Aye, yes, it’s been a stellar year for Scotland, musically speaking, what with floor-me-flat-out releases from the likes of Edwyn Collins, Alasdair Roberts, Malcolm Middleton, Emma Pollock, the Twilight Sad – not to mention the triumphant return of the Jesus and Mary Chain – and, sitting at the tippy-top of this list, the astonishingly prolific folk-pop troubadour from Fife, Kenny Anderson, better known as King Creosote.
Earlier this fall the honey-tenored charmer – in what is most likely his boldest move towards courting a larger audience – unleashed Bombshell (679 Recordings), a ravishing collection of introspective acoustic-pop and rousing indie folk-rock. Simply put, the album is fan-bloody-tastic: warm, glimmering, and deeply soulful, it’s the sort of thing which should appeal to anyone who isn’t afraid of a bit of sweetness and vulnerability coming through their headphones. Not that I’d necessarily compare the guy to Nick Drake or Elliott Smith or Iron and Wine, but I’d reckon a great many fans of those artists would find themselves seriously wooed by the King’s sensitive strummings if they gave him a chance.
In fact, that’s exactly how I got into his stuff: “an Elliott Smith with brighter edges and a Scottish accent,” I’d heard somewhere a few years ago, so needless to say I was intrigued. Then, of course, there was the matter of – and this is a biggie if you’re a die-hard musical dot-connector like me – Creosote being the brother of Gordon Anderson, the former Beta Band member now recording oddball-pop under the name Lone Pigeon. Not that the King Creosote universe overlaps too much with that of the deliriously iconoclastic Betas, mind you. Don’t expect any forays into warped acid-house or ambient-funk here. Still, it’s a relationship worth mentioning, especially since the Lone Pigeon has collaborated with Creosote on a few projects, including Bombshell.
I don’t like techno. And by calling it techno, of course I mean to deride electronic music, perhaps only for effect, or maybe because I have all these negative electro-associations: the movie Swordfish, for example. There’s one. Falling asleep behind the wheel somewhere along I-90 and waking up to the white-hot snap of a lightning bolt, my buddy’s nightmarish screaming, and the Virgin Suicides score blaring an almost-swansong over factory-installed speakers – there’s another.
So when I swerved into Amnesia the other night, it was not without some degree of reluctance that I paid a $3 cover to hear Moped, a two-man electronic outfit from around the way. A couple-three soju and sodas eased me, however, into the acknowledgment of memory files long since repudiated, zipped-up, stored in the recesses of my Neuronet Processor next to my DJ Shadow penchant and those digitally manipulated nudes of Monica Seles on Blossom Russo.
All playful digs aside, I really enjoyed Moped’s stuff. They had old TV episodes of Batman playing in slow-mo on the projection screen behind them. I think I actually stooped to the cliché “I wish I were on acid right now,” such was the nature of my relish, my drunk. Peter Gavin is not so much a frontman as he is an arbiter, sequencing his live bass, sax, and synth tracks atop the viciously groovy drumming of Scott Eberhardt. Their cover of Salt and Pepa’s “Push It” was nothing short of an achievement.
Some call this stuff electro jazz. Sounds like live house to me. Whatever it is, it stoned me to beat the band. I kept hoping Gavin would pull out some nunchucks, capable multitasker that he is. What this reigning Moped boy lacks in gutter-funk, he recoups in class and taste. And the tireless Eberhardt plays with astounding feel considering all the thumping and bumping the music needs from him. OK, so maybe I’m straddling them a bit too eagerly, but it sounded tight, was expertly conceived, and is a lot less dangerous to take for a spin than the Real McCoy. Remember them? Damn that German Eurodance crap. Damn it to hell.
The Foundation for the Preservation of Fantastic Possibilities lies behind black double doors, like any you’d happen upon in a SOMA alley. They stand without a grandiose poster or sign to mark the entrance. Unexpected, for a crew bearing such a title. A simple white “444” points the way. Inside a sign reads “Behold! Behind every calamity lies possibility!” It is the mythological starting point, in the shot heard ‘round the world sense, once spoken aloud by VeryVery Morley in that transitional breath between the Victorian Era and World War I. A table waited nearby with two warm pots of melted chocolate. The Elationists, a spiritualist-art movement that followed on the heels of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, are said to have used an exotic mix of spices in their cocoa elixir, a mix I couldn’t well find distinctions within as the thick drink made tracks across my palette.
Archival film, displayed on video screens, was layered with a suspicious digital static. Actors attempted the earliest of film methods to document their all-night parties, garbed in mythological outfits and those of relatively decadent, imperial civilizations like Ancient Greece and Egypt. Sync sound film hadn’t yet matured but the Elationists, in a rationale for the phenomenon, carried a reputation for experimenting. Music replicating the Edison phonograph tunes they’d spin during screenings was heard alongside.
It’s interesting how the NFL promotes itself as the all-American sport while making its players follow a zipped-lip policy you might have expected to find behind the Iron Curtain. That’s the Iron Curtain of the former USSR, not the Steel Curtain of the ’70s Pittsburgh Steelers.
For all the times football fans have had to sit through incessant flag waving John Mellencamp’s “This is Our County” Chevy ads during NFL telecasts you might have thought that the NFL big wigs would have freedom of speech as a basic right of it’s employees.
The Ravens’ Samari Rolle
But when you see what happened to four Baltimore Ravens players this past week after they spoke out about what they perceived as poor officiating calls and insulting treatment that got personal from game officials, during a very tough 27-24 loss to New England on Monday Night Football (Dec. 3) you would realize that the NFL believes the first amendment rights apply only to the shot callers, not the grunts who break their necks (sometimes, literally) so the NFL stuffed shirts can also stuff their wallets on a weekly basis.
Getting the word out for a friend whose cousin has been missing for 2 weeks:
Alicia Amanda Stokes, who goes by Mandy, is 33 years old, 5’4″ with blonde hair and green eyes. She was last seen on Sunday, November 25 at her home in Oakland. Her car was found abandoned containing her wallet and cell phone at 5000 Park Blvd, one freeway exit away from her home. If you have any information that could lead to Mandy’s safe
return home to her family, please call 404-931-7044 or 702-318-1590 or the Oakland Police Department who is investigating her case.
Simon Doonan, creative director for Barneys New York, defines San Francisco style this way: “People here are into design,” he said, while in town in September for the grand opening of Barneys’ Bay Area flagship store. “It’s about the craft of fashion, not the hype of fashion.” In L.A., he pointed out as an example, style is all about exhibitionism, about what other people think of what you’re wearing. “Here, it’s what you think of what you’re wearing.”
Oh my God, shooz! Simon Doonan shows off the SF flagship store’s bright, airy floor full of women’s footwear.
Now, before I go on, I realize you could argue that San Francisco has a scene with a uniform as much as anyplace else, even if here it’s fedoras and Fluevogs instead of short shorts and Uggs. But what really makes the difference – at least, to me – is how much fashion culture here appreciates creativity, independent designers, and funky combinations of styles, trends, and shit we just made up. Fashionistas in this city create a style that is uniquely ours, more emulated by the outside fashion world than affected by it.
I was thinking about this on Saturday night, while attending the official grand opening party for Pandora’s Trunk, a retail space and artists’ coop that provides places for indie designers to both work and sell their wares (reconstructed dresses and jackets made from scraps of fleece, lace-trimmed arm warmers and twisty scarves – all gorgeous and unusual). And true to the co-op’s mission, the opening not only supported artists involved with the store, but other independent creators like Jesse Wilson, one-half of the newly named Flamenco Feathers musical group, and Sterling, an up-and-coming chef who made guests a mean spanikopita (among other delectables). It was fun and festive, and both homegrown and professional.
So the night, Nov. 30, was a disaster of sorts but not for the reasons you’d think – and before you gag yourself with the prospect of another music review-turned personal soapbox or group session, bear with me. I’d like to think there is a point to my mawkishness. There is a certain regimen that proceeds from a typical Friday evening in the Bay that includes: 1) Driving with abandon, windows down, sunroof retracted, a hurly-burly of pre-weekend tune-age, a ritualized exorcising of the week’s frustrations, fleeting Bay vistas obstructed by billboards to the right and a swathe of mountains to the left; 2) The trickle of evening that always seem to greet you at that asymptote of the Peninsula where the sepia tones of suburbia meets the neon city with its bleary-eyed halogens and dayglo pleasuredoms; 3) A fine meal, which is to say nothing in moderation and everything in excess; and 4) A moment of love, nostalgia, tomfoolery, or any of a number of sensuous terms that might describe the simple, inexplicable pleasures that only live music can afford us – jouissance, freude, orphic plaisir, or, at the very least, “like a monkey making love to a skunk – maybe didn’t get all he wanted, but got all he could stand…”
Of course, you see, it didn’t happen that way. Driving up the 101 in Friday rush-hour has its occasional pleasures and aesthetic appeals but not when dinner reservations in the Mission and a hop-skip-jump over the Bay Bridge are timed out perfectly to coincide with Sam Beam’s performance at the Paramount. Over an hour parked in the concrete desert is a numbing death-trip. Honk. Break. Lurch. Then there’s the inevitable parking morass that is downtown SF: where one parks in the Richmond to play on Harrison – and the confusing cell-phone tag-games that often delay dinner reservations and sometimes end friendships.
Reservations cancelled, eh?
What?! 7:30 already! I’m barely through the second scotch and soda and already it’s time to move on. Back onto the road and across the great steel artery leaving the flickering night of the city before it’s even begun in earnest. Wait…wait…where’s my WALLET?!
Believe it or not, we all might learn a thing or two from Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam – namely, not to sweat the little things and embrace your quotidian flaws. His Hirsuiteness took the cavernous auditorium of the Paramount on Nov. 30 for two hours of brittle ballads and po’ boy twee pop.
Here’s an interesting chart, thanks to Marc Salomon, totalling the second- and third-choice votes in the mayor’s race. SInce Newsom won a clear majority, ranked-choice voting never came in to play, but if it had, and just for fun and the permanent record, Quintin Mecke came in second, Harold Hoogasian third, Wilma Pang fourth. Chicken John didn’t come close to his goal of being the Number Two candidate.
When I first saw this press release, I thought: Wow. Gavin Newsom realizes that there’s a $250 million budget deficit, and he’s actually trying to do something about it. We tax cigarettes because they’re unhealthy, why not tax carbon emissions, which are killing the planet — and raise a little money in the process?
Well, damn: There’s a problem. The key word here is “revenue neutral.” Newsom’s going to give tax rebates to anyone who has to pay this new tax. So it brings in no money for the cash-strapped city.
I understand the argument (let’s tax carbon, not jobs) but the payroll tax doesn’t tax jobs; it’s just a way to measure the size of a company. It’s an imperfect measure, as is gross receipts, but it’s one of the few possible measures you can use for a tax. Calling it a tax on jobs is completely misleading, and the mayor knows that.
So why not keep both? Why not simply add a levy on commercial carbon use (and maybe residential, over a certain basline, so it won’t be a regressive tax on renters), and bring in some cash in a way that also discourages environmental waste?
Bay Area congressional Democrats Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi: fighting imperial excesses, one capitulation at a time.
So congressional Democrats are angry about the New York Times revelation that the CIA destroyed videotapes of their agents harshly interrogating (ne torturing) al Qaeda suspects. And they should be, both because its appears the tapes had been illegally withheld from congressional and 9/11 Commission inquiries, and because they might show evidence of torture authorized and/or condoned at the highest levels of government. But there’s some subtext to this story that once again casts congressional Democrats in a very disturbing light. It shows them to be complicit in and enablers of the very worst of the Bush Administration atrocities: torture, illegal spying on Americans, and telling lies designed to start an illegal war under false pretenses.
Hoo, boy — here come the truth fetishists. They’re still groping away at that mirage in the distance where we all get to know what actually happened on 9/11, who was behind it, and how to claim the tragedy for political means in order to replace one lame duck for another in that most outmoded of positions, “American president”. The Boston Tea Party is slated to become another terribly misused reference to successful protest in this, its 234th anniversary, as activists try to gather angry Americans not sold on the media’s representation of the World Trade Center bombings at both Bostonian and San Franciscan docks. Attendants are asked to dress in colonial attire—preferably from the late 18th Century (leave the pith helmet at home, Grandpa)—and to bring fifes and drums, presumably for their distracting novelty value.
Not exactly recycling, but ….
“Proclamations” will be made denouncing such garbage as the 9/11 Commission Report, PATRIOT Act, Military Commissions Act, and just the broad, general notion of all-around tyranny. “Genuine” investigation, accountability and impeachment will be called for. The final act of protest will be a mass dumping of cardboard and bleached paper—a series of large, corny replicas of the actual published work being protested—into that precious natural resource: the San Francisco Bay. At least they could make ash of the boxes first, like they’re doing in Milwaukee, and in a slightly more tasteful and harmless move stick to dumping spent carbon instead.
Yes, let’s all wheel a bunch of junk effigies down to the bay and dump them in the water in a game of dress-up, all on the basis that errors can be found in each account given on the attacks, which isn’t exactly the most surprising turn of events since the trial in Rashomon.
This week, we reported on Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier’s divided love between San Francisco and St. Helena in Napa County where she maintains an additional home. But she isn’t the only local official who’s heart is torn. Who else is sleeping around?
A friend of Oakland City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente who sits on the Oakland Port Commission may be living primarily in the peninsula town of Hillsborough, one of the nation’s wealthiest based on per capita income, rather than a tough East Oakland neighborhood he claimed to reside in. The Oakland City Charter requires that Tony Batarse live in city limits while serving on the port commission. But East Bay Express reporter Robert Gammon bore into his claims last month revealing that the commissioner, a successful auto dealer and also a donor to powerful state Sen. Don Perata, had been taking annual homeowner’s exemptions on his opulent residence in Hillsborough since at least 1985. The tax benefit can only be used against a property that the homeowner predominantly lives in.
Stop the FCC’s Quiet Holiday Giveaway to the Big Media
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Since the Big Media are blacking out the story, let me pass along the news and the action plan to mobilize the message and the troops to stop the latest media giveaway by the Bush Administration. It’s payback time for their support of the Iraq war and occupation.
People across the country are building a wall to stop the FCC’s plan to let Big Media swallow up more local stations.
Dear Media Reformer,
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin refuses to listen to the public, but Congress is starting to pay attention. This week, the House announced a formal investigation into the way the FCC conducts business. And yesterday, during a House oversight hearing, Congress scolded the FCC for a “short-circuited decision-making process” and “abuse of power.”
Our campaign is gaining momentum, but we need you to join us in our stand against Big Media.
In response to a growing public outcry, the Senate Commerce Committee this week passed the Media Ownership Act of 2007 (S. 2332). This crucial legislation would force Martin to slow down, give the public more time to comment, and address the negative impact of media consolidation on minority and female ownership.
Senators Boxer and Feinstein are already a co-sponsors. Thank your senators being leaders on this important effort.
Chairman Martin hopes you aren’t paying attention. He wants to vote on his proposal to let Big Media get even bigger on Dec. 18. If you think we need more local, diverse, and democratic media, now is the time to act.
Congress is taking action, but we need to show that this isn’t just another inside-the-Beltway issue. Too much is at stake, and they need to see the faces of the millions of Americans who are fed up with another massive giveaway to Big Media.
In 2003, nearly 3 million citizens like you stood up to the FCC and put a stop to media consolidation. We can do it again. But we need to put a public face on the resistance to media consolidation.
Write Your Senators. Add Your Picture to the Wall. Stop Big Media.
This is big, a clear sign of how Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to operate in his next four years: Susan Leal, the head of the Public Utilities Commission, is going to be fired because she’s moving too fast toward public power.
Now keep in mind: Susan Leal is not by any means a radical public-power activist. We’ve been pushing her on this issue for years, and she is, at best, moving slowly, cautiously, incrementally to implement Community Choice Aggregation and to look at options to create a city-run utility.
But even these cautious, slow moves were too much for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and, according to what I’ve heard at City Hall, PG&E was directly behind this move. THe message that Newsom and PG&E are sending out: Nobody should dare, ever, to take even little itsy-bitsy baby steps toward public power.
Note the comment by the head of Leal’s commission:
“The commission has never taken a vote on public power,” commission President Ryan Brooks said Wednesday. “It’s something she wants, but I don’t think the commission wants it. … I don’t think it’s the right time for it. It’s not a policy direction she has from the commission or from me.”
Leal, no fool, forced Newsom to give her a contract when she took the job, and the city will now have to spend $500,000 to buy her out. That’s a lot of money — but Newsom is apparently willing to spend it as the price of protecting PG&E.
This just in: Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse – the longest-running, full-time venue for folk and traditional music west of the Mississippi River – announced today it has been awarded a $1.161 million grant from the California Cultural and Historical Endowment (CCHE) to fund construction of its new green performance space, school, and café.
A release from the East Bay institution continues:
“Construction will begin before the end of the year on the nonprofit’s 18,000-square-foot venue at 2020 Addison Street, in Berkeley’s Downtown Arts District.
“The Freight’s new home will have a listening room that doubles the audience capacity of its existing 220-seat venue. The plan also includes an additional 1,339-square-foot performance space, state-of-the-art sound system, café, and store offering CDs and sheet music.
“As an all-ages, family-friendly venue, the Freight is using this opportunity to expand its education program, and will offer a variety of folk and traditional music classes in six classrooms, bring music into the local schools, and establish a library and archive that will be open to the public.
Brian Miller contemplates the Lightning Bug Situation – he’s responsible.
C’mon down and down some more choiceness along with that hard eggnog: you’d think this was high-music season with all the live sounds out there. Here’s what didn’t make it into print in this week’s Sonic Reducer yet nonetheless stands out, shining like a friendly faux candle in a neighbor’s window.
Ghost of Curtis
We’ve lost Control again? Pay tribute to Joy Division once again. Wed/5, 9 p.m., $6. With Hot Challenge and Death Valley High. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300.
Head Boggle Domo
Squelching, ringing noise by way of SF meets Santa Cruz and Australia’s most clamorous. With Jap Jap, Bonnie, iXi, and Everything Is Inebriated. Wed/5, 8:30 p.m., donation. All ages. ArtSF, 110 Capp, SF.
Parker Street Cinema in motion.
Parker Street Cinema
The SF band unfurls evocative, cinematic instrumentals that cue the halcyon days of Tristeza and Album Leaf. With Excuses for Skipping and French Miami. Wed/5, 9 p.m., $8. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011. Also Thurs/6, 5 p.m., free. Rasputin’s Music, 2401 Telegraph, Berk. (510) 848-9004. Also Fri/7, 5 p.m., 5 p.m., Rasputin’s Music, 630 San Antonio, Mountain View. (650) 947-0181.
Ramon and Jessica captured by Christian Bruno. Ramon and Jessica
Winsome fiddle and Casio get together for a few tunes, documented by filmmaker Christian Bruno. With Maya Dorn and Eggplant Casino. Wed/5, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
The Thermals
Punker than you – and recording for Sub Pop.
With the Big Sleep and the Scandells. Wed/5, 8 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.
Vampire Weekend
Ivy League indie-rock afro-pop? Can I get another descriptor? Warriors can see for themselves on the brink of the buzz band’s debut release. With Grand Ole Party and Still Flyin’. Wed/5, 8 p.m., $12. Independent, 628 Divisadero, S.F. 771-1422. www.theindependentsf.com
Meg Baird
Lovely Appalachian traditionals emanate from the Espers songbird. With Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound and Rahdunes. Fri/7, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
Batman vs. Predator
“The greatest band of all time ever in history”? according to their MySpace page. Or just Santa Rosa’s most chaotic and comic book-obsessed? With Melt Banana and xbxrx. Fri/7, 9 p.m., $13-$15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, S.F. 771-1422. www.theindependentsf.com
Immigrant
The SF indie rockers of Evening spin off into a new, rockier variation. With Triple Cobra and Frail. Fri/7, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.
Antelope
The Dischord trio formed by ex-members of the Vertebrates and El Guapo herd into SF. With Fucking Ocean and Mi Ami. Sat/8, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923. Also with Trainwreck Riders, Fucking Ocean, Ovens, and Touch Committee. Mon/10, 7 p.m., $3. Bike Kitchen, 1256 Mission, SF.
Andrew Bird on Letterman.
Andrew Bird
The nest has been all a-twitter over his latest, Armchair Apocrypha, but I prefer his last disc, The Mysterious Production of Eggs. Sat/8, 8 p.m., $28.50. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 775-7722.
Lightning Bug Situation
Jolie Holland guitarist and Speakers member Brian Miller parties like it’s a CD release party – and it is! For the dream-worthy A Leaf; A Stream. Sat/8, 9 p.m., $6-$8. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. (415) 970-0012.
Etta James and the Roots Band
The Fillmore-reared hell-raiser returns to the hood she ran as a member of a girl gang (see her autobio, Rage to Live). With Moonalice. Sat/8, 9 p.m., $49.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-TIXS.
Prefuse 73
Flabbergasting at Bimbo’s 365 Club, and expect no less this time around. With School of Seven Bells and Blank Blue. Sat/8, 9 p.m., $16. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.
Tempo No Tempo
Breezy indie by way of the East Bay. Sat/8, call for time and price. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.storkcluboakland.com.
Giant Skyflower Band
Delectable, hazy Brit-Invasion-style rock-pop from Skygreen Leopards and Papercuts stalwarts. With Citay and Coconut. Sun/9, 9 p.m., $8. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
Shonen Knife
The Japanese girl group bounces back with a new album, Fun! Fun! Fun!, released in their homeland and a tour with founding bassist Atsuko Yamano, now living in the US. With Juliet Dagger and Vernon Grove. Tues/11, 8 p.m., $16-$18. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.
Presidential hopeful Ron Paul
Last night at the Holiday Inn in San Francisco, an event and straw poll staged by the San Francisco Republican Alliance (a group started by former local GOP committee member and sacrificial Assembly candidate Gail Neira after she battled with local party leaders) that seemed geared toward supporting presidential candidate Fred Thompson was abruptly canceled when dozens of Ron Paul supporters showed up to vote. Rather than allow the vote to go in favor of Paul — whose anti-war and libertarian views have generated considerable support in the Bay Area — Neira called off the vote and offered to refund everyone’s fees ($5 to vote, or $33 to attend the banquet then vote).
Check on the You Tube videos of the event here and here, and read accounts by Paul support here, here, and here.
Have patience, it progressively gets weirder. The best part is that it actually works. Ever since our illustrious receptionist Dena enlightened me to this video, I’ve been walking around the office singing, “spare me my life!”
Yesterday, the Board faced a choice: hire legal firm Garcia Calderon Ruiz, which specializes in government law,
or run with academic lawyer Prof. Robert Weisberg, as outside counsel for official misconduct proceedings against Sup. Ed Jew.
Beleagured Sup. Ed Jew in happier times outside his flower shop on Waverly Place.
Photo by Charles Russo
Three attorneys with GCR, Mary Hernandez, George Yin and Nicolas Vaca, gave a relatively slick presentation compared to the Dumbledore-style ramblings of Prof. Weisberg.
“We have dealt with removal issues before,” said Hernandez.
“We are used to working in gray areas,” said Yin.
“A reasonable estimate,” said Vaca,of the firm’s $24,800 bid to get the project started.
But that bid appeared to be $24,800 too much, compared to Weisberg’s offer to work pro-bono, even if he teaches criminal law and doesn’t have experience in government agency law.
“This is not really a criminal matter,” said Weisberg. “The Board is a legislative body, and so it would be unconstitutional for it to convict someone of a crime.”
Maybe the Board enjoyed Weisberg’s easy-to-grasp explanations,which included making an analogy between Jew’s case and congressional impeachments proceedings: just as Congress indicts and the Senate then votes to remove from office, the Ethics Commission would do the “impeaching” and the Board of Supervisors would then vote whether to remove Jew from office.
Alles klar, Herr Professor.
Because in the end Sup. Geraldo Sandoval, seconded by Sup. Tom Ammiano, directed the Clerk of the Board to enter into an agreement with the professor, which does include the possibility of the $15-an-hour labor of his student research assistants at Stanford University.
.
On Friday night, Nov. 30, I caught Etienne de Rocher’s farewell tribute at the Rickshaw Stop. It went off all mellow, with candlelight and whatnot. Seems your boy is off to Athens, Geo., to buy property and raise his kids, kick it with his broski, and find a porchswing or something.
Et il me manque deja: I’m a sucker for the sounds of the overeducated. He did a most academic Slick Rick, despite botching a few lines. (This is a compliment.) And his old stuff, stuff I’d never heard before, the once-upon-a-time stuff he used to play with the same buddies who showed up to honor him on Friday evening, conjured perfect images of budding intelligentsia in khakis, Rod Levers, beanies, and shit-eating grins cutting Latin or some AP class to get high, eat Popeye’s, play video games, and bust arch freestyles over instrumental B-side cuts from Public Enemy EPs – underwrought, expropriated gesticulations and the stuff of preparedness’ memory.
Gala, a café acquaintance of mine was there – a smarty-party to herself with some great advice for me: indulge. I’d never seen de Rocher before so that’s certainly what I did, in my Boathouse warm-up pants, Stan Smiths, and an Extra Tasty Crispy mustache, my virgin ears teething against the literary tropes. I was picking up what de Rocher and friends were putting down, like the rest of the packed, booksmart house.
History museum proposed by Presidio Historical Association
Art museum proposed by Don Fisher
Last night at the Officer’s Club about 200 Marina residents gushed over Gap-founder Don Fisher’s plan to put a 100,000 square foot museum in the Presidio to house his art collection. For the most part they gave a demur nod to the Presidio Historical Association’s alternate proposal for a history museum. The two museums are vying for the same slice of real estate at the head of the Main Parade Ground, facing north toward the Bay where a bowling alley and tennis courts are currently located.
The historical association made a case for the site as a place where the history they’d be presenting actually went down, and said the grounds surrounding the museum would be a part of the museum itself. “The Main Post area is the most historically sensitive area,” said Gary Widman of the Historical Association. “It’s where San Francisco really started 1n 1776 and it’s an area that has buildings from almost every major period since that time.”
The only historical connection Mr. Fisher could come up with was the original plan for the Main Parade Ground, which called for a significant building at its head to anchor the site. He was firm in saying he could think of no other possible place for his museum. “This is the only location that works for us,” he said. “Nothing like that is available anywhere else in the Presidio.” In fact, he said he was planning on gifting his art to some other, already established museums until he was approached by the Presidio Trust, which suggested he consider building his own museum in the park instead.
Before the two plans were presented, Mayor Newsom offered some very diplomatic remarks suggesting a great compromise. “These don’t have to be competing projects,” he said, adding that he’d appointed a staff member (Kyri McClellan, 554-6123) to this project. “My office wants to participate in this process from the beginning.”
The plans agreed on one issue — parking would go underground. After that, they differ radically.
The San Francisco-based War and Law League has just released a survey of this year’s presidential candidates, who are actively questioning whether the U.S. is now conducting an illegal war in Iraq that should be ended or properly authorized immediately. Or least that was the basic position taken by the only three candidates to respond: Democrats Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards and Republican Ron Paul. Kudos to the trio for stating their positions on a controversial question that might become painfully relevant in the coming years: Was the U.S. invasion of Iraq legal? Because if it wasn’t, as many legal scholars believe, then the leaders who started it might someday be called to account for war crimes and other violations of international law.
The questions and issues raised, which were vetted by Golden Gate University of Law professor Peter Keane and touch on everything from the legality of nuclear strikes to Bush’s preemptive war doctrine, are fascinating to read and consider. And the answers — as well as the lack of answers from strong anti-war candidates like Barack Obama and Bill Richardson — are telling indicators of where our country could be headed.
