. 

 

THE APATHY AND THE ECSTACY

“OMG! Marriage is the new AIDS!” a friend screeched to me through her cell phone after witnessing West Hollywood’s cop-clashing response to the passage of Proposition 8. She meant, of course, the unexpected, exhilarating, and somewhat clumsy reemergence of queer protest energy that has overtaken many a civic center and public park since the November election and its attendant LGBT letdown.

Continued here.

 

POLITICS BEHIND THE PICTURE

The new Harvey Milk movie, which opens later this month, begins as a love story, a sweet love story about two guys who meet in a subway station and wind up fleeing New York for San Francisco. But after that, the movie gets political — in fact, by Hollywood standards, it’s remarkably political.

The movie raises a lot of issues that are alive and part of San Francisco politics today. The history isn’t perfect (see sidebar), but it is compelling. And while we mourn Milk and watch Milk, we shouldn’t forget what the queer hero stood for.

Continued here.

 

MILK’S REAL LEGACY

Ever since Supervisor David Campos announced his proposal to add Harvey Milk’s name to SFO, there’s been an unending string of criticism — mostly from one source — that has an eerily familiar ring to it.

We heard it years ago when we tried to change the name of Douglas School in the Castro to Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Believe it or not, it took seven years before the School Board finally voted for the name change — and there was still bitterness. This was a school in Harvey’s neighborhood that Harvey personally helped when he was alive.

Continued here.

 

BEHIND THE TWINKIE DEFENSE

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who wanted to decriminalize marijuana, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to be elected to public office in America. November also marks the release of a film about the case titled Milk. Although a former policeman, homophobic Dan White, had confessed to the murders, he pleaded not guilty. I covered his trial for the Bay Guardian.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I said “Thank you” to the sheriff’s deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However, this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass…

Continued here. 

San Francisco Bay Guardian after Harvey Milk’s death by FitztheReporter

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian after Harvey Milk's death by FitztheReporter

Not even Sean Lennon’s gear is safe in SF

Steven T. Jones
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4
Not even Sean Lennon’s gear is safe in SF

Via Mission Mission: Earlier today, someone broke into the van carrying equipment for Sean Lennon’s The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, which played at Great American Music Hall last night.

Said thief made off with percussionist Connor Grant’s laptop, which seems like a thing that’s probably fairly crucial for performances going forward, like tomorrow night’s show in Seattle. Per Lennon’s Instagram:

Our van window was smashed this morning as [Grant] was getting coffee near Franklin and Hayes. BIG REWARD if computer is returned unharmed! NO QUESTIONS ASKED! If anyone knows anything pleeeeease contact us at mutethehead@gmail.com.

Here’s hoping someone has a change of heart. The GOASTT should know they can call up SF’s Waters, among other bands, if they want to feel lucky that their entire van wasn’t stolen. In the meantime, check our Q&A with GOASST’s Charlotte Kemp Muhl, think positive thoughts, and, you know, imagine a San Francisco where you can grab coffee without someone jacking your shit.

 

Supes won’t let mayor raid CleanPowerSF without a fight

Erica Hanna
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Supes won’t let mayor raid CleanPowerSF without a fight

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee today voted to reject the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission budget, an effort by Sup. John Avalos and others to force Mayor Ed Lee to the bargaining table over the city’s neglected sustainable energy infrastructure needs.

“I wanted to get the mayor’s attention and to find a practical way to let the mayor know the Power Enterprise infrastructure needs help, as well as CleanPowerSF,” Avalos told the Guardian. CleanPowerSF would provide electricity derived from renewable sources to enrollees in the municipal program.

After CleanPowerSF was approved by a veto-proof majority on the Board of Supervisors last year, Lee’s appointees to the SFPUC blocked implementation of the program during what should have been a routine vote to set a maximum rate. Then Lee this year raided those funds and transferred them to his GoSolar program.

“Because he raided our funds, I worked with [fellow Budget Committee members Sups.] Eric Mar and London Breed to kill his budget,” Avalos told us, noting that he alerted Lee on Sunday of his intention to do so and never got a response. “It was remarkable that he thought he could just bring this to committee and thought everything was hunky-dory.”

Christine Falvey, the mayor’s spokesperson, said the mayor hadn’t had time yet to develop his next step but “the mayor is committed to funding GoSolar, a program that can start immediately, help us reach our agressive environmental goals and employ San Francisco residents.”

The tendrils of the mayor’s power could be felt even in the SFPUC’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting last night. The committee makes recommendations to the PUC with no authority for mandate, but rather for long-term strategic, financial and capital improvement plans.

As the committee considered a vote to recommend the PUC move forward with CleanPowerSF, the tussle between the mayor and the supervisors reverberated through their frank discussions.

“The problem is the mayor is violently against this program,” said Walt Farrell, a committee member from Supervisor Norman Yee’s District 7. He added, “How will you convince them?”

Director of Policy and Administration at Power Enterprise Kim Malcolm was slated to be the Director of CleanPowerSF, but she deflected, saying it wasn’t up to her.

“We view our job as, we do what the policy makers tell us to do,” she said.

Jason Fried, executive director of the Local Agency Formation Commission, told the CAC most of the mayor’s concerns regarding CleanPowerSF have since been addressed. 

The mayor critiqued the program for relying on Shell for energy, Fried said, but now Shell is out of the picture.

cacsfpuc

Kim Malcolm presents information on CleanPowerSF to the SFPUC Citizens’ Advisory Committee.

He said the program could also possibly provide extra money for Power Enterprise, the city’s Hetch Hetchy powered hydroelectric system. 

Highlighting all the benefits of CleanPowerSF, Jess Derbin-Ackerman, a conservation organizer speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club, urged action.

“This program was in the works for ten years,” she said, and “it’s largely been fought because of political attachments to PG&E.”

She noted more than four other counties in Northern California are now shifting to clean power, and San Francisco lags behind.

“Get with it,” she said, “the rest of the Bay Area is.” 

Ultimately the CAC opted to push the vote backing CleanPowerSF until its next meeting, due to absent members. The CAC’s chair, Wendolyn Aragon, supported the supervisors stalling the PUC budget.

“CleanPowerSF has been proven time and time again as a viable source of clean energy,” she told the Guardian. “But if Mayor Lee and the SFPUC Commissioners (whom he appoints) want to keep denying that … it’s time to draw a line in the sand.”

Now that the PUC’s budget has been formally rejected, the agency has $20 million in reserves that it can spend until it comes up with a budget that meets the approval of the Board of Supervisors, as the City Charter requires. In the meantime, Avalos called on Lee to negotiate in good faith with the board.

“The path forward is to negotiate,” Avalos told us. “The mayor has overstepped his bounds on this issue. He is not taking the leadership to convene us together to find a solution.”

Party Radar: Heidi, Silent Servant, Dr. Israel, Paradise Garage, more long weekend joys

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Party Radar: Heidi, Silent Servant, Dr. Israel, Paradise Garage, more long weekend joys

Now that I have a strapping young nephew in the Navy, Memorial Day scares the shit out of me. Best thing for it is dancing, of course — to celebrate our hardwon freedomz!

Also, oscillating wildly will help us get over the fact that we’re neither at the International Mr. Leather Competition in Chicago or Detroit’s huge Movement technofest. But we have Carnaval! And Honey Soundsystem! And Paradise Garage tributes! And so much more.

So let’s get to Memorialing! (Click the names below for more info.) Here’s our theme song, duh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw

 

>> FRIDAY

PARADISE GARAGE TRIBUTE
The great Odyssey after-hours crew calls down the spirits of true house and disco in this tribute to DJ Larry Levan and his epochal dance floor. Eight hours of deep dance madness, with incredible DJs Robin Simmons, Eli Escobar, Bus Station John, Steve Fabus, and Stanley Frank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnAatmJlgpA
Fri/23, Midnight-8am, $10, Beatbox, SF.

HEIDI
Love this classic Canadian mistress of banging’ house. Her Jackathon parties are true, well, jackathons. Get into her. With Kadeejah Streets, DJ M3, and Sharon Buck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsGwBnLWi4o
Fri/23, 9:30-3am, $15-$20, Monarch, SF.


GIORGIO’S JUNKSHOP GLAM DISCOTHEQUE
Finally, a proper night of 70s glam dance floor STOMPERS and Bubblegum KILLERS.” And with our patron DJ saint of all things dark and glamorous, Omar, at the helm, you know you’re going to hear some things. And stomp like a glitter-strewing monster to them! With Jason Duncan aka Medium Rare, Jodie Yagi Stridsberg, Jeff Glave, and Deedee Robbins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYs_uogUwk
Fri/23, 10pm, $3-$5, The Knockout, SF.


ANTWON
Aw, Antwon — our favorite cuddly ex-pat SF rapper. He’ll tear up the 120 Minutes based goth party for sure. With DJs Santa Muerte and Chauncey CC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXmo0zsG3q0
Fri/23, 10pm-2am, $10-$15, Elbo Room, SF.


SILENT SERVANT
The current king of dark ‘n sexy industrial grooves comes up from LA to move the body. He’s joined by live dub-techno kid Austin Cesear for the always smoking Icee Hot party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2JLVGGep0U
Fri/23, 10pm-4am, $5-$10 (free before 10:30pm!), Public Works, SF.

>> SATURDAY

DAVID HARNESS
Our master of soulful house takes us on another all-night journey into the deep and up to the stars. His last marathon session broke Mighty into a serious sweat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDLEGTFP02M
Sat/24, 10pm-4am, $15 (free before midnight with RSVP at link above), Mighty, SF.

 

CLUB 1994
The original ’90s dance party for cool kids, playing “the best and worst” of that churning decade, returns to render us Clueless the next morning. How did we get here, 20 years later? Who cares, let’s party. With Jeffrey Paradise, Ava Berlin, Vin Sol, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KL9mRus19o
Sat/24, 10pm-2am, $10-$20. Rickshaw Stop, SF.

 

>> SUNDAY

SUNSET + STOMPY
Oh dear — this is the final blowout for these two venerable party crews at Cafe Cocomo, slated for condofication demolition. You can bet it will be amazing (as all S+S parties are), with legendary live disco-house players Metro Area and a host of smiling, stomping people. All day! Big patio! BBQ till 8pm!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39We6ml2oY4
Sun/25, 2pm-2am, $20, Cafe Cocomo, SF.


DR. ISRAEL
Ace of all dancehall/dub parties, 18-year-old Dub Mission, brings in this incredible live, revolutionary dub artist from Brooklyn to set minds, hearts, and feet a-throbbin’. With Kush Arora and DJ Sep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbrt1oLjyOE
Sun/25, 9pm-2am, $8-$11, Elbo Room, SF.


HONEY SOUNDSYSTEM
That fearsome foursome of sticky-sweet queer action, Honey Soundsystem, hits the decks all night to transform the dance floor into a moist hole of glory. OK, that sounded gross. Just go and have a blast with hundreds of other really cute gays etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Ks0O_380k
Sun/25, 10pm-4am, $15-$20, Beatbox, SF. 


Supervisors play politics with Sunshine appointments

Sasha Cuttler
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44
Supervisors play politics with Sunshine appointments

The Board of Supervisors today [Tues/20] considers reappointing three Sunshine Ordinance Task Force members after the board’s Rules Committee last week blocked other qualified nominees, including those named by organizations with designated seats on the board, a move critics say undermines the independence of the body.

SOTF is responsible for holding city officials to the open government ideals of the city’s voter-approved Sunshine Ordinance. When government makes backroom deals or shields public records from disclosure, the ordinance allow citizens (and journalists) to appeal to the SOTF, which rules on whether the ordinance was violated.   

Sunshine advocates say the supervisors are stacking the task force with ineffective political appointees and barring the appointments of qualified, independent candidates. The Sunshine Ordinance, which Bay Guardian editors helped create in the ‘90s, gives New American Media, The League of Women Voters, and the Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California direct appointments to SOTF, pending supervisorial approval.

The SPJ appointed Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Mark Rumold, who works on EFF’s Transparency Project and has uncovered documents exposing federal surveillance activities, and Ali Winston, a local journalist who has broken big stories for the Center for Investigative Reporting and other media outlets using public records.

Rumold is considered one of the leading Freedom of Information Act litigators in the country, but was humble in his appointment interview at the Rules Committee. “I’m hoping to apply my experience to the task force to make San Francisco an open and more efficient government,” he said.

But those appointments and others were blocked last week at the Rules Committee by Sup. Katy Tang, who told the Guardian, “Personally, I would have liked to see stronger applicants,” claiming that they didn’t seem to have a good understanding of the Sunshine Ordinance and that she wanted more ethnic diversity on the body.

Yet the backdrop of these blocked appointments is a running battle that the SOTF has had with the Board of Supervisors over the last couple years, stemming mostly from the SOTF finding that some supervisors violated the ordinance in 2011 by not making public a package of late amendments while passing the massive Parkmerced project.

The City Attorney’s Office disagreed with the SOTF interpretation, just as it did earlier that year when the SOTF voted to change its bylaws surrounding how a quorum is calculated. They were the latest battles in a longstanding battle between SOTF and the City Attorney’s Office, which sunshine advocates criticize as being too lenient on city agencies that refuse to release documents.

“I was around when the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force decided to change some of the rules against the advice of the City Attorney’s Office,” Tang told us, calling such actions improper conduct and saying she won’t support any SOTF members who took part in that vote.

Thomas Peele, who co-chairs SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee, which made the appointments, told us that he understands Tang’s points about diversity, but he doesn’t understand why Rumold and Winston were rejected, calling them strong candidates.

“We put up excellent, well qualified candidates,” he said. “One of the country’s leading FOIA lawyers and a very good police watchdog reporter doing work with Propublica and CIR.”

While critics contend the Tang and other supervisors are trying to weaken SOTF as a watchdog agency, Tang told us it wasn’t about SPJ’s appointments, noting that she also delayed the League of Women Voters appointment of Allyson Washburn. But she said all remain under consideration and could come up for a vote next month.

“I have every intention of supporting someone put forth by those organizations,” Tang told us. “I will have a conversation with both those organizations about their nominees.”

The SOTF has long struggled to fulfill its mandate. It has little means of enforcing its rulings, which usually require further actions by the City Attorney’s Office or the San Francisco Ethics Commission to have teeth.

After the Rules Committee blocked the reappointment of Bruce Wolfe in 2012, citing his role in defying the City Attorney’s Office, it was essentially dormant for more than four months because it couldn’t meet without a seated member from the disability community, until Bruce Oka was finally appointed in November 2012.

Currently, the Sunshine Task Force has a backlog of over 62 complaints against city agencies for not adhering to the city’s sunshine records policies, dating back to 2012. The three re-appointments the Rules Committee did approve, which will go before the Board of Supervisors today, are Todd David, David Pilpel and Louise Fischer — none of whom have much support among longtime Sunshine Ordinance advocates.

“The supervisors,” Peele told us, “appear to have an issue with having a strong Sunshine Task Force.”

Karen Clopton, past president of the League of Women Voters said she was disappointed that Washburn, a former League board member, wasn’t appointed and said the SOTF should be independent: “It’s extremely important for us to make sure we entrust such an important task to an individual who is trustworthy, nonpartisan, and devoted to nonpartisanship.”

An evening with Herbie Hancock and Nancy Pelosi at the SFJAZZ Gala

Steven T. Jones
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2

By Micah Dubreuil

If you were driving down Fell street last Friday, you might have come upon an unexpected detour. This would have been the block cordoned off for the first annual SFJAZZ Gala in their new facilities at 201 Franklin St. The building opened in January 2013, and in addition to featuring near-perfect acoustics in the main auditorium — arguably the best on the West Coast for jazz — it provides a sophisticated space for a social and fundraising event such as this one.

The Gala was officially honoring pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, and featured performances by Hancock himself in addition to the SFJAZZ Collective, Booker T., Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, Terrance Brewer, the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, and a number of special guests. Standout performances were delivered by Avishai Cohen and Warren Wolf of the SFJAZZ Collective, in particular. And then of course there was Charles Bradley, whose emotional commitment is so thorough that he seems always to be on the verge of tears. Seeing Hammond Organ master Booker T. in a room as small as the Joe Henderson Lab was also a rare and unique experience.

cb
Charles Bradley. All photos by Scott Chernis, courtesy of SFJAZZ.

The High School All-Stars played exceptionally well, highlighted by an inspired arrangement of Hancock’s “Eye of the Hurricane.” It must have been no simple feat for the teenagers (particularly the pianists) to perform mere feet from the legendary Hancock, but they acquitted themselves with distinction. It’d be easy to take the profoundly high level of youth musical achievement in the Bay Area for granted, if not for events like these reminding us that, you know, actual programs drive these accomplishments — programs like the SFJAZZ ensemble, the Berkeley High jazz program, the California Jazz Conservatory (formerly known as the Jazz School) and a number of others — and those programs take passion, effort, and funding. All told, their sweeping institutional support of this music is a remarkable achievement in its own right.

high school
The SFJAZZ High School All Stars, with Paula West

Presenting the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement award to Hancock was saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who was himself honored in 2008. After receiving the award, Hancock performed a solo interpretation of Shorter’s classic “Footprints,” which was followed by a SFJAZZ arrangement of the same tune. If I had one criticism, the night’s overall programming was extremely safe, featuring nearly all well-traveled (but beautiful) standards by Hancock (and one by Shorter), including Maiden Voyage, Watermelon Man, and Actual Proof. The only deep cut, as it were, was “And What If I Don’t” from Hancock’s 1963 release, My Point of View, performed by the SFJAZZ Collective. However, the programming reflected the nature of the event: A fundraiser aimed at gaining financial support from perhaps a broader audience than merely hardcore jazz fans — though, to be sure, plenty of those were also in attendance.

When the tally was in, SFJAZZ raised over $1.4 million for its educational and artistic programs, which is roughly in line with previous fundraisers. The event reflected this level of ambition, with a red carpet entrance and deliciously decadent food from local and national culinary artisans: Oysters from Tomales Bay, bacon-wrapped mochi, heirloom tomatoes topped with white chocolate. The statuesque models flanking the front doors with platters of champagne might have been a bit much, but otherwise the event was classy and dignified, with a crowd (which included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) dressed to impress; the invitation has read “black tie optional.” Master of ceremonies Robert Townsend, who directed Eddie Murphy’s stand-up film Raw (among other achievements) was jocular, jovial, and energetic. Even his (undeniably offensive) parody of sign-language interpreters received hearty laughter from the mostly-full auditorium.

booker
Booker T. Jones

Watching Shorter and Hancock sit by the side of the stage, it was hard not to reflect on their 50-year history of close collaboration and friendship. Jazz is obviously a major cultural institution, now propelled by organizations such as SFJAZZ, but for decades it was driven primarily by the passion and fearlessness of musicians like Hancock and Shorter. Their personal achievements are nothing short of colossal, and jazz itself would not be what it is today without them. In his acceptance speech, though, Hancock intoned that the jazz spirit “was all about we,” not the individual. He complimented hishosts for continuing those values: “SFJAZZ is all about sharing.” Here’s hoping the coming years keep allowing them to do just that.

Shipyard artists promised affordable studios in solar-powered facility

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1
Shipyard artists promised affordable studios in solar-powered facility

Alarm bells went off last year when a small group of sculptors and painters in Building 101 at the Hunters Point Shipyard artists’ colony – one of the largest artist enclaves on the western seaboard, where even famed poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti has a studio – faced possible loss of affordable studio space.

Some artists who had long occupied low-rent studios were threatened under a shortsighted relocation plan hatched by Lennar, the mega-developer that is undertaking a sprawling mixed-use and residential project spanning 770 acres at Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point.

Fortunately it now seems that the artist colony, which has been there since the 1980s, may face brighter days ahead. Not only were the small number of Building 101 artists spared from eviction, but another group of artists who currently occupy studios in buildings that are slated for demolition under Lennar’s plan have now been promised brand-new art studio space with affordable rents set in perpetuity. 

Commissioners of the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure – better known as the successor agency to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency – will today [Tue/20] consider a final plan for a new shipyard art facility, which is expected to pass. The 87,000 square foot structure would house 130 artists’ studios, plus a gallery space, a kiln room, a spray booth and more. 

The Shipyard Trust for the Arts (STAR), a nonprofit organization that’s represented the Shipyard artists since the mid-1990s, announced in a press statement May 19 that it had approved Lennar’s final building design – and had managed to convince the developer to install solar panels to save energy costs in an effort to keep monthly rental payments at affordable rates.

Under a 2004 agreement, Lennar guaranteed that there would be no net loss of studio space, and a stipulation in Lennar’s development agreement promised that rents in the new studio spaces to accommodate displaced artists would be based on building operating costs only. But even this seemingly minimal threshold would have resulted in a projected 50 percent rent spike for more than half the artists facing relocation. This would have forced some of them off the shipyard, and out of San Francisco by default – dealing yet another blow to the city’s arts community.

In the course of a long and arduous negotiating process with Lennar with input from OCII, the shipyard artists proposed that Lennar supply solar energy to the building, which would allow the savings in utility costs to be put toward subsidizing studio rents for artists who would be otherwise forced out.

“That was really outside of their obligations,” noted Amabel Akwa-Asare, OCII assistant project manager, who has been working with Lennar and STAR on behalf of city government.

“It has been a long and difficult process,” said STAR vice president Stacey Carter, “but Lennar has agreed to put solar on the new artists studio building at Hunters Point Shipyard and STAR intends to use that savings to help offset the rents for qualified, low-income artists.”   

Dear United States: #Jessicastux discrimination shows SF inequality

Erica Hanna
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41
Dear United States: #Jessicastux discrimination shows SF inequality

Dear United States,

Yes,  you’ve found San Francisco out. You’ve got us. Our city is not the bastion of equality we claim it to be. 

It’s something most San Franciscans know, but now you, the country, are getting a peek at how discriminatory our local institutions can actually be.

Just last week, the news of Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep’s discrimination against young Jessica Urbina went viral. Urbina just wanted to wear a tuxedo in her yearbook photo, and the Catholic school, Sacred Heart, said it would not print her photo in a yearbook because she wasn’t in a dress.

The resulting social media firestorm blew up in national media, propelled by the hashtag #jessicastux. Today Sacred Heart issued an apology, offering to work on its policies moving forward.

“On Friday, May 16, the school communicated that it will change its policy regarding senior portraits. We agree with our students who showed solidarity with their classmate that the current policy regarding senior portraits is not adequate to meet the needs of our families or our mission. We will involve our students, families, and Board in crafting the updated policy.

…

Many people suggest that the past few days have been deeply revealing about our school community. We agree. We are an imperfect community that can and does fail. We are a community that is open to self-reflection, and to the constructive criticism and leadership of its students, as well as to the criticism from members of our broader community. We are a community that strives to grow, improve and do what is right. We are a community that sees, in all situations, an opportunity to learn.”

But before we let Sacred Heart be crucified in the court of public opinion, let’s remember an old religious maxim: let ye who is without sin cast the first stone. And when it comes to inequality, San Francisco has many sinners.

Yes, dear country, you spent the last week utterly aghast that San Francisco, the champion of marriage equality, could discriminate against an LGBT teen.

You really don’t know the half of it. 

Take our public schools. Even as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education, an investigative report by the San Francisco Public Press revealed massive inequality in San Francisco public elementary schools. Though the SFUSD suffered funding cuts totalling $113 million in the 2009-10 school year (after numerous annual state cuts), some public schools managed to stave off layoffs and provide excellent facilities for their children. The catch? Only the elementary schools attended by rich families survived, bouyed by nearly $3 million in PTSA fundraising in 11 elementary schools.

But 35 of SFUSD’s elementary schools raised no money at all. These schools are not surprisingly attended mostly by the city’s poorest families, and their schools were met with brutal cuts.

The SFUSD is only now allowing students to wear hats (including some religious headgear), and is only now considering raising its minimum wage to San Francisco’s minimum of $10.24 an hour (as a state entity, it only has to pay $8 an hour).

And lest we pick on the schools too much, the explosive tech industry has had its impacts on San Francisco equality too. As taxi drivers flock to rideshare companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, there are fewer drivers to drive wheelchair-accessible taxis. Those rideshare companies don’t yet have a plan to offer service to our city’s many persons with disabilities. Even our beloved regional transit system, BART, has new proposed “trains of the future” offering less space for electric wheelchairs to move around as well.  

San Francisco has also seen massive numbers of folks displaced by the tech boom, symbolized (and even exacerberated) by our city’s most hated/loved/over-discussed behemoths, the Google buses.  

We’ve even got the second highest inequality in the United States, fast headed for number one. Go us.

And though Bill O’Reilly at Fox News loves to make funny videos about San Francisco’s homeless while he talks up our love of hippies, he’s got it all wrong (unfortunately). The city issues numerous citations against homeless youth for the act of sitting down in the Haight Ashbury district (the birthplace of the Summer of Love), and has struggled with policies to help the homeless for over 10 years running. 

Also, did we mention one in four San Franciscans are food insecure? That means about 200,000 San Franciscans don’t have enough money to eat healthily, and many are near starvation. 

Yes, dear country, San Francisco espouses many loving principles, and we do have an innate sense of justice to help immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized.

But we still have a long, long way to go. 

Best,

A San Franciscan. 

 

 

Go do this thing tomorrow: Speak up for Viracocha

Steven T. Jones
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7

If you’ve ever set foot in Viracocha, the Never-Never-Land-esque antiques store/typewriter shop/arts space/music venue at 21st and Valencia, you know it’s a pretty magical place — especially in contrast to some of the shiny new businesses springing up around it in the Mission as of late. The brain child and passion project of poet Jonathan Siegel, it’s a homey haven for writers, musicians, visual artists, and dreamers of all kinds; for the past four years, it’s also been hosting intimate live shows and spoken word events in its downstairs performance space. Only problem — Siegel hasn’t been able to promote that aspect of the business, as the room’s not ADA-compliant, meaning the space has remained a (relatively open) secret, since each of those shows has been illegal.

Now, the little speakeasy that could is trying to go legit once and for all: At a City Hall hearing tomorrow, Tue/20 at 5:30 pm, Siegel and the store’s employees are hoping supporters will show up to help convince the SF Entertainment Commission that Viracocha should be granted a Place of Entertainment Permit.

ezza
Ezza Rose performing in the Viracocha basement. Photo by Pete Lee.

“We’ve been operating underground for four years: building, strengthing, and expanding a diverse community of artists, writers, and musicians,” Siegel wrote to supporters. “Not to mention an incredibly supportive and loving mass of patrons and neighbors. But now, it’s time to share with the world how this all works…what, exactly, we’re about, and what our potential is for the future.”

The hearing is open to the public, and Siegel says the commission knows everything about the space’s operations at this point (including its squeaky-clean track record in terms of noise complaints, thank you very much), and nothing’s on the DL anymore. So if you’ve had a good experience there, or just give a shit about the survival of affordable, independent, community-minded arts spaces in this city, come on down.

(Oh yeah, the bathroom’s pretty great, too.)

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