Rene Cazenave, a stalwart in the affordable housing movement in San Francisco for 40 years, died June 27. Although he insisted that he didn’t want a big memorial, he touched so many people in this city and this community that we’ll be gathering to celebrate his life on Saturday, July 31, from 2-5 pm. The event’s at Fromm Hall at the University of San Francisco (right behind St. Ignatius Church). See you there.
SFBG Blogs
Flair for the music in your head
It’s happy hunting, this urban jungle. But leave the sounds of the flora and fauna to chance and you may be caught in the screeches and tweets of a tacky bird of paradise: who hasn’t had their morning quarry foiled by an ill-timed burst from a passing safari-mobile bumping last year’s Usher or – egads! – a morning DJ’s rehash of the latest hijinx on The Hills? Best to keep that trek through the underbrush sleek and soundtracked with some of the fierce headphones on offer at local J-pop mecca New People. After all, it don’t get much more wild than Tokyo fashion.
Exhibit A: headphones as jewelery. You want fly but functional, right? Ladeez… you got your choice of many little gems at New People, but my faves have gotta be the Elecom Rose Ear Drops ($44.95) , little red rose buds that fit in your canal just. So. Sweet. They’re cute, but not hit you over the head with it. You can peep Zumreed’s jewelery ‘phones in shiny blue bead style, too, if you’re more of a buy-my-bling-at-Sanrio kinda girl.
Exhibit B
Exhibit B: retro charm. Some of the style here wouldn’t look untoward attached to your Walkman, yeah I said it, Walkman. Zumreed comes strong in this category as well, with square phones, and a red and black color palette ($34.95). Back to the ’80s witcha, only with presumably better sound quality and debatably more commercial hip-hop in the zeitgeist. Or you can go Lucille Ball retro with dome candy colored or stripey ‘phones, again from Zumreed (above, $44.95-54.95). I see these being used to listen to a lot of The Shins. Early Beatles, maybe.
FYI, the store also stocks a whole bunch of mini-speakers, perfect for when you and the rest of the food chain are chilling with nary a stereo to pump that jungle love.
ALL HAIL THE BURGER SPEAKER ($30)
Back to ‘phones… many of the models are be-tricked with noise canceling super powers – both for you to block out any possible ambient D-list punditry and so that the rest of your ecosystem doesn’t have to hear the bass beats of your carnivorous soul. After all, it just doesn’t do to let your prey know you’re coming for them, rawr.
New People
1746 Post, SF
(415) 525-8630
Wikileaks releases classified Afghan War diaries
Wikileaks has released thousands of classified files about the war in Afghanistan. These Afghan war diaries provide a unique insight into what’s happening on the ground. And it ain’t pretty. You can review the reports by looking at various categories, including “severity”, “friendly fire” and “escalation of force”.
Wikileaks is calling the files “the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war.”
The U.K. Guardian calls them, “a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan.”
Take a look and decide for yourself.
SFBG Radio: Who’s afraid of the right-wing nuts?
In today’s episode, Johnny and Tim talk about news fabrication — and why anybody still respects Andrew Brietbart. You can listen after the jump.
sfbgradio7/23/2010 by johnnywangelRumors fly that Board can’t amend Lennar deal, after all
For the past month, fireworks and deals have been going on at City Hall as the Board prepares to vote on Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan for Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard. And recently, the Board vowed to make a slew of amendments to the plan, even as they approved the project’s environmental impact report.
But now it’s beginning to look like the only winners could be the developer—and perhaps those folks at city hall who are staking their political careers on jamming this deal over the finish line, come hell or high water, before the November election comes around and they go into the private sector as real estate developers.
I say this because two weeks ago, the progressives on the Board were saying that they had been told that they couldn’t amend the EIR July 14, but that they could amend the actual redevelopment plan when it comes before them on July 27. It was for this reason, they said, that they decided to vote to accept the EIR in an 8-3 vote, with only Sups. John Avalos, Chris Daly and Eric Mar, voting to reject the project’s key environmental document.
But today, with less than two working days before the Board’s July 27 meeting, I’m hearing rumors that the Board will only be able to take an up and down vote, when they consider Lennar’s actual redevelopment plan.
In other words, the only way the Board would be able to change anything would be to reject the plan in its entirety.But everyone knows that this is a pigs-may-fly scenario, given the massive pressure the Mayor’s Office, labor and Lennar have been exerting on the Board.
So, if these “up-and-down-vote only” rumors turn out to be true, folks who care about environmental and economic justice better start sounding the alarm. Because there is a plethora of unresolved issues that Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi identified July 13 as needing shoring up, before the actual redevelopment plan would ever pass their sniff test.
These concerns included fears that the project’s financing plan amounts to daylight bank robbery, that the proposed bridge across the Yosemite Slough is unnecessary, and that the amount of projected air pollution related to the development is unacceptable.
And then there’s the fact that the Controller’s “economic benefits” report only used averaged figures, and therefore did not give any details about how many jobs and benefits the project would create in this economically depressed community in the next few years.
And did I mention the part about liquidated damages and watershed concerns? Or the fact that there are no maritime uses in the current plan, even though these uses could translate directly into relatively unskilled jobs, if old ships were broken up at the shipyard.
But despite the hours of discussion on July 13 that the Board sat through last week, I do not recall anyone from the Mayor’s or City Attorney’s Office advising the supervisors that they would not be able to amend the actual plan when it comes before them July 27.
Right now, a lot of confusion is swirling as folks point to the fact that Board President David Chiu introduced five amendments at a July 12 Land Use Committee hearing that eight supervisors subsequently voted to accept. This move led the rest of the Board to believe that they too could make amendments to the final plan.
But a review of Chiu’s amendments and the project’s EIR suggests that these changes are in fact repackaged pieces of the EIR, and that the move misled other supervisors into believing that that they would have a chance to amend the actual redevelopment plan.
So far, no one from the Mayor’s Office has returned my calls seeking clarification on this process. But if it turns out that the only way the Board can have input is to kick the plan to the curb, or ask the Planning Commission to make new findings, then democracy in San Francisco has been replaced with an empty charade.
“The Board can make changes along the line that David made in the Land Use Committee, “ Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True told me today. But he wasn’t clear on the process next week, and suggested that I call Cohen’s office, which I did (only to find myself shunted to Cohen’s voice mail.)
So, what gives? And why would the Board allow an out-of-town developer in partnership with the Mayor’s Office to sidestep its responsibility in this way?
“We were told we could not make amendments to the EIR, but could make amendments to the plan that we will be voting on this Tuesday,” Campos told me today, noting that he and Mirkarimi were prepared to make changes July 13, but were then told they could not do that.
“The biggest fear I have with this project, and any project this size in this economy, is that a lot is promised, but will anything get developed, or will we be stuck holding the bag,” Campos added.
Similar questions led the Alameda city council to kick developer SunCal to the curb last week. Ironically, the move could open the door to a developer like Lennar to try and swoop in and pick up the pieces in the island city across the Bay from San Francisco.
But folks in Alameda are pointing to San Francisco as an example of how difficult it is to nail down developers, noting that Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top financial advisor, recently admitted that investment money is scarce, even though the city’s EIR for the project has been approved.
Actually, Cohen went a step further by intimating that all the benefits that the community wants out of the plan would deter investors even more—comments that were perhaps just a precursor to this potential bombshell that the Board won’t actually be able to amend the deal, after all? Stay tuned.
Arrests made as hotel workers and their supporters target Hyatt
Images by Ramsey El-Qare, who contributed to this report.
An ongoing labor conflict between the hospitality workers union Unite-Here Local 2 and the Hyatt Corporation boiled over into the streets yesterday (7/22) with a union-organized protest and civil disobedience outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco hotel. Union leaders see the action as another step in the fight for their members’ workplace rights. Hotel management called the action a staged spectacle and a waste of energy that would be better spent at the bargaining table.
San Francisco hospitality workers have been without a contract for nearly a year as Local 2 and hotel management of several corporations have reached an impasse over securing health care benefits, pension improvement, wage increases, and the right to organize without intimidation from employers. San Francisco Police Department Sgt. Tadao Yamaguchi confirmed that 150 demonstrators were arrested after blocking Stockton Street outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco hotel. All were cited and released.
“The Hyatt Corporation has repeatedly said they want workers to pay hundreds of dollars per month for family medical,” Local 2 spokeswoman Riddhi Mehta told the Guardian. “Workers have sacrificed wages for decades to keep health care, to the point that their average income is $30,000 to $35,000 per year.”
Hyatt spokesman Peter Hillman told the Guardian that management wants to renegotiate the health care portion of the contract, but that negotiations hadn’t reached the point to make specific demands for worker contributions to the plan.
“They are sitting on top of $35 million that could be used to help address the overall health care plan that hasn’t been addressed in 30 years,” Hillman told us. “If there is finger pointing on profits and all that, I would ask them why they haven’t opened up that?”
Mehta told the Guardian that $35 million is in an health and welfare trust fund specifically for emergencies, like earthquakes or lockouts in which union members aren’t working enough hours to get health benefits. Local 2 President Mike Casey told the Guardian that the union does not control the trust fund. It’s managed by trustees from both employers and the union. “Bringing this up is it’s a delay tactic on their part,” Mehta said.
Casey, who was arrested during the demonstration, said it was a success. “We’re going to win,” he said. “It’s going to take some time. It’s a question of who’s going to last one day longer than the other side.”
“The game Unite Here is playing is to generate more union membership, to some extent at the expense of the current membership,” Hillman said. “These are staged spectacles. The energy would be better spent at the bargaining table and we encourage Local 2 to come back to that.”
To watch video of the action taken by the Guardian, click here, here, here, here, and here.
Unions say grand juror unethically helped Adachi measure
San Francisco’s police and fire unions are taking a lead role in opposing Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s November initiative to make city employees pay more of their pension and health care costs, despite the fact that both unions have recently renegotiated their contracts to exempt their members from paying those increased costs until 2013.
The unions and Bob Muscat from the San Francisco Labor Council recently formed the group Stand Up for Working Families to run the opposition campaign to Adachi’s SF Smart Reform, yesterday holding a press conference at City Hall to highlight the allegedly unethical role that a grand juror has played in pushing the Adachi measure.
Civil Grand Jury member Craig Weber led the committee that in June released a report on the city’s pension system called “Pension Tsunami: The Billion Dollar Bubble,” warning that employee pension costs to the city would more than double in the next five years and “fundamental adjustments must be made to the City’s employee pension program.”
Yet by the time that report came out (following a similar grand jury report from a year earlier), Weber was already working as treasurer for the Adachi’s signature-gathering campaign, which City Attorney Dennis Herrera called an inappropriate conflict of interest and which Muscat says that raises questions about data manipulation and access to secret grand jury proceedings.
“I have serious concerns in this particular instance that Mr. Weber’s dual roles create a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict of interest, which would undermine the integrity of any Civil Grand Jury investigation into these issues,” Herrera wrote in a June 14 letter to Presiding Judge James McBride, relating how Weber had sought advice from Herrera’s office on the matter in March and that both Weber and the Grand Jury chair refused to heed his advice that Weber recuse himself from working on the report.
“We believe he used his position on the Civil Grand Jury to manipulate the civil grand jury report,” attorney Peter Saltzman, who represents opponents of the measure, said at the press conference.
But Adachi called the charges “just smoke and mirrors,” telling the Guardian that his initiative was based on data from the Controller’s Office and that the measure was written and publicly available before the latest grand jury report was released. “We received zero information from the grand jury,” Adachi told us. “We relied on public information that we received from the Controller’s Office.”
He has claimed the measure will save the city about $167 million per year by making city employees pay more into their pensions and health care costs for their dependents, although that figure will be lower for the next two years because of exemptions that were written into five police and fire memorandums of understanding that the Board of Supervisors approved last week, agreements negotiated by the Mayor’s Office and opposed by Sups. David Campos and Chris Daly (Sup. Ross Mirkarimi also voted against the MOU for Fire Department executives) because of the exemption.
Police union head Gary Delagnes, who was at the press conference, told the Guardian that the special consideration for those two unions – both of which are key supporters of Mayor Gavin Newsom — was simply a function of negotiating their MOUs later than the other unions. “By the time we and the firefighters were in there, this thing [Adachi’s campaign] had really picked up steam,” he told us.
During the press conference, Muscat highlighted how billionaire Michael Moritz, managing partner of Sequoia Capital, put almost a quarter-million-dollars into qualifying the Adachi measure for the ballot and said, “This is a measure not in the interests of anyone in San Francisco and it represents the interests of people outside of San Francisco” who are attacking public employee unions for political reasons.
Safety first!
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.
The number of serious on-the-job accidents this year have yet again made very clear the urgent need for expanded and tightened government safety regulation. The toll on workers has been high, as President Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers union told the House Education and Labor Committee in mid-July.
Roberts noted the explosion at a mine in West Virginia that killed 29 coal miners, a blast at a refinery in Washington State that killed seven workers, the BP oil rig blast in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11, an explosion that killed six workers at an Energy Systems facility in Connecticut.
Those were but a very small sampling of the on-the-job accidents that kill nearly 6,000 U.S. workers every year. More than two million other American workers are seriously injured yearly. And another 50,000 or more die yearly from cancer, lung and heart ailments and other occupational diseases caused by exposure to toxic substances.
The Mine Workers’ Roberts came before the House committee to urge passage of a bill, the Miner Safety and Health Act, that focuses on mine safety but also includes provisions that would strengthen safety protections in all other workplaces.
Joe Main, who heads the federal Mine Safety and Health Agency, said the bill would do nothing less than “change the culture of safety in the mining industry, and put the health and safety of miners first.” That indeed would be a major shift in focus, a very much needed and most welcome shift.
It’s sad but true that the safety of miners has often been a secondary consideration of many mine owners and government regulators. Greater profit and productivity – not safety – has been the overriding concern, and far too many workers have suffered because of that.
Too many have been maimed, too many killed for lack of proper protections, some required by law but ignored, some not required at all, however essential they are.
The Mine Safety and Health Agency’s Main says the proposed law would give his agency the tools to make employers live up to their legal and moral obligation. And if they don’t meet their obligation, the agency would be empowered to step in to see that they do so.
As the AFL-CIO’s general counsel, Lynn Rinehart, told the House committee, the federal job safety laws – now 40 years old – are way out-of-date. They have never been significantly strengthened, Rinehart noted, and their penalties are slight compared to those imposed for violations of other labor laws.
What’s more, Rinehart said, the law gives workers little protection from employer retaliation against those who raise safety concerns. Current law, he added, “simply does not provide a sufficient deterrent against employers who would cut corners on safety and put workers in harm’s way.”
Among the bill’s most important provisions is one that would guarantee workers the right to refuse to work in unsafe conditions. That right is guaranteed in mineworker union contracts, and for good reason: Non-union miners have long complained that they fear employer retaliation if they speak out about mine safety problems.
The bill would give the mine safety agency authority to close a mine if there’s a continuing threat to workers safety, and would subject mine owners to increased civil and criminal penalties for safety violations.
The AFL-CIO’s Rinehart noted that the median penalty for having working conditions that cause a fatality was a mere $5,000 in 2009. The penalties generally have been mere slaps on the wrist.
One of the most important parts of the proposed safety law would extend coverage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act – OSHA – to the millions of local and state government employees who are not covered by the law.
Sponsors of the proposed law face formidable opposition – the National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and nearly two dozen other industry groups whose members aren’t eager to spend money on safer workplaces.
The Bush administration was openly on the side of those groups. Safety laws were only lightly enforced – if enforced at all – by the Bush appointees who ran the federal safety agencies. Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s safety and health director, figures it will take years to reverse and undo the “many bad policies and practices that were put into place” under Bush.
It will indeed be a long time before the government can provide the full protection from on-the-job hazards that will continue to needlessly harm millions of American workers. But the proposed new safety law, and the worker-friendly Obama administration, give us a fighting chance to finally do what must be done if we are to have truly safe workplaces.
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.
Live Shots: Keane, Fox Theater, 7/20/2010
Imagine you were on a long summer road trip and hours have passed.
A perfect go-to group to pop in would be Keane. Its music is hypnotic, and with the windows rolled down, wind blowing through your hair, they make perfect companions to sing along to on the open road.
There are so many awesome British bands and Keane is definitely one of them. As part of their Night Train tour, Keane performed Tuesday night to an ecstatic audience at the Fox Theater in Oakland. The band has a very lively, almost goofy, energy about them, making them fun to watch as they bounce across the stage. Keep a keen ear on this band. And now I gotta know … what else is on your road trip mix?
RecPark boots child care program to make money
San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission voted July 15 to let an expensive private preschool displace a free, 38-year-old City College parenting class that included guided activities for children. College officials and neighborhood groups understand the desire to make money from rent at the Laurel Hills Playground clubhouse, but they’re upset about how little notice and community input was involved in the decision.
“On the face of it, they wanted to lease this property and they didn’t really care what the public thought,” City College Trustee John Rizzo told the Guardian. “They cared so little about the public that it was too late once they were notified.”
The commission approved a two-year lease for Language in Action, a preschool offering nine-month terms immersing two to five year olds in Spanish and Mandarin. Tuition ranges from $1,000 — for two hours per day, two days per week — to $14,000 for full day, five day per week instruction, according to the company’s website.
“People want to call it privatization. I think that’s an offensive word. I would rather call it revenue generating for site appropriate uses and recreation,” Recreation and Park Commission President Mark Buell said at the July 15 meeting. “It’s a reality.”
City College Child Development and Family Studies Department Chair Kathleen White told the Guardian that she feels torn by the position of having to compete with other child care services. “I never want to stand in the way of child care, this is my department,” she said. “We all want the same thing. We want parenting classes and we want child care. There should be plenty of places in the Park and Rec [Department] to do both.”
Freelance San Francisco writer Ellen Lee, who used to attend City College’s child observation class with her toddler, told the Guardian there were attributes of the program that she would miss, although she hopes to enroll her child in the Language in Action preschool.
“It’s the little things,” she said. “I learned new songs that I could sing to her at home. They gave out handouts every week on different child development issues — how to deal with temper tantrums and that kind of thing. The teacher was always available to talk with us.” Lee wrote an article on the termination of the class at Laurel Hill here.
The Recreation and Park commission elected to evict the City College class in favor of a tenant that could pay $1,500 per month for use of the clubhouse. Laurel Heights neighborhood groups expressed some interest in fundraising to save the class and help City College pay the rent, but the process happened too quickly to mobilize during a term when the school has cancelled summer classes and almost no faculty are on campus, White said. The community college is prohibited by state law from charging tuition for non-credit courses like the parenting class and is facing a $12 million deficit.
“We’re in as dire straights as Park and Rec is,” White told the Guardian.
City College Trustee Chris Jackson, who is running for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors, told us the college combated its dire budget deficit by cutting salaries at the top, a tactic he recommended for both the Recreation and Park Department and San Francisco as a whole. He suggested bringing middle and upper management positions to the level they were 10 years ago, saving jobs for entry-level workers and free public programs like the City College class.
“When you start charging and raising fees for some of these public programs, especially in working class neighborhoods like District 10, people start dropping out of them, and you create a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Rizzo spoke to what he called a disturbing trend of privatization and fees the Recreation and Parks Department has adopted while attempting to close its own budget deficit. The Board of Supervisors voted in May to allow the department to charge a $7 admission to non-resident visitors at the Golden Gate Park Botanical Gardens. Threesixty theater’s production of Peter Pan in Ferry Park has turned the once free park into a fenced-in, fee-charging venue.
“The public is kicked out and private interest comes in,” Rizzo said.
Janet Reilly should stay in the race
Now that a judge has ruled that Michela Alioto-Pier can run again for her District Two seat, a wide-open race has become a little strange. Janet Reilly had already rounded up the endorsements of Democratic Party heavies like Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, along with Gavin Newsom. Of course, Newsom has always supported Alioto-Pier in the past; he no doubt backed Reilly because he figured (as did a lot of us) that City Attorney Dennis Herrera was right and Alioto-Pier was termed out. Same goes for Feinstein and Pelosi, who won’t want to be in the position of opposing an incumbent supervisor who has always sided with the downtown establishment.
So now what do all those people do?
Add in the fact that Herrera, who still thinks his position was correct, might decide to appeal, and the state Appeals Court might still intervene and kick Alioto-Pier off the ballot, and anyone who switches endorsements after this ruling might have to do it again after that one, and you’ve got quite a political mess.
The only thing that gets the entire power structure of the local Democratic Party off the hook is if Reilly drops out and says she doesn’t want to fight Alioto-Pier. There’s going to be immense pressure on her to do just that; I bet someone from Pelosi’s office has already called.
But Reilly needs to hang tough. She’s a good candidate who could mount a serious challenge to Alioto-Pier, who needs a challenge. District Two isn’t going to elect a left-progressive, but Reilly would be a much more independent supervisor. I couldn’t reach her today, but she told the Chron she was going to make up her mind this fall. My advice: Don’t spend a lot of time debating (which leaves all your supporters up in the air). Announce right away that you’re in the race for good, that you’re in it to win and that you look forward to a lively debate on the issues facing the city. And if Pelosi and Feinstein back off from their endorsements, they look bad and you look fine.
Street Threads: Look of the Day
Today’s Look: Maryanne, Civic Center Farmers Market
Tell us about your look: “I got these legwarmers from Wallgreens. I got these Rocket Dog Mules in 2001 and I’ve done everything to preserve them, including taking a hot glue gun to them!”
“Mission’s first farmers market” checks off its grocery list
I watch as Theresa Alvarez painstakingly turns four year old Rolando Steinway-Raybon into a tiger with the palette of face-paints sitting in front of the Mission Beacon neighborhood organizer. Next to them, speakers bumped a hip hop song. Down the block of Bartlett Street where they sat, community members were buying and selling bags of salad greens and edible flowers, white peaches, homemade soaps, and pupusas that came with salad and salsa for the princely sum of $2. A lot going on at the first Mission Community Market, which Alvarez takes as a good sign.
“We’re not only giving out produce, but services people might need,” she told me between happily decorated children. Alvarez’s face-painting operation had set up shop behind a table full of literature about Mission Beacon, the local organization she works for whose mission is to empower youth by exposing them to new places and skills – a bike club and a gardening class are two of the programs that the group offers out of Everett Middle School.
The presence of neighborhood nonprofits – Dolores Community Youth Alliance and volunteers from the Mission YMCA had joined Alvarez in organizing the kids play space and were also distributing information about their programs in the hopes of attracting new volunteers – was one sign that this is a market that’s trying hard to address the needs of local residents.
Rolando Steinway-Raybon and sister Naijella show off their new facial flair, courtesy of the kid’s space at the first Mission Community Market
The concept was first dreamed up in November of 2009 at public planning meetings for the Mission Streetscape Plan, which is re-envisioning street usage in the neighborhood. One of the market’s head organizers, Jeremy Shaw, told me its implementation followed a three point plan; “one, the farmers market, which promotes healthy eating. Number two, supporting emerging businesses, people that don’t have the capital for a storefront. Number three, community programs. We’re saying, we’re going to provide this public space and you can do what you want with it. We can use this street for more than just cars.”
True that said the crowd yesterday evening; we can use it for veggies! And for playing four square! And the strumming tunes of a mini-orchestral group! As I strolled through in the early evening hours, the block was slowly filling up with shoppers and those who had paused on their way home to see what all the commotion was about. At 5:30 p.m., volunteers at both entrances told me that they’d already counted around 330 attendees, and expected the numbers to rise as more people got off work. The market raised money for this week’s opening at a fundraiser on Bartlett Street in June, and aims to close the block between 21st and 22nd Street every week at the same time, Thursdays from 4-8 p.m.
Entrepreneurs from the Women’s Initiative hawked wares alongside the produce farmers, including Rubber Ducky Soap Co. owner Kelly Smith. Smith, who stood cheerfully behind her table stacked with naturally made bath products in a green skirt and retro cateye glasses, joined the Women’s Initiative in 2000 to gather the “networking, support groups, and knowledge” she needed to make her enterprise profitable. She recently used her business acumen to help create a new farmers market herself, in a largely abandoned strip mall parking lot in her town of Marinwood. So how were Sharp, the Streetscape Plan, and the Mission District doing on their first market day? “I have to congratulate them,” Smith told me, smiling. “They’re already so tapped into the community, that’s the basic. Its a nice honor to be a part of opening day.”
That connection gives Alvarez hope that the Mission Community Market will meet the needs of its neighborhood beyond just its shopping lists. “It’s hard when people do this without community organizations and families. In the last several years, the neighborhood’s been transforming. I think us being a partner [in the market] will help preserve what’s special about this area.”
Update: 1500 attendees came to the market’s first week!
Mission Community Market
every Thursday, 4-8 p.m., free
22nd St. and Bartlett, SF
www.missioncommunitymarket.org
Looking for silver lining in SF bee hate crime
SF Bee Cause director and beekeeper extraordinaire Karen Peteros talked to the media last afternoon, as a group of reporters clustered around the sad sight of thousands of dead bees in and around two of three hives that were attacked by an unknown person who sprayed insecticide into their entrances, probably on Tuesday night.
A few of the bees were still wiggling a little, but Peteros said none of them can be saved.
“They’ve been poisoned,” she said, as a carnivorous wasp pulled at a dead bee carcass next to her feet.
“We’ll be able to salvage the bee hive boxes,” Peteros added, explaining how she’ll have to scorch and set the boxes aside for a year to make sure they are clear of poisons.
Peteros acknowledged that some folks are deadly afraid of bees, and noted that the Hayes Valley Farm had a number of interactions with a neighbor who complained about bees.
“But when fear takes over any rational consideration of science, that’s too bad,” she said.
Peteros told reporters how bees are crucial pollinators to the world’s food supply, and produce honey, which has anti-microbial properties, and propolis (the resin bees collect from trees to help glue their hive together), which is used in the cosmetics industry.
“And then there’s apitherapy, in which people get bees to sting them at the site of arthritis or other degenerative disorders, to shock their immune systems in a beneficial way.
Peteros said she is not aware of any other violence against honey bees being committed in San Francisco, other than folks perhaps kicking over hives and/or trying to steal honey.
“I’ve never heard of anyone spraying pesticide into a hive,” she said. “I get it that for some folks, a bee sting can be deadly. But bees aren’t interested in people, they are interested in flowers, and only certain flowers that produce nectar and pollen that they want. So, just because some folks are afraid of bees, mostly because they are confusing them with yellow jacket wasps which are aggressive and sting repeatedly, is no reason to exclude hives from a city, especially a city that encourages urban agriculture and therefore needs pollinators.”
Hayes Valley Farm is planning a wake for all their poor dead bees this Sunday afternoon.
“But we can’t compost them because they are contaminated with pesticide,” Peteros said.
“Bees are wildlife, wonderful creatures right in our midst,” she added. “We are trying to create transitional job opportunities based on apiculture, so folks can assist community gardens who want to attract and cultivate bees.
“We have other hives at Alemany Farm, so we can sell honey to get revenue,” she said. “If people want to contribute to help us replace the lost hives and bees, they can got to the Hayes Valley Farm website and mark their donation for bees. No amount is too small.”
Looking into the future, Peteros said the farm has a vision of getting an acre of land at McLaren Park, which has a lot of wild areas.
“The dream is to do a pollinator demonstration garden that attracts a multitude of pollinators, including bees and butterflies,” Peteros said. “And we are talking to the Friends of the Urban Forest about the ‘wildlife factor’ when they do plantings.”
Last but not least, Peteros explained why San Francisco is a particularly great city to raise and attract bees.
“It’s because of all our eucalyptus trees,” Peteros said, acknowledging that her answer likely won’t please native plant enthusiasts. “But because the blue gums bloom in December and the red gum bloom until October, there are only two months when something isn’t blooming that’s a good source of pollen and nectar.”
Freeing up the ballet — Post:Ballet performs at Cowell Theater
Call me a bourgeois classicist, but I like pretty dance. Maybe a decade of ballet training left me partial to a streamline aesthetic and women in pointe shoes, but regardless, I think there is something undeniably appealing about watching dance rooted in beauty. Luckily, choreographer Robert Dekkers knows how to make dance that is both aesthetically pleasing and free from some of the more restrictive aspects of ballet. No tutus, tight buns, or overly sweet sugarplum fairies with Dekkers’ new contemporary ballet company, Post:Ballet. In its inaugural performance at Cowell Theater last weekend (July 16-17), the company proved that even classical ballet dancers are capable of moving with the free-flowing release associated with modern dance.
Post:Ballet’s “Concert One” opened with Dekkers’ Milieu (2009). The curtain rose to reveal the dancers—dressed in simple yet attractive Yumiko leotards and shorts—crouched, head in hands, in various folded shapes on stage. With live music and an exciting original score by SF based composer Daniel Berkman (known for his eclectic sound and mastery of the kora, a 21-string harp/lute from West Africa), Milieu instantly took on an innovative and experimental feel. Emerging from their crouching positions like primordial birds hatching from eggs, the dancers began dancing through a series of geometrical movements with both precision and fluidity. While the stage became a flurry of activity, the dancers—Alessandra Ball, Beau Campbell, Ashley Flaner, Jared Hunt, Beth Kaczmarek, David Ligon, and Christian Squires—maintained Dekkers’ complex, high-octane choreography with graceful vigor. Like Dekkers’ other pieces, Milieu does not revolve around a story-based narrative. Instead the highly expressive movements speak for themselves.
This is nowhere more evident than in Dekkers’ passionate duet B-Sides (2009). Christian Squires and Jared Hunt took the stage by storm as they moved together through interdependent, asymmetrical leans, expansive jumps and sleek gestures. Music by Grizzly Bear paired perfectly with the boys’ boundless energy and vibrant expression.
Just as impressive as the boys were the girls in Dekkers’ trio Flutter. Appearing onstage in flowy tops and black shorts, the three, long legged women—Campbell, Flaner, and Kaczmarek—looked like Grecian muses. The women moved through meticulous movements in rhythmic cannon to Steve Reich’s percussive Clapping Music before giving way to Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 2 with more romantic, free flowing leg extensions and feather light rolls on the ground.
While the dancers all held their own throughout the show, it was in the closing piece—Dekkers’ newest work, The Happiness of Pursuit— that the dancers seemed the most comfortable and brought the most energy to the stage. As the dancers skipped, slid, and leaned up against each other to a score by Jacob Wolkenhauer, they embodied a playful and eager innocence. Even as the piece built in intensity and speed, the dancers — executing fast-paced leg kicks, intricate hand gestures, and urgent crawls — never lost their underlying joy. It is that sense of eager joy and fresh charisma that will see Dekkers’ Post:Ballet through many more concerts to come.
Experience the Joys and Panes of Metropolis
For months, I’m been covering and working on the Temple of Flux project, a collaboration of literally hundreds of Bay Area artists and residents to create this year’s Temple at Burning Man. This amazing, inspiring effort to create a truly unique temple is being accompanied by an equally ambitious fundraising effort to pay for the project, with the last big fundraiser this Saturday night at Supperclub.
“Windows: Joys and Panes of Metropolis” features outstanding live performances, top DJs, and an auction of original artworks created by more than 20 artists from old window panes (including my painting of the Armory as seen from my roof, with windows you can peer into the see a BDSM porn collage diorama). Other artists include Peter Hudson, Rebecca Anders, Jess Hobbs, Richard Blakely, Victoria Heilweil, and Phil Spitler, while performers range from the Cheesepuffs to Clandestine.
The fun starts at 9:30 p.m. and the art auction closes at 1:30 a.m., with admission for a $15-$25 sliding scale. We hope to see you there.
– Scribe
The top 10 films of 2010’s first half — one take
By now we’re past the halfway point of 2010, the inaugural year of another decade in movies. So far, the selection of great films has been scant –– though, as usual, the coming of winter and the iron hand of film’s favorite fascist Harvey Weinstein signal Oscar-worthy films in our future. These are the best films of 2010, so far, in alphabetical order. And yes, I have seen Inception, but I did miss The Ghost Writer. Cold Weather (Aaron Katz)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEggB8DvXP4
Aaron Katz acts as the much-needed liaison between mumblecore and non-mumblecore (what would that be? Everything Else? Screamcore?), forgoing an already tired genre (though Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha remains great) for a totally weird existential detective story. Cold Weather stirs up the naturalism of mumblecore with the more exciting draw of, say, an independent thriller.
Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTlm6dU2xHk
The exit of this Gift Shop could’ve led us down an enigmatic path forged by Banksy for his own self-gratification. Yet, for the most part, he turns the camera completely away from himself –– despite a few shadowy moments –– and onto Thierry Guetta, also known as Mr. Brainwash, also known as the biggest art hack of the 21st century.
Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjV2GXxrEMI
Speaking of mumblecore, Noah Baumbach’s (The Squid and the Whale) latest bittersweet-slice-of-life stars mumblecore muse Greta Gerwig as the bemused and socially uncomfortable Florence as Ben Stiller’s love interest (or, more accurately, emotional plaything/fuck buddy). Baumbach’s screenplay is spare, mostly plotless, yet full of the scars of real life that are mostly healed but always leave a mark.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnojZw54ls
One of the best documentaries about show business ever, A Piece of Work is just that and more. It is the root canal of a starlet going sour, a woman trying to elevate herself above flotsam-status. Joan Rivers has never been so heartbreaking before, nor has she been this saucy.
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgwjTy_cohg
This is the best tragicomedy about family in America that I’ve seen in awhile. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore note-perfectly elicit all the nuances of a very long marriage. Cholodenko works in a language that can be universally understood and in some way, I can’t help but think she’s made a great case for gay marriage.
Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi9WlsYCr-k
In Nicole Holofcener’s (Lovely and Amazing) sometimes icky dramadey, Catherine Keener is brilliant as a polarizing character who tries to have a heart of gold –– but all her liberal trappings are weighing her down. Rebecca Hall plays a woman who is sort of the opposite: a genuinely good person for whom things just don’t work out. These are some of the year’s best performances.
Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYVrHkYoY80
A totally misunderstood, underrated genre romp, Shutter Island is Scorsese’s Shining: occasionally terrifying, oozing with hallucinatory visuals and an ending that could be potentially be seen as a cop-out. Leonardo DiCaprio, in all his tortured, splashing-water-on-his-face-in-front-of-the-mirror madness, has utterly convinced me he’s one of today’s great actors.
Splice (Vincenzo Natali)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6o_Vl2f07Q
Splice is probably the most fun I’ve had at the movies this year. It’s fucking scary, it reeks of Freud, and Adrien Brody looks brutally hot –– again. But seriously, guys, if you consider yourself a horror or sci-fi buff at all, you’ll most likely take great pleasure and comfort in this film, and the fact that Vincenzo Natali restored my faith in horror. The most remarkable splicing is the one with thrills and laughs. This movie is mostly horrifying for its 104-minute running time, and hilarious for at least 80 of those minutes.
White Material (Claire Denis)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2noQowyoKQ
I don’t really know what the hell happened in this movie –– most of the senior citizens seeing it at the PFA didn’t know, either –– but all I need are lots of grainy handheld close-ups of Isabelle Huppert’s face to know White Material is good.
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ8kqytI_oA
Granik wow’d me with 2004’s Down to the Bone, and she’s thrown us yet another bone with Winter’s Bone, a bloody and downright biblical tale of the Ozarks. Granik is so skilled because she deals in rich, beautiful symbolism that’s never too obvious, nor is it cockeyed. She might very well be the Dardenne Brothers of the West.
HONORABLE MENTION: I almost forgot Sex and the City 2 (Michael Patrick King). It transcends this list. It is the list-defier of all list-defiers. It’s just that good. So good, in fact, that I just can’t parse it with words.
Board reverses mayor’s mental health cuts
San Francisco’s $6.5 billion budget, which the Board of Supervisors approved late Tuesday nigth, included a complete restoration of outpatient mental health services funded through the city’s Department of Public Health. The board is expected to finalize the same budget after a second reading scheduled for July 27.
The board reversed a more than $4.1 million cut to community behavioral health services proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom in early June, which would have affected a dozen agencies and approximately 1,000 patients. As the Guardian reported on June 8, Newsom’s massive cut to the DPH would have resulted in a much greater loss to community nonprofits that leverage federal dollars from city funding to treat San Francisco’s most severely mentally ill homeless and poor.
Sup. Bevan Dufty told the Guardian he was very impressed by Citywide Case Management and Community Focus after walking rounds with one of the nonprofit’s caseworkers. Citywide is one of the San Francisco’s best performing mental health nonprofits, according to DPH reviews, and it would also have been the hardest hit under Newsom’s plan.
“It’s clear to me that this is a program that we ought to be doubling rather than cutting,” Dufty told us. “The more that people saw what they were doing, the more people would get behind what they were doing. Other cities are building models based on what Citywide Case management is doing now.”
Citywide Director Dr. David Fariello wrote the Guardian this letter about restoration of funding to his program to the Guardian: “We have good news for the supporters of Citywide Case Management and Community Focus mental health services. As you remember we were facing the prospect of 38 percent budget lose and cutting services to 240 of the severely mentally ill clients that we treat. On July 20, the Board of Supervisors voted for a full restoration of outpatient mental health services. This means that we will not need to cut services to the clients we serve.
“Your article, as well as phone calls, emails, and letters from supporters made clear to the Mayor’s Office and to the Board of Supervisors how critical our services are. Citywide/Community Focus supporters generated more input than any other budget cut issue. The Mayor restored 40 percent of our cuts, even after submitting his budget to the Board of Supervisors. Ours was the only cut to be so restored. The Board restored the remainder along with other outpatient mental health programs.
“Thank you for your support. In return, we are rededicating ourselves to providing comprehensive, cutting-edge, quality treatment to those San Franciscans at highest risk because of their mental illness.”
The king is dead, love live SF Theater Pub
SF Theater Pub’s one-night-only presentation of Alfred Jarry’s bawdy classic Ubu Roi this past Monday felt like nothing so much as a group of dedicated friends putting on a show because they thought it just might turn out awesome. The staged reading took place at SF lounge Café Royale, a pleasant venue with couches and balcony seats as well as standing room that rendered the production all the more intimate.
The play is a deliberately sick-and-twisted piss-take on Macbeth, eviscerated of all its pathos and stuffed full of crap, and the Theater Pub performers, as well as director Bennett Fisher’s new translation, seemed entirely tuned in to its irreverence. Greedy, grubby protagonist Pere Ubu was played with alternating witlessness and pomposity by Sam Leichter, but the most successful comic performer on display was Catherine Lardas, who delivered a positively Oliver Hardy-esque Mere Ubu. The herald Pile (Warden Lawlor) stood above the other actors on the balcony, reciting increasingly complicated titles for Pere Ubu as he continued to murder and annex the positions of several other noblemen.
Music and sound effects from DJ Wait What were evocative of old radio plays, and the minimal use of props such as a giant plastic sword generated a few laughs. The show certainly felt like a one-off event, with all the actors reading their lines from music stands, but this only added to the sense of comeraderie and fun.
Besides the fact that SF Theater Pub’s events are free (a donation at the door will get you a raffle ticket!), their most attractive feature is their apparent modernist sensibility when selecting plays. They’ve already put on Václav Havel’s Audience and an assortment of Greek tragedies. They’re following up Ubu with a collection of short local plays under the heading “The Pint Sized Plays.” Their blog then announces a series of Beckett shorts for September, though on Monday night they claimed September would hold some Oscar Wilde performances.
Most fascinatingly to this reporter, they’ll be celebrating Halloween with a series of radio play-style adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories. There’s nothing I love more than hearing people say “eldritch” and “gibbous” out loud, so those should be jolly good fun. This diverse roster of plays, as well as a genuine sense of joy, means SF Theater Pub are ones to watch in the coming months. Especially since watching them is totally free!
SF hospitality workers to protest Hyatt today
San Francisco hospitality workers will join hotel employees in 14 other cities across the United States and Canada today, July 22, in a protest and civil disobedience demonstration against the Hyatt Corporation. The action in San Francisco begins at Local 2 Plaza, between 3rd and 4th streets on Market, at 4 p.m. The demonstration will eventually move toward Union Square and the Grand Hyatt San Francisco hotel, organizers said.
More than 1,000 protesters are expected in San Francisco, with approximately 150 prepared to be arrested, hospitality union Unite Here Local 2 spokeswoman Riddhi Mehta told the Guardian. Tens of thousands of hotel workers are anticipated to participate in protests across North America, and more than 1,000 plan to be arrested.
The union is demanding a contract with the Hyatt Corporation that does not unduly burden middle-class workers with health care costs, Mehta said.
“The Hyatt Corporation has repeatedly said they want workers to pay hundreds of dollars per month for family medical,” Mehta told the Guardian. “Workers have sacrificed wages for decades to keep health care, to the point that their average income is $30,000 to $35,000 per year.”
Union hospitality workers have been without a contract in the city for nearly a year, resulting in an organized boycott of eight San Francisco hotels, including the three owned by the Hyatt Corporation. Union leaders criticize Hyatt’s attempts to “lock workers into recession” while the corporation has made windfall profits since the company first offered public sale of stock last November, according to the Hotel Workers Rising website.
Laura’s Law’s reactionary backers demonize progressives
San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius often gets things wrong in his columns, sometimes painfully so. Nobody’s perfect and we all make mistakes. But what’s less excusable is the fact that Chuck’s erroneous reporting, prominently presented by his newspaper, almost always serves a conservative political agenda. Even worse is that he won’t admit when he gets something wrong, even when directly confronted with accurate information – a cardinal sin for anyone who considers himself a journalist.
I experienced Chuck’s incurious intransigence at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the same day his column on Laura’s Law – which Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier is proposing to implement in San Francisco — appeared in the paper. Laura’s Law is a controversial measure that would allow counties to force medication and other psychiatric treatments on individuals who show signs of schizophrenia and other serious mental health issues, but who haven’t committed any crimes.
As with a Chronicle editorial the day before, Nevius took an overheated whack at progressives for not wholeheartedly supporting the measure: “Laura’s Law, which provides court-ordered mental health treatment for those individuals, is the kind of bold, breakthrough idea the city was once known to promote. But today, when it is considered by the Board of Supervisors, it will face an uphill battle. This is San Francisco at its worst, protecting small constituencies, worrying about legal consequences and letting lobbyists carry the agenda. It is an embarrassment for the city that used to know how to take a courageous stand.”
But none of that was true. The reality is that forcing treatment on mental health patients is an issue that divides that community and raises civil liberties concerns. This is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree, but Nevius’s column never aired that perspective, and it didn’t even mention that forced medication was an aspect of this law, so I asked him why and whether he understood that.
Nevius vehemently denied that forced medication was part of Laura’s Law, even though Dr. James Dillard from SF General Hospital had just testified that “medication is the single most important aspect of this care,” given that the patients involved are often exhibiting psychotic behavior, testimony on which Nevius took no notes and seemed to be playing with his phone during.
So I pulled out my own Iphone and quickly pulled up this recent article by the Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan, where the opening sentence defines the purpose of the law as “to compel the mentally ill to take medications.” Still, Nevius didn’t believe it, illogicaly quibbling over the definition of “compel,” and we stepped out into the hall to argue for a moment. There, representatives for the California Network of Mental Health Clients were gathered to oppose implementation of the law, distributing literature calling it, “an outdated, coercive, unproven, and divisive law that codifies involuntary outpatient commitment.” I left them to educate Nevius and went back inside, but after a few minutes he pulled me out to listen to one guy say that the law didn’t have strong enough teeth, thinking this supported his point. But when I asked point blank whether the law was about involuntary treatment, he agreed it was – and still Nevius wouldn’t relent.
Now, this is a complex issue, and Laura’s Law may actually be a good idea on balance. But rather than relying solely on horrific anecdotes of mentally ill people who commit crimes, as both Nevius and Alioto-Pier are doing, a smart and thorough legislative process will take into account a broad array of issues, including civil liberties concerns.
That’s what the progressive supervisors who Nevius tried to demonize did during the hearing, asking many questions for which Alioto-Pier didn’t have good answers. Dr. Mitch Katz, who runs the city’s Department of Public Health, the agency that would implement the law, opposes Laura’s Law but neither Alioto-Pier or Nevius could explain why in a way that made sense, and Katz was out of town during the hearing.
So rather than be pressured by these hyperventilating reactionaries, the board did the right thing and – over Alioto-Pier’s objections — delayed consideration of the item by two weeks, expressing support for the notion of improved pubic safety and mental health treatment, noting that the budget proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom would have slashed mental health treatment services in the city, and asking for more information to reach a well-considered decision.
Nevius loves to paint progressives as wild-eyed ideologues who won’t listen to reason, but once again, this episode seems to show that it is this city’s so-called “moderates” that are most prone to going off on half-cocked ideological crusades using the most reactionary arguments.
Thousands of bees murdered at Hayes Valley Farm
Very sad news about a massive honey bee crime at Hayes Valley Farm: apparently, sometime between the late afternoons of July 19 and July 20, someone sprayed pesticide into two San Francisco Bee-Cause (SFBC) honey bee colonies at Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) and tried to do the same to a third, smaller colony, according to Karen Peteros, SFBC’s bee keeper.
Peteros reports that thousands of bees died immediately or rushed for air in the first two hives, blocking the entrance and making escape impossible. And that he third colony, maintained by Chris Burley, lost 60-70 percent of its members.
“The distinct scent of household pesticide could be smelled around the entrance and ventilation holes of the SFBC hives, and around the piles of dead bees,” Peteros writes. “ A sample of the residue from around the ventilation holes and a sampling of the dead bees have been preserved for analysis. A police report has been filed.”
She also reports that each of the two exterminated colonies was healthy and thriving and likely consisted of 60,000-100,000 individuals, and was set to produce 20-30 medium frames of honey which HVF planned to sell to support the work of SFBC.
It’s hard to imagine what was going through the perpetrator(s)’ heads. But whatever their motive, it seems there is a need for more education about bees in general and the vital role they play in pollination in particular—a role that helps produce one third of the world’s food supply.
Unlike wasps, which prey on spiders and ladybugs and other insects and have the ability to sting multiple times, bees are entirely vegetarian, a switch their ancestors made back in the great angiosperm explosion some 80 million years ago that produced our modern-day flowers. That switch means bees live on and raise their brood entirely from pollen (also known as bee bread) and nectar, and are unlikely to sting you, unless you approach their hives. (Could be the folks responsible for this massacre got stung quite a few times in the process of spraying all these bees, so that could be a helpful clue in tracking them down.)
But most people consistently confuse wasps, which are hairless and can sting multiple times, with bees, which are fuzzy and can only sting once, and then die, unless they happen to be the queen bee, which can sting many times.
A recent example of the general ignorance about bees were July 2 news reports that folks had been stung by “bees” at the Alameda County Fair’s fireworks show. It turned out that the insects were in fact yellow jackets, which are a type of wasp. But national news outlets repeatedly reported that bees were to blame.
Thousands of dead bees litter the ground at Hayes Valley Farm
Thousands of bees murdered at Hayes Valley Farm
Very sad news about a massive honey bee crime at Hayes Valley Farm: apparently, sometime between the late afternoons of July 19 and July 20, someone sprayed pesticide into two San Francisco Bee-Cause (SFBC) honey bee colonies at Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) and tried to do the same to a third, smaller colony, according to Karen Peteros, SFBC’s bee keeper.
Peteros reports that thousands of bees died immediately or rushed for air in the first two hives, blocking the entrance and making escape impossible. And that he third colony, maintained by Chris Burley, lost 60-70 percent of its members.
“The distinct scent of household pesticide could be smelled around the entrance and ventilation holes of the SFBC hives, and around the piles of dead bees,” Peteros writes. “ A sample of the residue from around the ventilation holes and a sampling of the dead bees have been preserved for analysis. A police report has been filed.”
She also reports that each of the two exterminated colonies was healthy and thriving and likely consisted of 60,000-100,000 individuals, and was set to produce 20-30 medium frames of honey which HVF planned to sell to support the work of SFBC.
It’s hard to imagine what was going through the perpetrator(s)’ heads. But whatever their motive, it seems there is a need for more education about bees in general and the vital role they play in pollination in particular—a role that helps produce one third of the world’s food supply.
Unlike wasps, which prey on spiders and ladybugs and other insects and have the ability to sting multiple times, bees are entirely vegetarian, a switch their ancestors made back in the great angiosperm explosion some 80 million years ago that produced our modern-day flowers. That switch means bees live on and raise their brood entirely from pollen (also known as bee bread) and nectar, and are unlikely to sting you, unless you approach their hives. (Could be the folks responsible for this massacre got stung quite a few times in the process of spraying all these bees, so that could be a helpful clue in tracking them down.)
But most people consistently confuse wasps, which are hairless and can sting multiple times, with bees, which are fuzzy and can only sting once, and then die, unless they happen to be the queen bee, which can sting many times.
A recent example of the general ignorance about bees were July 2 news reports that folks had been stung by “bees” at the Alameda County Fair’s fireworks show. It turned out that the insects were in fact yellow jackets, which are a type of wasp. But national news outlets repeatedly reported that bees were to blame.
Restore Hetch Hetchy throws another curveball
It would be lovely to be able to talk seriously about removing the dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley, to restore John Muir’s “holiest temple” and expand hiking and camping areas in Yosemite. But I’m not ready to go there right now — and to claim that giardia in the water is a good reason to dynamite O’Shaugnessy Dam is a bit beyond silly.
The Chron writes about the Restore Hetch Hetchy movement every now and then, and there’s always a lot of talk about the water system. But the paper never seems to mention the other part of the dam — it generates electricity. And it was, and remains, the lynchpin of what’s supposed to be a public power system in San Francisco.
Congress would never have allowed San Francisco to build the dam if it was just for water. The whole deal, memorialized in the Raker Act of 1913, hinged on the city using the dam for both water and power, and using the power to establish a public-power beachead in Northern California to compete against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Tear down the dam and the city loses not only a pristine water supply but enough non-fossil-fuel electricity to power a significant part of its electricity needs.
I know that there’s a lot of controversy about large hydro as renewable power, but the dam’s already there, and I think everyone agrees that existing hydro is a better source of electricity than coal, oil, natural gas or nukes.
In a perfect world (and we’ll get there one day), San Francisco would have a municipal power system that relied entirely on solar, wind, and tidal energy. And we’d have a Bay Area water system that reduces use dramatically, recycles gray water, shifts agriculture to drought-resistant sustainable crops, replaces lawns with native ground cover and requires far less fresh-water input every year. At that point, the dam will be redundant and pointless. Bombs away.
But until we no longer rely on a privately-controlled electrical grid based on fossil-fuel and nuclear generation, we just can’t afford to lose the dam. Why the Chron never talks about that side of the equation remains one of the great mysteries of local journalism.