SFBG Blogs

America’s Next Top Supervisor

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Eleven began the competition, but after last week’s spectacular fiasco involving Ross Mirkarimi and a ring-tailed lemur, only five finalists are left to face our panel of sublebrity judges, who reviewed their looks, poise, style, and grace during a session of drunken Googling (Droogling). Which one will receive a $100 modeling contract with Board Babes and a seven-slide spread on HuffPo? Who’s gonna be on top?

THE JUDGES:

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Nicole Markoff of local label Nicacelly (www.nicacelly.com), fashion goddess

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Anna Conda of clubs Charlie Horse (myspace.com/charliehorsecinch) and Herr-A-Chick, merciless queen

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Marke B. of SFBG, noted closet case

THE HOPEFULS:

MICHELA ALIOTO-PIER


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Nicole Oh, you round-the-way girl. Peek-a-boo lacey undergarments haven’t looked this good since Jody Watley. As for your slimmed-down bamboo hoops — nice touch! We know you’re feeling underground, all gold chains and sweet blue eyes. Represent!

Anna You’re a beautiful woman with great eyes and hair, but would a little color — just to break up the funeral gray — kill you?

Marke She’s definitely working the "sweet as apple pie," all-American look. But you know that within that pie lurks a coiled python as pink and sweaty as any hot dog, and that’s what brought down the auto industry.

CHRIS DALY


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Nicole C-Diddy, you’re pushing up on some Sarah Palin eyewear, but I’m not hating. I’m feeling your approach and evolution, running from the "Didn’t we meet at Pops a couple years ago?" 5 o’clock-smudged hipster through proud beard-papa.

Anna Wha … hunh? Oh, I’m sorry. Just a little nap.

Marke I thought Chris was really going to blow it on the Bollywood challenge, but he barely edged out Jaslene by last-minute waxing his thighs with some packing tape and break dancing right through the herd of elephants. Who’s sari now, Jaslene?

Ask Nate

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The Guardian introduces a new weekly advice column from Nathan Ballard, press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom. We hope you enjoy his insights as much as we always have.

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Dear Nate:

Times are tough in San Francisco for a lot of people, but my life seems to be bottoming out these days. My good city job just got eliminated, the after school program my kids love was cut, my elderly grandmother just lost her home health nurse, and the police still have no idea who murdered my husband last year. He was even shot right in front of one of those crime cameras. What should I do?

Desperate for Help

Dear Dessie:

I reject the premise of your question. Things are going great in San Francisco, particularly under this mayor’s strong leadership. But we feel your pain, which seems to stem from the Board of Supervisors refusing to give the Police Department more money or the authority to constantly monitor those cameras. Sup. Aaron Peskin is the reason your husband’s killer hasn’t been caught. He may actually be the murderer.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I was thinking about going into politics. Do you have any advice for someone considering running for office?

Budding Candidate

Dear Bud:

As my boss has repeatedly said, being mayor is the toughest and most thankless job in the world. He’s constantly dealing with uppity supervisors and complaining constituents, at least when he’s in town. And if you’re one of those spineless, whiny so-called progressives, my advice is to just do something else. Get a real job, something in the private sector. But if you share Mayor Newsom’s belief in building a better San Francisco with more public-private partnerships — and you’ve got a lot of rich friends — I say go for it. But make sure you hire the best advisers by calling Storefront Political Media and Earned Media. We — , er, uh, I mean they really know what they’re doing.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I’m new to San Francisco and trying to understand the political dynamics here. Is the central struggle really between progressives and moderates? Those are the two labels I hear the most, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. What about liberal vs. conservative?

Political Science Student

Dear Poli-Sci:

I reject the label progressive, and so does the San Francisco Chronicle now that we convinced them to. So actually the central struggle in this town is between the radical and unrealistic ultra-liberals and moderates like Gavin Newsom. The mayor can be a fiscal conservative when he needs to be, and he’s liberal on social issues, which makes him a moderate and therefore the voice of reason. He could even be a progressive on some issues, if there were such a thing as a progressive, which there’s not. But he’s never ultra-anything, because that would make him crazy, which he also isn’t. Is that clear?

Nate

Music pick: Pier Paolo — uberexperimental post-cultural pan-Euro Situational demigods one-upped indie before indie was all uptight about it

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They thought through it first, then

By Max Goldberg

PREVIEW Though not as well known as contemporaneous post-punk politicos Gang of Four and Scritti Politti, Milanese quintet Pier Paolo produced a trio of wildly experimental EPs in the late 1970s that refuse to assimilate to faddish rock historiographies. Avanti (Rabbit’s Moon, 1978) and Naked City (Dérive, 1978) shadow Gramsci-inspired lyrical denouements with febrile musical leitmotifs that seem to dissolve as soon as they are discerned. Putting to shame Factory Records’ later situationist-ripping tactic of sheathing 12-inch singles in sandpaper, they even released one single as a 78 rpm wrapped in pages from Cuir magazine. Pier Paolo has long known how to cultivate an enigmatic image, right down to posing for their own photos. The group’s central innovation — a split-screen approach to rhythm and textural ambience, set astride by Gérard Lebovici’s dry production — may not sound like much on paper, but the double-drummer chaos suggests what would have happened if the Talking Heads and Brian Eno had pushed past bourgeois niceties. The band’s unmatched achievement is Abjection (NoNo, 1979), a mutant mix of millennial dub, soft-hewn minimalism, and verses cribbed from The Society of the Spectacle. Thirty years later, Pier Paolo is making its first stateside appearances, and the shows promise to be a bold redress of the usual reunion tactics.

PIER PAOLO with Conrad’s Bane. Wed/1, 8 p.m., $20. Direland, 401 Paril Loofs, SF. (555) TEO-REMA, www.fakebands.com

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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See the previous Look of the Day here.

A talk with Steve McQueen

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By Johnny Ray Huston

Steve McQueen’s Hunger brings the story of Bobby Sands to the movie screen. As far as directorial debuts go, McQueen’s is a prodigious, visceral one. While a lot of filmmakers try to create Hitchcock-style suspense movies, in Hunger, McQueen goes deeper than those surface concerns to deliver the type of formal daredevilry and structural experimentation worthy of Hitch. He revives the bio drama genre — more specifically, the political bio drama — with a story of one man starving to death. I spoke on the phone with the Turner Prize-winning artist in January about Hunger and topics ranging from his Queen and Country project (Royal Mail stamps depicting recently deceased UK soldiers) to the 1982 Wimbledon final.

SFBG What is the status of Queen and Country at the moment?
Steve McQueen The Art Fund in England has supported the project, and aligned with me and the relatives. It’s a process. People have to be convinced. I spoke to Gordon Brown a couple of months ago, and he wrote back and is looking into the logistics. It’s something I don’t want to let go of until we get it done.

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Steve McQueen photographed by his Queen and Country art project

SFBG It seems there has been a heightened back and forth between the UK art world and feature film, with you and Douglas Gordon, or going back further, people such as Isaac Julien. And also there are filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, David Lynch, and Michel Gondry, who have had gallery-related projects. By extension, considering you’ve made short works in the art world, I wondered what drew you to want to make a feature for commercial theatres.
SM I can’t answer the question as far as other people are concerned, I can answer simply for me. When I was in art school I wanted to be in film school, and when I was in film school, I wanted to be in art school. I was in NYU for three months but I hated it and left because they wouldn’t allow me to throw a camera up in the air. I went back to London to continue where I’d left off there, within an art context.
That back and forth has always been happening, though. It isn’t exclusive to now. Obviously there’s Warhol and Man Ray. And Ken Russell and so forth.

SFBG I’m glad you bring up Ken Russell — the descriptions I’ve read of [McQueen’s 1993 short film] Bear remind me of the wrestling scene in Women in Love.
SM I never saw it. I saw Tommy.

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Still from Steve McQueen’s Bear

SFBG For whatever reason, though, publications such as Artforum have really shifted their emphasis more to film and film-related art in recent years.
SM Feature film is more populist in its content and approach – it reaches more people. The net gets cast broader or wider year after year within the arts.
Also, film has a certain glamour and appeal to the mass public, and if you can cross over, then people love you even more.

The Blender: What we’ve been eating

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By the peckish Guardian staff

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(1) Assorted canapes, Secret Garden, SF

(2) Pik-khing bpet, Basil Canteen, SF

(3) 2004 Castle Rock merlot

(4) Lamb brioche with flageolets, L’Ardoise, SF

(5) Chongga kimchi

Local Artist of the Week: Dean Smith

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LOCAL ARTIST Dean Smith

TITLE thought form #13a, 2008, graphite on paper, 24 by 17.8 inches

THE STORY "Revisiting the 1905 spiritualist book Thought Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, I present an updated group of visual thought forms. Composed primarily of graphite on paper, this precise and deliberate series is rooted in my interest in scientific illustration and the concomitant aesthetics of wonder: an old and constant human impulse to render the invisible visible."

BIO Smith lives and works in the East Bay. His work has been collected by the British Museum, L.A. County Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, among other public collections.

SHOW "thought forms 2003-2009," Wed/1 through April 25 (reception Thu/2, 6–8 p.m.). Tues.–Fri., 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Gallery Paule Anglim, 14 Geary, SF. (415) 423-2710.

WEB www.deansmith.us

An L-Shaped Recovery

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Economic advisers are predicting an L-shaped recovery for San Francisco, and it’s going to involve 25 percent cuts to some city departments, on top of the 730 layoff notices that were sent out between July 2008 and May ’09.

“Staggering” is how Mayor Gavin Newsom described the $746 million deficit that the Mayor’s Office, the Controller and the Budget Analyst are projecting for FY 2011-12.

That number is in a ‘three-year budget projection” report that the Board’s budget committee hears tomorrow.

Controller Ben Rosenfield noted that the report “makes no assumptions about how budgets are going to be solved.”

But, of course, as Newsom pointed out, action will be taken, not just to address FY 2011-12’s $746 million projected deficit, but the $615 million deficit projected for FY 2010-11, and the $438 million deficit projected for FY 2009-10.

And those actions will be the subject of intense debate about priorities and solutions in the weeks to come.

Newsom’s proposed solutions for the upcoming fiscal year, include 12.5 percent budget cuts, plus 12.5 percent contingencies cuts, in some departments.

“I will not be accepting 25 percent cuts from some departments, but from others I will,” Newsom said. “I don’t believe in across-the-board cuts.”

Asked which departments he would accept 25 percent cuts from, Newsom told reporters, “You’ll find out when you read my budget.”

Green and stimulated

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By Rebecca Bowe

At a March 30 event hosted by Change SF, representatives from Green for All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and other grassroots organizations opened up a dialogue about green jobs and federal stimulus spending with District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of climate protection initiatives, Wade Crowfoot.

Participants spoke about projects they’re engaged in that are aimed at promoting environmental justice, green-jobs training and environmental education, and voiced support for programs that can boost prospects for disadvantaged workers by preparing them for jobs in the green sector. Supervisor Maxwell, a panelist, praised the audience for their work, saying, “It makes me feel like I’m not out of my mind when I’m asking, who are we stimulating with the stimulus package?”

At this stage of the game, Maxwell’s question has yet to be answered with any real clarity. Crowfoot noted that as part of the economic-recovery package, San Francisco is slated to receive some $7.7 million from a U.S. Department of Energy community block grant for energy efficiency and conservation purposes. Additionally, the city will receive some $1.5 million as part of a federal weatherization assistance program, he said, which seeks to curb the energy consumption of low-income residences. Crowfoot threw out some thoughts on how the funding might be used — including energy retrofits on city buildings, initiating a program to replace inefficient boilers, and working alongside existing community-based programs — but on the whole the outlook was vague, as he characterized these suggestions as still being “in the universe of interesting ideas.” Applications for specific project funding are due in late April, he noted. We tried calling a few times today to get more details, but haven’t heard back yet.

Who’s leaving the Chron

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Reporter Steve Rubenstein, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Kim Komenich along with five other photographers, cartoonist Tom Meyer, music critic Joel Selvin and long time science writer and California Media Workers Guild representative Carl Hall.

These are just a few of the names on the list of about 100 employees “volunteering” to quit the Chronicle and accept a buyout of one year’s pay, plus medical insurance from Hearst Corp. by the end of today.

You can read the full list at author/journalist Frances Dinkelspiel’s blog.

Hearst claims it needs to layoff 150 employees and end seniority to avoid closing the 144-year-old newspaper. So, after today, Hearst will begin sending out pink slips to at least 50 of the Chron’s remaining employees.

I’m sure it is sad over at the Chron, and it’s never fun to write about the woes of the newspaper industry, but if I were leaving with a year’s pay in my back pocket and dreams of starting my own non-profit online newspaper dancing in my head, I’d be tempted to shout, “Adios Suckers!” in a really loud voice…just before the door hit me on the way out.
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Reilly on Hearst’s Hindenberg

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By Tim Redmond

Clint Reilly calls the San Francisco Chronicle “the greatest wealth destruction machine in American journalism today.” It’s an interesting hit on the situation; he cites a Wall Street Journal interview with investment banker (and media industry expert) Jonathan Knee, who notes:

The reason why most newspaper companies have gone bankrupt or appear perilously close to it is that they have too much debt, not that they have stopped being profitable. For the reasons I have already described, they are certainly less profitable than they used to be, but compared to most media businesses like movies and books, most newspapers still have higher profit margins. Unfortunately, many of these companies maxed out on available debt during a bubble in the debt market just before the debt bubble popped and their own profit margins precipitously declined. That does not mean that these companies cannot continue to generate significant cash flow once restructured into a sustainable capital structure.

Then points out that Hearst’s problem isn’t debt — I suspect the bean counters have already written off as a tax loss most of the $700 million the company paid to buy the Chron. The problem, he argues, is bad management:

With more than 75 percent of its circulation outside San Francisco, the Chronicle is unable to cover The City or the suburbs in depth. The paper’s circulation should have been cut in half many years ago; at 360,000, it remains massively expensive to produce, print and circulate. Resizing alone might have saved the paper by dramatically reducing operating costs across the organization.

All of which, of course, argues against Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s plan to eliminate anti-trust regs and allow the Chron to merge with, say, Dean Singleton’s Media News Group.

A little luck, a little pluck

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By Andrea Nemerson. View more alt.sex columns here.

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m not 40, like the author of the "40 and Frustrated" letter, but I’m afflicted with another "less than desirable" characteristic: color. Oh, and a bit of meat on my bones, although that’s never been much of a problem. I’m a black woman and I date(d) all sorts of men. Online has never been the right place for me to meet men because, in a field of redheads and green eyes, men pass right by my photo. I got absolutely no interest except from men I am not interested in. And if I happened to get an interested male inquiry, I too found that the communication petered out quickly.

Several years back, I moved to the city on my own. Finally — no roommates, no significant other, just me. My friends were in relationships or newly married and I had to find activities that allowed me to have fun and meet single men. When I went out with friends, I was always just another girl in the crowd.

I got the best results when I began going out by myself, walking into an establishment where I knew no one, ordering a drink, sitting at the bar, and looking desirable and approachable with a book or a snack. A month ago, I even had a CL Missed Connections ad placed for me by a nice Irish man after visiting a local pub and having a burger and beer. It is a 99.9 percent given that if you are female and alone, a male will walk up to you and begin a conversation. Despite your age, your looks, your size, your ethnicity, if a man sees you alone, without a crew of other females to choose from, he will feel compelled to find out your story and see if he has a shot with you.

Two years ago, out by myself, I met a man I had eyed a few times over the years. We chatted. We joked. We got to know each other. Two-and-a-half years later, we’re still together.

We both have an independent nature, which still leads me to frequent places on my own. Each and every time, I am approached. I’m attractive, but I’m not all that, so this is something any woman can do. I feel that we, as women, need to step it up a notch and realize that we need to depend mostly on ourselves and not our friends or the Internet to hook us up or place us in situations where we’ll meet people.

California is NOT a high-tax state

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By Tim Redmond

Next time a politician tells you that businesses are leaving California because of high taxes, try the truth. California is #12 on the list of state tax levies per person.

Check out this nifty chart from the Sacramento Bee:

Per capita

U.S. total $2,571
Alaska $12,276
Vermont $4,095
Wyoming $4,070
Hawaii $3,996
Connecticut $3,818
North Dakota $3,604
New Jersey $3,526
Minnesota $3,509
Mass. $3,360
Delaware $3,357
New York $3,356
California $3,193

Imagine — good ol’ conservative red-state don’t-tax-me Wyoming has higher per-capita taxes than California. Alaska, home to Sarah Palin, has the high oil-severance tax (which California still lacks, despite being an oil-producing state). I guess it’s cold in Minnesota, so they need higher taxes to heat all those state buildings — but wait! It’s warm in Hawaii, and they have higher taxes, too.

As Calitics notes:

The chart shows little overall trend – big states and small states, states with high unemployment and low unemployment, they’re all there. One cannot draw a conclusion from this chart that there’s any correlation between high taxes and high unemployment or poverty rates.

Of course, no amount of evidence or fact is likely to change the minds of California conservatives and their fellow travelers, who continue to cling to 30 years of failed policy and insist that any tax increase is going to destroy our state.

And none of that includes the fact that overall, people and businesses in the United States pay far lower taxes than just about any other industrialized country. Which may be why the recession isn’t as bad in Europe, where there’s a solid social-safety net:

The Europeans say they have no need for further stimulus right now because their social safety nets, derided in good times by free market disciples as sclerotic impediments to growth, are automatically providing the spending programs that the United States Congress has to legislate.

Something to think about.

Photofabulous GayVNs (NSFW)

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Photos by Darwin Bell. Text by Marke B.

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Logan McCree, the inky “it” porn boy of the moment (whither Francois Sagat?) accepts his “Performer of the Year 2009” award. His current studio, Raging Stallion, swept the awards again this year.

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Those ravishing Hungarians, the Visconti Triplets, on the GayVN red carpet. The won nothing.

Well! The sprawling, exhaustive GayVNs (“the Oscars of gay porn”) pretty much swallowed the weekend whole for many of us. The stars! The awards! The tragedies! The complete winners list is here.

All in all, though, the entire thing was pretty relaxed and entirely fun — moreso than I expected. There was even a charity aspect, with a pricey pre-ceremony “Porn Brunch” at the LookOut in the Castro attracting a number of curious onlookers, rabid fans, and stellar anal wattage for a taping of salacious and sometimes humorous Webisodic adventure “The Tim and Roma Show” — raising some bug bucks for StopAIDS. I wish there had been more food, but the “bottomless” (ha!) mimosas soon made me forgot that I was probably the only hungry person there.

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Logan, pre-win, on the couch at the LookOut

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Logan’s man helps him show off his assets

The endless night before had seen porn studio “reception” (double ha!) parties all over the Castro, in which boneriffic stars got very “up close and personal” with fans and photogs alike. Snapper Darwin Bell was there until the bitter, bitter end. Below is one more shot of my current threefold obsession, the Visconti Triplets, and then after the jump — and so, SO NSFW — perennial porno sunshine boy (and media mogul!) Barrett Long demonstrates his tongue-tickling talent for autofellatio. It took a couple tries, but we stuck with him!

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Fiona Ma joins the Pentagon

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By Tim Redmond

Nice piece by Marc Norton on BeyondChron about the upcoming pro-JROTC rally in Sacramento. He points out that Assemblymember Fiona Ma of San Francisco is joining with some serious right-wing types to force the military-recruitment program back into the San Francisco public schools.

If you want to let Ma know how screwed up this is, you can call her at (415) 557-2312 or email Assemblymember.ma@asm.ca.gov.

Editorial: The BART Board is clueless

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The state of California gave BART the right to create a police force. Now it must mandate civilian oversight and exactly how that force will be managed.

EDITORIAL The senseless and horrifying murder of four Oakland police officers March 21 has cast a pall over law enforcement agencies all over the Bay Area. It’s renewed calls for a federal ban on assault weapons, which is long overdue. (It’s also reminded us why a daily newspaper can be so valuable – Chronicle coverage of the incident, with numerous reporters quickly responding, is the kind of journalism that won’t happen if the city’s only major daily dies.)

Unfortunately, it’s also taken the focus away from other police issues, and while we mourn the four deaths of veteran officers who were killed trying to do their jobs, we can’t stop trying to solve the problems of cops who lack training, supervision, and oversight.

Appetite: She-Crab Soup, hot Pican, a Dogpatch Kitchenette, Cosmpolitan special, and more

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By Virginia Miller

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The Cosmopolitan on Spear Street. See “Deals” below.

As long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this city and obsessed with exploring its best food-and-drink spots, deals, events and news, in every neighborhood and cuisine type. I have my own personalized itinerary service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot, and am thrilled to share up-to-the minute news with you from the endless goings-on in our fair city each week on SFBG. View the last Appetite installment here.

———————

NEW RESTAURANT and BAR OPENINGS

Awesome sandwiches out of a Dogpatch garage at Kitchenette
Debuting less than two weeks ago out of warehouse in Dogpatch is Kitchenette, a project from chefs who’ve worked at places of such high caliber as Incanto, Chez Panisse and Foreign Cinema, creating daily offerings that are, you guessed it: fresh and seasonal. Check the website for the changing menu which usually consists of a meat and vegetarian sandwiches (occasionally pizza), a salad, fresh juice and cookie. Last week I was converted by the fabulous Bahn Mi-like sandwich of beer & tangerine roasted Berkshire pork ($8) with cilantro, jalapeno, cabbage plus a side of macaroni salad. Washed down with a tart Meyer lemon, tangerine, blood orange juice ($2), I was already planning my next visit. Bring your cash (no other option) and come early because once their daily creations of lunchtime goodness are gone, well… they’re gone.
Monday-Friday, 11:30am-1:30pm or until food runs out
958 Illinois Street (in the American Industrial Center)
www.kitchenettesf.com

Fine dining made more affordable at La Folie’s Lounge
San Fran’s 21-year old French fine dining mecca, La Folie, may not be cheap even in lounge form, but if I don’t have to pay $70 to $105 for the only option of tasting menus in the dining room, I can still make a night of it ordering a la carte in the next door lounge, opening March 31 during their 21st birthday party. You can now eat as little or as much as you wish of the Michelin-starred food given a lounge-twist (think Lobster Croque Monsieurs), cocktail in hand (note: the bar is helmed by Casper Rice of Michael Mina and Rubicon).
2316 Polk Street
415-776-5577
www.lafolie.com

Cafe Altano, a casual, new restaurant in Hayes Valley
Hayes (Valley, that is) is home to a regular foodie row with primo sushi, German food, coffee and chocolate within a couple blocks. Cafe Altano is a humble entry into to the ‘hood, a corner Med-Italian eatery taking over the Modern Tea space (R.I.P.) With pizzas, pastas, mussels, paninis and beers, it sounds like a relaxing late afternoon spot to chill, sitting at the copper bar, communal or sidewalk tables.
602 Hayes Street
415-252-1200

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s Look: Sam, 26th and Castro

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A note from Ariel: “Sam doesn’t know I’m submitting this — but he’s just so darling, I had to!”

The BART police committee mess

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By Tim Redmond

In the wake of the shooting of Oscar Grant, which was captured on videotape and inflamed the community, and 17 years after the shooting of Jerrold Hall, which was reported only by me and roundly ignored by BART’s establishment, the BART Board finally agreed to set up a subcommittee to look at police oversight and procedures. But if you haven’t heard much from that panel, it’s not surprising — Sweet Melissa reported last week that the police oversight committee hadn’t yet held any public meetings.

But wait — it gets even better.

I called Linton Johnson, the BART spokesperson, and asked him if Melissa had it right. “No, not at all,” he said. “The committee meets in public all the time.” When would that be? “At the regular BART Board meetings, every other Tuesday and Thursday.” Huh? I admit, I haven’t been to a BART Board meeting in a while, but it turns out, according to Johnson, that the committess all meet simultaneously with the full board. “The board goes into recess then reconvenes to hear reports from the various committees,” he explained.

That’s odd, I told him — no other agency I know of does that. Why BART? Well, he explained, the board members only get paid “their miserable $1,000” when they attend full meetings, and most of them didn’t want to take the time to come to an additional meeting on a different day.

Jesus, that’s lame. The San Francisco School Board members go to weekly meetings AND committee meetings AND spend about 30 hours a week working on school stuff, and they get $500 a MONTH. The BART Board members make four times as much and are too lazy to get to more than two meetings?

Wait — there’s more. Melissa told me that Linton’s story “was completely different from what he told me. He said he didn’t even know when the next meeting was.” And more: Quintin Mecke, who works for Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, was actually at the last BART Board meeting, and he told me that the police oversight committee reported that they had, in fact, been meeting on their own, with various community leaders and experts on police oversight — but they hadn’t given any public notice of those meetings and the sessions had been private.

I called BART Board member Tom Radulovich, who is on the committee, and he told me that “we will start having public meetings soon.” But he said he worried that public sessions might not be as productive — “I’ve been to a lot of public hearings at CIty Hall, and people say things differently in public than they do in private. We want to have conversations, and public hearings are not always conversations.”

Sure — but private meetings aren’t good, either. That’s why the state’s Brown Act requires most public agencies to do most of their work in public. How is BART getting away with this? Well, Johnson says, the folks at BART HQ have conveniently decided that the police oversight committee is actually just a subcommitee, and since it has four members, and there are nine BART Board members, a meeting of the subcommittee doesn’t include a quorum of BART Board members and thus doens’t require public notice.

Give me a fucking break.

I like Tom Radulovich, and he’s one of the very few decent members of a generally miserable board, but he’s missing the point here. Legal or not, it looks terrible for this committee to be holding secret meetings. This nonsense has to end.

Durst: Stuff a sanitary sock in it

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By Will Durst

Oh for crum’s sake. Settle down people. You’re fixated. You’ve inflated this whole steroids thing into a national obsession. Suddenly, steroids are the root of all evil. An Al Qaeda trick designed to devastate Democracy from within. No. That’s not it. It’s athletes trying to cover Father Time’s spread. The average Major League Baseball career is 5.6 years long. If you’re going to make it, better start today. And be willing to do whatever it takes. Especially after Marvin Bernard and Fernando Tatis start going long.

This unhealthy obsession has all the earmarks of payback. Face it: your average baseball writer is smarter than your average ball player. Better educated. Reads more books. Some without pictures in them. Watches PBS. On purpose. And yes, they know they’re smarter and the players probably do too, but demonstrate little, if any, respect; residing at the top of the heap of the cream of the crop of the modern gladiator business.

Interview part two: author and actor Amber Benson

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By Louis Peitzman

Editor’s note: See below or click here for part one!

San Francisco Bay Guardian: When you were writing Death’s Daughter, did you think about casting any of the characters?

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Benson as Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Amber Benson: It’s funny — somebody asked me about that recently, and I was like, I’d love to play [Calliope] myself. But I don’t know, I try not to give actors to the characters when I’m writing, because then, all of a sudden, they’re talking in that person’s voice, and it gets a little muted and weird. So I try to keep them separate, and give them their own sort of — like, I have an idea of what they look like in my head. Like, I always thought Calliope looked like Zooey Deschanel, but less hip. But definitely that elfin sort of look. Also, the character of Jarvis, I did cast, only because I worked with this guy named Ashley Artus on this film called Gryphon, and I’m like, that’s what Jarvis looks like. Jarvis looks like Ashley and sounds like Ashley and is kind of just like Ashley.

SFBG: This was your first solo novel. How was it different writing by yourself instead of with a collaborator?

Street Threads: Look of the Day

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SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.

Today’s look: Jocelyn, Hayes and Laguna

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Tell us about your look: “As long as you have one robust color on, you can wear all black and you’ll be golden.”

Don’t fear Bonnie “Prince” Billy – ‘Beware’ marks his most accessible effort to date

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BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY
Beware
(Drag City)

After multiple career tangents, name changes, and rambles hither and yon, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ne Will Oldham, appears to have finally arrived. The accolades are pouring in from NPR to small-town daily newspapers — a marvel when one considers the fact that the Louisville, Ky., post-punk scene that Oldham sprang from was so roundly ignored during its most vital years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when Squirrel Bait, Slint, and later Oldham and brothers Ned and Paul performed as Palace (Brothers/Songs/Music).

The most accessible, clean, and least eccentric recording to date from Oldham, Beware might be considered the recording in which the songwriter assumes his rightful place in the current rock canon as the music-maker who prefigured the so-called freak/out-folk scene and the enabler and encourager of such talents as Joanna Newsom and Dawn McCarthy.

This time, his roving sensibility finds its soothingly smooth fit with help from Josh Abrams of Town and Country, Emmett Kelly of Cairo Gang, Akita Youssefi, Jon Langford of the Mekons, Rob Mazurek of Isotope 217, and renowned pedal steel session player Greg Leisz, among others – likely his most accomplished set of contributors to date. Still, despite Beware’s full-bodied, country-soul sound, I feel almost nostalgic for the humanizing glitchy folk Palace and early Bonnie “Prince” Billy was known for – perhaps that’s just my indie rock values rearing their scruffy heads.

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