Today’s Ammianoliner:
Schwarzenegger and Maldonado claim that budget plan is a four legged stool. Yeah, a real stool sample.
(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the weekend of Feb. 2l, 2008).
Another good Ammianoliner was rolling around City Hall but did not make his answering machine.
As the legislative sleepins continued, Ammiano was reported to say: I haven’t slept with so many men since the ’70s.
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Schwarzenegger and Maldonado claim that budget plan is a four legged stool. Yeah, a real stool sample.
(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the weekend of Feb. 2l, 2008).
Another good Ammianoliner was rolling around City Hall but did not make his answering machine.
As the legislative sleepins continued, Ammiano was reported to say: I haven’t slept with so many men since the ’70s.
In which super sexy porn people answer questions — each week — from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here.
Mediated by Justin Juul
Fielding your questions this month is local celebrity, Lorelei Lee. Lee specializes in fetish porn (water torture, whips-n-chains, electrocution, etc.) and has a blossoming side-career as a writer. Check out some of her movies/pics here.
Jon N: How much prep time do you take before doing a shoot? Any special routines?
Lee: There is a certain amount of physical preparation: body hair removal, skin care, manicures and pedicures, etc. I do warm-water enemas before any kind of anal scene. Then there’s always about two hours of paperwork, make-up, hair, and costuming before every shoot.
When I first started working, I would get much more nervous before shoots, and I think I had a little bit more of a ritual about it –I liked to have a bit of quiet-alone time both before and after work. These days, the most important thing I do before a shoot is get enough sleep. I’m totally a grandma in that way. People think porn performers stay up all night at endless parties doing drugs or something. I’m usually way too exhausted to go out at night, especially when I’ve been working every day with seven or eight a.m. call times. The night before a shoot I always try to be in bed by ten or eleven.
By Tim Redmond
I’m glad to see that our new president is giving San Francisco credit for taking a big step forward toward universal health care. But this is a bit misleading:
“Instead of talking about health care, mayors like Gavin Newsom in San Francisco have been ensuring that those in need receive it,” [Obama] said.
Actually, Sup. Tom Ammiano and his colleagues developed Healthy San Francisco. Newsom joined in later, after the hard work was done. Ammiano has been very good about letting Newsom take some of the glory, but it’s a bit annoying for the rest of us to see a guy who has never been good at developing and implementing his own programs get so much praise for someone else’s work.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Rena, Mission and 19th St.
Tell us about your look: “My style is casual but fun. I got these sunglasses in Brooklyn. I was still in high school and I saved up my allowance for months just to buy them.”
Once, autoworkers overcame even greater hardships than they face today
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for more than a half-century.)
This is not a happy time for American autoworkers. Their employers are cutting thousands of jobs, closing plants, and demanding and getting major pay and benefit concessions from their union.
Normally, February would be a time of celebration for the union, the United Auto Workers a time to mark the anniversary of a UAW victory in a sit-down strike in 1937 that led to making its members the world’s most secure and most highly compensated production workers.
Barry Schrader, a former government affairs officer for the Livermore Lab and retired in Illinois, sent along this joke that is making the rounds out there. It explains how the stimulus plan will work. B3
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from California. All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The California contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $1,800: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $1,000 profit for me.”
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me.” The Chicago contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”
The Chicago contractor whispers back, “$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.” “Done!” replies the White House chief of staff. And that is how the new stimulus plan will work.
—As per Sen. Tombstone Burris
Text by Sarah Phelan
When Sup. Chris Daly recently asked that a measure “commending Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her successful chairing of the 2009 Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies” be sent to committee for a hearing, some folks asked, what gives?
Turns out that Daly holds Feinstein responsible for the infamous purple ticket holder fiasco, in which thousands of Obama volunteers were stuck at gates and in tunnels, thereby missing the historic inauguration of their candidate,
“As chair of the inaugural committee, Feinstein was responsible for major f-ups in terms of lack of organization,” Daly told the Guardian. “Because of these failures, thousands, most of them core Obama volunteers, missed his inauguration.”
To date, the inaugural committee has apologized and Feinstein has initiated an investigation, but many ticket holders like Lindsay O’Grady aren’t satisfied.
By Diane Sussman
There is a subterranean cache of parking spaces in the city that, if justly liberated, could get hundreds of cars off the streets.
I refer to landlords, many of them absentee bridge-and-tunnelers, who are using garage spaces that rightfully should be reserved for tenants’ cars as free storage units for their personal possessions or as permanent parking spots for their own infrequently used cars.
I personally know of two buildings – one a four-unit building in Potrero Hill and the other a 10-unit building in Alamo Square – whose tenants have been forced to vie for street parking for years because their landlords are otherwise occupying the space.
Even more galling, these same landlords have “no parking” signs posted on these garages, and have no qualms about towing or ticketing when their theoretical “driveways” are blocked. (Note to landlords: In typical shit rolling downhill fashion, these displaced tenants often block the bona fide working garages of people who do use their garages to come and go from work, errands, doctor visits and so on. Their justification: “There was no place to park.”)
It’s time for the city to get hip to this cynical practice and eradicate it. Garages should be for the people who live there — in this case, the tenants (who, let’s not forget, are paying some of the highest rents in the country for their apartments). Here are my ideas for accomplishing this.
1. Establish an anonymous tip line for tenants to report landlords who are using their garages in their buildings as storage units. If a landlord is reported, the DPT (or if there is no existing bureaucracy for this, then someone should invent one) should do an inspection. Landlords in violation should be forced to clean out the garages and offer space to their tenants.
2. Landlords who want the space for their personal use – and who have permission from a kindly car-free tenant – should reimburse the tenant at a rate commensurate with long-term parking fees in the city.
3. Landlords whose garages have no cars moving in and out should be prohibited from towing cars blocking the space. Instead, they should allow their tenants to permanently occupy the space, either by parking in the driveway or parallel to the curb in front the driveway (perfectly legal). If multiple tenants want a shot, the landlord should offer a fair rotation.
Incidentally, the DPT does not allow people with non-working garages to issue citations. “No, not allowed. No,” said a DPT dispatcher. “You must be able to demostrate that you can get your car in and out – we will absolutely make you open that garage door to prove it.”
All I’m saying is, let’s add some spirit to the letter of the law.
By Diana Dunkelberger
During the next few months, if you wander down to the lower level of the main library, you’ll see Pat coming by to pour you a glass of ice water and take your order. Jean will be there, too, over by the gumball machine, handing out sweets. And that blond, pink-sweatered waitress you see rushing around with four plates of food and the focus of an Olympic sprinter? That’s Sondra.
Pat, Jean, and Sondra—photographs of them, that is—are on display at the Jewett Gallery’s current exhibit, called “Dishing It Out: Career Waitresses Across the U.S.A.” The work of Candacy Taylor, a Bay Area photographer and a former waitress, this collection of color photographs, displayed alongside short, chatty interviews, pays tribute to 14 seasoned diner waitresses from Gibsonia, Pennsylvania to Napa, California, with many pit stops in between.
By Steven T. Jones
At a time when the recession is forcing tax increases and deep cuts in government spending — and when California is being ordered by federal judges to substantially reduce its prison population — this would seem to be the ideal moment to end the costly, wasteful war on drugs.
That’s the hope of Assembly member Tom Ammiano, who tells the Guardian that next week he will introduce legislation to decriminalize and tax marijuana, a move that might instantly turn a huge drain on the public treasury (at least $17 billion a year nationally, and closer to $50 billion once related costs are figured in) into what saves the state from financial ruin, given that pot is California’s number one cash crop.
“This is long overdue,” said Ammiano, who will work on the measure with John Vasconcellos, who represented the Silicon Valley in the Legislature for 38 years and was the last legislator to really carry the banner for legalizing marijuana. In fact, Ammiano says he’s basically reintroducing Vasconcellos’s bill from 2004, which went nowhere.
Meanwhile, another former member of the Board of Supervisors, Carol Ruth Silver, this week resigned as director of SF’s Prisoner Legal Services program out of frustration with the large number of nonviolent drug users in the San Francisco jail, joining a new Law Enforcement Against Prohibition campaign for the legalization of all drugs.
As she told the Guardian, “The jail is full of people who should not be there.”
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Shaughn, Valencia and 20th St.
Tell us about your look: “I’m from Southern California so I’d say my style is mostly from LA.”
By Tim Redmond
A couple of interesting candidates looking at runs for those even-numbered supervisorial seats in 2010.
In district two, where the progressives have never had much of a chance (Gavin Newsom, then Michela Alioto-Pier), Janet Reilly, who ran a strong race against Fiona Ma for state Assembly, told me she’s looking at the race. She’d be well financed – her husband, Clint Reilly, is one of the top campaign donors in the city and she’s proven she can raise money on her own. She’s clearly not as far to the left as John Avalos or Eric Mar, but it’s a conservative district – and she’s a smart, articulate woman with strong policy ideas who would probably vote with the progressives some of the time and would be independent of the mayor.
Then there’s district 6. I’m starting to sense that Jane Kim isn’t pushing herself out there as a candidate right now — but another activist is, and his campaign raises some interesting questions.
Paul Hogarth, managing editor of BeyondChron, an online newspaper, is planning to file a statement of intent to run sometime this spring. “Yes, the rumor is true. I’m the candidate who can get things done for the District — having worked in the community for about 9 years,” he told me by email.
I like Paul, and I like BeyondChron, which by any standard is part of the progressive community. We’ve had some disagreements, but that’s pretty common in the San Francisco left.
And he’s certainly qualified – he’s a lawyer, a former Berkeley Rent Board commissioner, and has been a tenant organizer with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. He’s also been pretty active in the Democratic Party and has shown some solid journalistic instincts and abilities.
So I just assumed that he would take a leave of absence from Beyond Chron when he launched his campaign. I mean, it’s a brave new world, and the line between journalists and activists has been getting pretty blurry, but I’m not sure how you can be the managing editor of a political newspaper, and actively report on and write about local politicians and campaigns, when you’re actually running for office yourself.
But no – when I asked Paul about that, he told me he saw no conflict at all. I tried to reach his boss, Randy Shaw, by phone but after we played tag a little, I went to email and asked:
“Hi, Randy, sorry we didn’t connect by phone today. I hear Paul is running for D6 supe; how you going to handle that at BeyondChron? Can he possibly cover local politics while he’s running for office? Strikes me as a problem.”
Shaw’s response:
“Why?
I pursued it: “Well, one reason is that people will think he’s promoting his own interests by the way he covers candidates and issues. For example, there might be a perception that he was writing more positive things about people who endorsed him. It’s pretty basic journalistic ethics. I have immense respect for Paul, and I don’t think he’d do anything unethical, but in the media. appearance matters. I know you aren’t a traditional news outlet, but people trust and respect you in part for your independence.”
Shaw: “This recalls a past discussion I’ve had with the Guardian, where it became clear we have different views of activists as journalists.”
I don’t recall that discussion, although I’m sure it happened, since I talk about this stuff all the time. I am an activist and a journalist, and the Guardian is a newspaper that cares about and promotes causes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with BeyondChron, which is part of Randy Shaw’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic shop, covering the city from a pro-tenant, progressive perspective. I’m glad BeyondChron is around.
But there’s a difference between writing about and promoting causes that you care about and promoting something that gives you, personally, a direct financial or career benefit. How will we know that a piece Paul Hogarth writes about a local politician isn’t tainted by the fact that he wants that person to endorse him?
Paul seems to be aware of the problem; when he wrote about Mark Leno in the state Senate primary, he was careful to run disclosures like
EDITOR’S NOTE: As a private citizen, Paul Hogarth has endorsed Mark Leno in the State Senate race. He does not play an advisory role in the campaign, nor did he coordinate with Leno’s staff in writing this article.
Fair enough. Full disclosure is good. But what’s he going to do now – stop writing about local politics? Or end all his articles with
EDITORS NOTE: Paul Hogarth is running for supervisor in District 6, but none of the commentary about any other office holder here should be construed as a possible pitch for an endorsement?
And what if one of the other candidates argues that his paid promotional platform is in fact an in-kind campaign contribution? I’m not sure I’d buy that – there’s a First Amendment issue here – but the Ethics Commission might consider it worth investigation, which would be a huge distraction to both the candidate and his online newspaper.
It’s going to be tricky. That’s all I’m saying.
Justin Juul takes on singular porn hottie Buck Angel in part three of this exclusive SEX SF interview. Check out part two here.
SFBG: Do you think your involvement in porn helps you maintain such a strong sense of self?
Angel: For me, yes. I know that’s not the case with other people, but porn has definitely helped me feel more confident.
SFBG: Well, you certainly seem more confident and outgoing than other trans people I’ve met.
Angel: Like I said, my family has a lot to do with that. Many people who choose to change their sex don’t have much of a support system. But that’s never the determining factor. I had to do a lot of work on my own end to get to the point I’m at now. I went through a lot of therapy and a lot of tough times before I felt good. Lots of trans people have trouble adjusting because they take the easy way out and just do the hormone thing. But this is a mental situation — probably more so than a physical one — and people aren’t putting the time in like they should. They’re just jumping on this trendy transsexual bandwagon and fucking themselves up in the process. It’s, like, cool to be a transsexual now, you know?
Juliette Tang continues her journey into the altporn world. Read her recent interview with the Cutter Smith of altporn.net here.
“What I truly think separates altporn from mainstream porn is not just the music and the tattoos — but it’s the community that altporn sites have, that both girls and members participate in. On mainstream porn sites — you simply can’t see a girl getting fucked on camera, and then send her a message and drink coffee with her the next week.”
Our interview this week is with 28-year-old entrepreneur, model, pornographic actress, and writer extraordinaire, Joanna Angel. Joanna, who runs the popular site ” target=”_blank”>personal erotic website and blog, is smart, sassy, and totally down-to-earth and she dishes with the SFBG about what it’s like to be a former lit-geek wallflower who blossomed into a full-fledged porn star.
SFBG: You were a self-described nerdy kid, a shy English major at Rutgers who didn’t lose her virginity until you were already in college. So how did you find your way into the adult entertainment industry?
JA: I really don’t know! People ask me that all the time. My whole voyage didn’t really feel like I was “getting into the adult industry” it felt like I started a weird experiment with my friend. Basically in my senior year of college my roommate asked if I would start a porn site with him, and I said yes. Originally I was just gonna be the one who ran the show behind the scenes, but that was kinda unfulfilling…. so a few weeks later I took my clothes off in my basement while a friend photographed me in the basement of the house I lived in in college — surrounded by half empty 40 oz bottles that had transformed into ash-trays and half broken Christmas lights. It didn’t really feel like “the porn industry”, but whatever it was, I liked it… so I kept going… and now here I am.
This in from Cafe du Nord:
“We just announced a two-night run with Iron and Wine at the Swedish American Hall on May 6 and 7. The shows are going to be very special, intimate evenings, with set lists being determined by fans via the Iron and Wine Web site.
“Tickets are going on sale this Friday, Feb. 20, at 10 a.m. and are of course expected to go very quickly. Tickets are available at www.cafedunord.com. Tickets are will-call only. They are non-transferable. No hard tickets will be issued at any point. Purchaser must present ID at the door to claim tickets.
IRON AND WINE
With Yogoman Burning Band (May 6th only) and Magic Leaves (May 7th only)
May 6-7, 7:30 p.m., $25, all ages
Swedish American Hall
2174 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
Surfin’ bird: Andrew Bird. All photos by Ariel Soto.
By Ariel Soto
Last night, Feb. 19, the Fillmore turned itself into a fantasy fairyland filled with gentle creatures as the sweet, whistling Andrew Bird and endearing Loney, Dear took the stage. Loney, Dear, a band from Scandinavia, was able to get the crowd to sing along and even harmonize, as they strummed their guitars and tapped the piano keys, creating an incredibly lovely and mellow sound. Headliner Andrew Bird removed his shoes as soon as he got onstage, fiddled like a mad man, and kept the audience wistfully engaged for every song. If only I had known to wear my snow white dress…
ANDREW BIRD
With Loney, Dear
Fri/20, 9 p.m., $32.50
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
(415) 346-6000
By Rebecca Bowe
February 20 is a date that many city workers have probably looked toward with anxiety ever since Mayor Gavin Newsom first announced the 2008-09 midyear budget cuts. Tomorrow, 236 layoffs of city employees will take effect, signifying the first (but not the worst) of several waves of job cuts that will be dealt in an effort to remedy budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year and the 2009-10 fiscal year. On March 20, another 22 city employees will lose their jobs, and two months from now, yet another 94 layoffs will become effective, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda. All of these pink slips are being distributed to address the current year’s budget deficit.
Many of the layoffs that will take effect tomorrow are concentrated in the Department of Public Health. According to a breakdown of layoffs by department provided by the City Controller’s office, 49 are unit clerks in DPH, another 21 are nursing assistants and 13 are licensed vocational nurses. (These numbers don’t include unfilled positions that were eliminated from the budget.)
But these blows won’t be the heaviest: On May 1, an unknown but likely much larger number of layoffs will take effect as part of the city’s attempt to remedy the 2009-10 budget shortfall, which is projected to be more than $500 million. “I’m assuming that’s going to be much larger because we are working with a larger deficit,” Zmuda said, but added that she did not yet know what that number would be.
As the national economic crisis gets worse and worse, Jess Brownell sets out to find people who are willing to run a financial institution for $500,000 a year. It’s not going to be pretty.
By Jess Brownell
The national economic crisis just gets worse and worse. The time for aimless discussion is over. Now we have to find people who are willing to run a financial institution for $500,000 a year. It’s not going to be pretty.
I like to help the government when I can, so I went out to try to ascertain just how difficult the search was going to be. My first stop was at the bar down the street, an establishment I visited frequently back in the days when I was drinking seriously. I asked the bartender if he would be willing to take on a job like that. He looked at me (well, almost, he has this one eye that sort of drifts, but most of the time he gets the glass and the bottle in the same general area) and shook his head. “Are you kidding? When I can spend eight hours a day pouring cheap booze for penny-pinching losers? Mentioning no names, of course. Not me, man. I’m living my dream right where I am.”
By Laura Peach
This year, our favorite star of the Fashion Week runway happens to be both an international style icon and an old childhood friend: Barbie.
To pay tribute to the famous doll’s golden anniversary, designers such as Tommy Hilfiger, Nicole Miller, Derek Lam, and Nanette Lepore created dreamy doll designs for Barbie’s runway debut.
News from Recombinant Media Labs, over the transom yesterday:
“As some of you may or may not know, the Recombinant Media Labs facility located south of Market on Brannan Street in San Francisco closed its doors last spring. No formal announcements were made at that time due to legal complexities surrounding the closing. No further remarks will be made on this matter, but I think we can all agree that the RML Soma facility will be greatly missed. For those who are curious about what the future hold for Recombinant Media Labs please be on notice: RML is back in view.
“After Asphodel, Ltd. gave birth and support to the worldwide Recombinant Festivals of the ’90s, and then to the artist residency lab from 2005 through 2007 the RML nomadic initiative re-emerged after traveling in ’08 between Europe and North America, seeking new nodes of operation for performance, installation and exhibition. RML has moved on with fresh partnerships and independent alliances to resurface in a number of international configurations, which will be announced in the seasons to come.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Luka, 22nd St. and Bartlett
Tell us about your look: “I’d say my style is all things ripped. I get most of my clothes off the streets of San Francisco.”
LOCAL ARTIST Inga Dorosz
TITLE Mountain (14 by 11 inches, pen and pencil on ink)
STORY This piece is from a series devoted to transitional spaces. The basic construction units for these drawings (which include some nine-foot scrolls) are parallel lines. For those classic prose lovers who are adept in Morse code, some of the resulting mountain planes also provide a bit of reading pleasure.
SHOWS "Land — Morse Code," through March 12. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–7 p.m. Michael Rosenthal Gallery, 365 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-1010, www.rosenthalgallery.com. Upcoming projects include showing a selection of drawings at Mountain View’s Community School of Music and Arts and taking part in a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.
WEB www.ingadorosz.com, www.irreverentart.com
Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event.
Who Penny Arcade is a performance artist/playwright who, as a 13-year-old girl, would climb out of her bedroom window to do LSD with queers, junkies, prostitutes and the crème de le crème of New York’s art world. When that got boring, she began doing theater, which, to her surprise, she found more exciting than drugs and bottom dwelling. Her first big role was in the John Vaccaro directed Kenneth Bernard play, The Moke Eater. After that, she starred in a number of plays and then moved on to acting in movies. Or at least, that was the idea. By the time her first film, Andy Warhol’s Women in Revolt, began to attract mainstream attention, Arcade had become a bona-fide teenage starlet. Not a good thing. Arcade was so freaked out by the sudden stardom that she ran off to Amsterdam for 10 years. When she returned to the states in 1980, she immediately resumed her theater work, starring in plays and eventually turning her attention to writing. She’s been producing, directing, and starring in her own shows (Bad Reputation, Based on a True Story, La Miseria, etc.) around the world ever since. And you thought your grandma was cool because she used to smoke pot! Pssssh.
What Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! is Penny Arcade’s super ballsy (har har) take on censorship, feminism, and a life less ordinary. A series of semi-autobiographical monologues punctuated by go-go dancing, nude performance art, and audience participation, the piece touches on hot topics like gays in the military, the marketing of “bad girls” in pop-culture, and the politics of rape. Local dancers and freaks are contracted for every performance, so expect to see some familiar faces.
Where Brava Theater Center (2781, 24th. SF). Tickets ($20 – $45) available here.
When February 25th – March 7th.
Why Because you’re “a little bit of everything, all rolled into one.” –M. Brooks, I’m a Bitch.
