SFBG Blogs

Ed Lee is San Francisco’s interim mayor

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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After a unanimous vote by San Francisco’s newly installed Board of Supervisors on Jan. 11, City Administrator Edwin M. Lee was sworn in as interim mayor of San Francisco. The swearing-in was regal affair staged in the rotunda of City Hall. A host of prominent political figures, including Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, congregated to witness the changing of the guard.

Former Mayor Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies, standing behind a podium on the grand staircase with members the newly elected board to his right and former Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mayor-elect Ed Lee to his left.

Newsom offered advice to Lee on how to govern the city, saying, “Figure out what it is you want to accomplish, and work backward from there.”

Rose Pak, the powerful head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, was seated near the front row for a close-up view of the ceremony. Speaking to the historic nature of the first Asian American holding the office of mayor in San Francisco, Lee singled out Pak, whom he called his good friend, saying, “Today, Rose, our struggle is here, and it’s succeeding.”

Newly anointed as mayor, Lee expressed gratitude to Brown, Newsom, Pak, and the members of the Board of Supervisors who supported him.

He also noted that several weeks ago, he hadn’t even anticipated such a momentous change. “It’s been a whirlwind for me,” he said.

Lee promised to be “a mayor who tackles things head on, and moves the bar forward.” He also vowed to be inclusive – and if he is true to his word, it will mark a dramatic difference from Newsom’s administration, which tended to exclude anyone who disagreed with the mayor.

“I want to say to all of you: I will do my very best to represent all the communities,” Lee said. “I’m going to open up that Room 200 to everybody.”

Following the swearing-in was a reception featuring tables piled high with sushi, gourmet finger foods, and fancy cheese, plus a bar serving wine and beer. Several observers remarked to the Guardian that they had never seen such a feast offered up to the public at City Hall.

How Jerry can save $125 million a year

Zelda Bronstein
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How Jerry can save $125 million a year

Here’s an excellent point from Julia Rosen at Calitics: While Jerry Brown is scrambling around saving a few million here and a few million there (not that I’m against cutting back on state cell phones), the state could save far, far more just by abolishing the death penalty. That’s a lot of money. The Illinois legislature just voted to end the death penalty, in large part because the strapped state can’t afford the inordinate expense of killing people. I personally think the death penalty is ghastly, and I’m horrified that our new district attorney is willing even to consider it, but even if you don’t have moral or societal qualms about executions, you have to admit it’s a horrible waste of money. The number one cause of death on California’s Death Row is old age. Life without parole works just as well. 

John Ross is dying

Zelda Bronstein
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John Ross is dying

My friend John Ross — investigative poet, reporter, internationational shit disturber and reluctant honoree of the City and County of San Francisco is dying. His constant friend and supporter Elizabeth Bell let me know that he’s very weak: “John Ross and his cancerous liver are fading fast on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro,” where he has gone from Mexico City to retire. There’s a story about him in La Journada, if you read Spanish.

John never liked to sugarcoat things, so I’m not going to say that we all hope for a recovery; as he told me a month ago, we’re pretty close to the end here. He lived an amazing life, and of course, has no regrets.

I’ll bring you more info when I have it. Meanwhile, tune in to KPOO Jan 13 at 6 pm; Chelis Lopez will devote most of her show to his work. You can read John’s recent contributions to the Guardian here.

The Performant: Do you SQUART?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Let it be resolved, improv-based speed-playwriting competitions involving queer performance artists, cake, fabulous spandex, atrocious wigs, adult diapers, bare bums, wind-up hamsters, and flasks of whiskey should always be bestowed a title which sounds like an uncouth bodily function. Because at the very least it leads to the humorous speculation of what particular bodily function that might be. Though hopefully your attention will mostly be on the crazed mish-mash unfolding onstage, because queer performance artists armed with cake, fabulous spandex, and all the rest, put on quite a show.

Or at any rate, they did at the one-year anniversary SQUART, which graced the SOMARTS stage on Sun/9. Conceptualized by Laura Arrington and co-produced by The Offcenter and SOMArts, Spontaneous Queer Art invites participants to create ensemble pieces in two hours abiding by specific criteria, and present the finished piece to a panel of local “celebrity judges”. This season’s theme was New Queer Baby, so the criteria included counting down, making resolutions, and giving birth. Pregnant themes, if you will, and ripe for interpretation.
 
After an awkwardly-timed round of oddience participation, the first of four groups took the stage, dressed to dazzle in glittering tops, tiaras, and a sparkling, assless jumpsuit. After a series of sketches: the birth of a hamster, a needy girl at a party, an impassioned singalong to “If I Could Turn Back Time,” they regrouped to devise a list of non-traditional New Year’s resolutions such as “I need more excessive celebration in my life,” and “I need to find a way to make more money.” Fun stuff, but group number two quickly eclipsed their joie de avenir with a strikingly confrontational piece that traded in “fear, loathing, and ecstasy”. Dressed in diapers and trailer-park drag, the group spent a good portion of the show compulsively adding to the layers of garbage strewn about the stage — condoms, salt, champagne, crumpled paper, shopping bags, a tank of helium — while from the oddience a belligerent “heckler” (Philip Huang) kept interrupting their banal patter with a volley of insults, and deliberately annoying behaviors such as pacing around the room, and throwing his chips at the judges. A climactic moment involving another singalong and a half-naked performer (Michael Velez) being pushed around the stage on the back of a
dumpster screaming “I’m God” to the apathetic masses was the most visually interesting tableau of the whole evening.
 
The exceptional cohesion of the winning group doubtlessly pushed them to the top, points-wise. A woman (Loren Robertson) with a microphone sat on the edge of the stage singing “100 Bottles of Beer” as the rest of the group enacted a fully-clothed orgy which resulted in the birth of one very naked man. Brought to Loren, his head in her lap, he began to nurse at her breast while she continued to sing. This scenario repeated itself variously, while the rest of the cast danced the Hora, and attended a “dance class” in spandex, until there were four wriggling, naked bodies attached to Loren and no more bottles of beer on the wall. Her world-weary acceptance combined with the boundless enthusiasm of her “babies” and the dancers was strikingly nuanced.

A great example of how “spontaneous” doesn’t have to mean “sloppy”, and makes me think SQUARTing more in the New Year could be a resolution worth sticking to.

EDITORIAL: The Agenda for Mayor Lee

Maria Poblet
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San Francisco has its first Chinese American mayor, and that’s a major, historic milestone. Let’s remember: Chinese immigrants were among the most abused and marginalized communities in the early days of San Francisco. In 1870, the city passed a series of laws limiting the rights of Chinese people to work and live in large parts of the city. Chinese workers built much of the Transcontinental Railroad — at slave wages and in desperately unsafe conditions that led to a large number of deaths. The United States didn’t even repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act (an anti-immigration law) until 1943, and for years, Chinatown was one of the poorest and most neglected city neighborhoods.

So there’s good reason for Asians to celebrate that the last door in San Francisco political power is now open. And Mayor Ed Lee comes from a civil rights background; he got his start in politics working as a poverty lawyer and tenant organizer.

Unfortunately, his path to Room 200 was badly marred by some ugly backroom dealing involving Willie Brown, the most corrupt mayor in modern San Francisco history. Even Lee’s supporters agree the process was a mess and that it undermines Lee’s credibility. So it’s important for Mayor Lee to immediately establish that he’s independent of Brown and his cronies, that his administration will not just be a Gavin Newsom rerun, and that progressives can and should support him.

He has a tough job ahead. We urge him to make a clean break with the past and set the city in a new direction. Here are a few ways to get started.

• Clear out the Newsom operatives and bring some new people with progressive credentials into the senior ranks. Newsom’s chief of staff, Steve Kawa, has been a shadow mayor for the past year while Newsom was on the campaign trail, and is the architect of much of what the outgoing administration has done to sow political division and cripple city government. Lee needs his own chief advisor.

• Show up for question time and work with the district-elected supervisors. Newsom was openly dismissive of the board and refused to take the supervisors seriously as partners in city government. Lee should appear once a month to answer questions from the board in public, should meet regularly with all the supervisors and appoint a liaison that the board can work with and trust. He needs to make his administration as transparent and open as possible and ensure that everyone at City Hall follows the letter and spirit of the Sunshine Ordinance.

• Make it clear that the next city budget includes substantial new revenue. Newsom offered nothing but Republican politics when it came to city finance; his only solutions to the massive structural deficit involved service cuts.

The deficit will be even worse than projected this year, since Gov. Jerry Brown wants to transfer much of the state’s responsibility for public safety and public health back to local government — and there won’t be enough state money attached to handle the new burden. Lee needs to publicly call on Brown and the Legislature to give cities more ability to raise taxes on the local levee. Then he should start planning for a June ballot package that will raise as much as $250 million in new revenue for the city.

A substantially higher vehicle license fee on expensive cars, a congestion management fee, a significant annual transit impact fee on downtown offices, a restructured business tax, and a progressive tax on income of more than $50,000 a year would more than eliminate the structural deficit.

There are plenty of other revenue ideas out there; not all can or would pass on a single ballot. But Lee needs to make it clear that revenue will be part of the solution — and that he will use all the political capital he can muster to convince the voters to go along.

• Get serious about community choice aggregation. Newsom loved to talk about his environmental agenda, but when it came to challenging the hegemony of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and its dirty power portfolio, he ran for cover. His hand-picked Public Utilities Commission director, Ed Harrington, has been an obstacle to implementing the city’s CCA plan. Lee needs to get rid of Harrington or direct him to cooperate with the supervisors and get San Francisco on the path to clean public power.

• Establish a real affordable housing program. The city plans to build housing for as many as 60,000 new residents in the southeast neighborhoods — but only a fraction of them will be affordable. This city is already well on its way to becoming a high-end bedroom community for Silicon Valley; only a clear policy that limits new market-rate condos until there’s a plan for adequate affordable housing will turn things around.

• Support Sanctuary City and quit helping federal immigration authorities break up families. Newsom was just awful on this issue; Lee needs to work with Sup. David Campos to implement more humane laws.

• End the demonization of homeless people and public employees. Newsom came to power attacking the homeless (with Care Not Cash) and went out attacking the homeless (with the sit-lie law). Lee ought to tell the Police Department not to aggressively enforce the ordinance.

• Take on the sacred cows of the Police and Fire departments. The biggest salary and pension problems in the city are in the two public safety departments. The Fire Department budget has been bloated for years. If everyone else is taking cuts, so should the highest-paid cops and the overstaffed fire stations.

Some of Lee’s supporters insist he’s a solid progressive and that we shouldn’t hold the details of his selection — or the fact that he was chosen by people who are openly hostile to the progressive agenda — against him. We’re open to that — but the progressive community will judge him on his record. And he has to start right away.

Dan Witz gifts SF his finest S&M grates

Andrew Lam
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Given that he’s best known for his series of tiny, jewel-like airbrushed hummingbirds, it may strike his hordes of ardent fans as dissonant that street artist Dan Witz‘s latest offerings are so, well, fucked up. His current show at White Walls (on display through Feb. 5) is comprised of fake grated windows that Witz sneak-bolts onto buildings. The windows reveal chiaroscuro women with ball gags in their mouths and wasted man-prisoners. Witz, a classically trained artist, has rendered them realistically enough to invoke stomach-lurching concern in the onlooker. WTF, right?

But the artist, who I called up at while he was working at his chilly studio in dead-of-winter New York City, doesn’t see the birdies and the ball gags as being all that different. “Everything I do is an act of cultural aggression in some way,” he says. In 1979, when a young Witz airbrushed 40 of his now-famous hummers below 14th Street in Manhattan, their preciousness was a radical departure from the then-current trends in street art. Now, he says, his window grates onto depravity similarly represent what’s lacking in today’s milieu.

 

Keep your eyes on the road people — you can peep Witz’s highway pieces en situ above

 

“There’s a darkness and provocation that I think is missing from street art right now. Those uncomfortable moments, there’s just not much of it,” he reflects. Witz is a genius at creating, as my gallery-going companion at the White Walls opening on Saturday put it, “art that makes you feel something. Really any art that makes you feel something, I mean, that’s good.” 

Witz thinks the very act of making art that people don’t have to pay to enjoy – or be disturbed by, in the case of the grates he’s installed in undisclosed locations all over SF in anticipation of his White Walls show – is subversive. Y’know, the whole “taking the art to the people thing.” One of the problems about art today, Witz tells me, is that “as artists, we’re making art for rich people.” 

Wait – but the whole point of this article is that he’s having a gallery show in which his grates are being sold at prices that most people reading this article will not be able to afford (presumably, I’m actually kinda nervous to call and inquire – that whole “if you have to ask” business and all). I raise the point with Witzy, who tells me not to hate, essentially.

“We have to support this art. I think that’s mainly why people buy these pieces,” he tells me. Galleries are where Witz makes his bread and butter – otherwise how would he afford a life of donning maintenance worker outfits and affixing freaky photo-paintings of fetish models in shackles to buildings? It’s an argument that I’ve heard repeated a few times, by many different artists who’ve gained notoriety on the streets – public art is what inspires them, but without price tags and collectors, they’d be back to their day job. 

Plus, Witz informs me, the street is never far from his shows. At White Walls, great pains have been taken to locate the grates’ original use for the casual viewer – photos of them in their pavement-side locations abound, and each buyer of the indoor grates receives a photo print of their purchase’s al fresco twin, most likely made by Witz in the same batch of work. 

He says that as he ages, he’s become less concerned over what the art world’s opinions of his work is – but he’s created hundreds of the grates so far, to try to figure out which images snap the most necks, or as he puts it: “lie plausibly” on the streets. Indicative of the care, love, and reptilian focus that Witz injects into his work, this is a process in which he likens himself to a fertile mother sea turtle. “Those sea turtles, they lay a hundred eggs and only like two survive. I have to lay a fucking lot of eggs.”   

 

Dan Witz: “What the %$#@?”

Through Feb. 5

White Walls 

839 Larkin, SF

(415) 931-1500

www.whitewallssf.com

 

Judge Kopp to run for D.A.?

Zelda Bronstein
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Judge Kopp to run for D.A.?

Yep: Quentin Kopp, the 82-year-old former supervisor, former state Senator, retired Superior Court judge and political fixture in this city for four decades, is being talked about as a potential challenger to the new district attorney, George Gascon.


I just talked to Kopp, and he confirmed that a lot of people have approached him about running in November, and while he’s not a candidate at this point, he hasn’t ruled it out. “If I do run — and I have to think about the rigors of a campaign — I would run on a platform of using the district attorney’s office to root out political corruption,” he said.


Kopp has always been fairly conservative on law-and-order issues and is a supporter of the death penalty. His political base has always been on the West side of town. But in a typically untraditional fashion, Kopp has become a bit more liberal in his later years — and has always been a strong supporter of open government and a foe of political sleaze.


And he seems to be in good health and certainly hasn’t lost his political vigor. (And, he reminds me, the legendary DA of New York, Robert Morgenthau, served past his 90th birthday.) So Kopp would be a formidable candidate in what’s shaping up to be a fairly large field.


Never a dull moment in this town.

Tucson, the rabid right and gun control

Zelda Bronstein
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Tucson, the rabid right and gun control

In today’s episode, we talk about the Tucson shootings, how the right wing has inflamed violence — and whether America needs more impulse control or more gun control Listen to Tim and johnny mix it up (guess who favors gun control?) after the jump.

sfbgradio1102010 by endorsements2010

Turn to the left: Transgender threads hit the online runway

Andrew Lam
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Fashionable transsexuals are in the air, floating about on a current of gender smarts and well-fitting blazers and pant hips. Consider the evidence: on Friday, local trans rag Original Plumbing held a runway show at the Elbo Room to celebrate the release of its fashion issue, Justin Vivian Bond just issued a flowering proclamation of pronoun for those looking for a way to describe v (read it already), and now, a transpeople website that promises it will finally provide you with a dress that’ll fit right over those shoulders of yours. 

“This is a group of people that often need custom clothing and haven’t figured out how to get it yet.” Sarah Dopp is a transgender connector. The founder of Genderfork, a warm feeling-inducing collection of photos and stories from folks rejecting the binary model of gender from around the world, Dopp identifies as a “female, androgynous, genderqueer.” When we got the chance to catch up with her via phone last week, she told us that the idea for Genderplayful is one that she holds close to her own zipper.

Take, for example, her trip home for the holidays. Dopp’s well-meaning mom drew her aside one day before Christmas to talk presents with her. “She said she wanted to give me mine in advance because she didn’t know if I was going to like it and she didn’t want us to go through all that stress on Christmas Day,” Dopp says. The gift was a much-needed coat. Dopp, endowed with what she calls “a broad back but big hips,” can’t fit into most store bought clothes. “I just burst into tears. It’s just such an emotional subject for me, especially since I’m working on this project.”

Clothes that fit right are a common concern for a lot of transsexual individuals who are looking for a good Friday night frock – or even just an outfit to wear to work. Such sartorial endeavors often require a lot of time to search for the perfect fit, or as Dopp puts it, “a lot of money, and you better be comfortable talking with your tailor.” Plus, most stores are totally boring. “Conventional retail stores,” Dopp says, “just don’t have the most interesting clothing these days.”

On Genderplayful, she hopes to create a community wherein these kinds of concerns can be a source of empathy and DIY commerce instead of stress. Picture an Etsy stocked chockfull of transgendered buyers and sellers, only minus the limiting rules that all items exchanged be either handmade or over 20 years old to be considered vintage. Buyers will be able to describe their dream garment, and sellers will be able to display their broad shouldered-broad hipped coat designs (or tuxes with room for bosom, or robo-pirate-hipster-gypsy-goth wear — whatever the case may be) for a worldwide audience of eager fashionista/o/vs. 

Genderfork user Courtney submitted this fierce shot of beautiful-handsome hotness

Given the amount of interest already generated by the site, Dopp is hopeful that it will be a revenue-generator, not just a feel-good project. “We’re starting with the buyers, which I think is an interesting thing in a recession.” Handmade e-commerce seems to have dodged much of the financial ruin affecting the rest of the online retail industry – Etsy experienced a 65 percent increase in sales in December 2010 over last year’s figures at the same time, making it the site’s biggest month yet.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a little in Genderplayful’s coffers to get the online marketplace up and running, which Dopp estimates will take another three to six months. The site is currently fundraising – donors (won’t you be one?) can be a part of the magic until Sat/15. Added bonus: if you give money now, you can be a part of the site’s soft opening, checking out the transgendered transactions weeks before the regular public is allowed in. “If can we can raise $5,000 we will do it. If we raise $50,000 we will do it really well and awesomely,” Dopp explains.

“The wrong clothes can feel like trying to speak gibberish with conviction,” says a bespectacled dapper who weighs in on the darling video of testimonies by Genderplayful’s supporters-potential customer base. One can’t help but wish the plucky Dopp and her e-gang of genderqueered dandies well on their way to style glory and accessibility. Because the dressing room is a rough experience for many of us – even leaving aside the question of which one to go into. 

Street Threads: Sabrina

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Street Threads: Sabrina

Today’s Look: Sabrina, 17th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look: “I own Density, and so I get a lot of my clothes from there.”

What progressive means

Zelda Bronstein
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What progressive means

Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a “progressive” value. David Chiu says Ed Lee is a progressive. Several supervisors, and other political observers, say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with an excellent political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers, but that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers, who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women) and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and his brother Phil for national office – as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was highrise office development in San Francisco.
Arguing that Shorenstein’s economic agenda was driving up housing prices, destroying low-income neighborhoods and displacing tenants was a waste of time; the liberals like Burton (who also represented real estate developers as a private attorney) weren’t interested.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s about the fact that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s, and the impacts are all around us. And it’s about (Democratic) politicians in San Francisco blaming Sacramento, and (Democratic) politicians in Sacramento blaming Washington, and the Democratic Party in the United States abandoning economic equality as a guiding principle.

So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to be (yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

For all the people who are going to blast me in the comments, let me say very clearly: This isn’t a litmus-test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.
For the record: When I use the word “progressive,” I’m talking about people who believe:

1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for Sanctuary City and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.

2. That essential public services – water, electricity, health care, broadband – should be controlled by the public and not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.

3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level – including local government, right here in San Francisco – should do everything possible to reduce that inequality; that means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.

4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for both politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections.

5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so that the city can have socio-economic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public, and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests; we believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.

6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.

7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives – and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that their own personal ambitions.

I could add a lot more, but I think those six factors are at the heart of what I mean when I talk about progressives. We support a lot of other things; I put the right of workers to unionize under Number 3, since unions (along with public schools and subsidized higher education) are one of the major forces behind a stable middle class and a more equal society. We think racism and homophobia are never acceptable, and we support affirmative action, but that goes under Number 1.

This is not a socialist manifesto; I never mentioned worker control of the means of production. Progressives don’t oppose private enterprise; they just think that some things essential for the good of society don’t belong in the private sector, and that the private sector should be regulated for the good of all of us. We trust and support small businesses much more than big corporations – and we think their interests are not the same.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. We won’t know until we see his budget plans, and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what the tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values. We know that the people who pushed him to take the job aren’t progressives by any definition, but you never know. I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, an historic moment — and when Lee takes office, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

Chiu and pragmatism win over the new board

Sasha Cuttler
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Despite the re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors today, there was a palpable shift in the political dynamics at City Hall. “Ideology” has been deemed a dirty word by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, while the politics of identity and “getting things done” is the new imperative.
That shift was most evident in the 8-3 vote for Chiu, with progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi supporting Avalos for the post through two rounds of voting. Chiu won it on the second round after fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd withdrew his nomination, with he and his other three backers – Sups. Carmen Chu, Scott Wiener, and Mark Farrell – all supporting Chiu in the second round.
“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu told us, noting the departure of both Mayor Gavin Newsom and supervisors that include Chris Daly. “We’re going to have to get past the oppositional politics of personality.”
In place of a progressive politics based on principled positions and aggressively challenging the influence that powerful downtown interests still exert on City Hall, Chiu is advocating for more pragmatic solutions to the considerable challenges facing the city, starting with a projected budget deficit of almost $400 million.
“None of us were voted into office to take positions, we were voted into office to get things done,” Chiu said.
His approach has occasionally earned him the scorn of progressives over the last two years, particularly in Chiu’s high-profile compromises with Newsom over cuts to Muni and city programs, business tax breaks, and other issues, as Avalos noted. But as Avalos told Chiu, “Clearly today, you have been validated in your hard work.”
Chiu was backed in both rounds of voting by progressive Asian-American Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar, both of whom also struck pragmatic notes in their comments. But they also noted that the board’s new civility and diversity are progressive values. “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco,” Mar said.
Newsom has been pointedly criticizing the notion of ideology for years – apparently unaware that his anti-tax, pro-business philosophy is an ideology – and it was echoed by several supervisors, including Farrell, who said he wants “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas and not ideology.”
Now, we’re all left to wait and see what kinds of issues and ideas take root. We’ll have much more on an extraordinary week at City Hall – with a new board and new incoming Mayor-select Ed Lee – in next week’s Guardian.

Highlights of Ed Lee’s nomination

Mary Magee
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An awful lot went down at City Hall today: four Board members were termed out, new Board members were moving into their offices, the old Board nominated Ed Lee as interim mayor, and Gavin Newsom revealed he’ll be gone as mayor by Monday afternoon. Here in no particular order are some of the highlights:


When termed-out D6 Sup. Chris Daly suggested that Rose Pak be nominated mayor, since she apparently managed to broker the Lee deal in three short days, Pak shot back, “I would do it, only if Chris Daly would be my Chief of Staff.”


Pak told me that she persuaded Lee to take the job, over the cell phone, while he was at the airport in Hong Kong.


Pak outlined her reasons for supporting Ed Lee as mayor. “Ed Lee has devoted 35 years to San Francisco. He’s earned his stripes. He’s the most qualified, the most unifying agent, and the most talented.”


 The crowd of seniors from the Self Help for the Elderly non-profit who crammed City Hall today are a likely preview of things to come during the mayor’s race.


 Board President David Chiu’s insistence that there were no back room deals. “Shortly after Gavin Newsom was elected Lt. Governor, I said Ed Lee should be considered as a candidate,” Chiu told me. “There was never a deal.”


The strong sense that Chiu is running for mayor in November, though he hasn’t filed. Asked if he was running, Chiu said. “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” Asked if he wasn’t running, Chiu said, “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” (That’s not a very convincing denial, David!)


On being reminded that the Year of the Rabbit kicks off in February, Chiu added,  “Hopefully, this will be a very fortunate year for San Francisco.”


Oakland and San Francisco will both have Asian American mayors—160 years after Chinese immigrants first settled in San Francisco and 129 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act sought to prevent these immigrants from rising to the top.


The rejoicing that reportedly is going in the Asian community, right now.“Chinatown is excited,” a reporter for Sing Tao Daily told me. “Ed Lee is a low-key kinda guy. No one really knows him, but as former DPW director, he was always filling up pot holes.”


The stated hope that Lee will support Sup. Avalos local hire ordinance, which kicks in Feb. 23, implement Sup. David Campos’ due process for immigrant youth ordinance, and enforce the recommendations of the Mayor’s African American Out Migration Task Force.


The growing sense that Sup. John Avalos is a strong contender as new Board President.


Sharen Hewitt’s observation that burgeoning racial tensions between African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos need to be addressed. Now.


Julian Davis’ observation that while the way Lee was appointed is not something San Francisco should be proud of, the fact that we now have an Asian American mayor with the almost unanimous support of the old Board is (Daly was the lone dissenter).


Newsom’s reminder that the old Board’s vote was symbolic.“Today was an extraordinary historic vote,” Newsom said. “But remember, it’s symbolic. The new Board will make the appointment.”


 Newsom’s description of Lee as a ‘recruitment” as he, too, insisted there were no backroom deals. “There were no deals, no backroom deals,” Newsom insisted. “He’s the right person at the right time.”


Newsom’s claim that this isn’t about Lee (or anyone else who’d been nominated.) “It’s not about you,” Newsom said, recreating a conversation he allegedly recently had to convince Lee, who’d just been guaranteed five more years employment as City Administrator, to become interim mayor for the rest of 2011. “You are that something more, that something better. You’re the one guy who can pull it altogether, including if disaster strikes, which is my biggest fear.”


Newsom’s relief that he only needs to prepare a 3-page budget brief. “Someone who understands so much of the process doesn’t need 20 pages,” he said.


Newsom’s claim that ideologues make terrible mayors.”If this city gets off track, plays some ideological game, it impacts the entire region,” he said. “I love that Lee is not even in the country. If he had been here, he’d probably have been convinced not to do it. Ideologues make terrible mayors, and mayors make terrible ideologues.”


Newsom’s explanation of how Lee will be able to get back his job, though the charter prohibits people who served in elected office from working for the city for at least a year.
”Hopefully, the Board will make it easy for him. Four members of the Board can put a charter amendment on the ballot. Or Lee can do it himself.”


Newsom’s revelation that he will be sworn in as Lt. Governor at 1:30 p.m, Jan. 10, and San Francisco will find out who the next District Attorney is by then.


Newsom’s claim that 2010 was an “incredible” year. “The Shipyard, Treasure Island, the America’s Cup, Doyle Drive, the Transbay Terminal. All these things are groundbreaking,” he said.


 


 

Historic mayoral vote followed a flawed process

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Ed Lee would be San Francisco’s first Chinese-American mayor right now – if Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t delaying his swearing in as lieutenant governor. And Lee might also have had 10 votes on the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, as he had today, if the process hadn’t involved backroom deals and moderate, lame-duck supervisors kowtowing to the outgoing mayor. In other words, this historic occasion just didn’t need to be sullied the way it was this week.
There was real jubilation at City Hall when I left there a few minutes ago, and for good reason, even though today’s vote will have to be repeated by the new board after Newsom officially resigns. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” Board President David Chiu told a packed board chambers, calling it, “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”
Chiu braved the taunts of Sup. Chris Daly and some progressive activists for supporting Lee on Tuesday, steadfastly maintaining that Lee is progressive and the best candidate for this job, despite his five progressive colleagues voting for Sheriff Michael Hennessey. And Lee does have progressive roots and support, as the progressive supervisors have attested publicly.
Once the progressive supervisors were given the chance to talk to Lee – whose openness to accepting the nomination came out of nowhere, reportedly at the urging of Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown – all but Daly voted to support Lee.
Yet all of them also publicly noted how the process was deeply flawed and contrary to progressive principles of openness and accountability. “I have questions about the process and how we got to this point,” Sup. John Avalos said before announcing his support for Lee based on a half-hour telephone conversation yesterday (Lee has been in China through his public consideration as interim mayor).  
Sup. David Campos said he nominated Hennessey as a compromise caretaker mayor based on the representation from Newsom that he was acceptable and after being told by Sup. Bevan Dufty that he would support Hennessey. Instead, Dufty refused to vote until calling for a recess and marching down to the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday, returning to be the swing vote for Lee.
“I’m very disappointed in the way this process has gone down,” Campos said, adding that Hennessey “did not deserve the kind of treatment he received.” Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar echoed the point, with Mirkarimi saying he still doesn’t understand why Dufty flipped or what happened when he went to visit the Mayor’s Office.
Through the whole hearing, Dufty – a candidate for mayor himself – didn’t say a word. At one point, he even started clearing out his desk in Board Chambers, throwing away recycled papers and filling a big envelope full of paper clips. He didn’t stick around the hallway for the celebration that he helped enable, instead going straight into his office, where I found him and asked for a reaction to his colleagues’ questioning of his motives and integrity.
“My actions speak for themselves,” was all Dufty would say.
Perhaps they do, but even Lee’s strongest supporters acknowledged that the process of picking him was flawed. “Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind,” Rev. Norman Fong told the Guardian. “The process was bad.”
Without a public discussion or the ability of reporters or supervisors to talk to Lee, Fong acknowledged why some progressives worried that a deal had been cut to continue with Newsom’s policies and personnel. “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to,” Fong said, but he said, “I’ve fought with Ed Lee and I know his heart…He’ll do the right thing.”
Gordon Chin of Chinatown Community Development Center said he has worked closely with both Lee and Hennessey and both would have been good interim mayors, and he said this should not have been a partisan fight. “Who nominated Mike Hennessey as the nominee of all of progressive San Francisco?” Chin asked, noting that few progressive constituencies were consulted on the choice or offered their buy-in.
Yet he also acknowledged the unseemly way in which Lee came out of nowhere to get the nomination, with little public vetting, “If Ed was out there a week earlier, it would have been a lot better. It was a flawed process,” Chin said.
So flawed that Daly and many progressive activists are still smarting about what happened and wary of what kind of mayor Lee will be. “No more backroom deals,” queer activist and blogger Michael Petrelis repeatedly shouted at Rose Pak as she was being interviewed outside board chambers.
But Fong just shrugged and told me, “There’s backroom deals on the left too.”

Congratulations to Ed Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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5

Congratulations to Ed Lee, who, unless Gavin Newsom still refuses to leave or the next board does something terribly surprising, will be the city’s first Asian mayor. This, as Sup David Chiu pointed out, is an historic moment, a watershed event in San Francisco history. And we shouldn’t forget that.


Now Lee will face a massive challenge, starting with a terrifying city budget — and a need to reassure progressives that he can be trusted. It’s not Lee’s fault that Rose Pak and Willie Brown settled on him as their candidate — but starting from Day One, he is going to have to demonstrate independence.


I have no doubt that, true to his roots, he will be solid on sanctuary city and local hire — two major issues that the supervisors mentioned today. And on those issues, and on civil rights in general, he will be vastly better than Newsom. He won’t deport high school kids and break up families.


But I have to wonder if he’ll be true to progressive values on the city budget — because the willingness to accept that, as Chris Daly just said, something is very wrong in this country and this world, and it includes (perhaps starts with) the vast income and wealth disparities that are making our society unsustainable, and that it’s the responsibility of every official at the federal, state AND local level to try to address that problem … that’s what separates out the real progressives.


Good luck, Mayor Lee, we sincerely wish you the best, look forward to working with you and can’t wait to hear your ideas on new city revenues.

Daly’s swan song

Zelda Bronstein
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4

I’m just going to quote the way Chris Daly summed up today’s actions, because I think (beyond the vote today) it’s an important point for everyone to remember. Take it away, Chris:


“I’ve seen go along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go along to get along doesn’t do it.”

It looks like Ed Lee — but will that hold tomorrow?

Zelda Bronstein
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1

Well, Campos says he’s with Ed Lee — and that means it’s over. For now, anyway. There’s a new board in place tomorrow; it’s hard to imagine that the new supes will change this vote, but they’ll have to reaffirm it.


So Mayor Ed Lee will have a tough job ahead of him — starting with the fact that there’s no question he came to office at least to some degree because of Willie Brown and Rose Pak. And that’s going to hurt his credibility. He doesn’t need to convince us that he’s no Gavin Newsom; ne needs to convince us that he’s not going to take directions from Willie Brown.  

Leno will not run for mayor

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Leno will not run for mayor

Just as the supervisors were meeting to select a successor mayor, Mark Leno called me to tell me that, after a lot of thought, he has decided he won’t be a candidate for mayor in November. He’s going to be running the state Senate Budget Committee, dealing with the worst fiscal crisis in California history, and “I just wouldn’t have the time to run a campaign.”


Leno would have brought a lot to the race, particularly as it’s shaking down now, but I certainly understand his choice.

Chinese community out in force for Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Chinese community out in force for Lee

Well, Rose Pak promised a big demonstration and she’s got one: City Hall is mobbed with Ed Lee supporters pushing the supervisors to vote for the city’s first Asian mayor. Lee is still out of town, so he can’t answer questions, although he’s talked to several supervisors by phone. One said he seemed a little overwhelmed by all of this; he wasn’t even sure he wanted the job until Pak and Willie Brown talked him into it.


The revelations that the vote for Lee was a backroom deal orchestrated by Pak and Willie Brown (and from years of Brown watching, I can you this was a classic Brown move) will put Lee supporters like David Chiu and Eric Mar in a tough situation. Aaron Peskin, former supervisor, wasn’t mincing words when I talked to him jost before the meeting started:


“This is no so much about left and right, it’s about democracy and how power is transitioned,” he said. “This is disgusting, not because Ed Lee is or isn’t left or right or a progressive or a liberal. This is about the politics of power, and conservatives and moderates should be just as revolted as anyone.”


Meanwhile, my old friend Rev. Norman Fong, a leading Chinatown progressive, says he supports Ed Lee, as do a lot of progressives in the Asian communtity. I get that, and he’s a decent guy with a good history as a civil rights and housing lawyer, and he might even be a decent mayor. But this process stinks. There’s no other way to put it.

Elsbernd defends Lee (but ducks the Tapas)

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Elsbernd defends Lee (but ducks the Tapas)

Well, Sean didn’t stop by for tapas at Que Syrah last night, but he did take the time to send me a long letter answering my questions about why he “mysteriously”  nominated CAO Ed Lee for interim mayor in Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

I appreciate the letter and it’s to Sean’s credit that this is his modus operandi with the Guardian (and others) in answering questions, even pesky ones.

I am printing his letter in full below and offering him the opportunity to continue this illuminating conversation since his letter raises even more questions about his nomination of Lee.

For example, the Bay Citizen section of today’s New York Times, on the morning of the followup supervisors’ meeting this afternoon, laid out a detailed story by Gerry Shih  of how former Mayor Willie Brown, Rose Pak, a powerful Chinatown political operative, and Mayor Newsom orchestrated the Lee nomination to keep the mayor’s office safe for PG&E, the downtown gang, and Willie/Pak’s clients and allies.

The headline: “Behind-the-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of a Mayor,” with  pictures of Newsom, Willie, and Pak. The motivation for the orchestration, according to the story, was that on Sunday afternoon “Word had  trickled out that the main contenders for the job were Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Mayor Art Agnos and former board chairman Aaron Peskin” and the three were “deemed too liberal” by Pak, Brown and Newsom.

Then, the story said that over the next 48 hours, Pak, Brown and the Newsom administration “engaged in an extraordinary political power play, forging a consensus” on the board, “outflanking the board’s progressive wing” and persuading Lee at the last moment  shortly before he boarded  a plane to  Taiwan to agree “to become San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, even though he had told officials for months that he had no interest in the job.”

The story noted that Pak was “in a boastful mood the next day, several hours before she planned to have celebratory drinks with Brown at the Chinese Hilton,” (Willie, last time I checked, was on an annual PG&E retainer of $200,000 plus.) The story ended with a telling quote from Pak: “Now you know why they say I play politics like a blood sport.”

So the new questions I have for Sean (and other supervisors who voted for Lee) is what did they know and when did they know it? Or were they even informed about the deal and how it came down? Is this the West Portal supervisor’s idea of how to choose a mayor?

P.S. Sean and his fellow Lee supporters may not think it’s important for the Guardian (or other media or citizens) to be able to ask questions of Lee or other candidates  before making him mayor.

Well, I think  it’s important and I have some basic questions: What is Lee’s position on rent control? On progressive taxation to help solve the crushing budget crisis? On rubberstamping Newsom/Pak/Brown policies as mayor? And on community choice aggregation and public power and kicking PG&E out of the mayor’s office?  The last question on PG&E  is critical, because this is the key litmus test in political San Francisco.  Any politician, elected or appointed or emerging,  who supports PG&E and opposes public power/CCA is not to be trusted.  Did anybody get to ask Lee any of these questions or any others? Let’s lay out the questions and Lee’s answers before making him the reluctant mayor.

Here’s Elsbernds letter to me:

Bruce,

Good to hear from you.  As always, I enjoy the conversation, particularly
with those District 7 constituents who so often and consistently advocate
positions contrary to the vast majority of residents in District 7 (e.g.
the Guardian’s endorsement against Proposition G, which received over 70%
of the vote in District 7), but every now and then, present a fresh
perspective worth analysis.

 

I believe Ed Lee will make an outstanding Interim Mayor. You asked me the
following questions to justify this.  Let me give it my best shot.

Why did I nominate Ed Lee for Interim Mayor when he was out of town?  His
presence was immaterial to me.  I had the opportunity to discuss his
interest in the position with him prior to the vote, and I have worked with
him for nearly 10 years, and know where he stands on various positions.  I
did not need him in the room on Tuesday evening to answer questions as I
had done my homework before showing up to class.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was not publicly “out there” or “in
public discussion” as a candidate or even known by the Supervisors to be a
legitimate candidate?  Whether or not Ed Lee’s name was known to you, your
readers, or other Supervisors, is not a fact to which I can speak.  After
all, I do not fit any one of those 3 criteria.  Ed was always a candidate
to me, and, most importantly, the qualities of an Interim Mayor were “in
public discussion.”  These qualities, which I heard from residents in
district 7 and throughout the City, were that the individual be someone not
wanting to run for re-election, someone, who had a demonstrated ability to
appeal to all cross sections of the political spectrum, someone who knows
the City (both how it functions as a government as well as its many
neighborhoods), and, someone with demonstrated experience in a variety of
areas of public policy.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he has not publicly stated his views on any
of the major issues coming before the Mayor?  Yes, it’s true he has not
filled out a Bay Guardian questionnaire, or been grilled by your editorial
Board.  However, an astute observer of Ed’s career can decipher well his
positions.  Moreover, Ed was most recently confirmed unanimously to serve
as CAO of the City and County, for the second time.  During that
confirmation process, I had the opportunity, as did every other member of
the Board and the public to present issues to Ed for his analysis.  The
tough issues facing the Mayor, are the same tough issues facing the CAO,
the Supervisors, and everyone else charged with the duty of serving the
public.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was not available for questioning by the
Board when the discussion and vote came down?  Yes, Ed was not present.
However, as I stated earlier, Ed had always been available to talk prior to
his departure.  I was able to ask my questions before he left.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he is not as qualified for this tough post
in these tough times as the other public candidates?  Well, this question
implies a bit of a comparison to the other candidates.  I respect the other
candidates too much to say anything negative about them.  Simply put, I
believe Ed is the lone candidate with the sufficient breadth, most
relevant, and most timely experience across City government, and the one
who had the greatest ability to bring all sides of the political spectrum
together.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was obviously part of a backroom deal
orchestrated by Mayor Newsom and his downtown allies?  I love questions
based on evidence and fact.  This question, however, is merely a question
based on your opinion.  I disagree with that opinion.  Ed Lee was elected
Interim Mayor because he is the most qualified candidate.

 

Finally, thanks for the invitation to Que Syrah this evening.
Unfortunately, as a working parent, my weeknight evenings do not belong to
me – they belong to my son.  I’ll be with him tonight.  I hope you’re still
able to enjoy yourself without me.

 

All the best,
Sean

 

P.S.  It’s the “Village Grill,” not the “Village Inn .”  Perhaps you need
to get out on West Portal a bit more and learn the name of the
establishments along the street.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SFBG Radio: Are conservatives brain damaged?

Zelda Bronstein
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3
SFBG Radio: Are conservatives brain damaged?

Well, maybe not damaged — but Johnny talks about the new evidence that the brains of right wingers are different from those of other people. You can listen after the jump.

sfbg.com172010 by endorsements2010

City Hall’s mad political swirl

Sasha Cuttler
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1
City Hall’s mad political swirl

It was common knowledge around City Hall that Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown were lurking behind the sudden emergence of Ed Lee as the pick for interim mayor, but Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih does an excellent job showing how it actually went down in a story that appeared in today’s New York Times.

Pak is also expected to orchestrate a big show of Chinese-American power during this afternoon’s Board of Supervisors meeting, and progressive supervisors tell the Guardian that they have been personally lobbied by Pak to get behind Lee. Some supervisors hold out the hope that Michael Hennessey might still have a shot, or that Ed Harrington might be put back in play, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Lee seems like he’ll be the guy, at least with this board.

In addition, the rumor mill is buzzing that David Chiu will declare his candidacy for mayor in the coming weeks, although other sources indicate he hasn’t made a final decision yet. And given that the new board still has to confirm the current board’s selection, don’t be too surprised if someone makes a play to name Chiu as interim mayor, but that’s a longshot.

Following right on the heels of today’s interim mayor vote will be tomorrow’s swearing in of the new board and vote on president, which Chiu would like to hold onto. But after crossing his progressive colleagues on Tuesday to support Lee over Hennessey, most progressives are expected to push for Sup. John Avalos, while fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd is also expected to make a bid for the presidency. None appear to have six votes yet.

Despite media reports about the board’s “progressive majority,” the current political dynamics don’t really give any faction a majority, with identity politics holding heavier sway than ideology right now. So the only prediction that political watchers can make right now is that it’s going to be interesting.

Expert opinion: how best to love your Oregon Ducks

Andrew Lam
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1

There are sports fans who watch every game, know all the stats, own all the gear, take it upon themselves to achieve championship-level drunk status upon every win and loss their team achieves — and then there are real sports fans. Those are the guys that cobble together high-quality parodic hip-hop videos with their buddies that become their football team’s anthem and Youtube blockbusters, getting them flown around the country to perform — and getting star-struck coeds to swoon at the tailgate.

That’d be Jamie Slade, Brian McAndrew, and Michael Bishop, whose Supwitchugirl team starred in and edited the Eugene, Oregon party anthems “I Love My Ducks” and “I Love My Ducks (Return of the Quack),” as well as a host of other tunes dedicated to frat juicin’ brobots and bathroom water conservation — even at the price of party foul.  Lucky us, SFBG had the inside line on these young bucks and got Jamie Slade, the group’s tallest member with its curliest hair, to email with us about ways you can be the ultimate Ducks fan at the team’s championship title run on Mon/10 against Auburn University — or front like you are, at least.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s the most important thing that someone unacquainted with them should know about the Oregon Ducks’ season this year?

Jamie Slade: This is Oregon’s very first run at the national title and last year was the first year since 1995 we went to the Rose Bowl so both this year and last year are monumental years for Duck football history. That’s why Oregon has been getting so much hype lately on TV — that and head coach Chip Kelly has only lost three games in his whole career — which has only been two years, but it’s still very impressive.

 

SFBG: An all-purpose line to make yourself sound like a real fan?

JS: I LOVE MY DUCKS

 

SFBG: The season highlight? Lowlight?

JS: The season highlight was beating Tennessee. They’re in the SEC conference, which is known for being the best conference, historically, in college football. Also, beating Oregon State and solidifying our spot in the national championship game. Also the Stanford game, they’re now the best one-loss team in the nation and WE beat them. They just won their bowl game which makes us look GOOD. Lowlight? I guess the Cal game where we only won by two points when we were favored to win by 30-plus.

 

SFBG: How can you tell who the Ducks fans are?

JS: We have the loudest stadium in college football — literally, the decibels in Autzen Stadium have been recorded as louder than a fighter jet taking off and that isn’t because of how the stadium is engineered and built, it’s because we yell our asses off. Duck fans are loud and will be happy to yell in your face if you’re an opposing fan.

 

SFBG: Have you met the team? Which player made the biggest impression on you and why?

JS: Yeah we’ve met the team, well most of the players at least. Two players that have been really nice to us has been DJ Davis, our wide receiver and defensive end Kenny Rowe. DJ Davis is just an all-around nice guy with a really sincere personality and Kenny Rowe is a really funny dude. Every time I see him he always says “Man, I wanna be just like you” even though he leads the Pac-10 in sacks and is a menace on the field.

 

SFBG: How’d Supwitchu Girl get together? What was the first video you guys made?

JS: We met in the dorms. Michael and Brian have been longtime friends and I met them when I was on the Oregon track team my freshmen year. Because of Saturday practices I would stay in the dorms on Friday nights and Michael and Brian coincidentally stayed in as well and our personalities just clicked. Our first video is called “Just Don’t Flush It” and it’s a music video about water conservation. It was an inside joke at first about how Brian would never flush the toilet in our tiny apartment during our senior year. 

 

SFBG: Are you super stars in Eugene at this point? 

JS: We’re more sex symbols if anything, Caitlin. Just kidding haha. I wouldn’t say we are super stars at all — we get recognized just because the video is so popular but we don’t get star treatment or anything, we still had to go to school and do everything else every other student has to go through. Sometimes people say “Hey are you that “I Love My Ducks” guy?” and I say yes…but we are so much more than JUST the “I Love My Ducks” guys.

 

SFBG: Do you have plans to extend your reign of terror to other college towns?

JS: NO. We are die-hard Duck fans. That’s where we find inspiration for these songs…out of true emotion and love for this team.

 

SFBG: Future video plans? Or are you done with the UO scene now that you’re graduating?

JS: Yep we have a video coming out after the BCS game called “Pogs” and it is about that childhood fad of throwing Pogs and slammers etc. Should be funny. But we all plan on travelling for a few months and reconvening afterwards to figure out what our next step will be.

 

SFBG: What line from your songs do you hear people repeat the most?

JS: From the first song: “Holy Moly, is that my boy Masoli?” From the second song: “Eatin chips ‘n’ dip with the brain Chip Kelly!”

 

You can yell your ass off (or get yelled at in your face) with the rest of the Oregon fans at The Independent (628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com), which will be playing the national championship game on their pull-down movie screen.


BCS National College Football Championship Game: University of Oregon vs. Auburn University

Mon/10 5:30 PST, FOX Sports

 

Daly goes down swinging

Sasha Cuttler
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7

The League of Pissed of Voters made a Daly roast video honoring the “biggest asshole in San Francisco politics”

Between last night’s epic Chris Daly Roast and Daly’s crazy-man antics on Tuesday night, Daly is ending his 10-year tenure on the Board of Supervisors in fitting fashion: as a passionate leader of the progressive movement who has also been its – and his own – worst enemy.

A huge crowd packed The Independent to honor and make fun of Daly and other political figures, and it definitely had the feel of an alcohol-fueled progressive love-fest, right down to conservative Chronicle columnist CW Nevius taking a pie in the face after stepping off the stage for the evening’s most tedious session behind the microphone.

Well, at least it was until Daly took the mike, going on and on in often tasteless fashion and resisting efforts by his wife, Sarah Low, and others to get him to give up the spotlight. Daly just isn’t ready to leave the stage yet, despite buying and running the Buck Tavern, soon to be renamed Daly’s Dive. He’s even half seriously talking about running for mayor.

But for all of Daly’s many accomplishments – he is the most productive supervisor of his era and the most passionately progressive – his personal grudges also create problems for the movement. On Tuesday, Daly led the effort to name Sheriff Michael Hennessey as interim mayor, twisting Sup. Eric Mar’s arm to get him to come along, only to fall one vote short.

Even though Hennessey and Ed Lee are similar figures, Daly turned Board President David Chiu’s support for Lee into an act of epic ideological betrayal, aggressively menacing Chiu at the meeting and shouting at him, “I will haunt you! I will politically haunt you! It’s on like Donkey Kong.” He spoke over his colleagues as they had the floor and tried to talk, including repeatedly yelling at Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, “You are a representative of the rich!” And when the board reconvened after a short recess, Daly remained in the audience, periodically flipping the bird to the board.

But for all Daly’s current ire toward Chiu, it should be noted that Chiu became board president two years ago because Daly led the opposition to Sup. Ross Mirkarimi becoming board president, giving Chiu far more political power than he would otherwise have. Daly has long prided himself on his good political instincts, and at times he has indeed been a masterful political tactician, but his ego sometimes gets the better of him. He’s hyper competitive and just wants to win, even when victory carries an unacceptable price.

When the new Board of Supervisors takes the oath of office at noon on Saturday, the progressive movement will lose a passionate leader in Chris Daly. But as it elects a new president and its political dynamics take shape, someone will need to take Daly’s role as the whip and conscience of the board, a role even his enemies acknowledged that he played.

“Chris, I think San Francisco is better because you served,” Sup. Sophie Maxwell said on Tuesday, gritting her teeth in praising someone who has at times scorned and belittled her. It will be interesting to see how Daly’s role is filled on the new board, and whether we can still have the passion without its pitfalls.

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