“However many votes we get,we know the Bay Guardian will say it wasn’t enough.” That’s what Mayor Gavin Newsom’s campaign manager Eric Jaye said in the intro of today’s C.W. Nevius column in the Chronicle, so I thought I might as well address it and get into the political prediction game.
Also in the column, consultant Jim Stearns said of Newsom, “I would expect that he gets 75-85 percent easily.” Stearns is probably the best consultant in town, so I don’t dismiss his numbers, but if Newsom really gets that much, the Bay Guardian will definitely say, “Whoa, that’s a lot.” Even against a weak field, if Newsom gets 80 percent of the vote, he’ll have his voter mandate and be in a strong position to set the agenda in the coming years.
Does that mean the Guardian will roll over and support that agenda? If he does things like legalize gay marriage, support the labor movement, and offer universal health care, you bet. We’ve always been supportive of the mayor when he’s done the right thing, but unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often, which is why we didn’t endorse him. And we won’t support his efforts to subvert progressive values, no matter what kind of mandate he claims.
But I also think this is a moot point, because my prediction is that he won’t get anywhere near 80 percent.
SFBG Blogs
Mayor’s race predictions
Election-night coverage
by Tim Redmond
This blog is typically crowded on election night; I’m down at City Hall posting updates as the results come in and various Guardian staffers are reporting in from the evening’s events. It will be a little calmer tonight; we’ll get one set of results, at 8:30 pm, when the Elections Department releases its count of early absentees. But since the rest of the ballots have to be counted by hand, we won’t know much beyond that until later in the week.
So you can look here for the party scene, our analysis of the early results and some other fun – but we probably won’t be able to call the election until later in the week.
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Vote!
Turnout was pretty light in my Bernal Heights precinct this morning. Some projections say as few as 100,000 people will bother to vote. That would be less than 25 percent of the electorate choosing the next mayor and making key decisions on transportation policy. Which is exactly what Don Fisher and the downtown types hope for — in fact, the only way something as dumb and regressive as Prop. H could ever pass is San Francisco is in a very-low-turnout election.
So if you’re reading this, take a few minutes and go vote. Our endorsements are here.
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Teddy Thompson: Americana by way of England
By Anna Mantzaris
Teddy Thompson (that’s Thompson as in spawn of Richard and Linda) may be an English boy by birth, but the 31-year-old’s rock-folk-country sound will make you think he’s spent years fine-tuning his sound deep in the land of the American south.
Taking on the greats – Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, George Jones – Thompson’s latest CD, Up Front and Down Low(Verve Forecast), is a thoughtful collection of interpretations of C&W classics and not-so-well-known gems, with dad Richard and pal Rufus Wainwright lending their talents. A New Yorker by residence, Thompson takes his show on the road opening for Suzanne Vega; he appears Monday, Nov. 12, at the Fillmore.
Bay Guardian: How did Up Front and Down Low come about? Why an album of covers?
Teddy Thompson: I came home after touring after the last record for a year. I didn’t have a lot to do. I started just recording some songs for fun, but I liked the way it came out and I thought maybe it would make a good side-project album.
Meet Fisher’s little helpers. Impertinent question: How did the Gap’s Don Fisher enlist helpers from small business and neighborhood associations in his wrongway campaigns on A and H?
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Well, one of Don Fisher’s little helpers is James G. Maxwell, principal architect of Architects II and president of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations.
He sent out an email plea, late Monday afternoon on election eve, trying to help the Republican billiionaire and his downtown buddies round up more little helpers in the small business community to vote against their self interest and help Fisher reverse decades of good transit first planning and jam thousands of more cars into downtown San Francisco for the rich folks in their new highrise condos.
Maxwell was happy in his letter to further highlight and tee up more of Fisher’s little helpers: the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods. Which means that lots of merchants in the various neighborhood merchants associations and lots of residents in the various neighborhood associations found themselves lined up by Maxwell and his allies as Fisher’s little helpers in his ruinous onslaught against good planning and common sense.
Imagine: he wants more cars to service the highrises and downtown (Prop H) at the same time he is opposing a measure to help the Muni (Prop A), which would help the rest of us throughout the entire city. And the associations representing neighborhood business and neighborhood residents get suckered into being little helpers for Don Fisher. Fisher has a lot of explaining to do about his use of child labor in India and the business and residential associations have a lot of explaining to do about their support of Fisher’s wrongway campaign for more cars in San Francisco.
Maxwell repeated that the SFCDM put the measure on the ballot. But he was doing the bidding of Fisher, who was the driving force and major donor behind H. See the attached Steve Jones story. For more on the little helpers, see the Ammianoliners.
Postscript l: Let me be specific about Fisher’s involvement in H. He has personally given about $250,000 to the No on A/Yes on H campaign, funding the signature gathering initially and splitting the cost with condo developer WebCor. Fisher has since funded the mailers and the consulting fees for Jim Ross.
Postscript 2: I am happy to report that the Potrero Merchants Association figured out the issue quickly and refused to go along with the Fisher measure. B3
Click on the articles below to learn more about the Gap’s Don Fischer in San Francisco politics.
Transit or traffic: There’s a real chance to fix Muni
By Steven T. Jones
Joining the battle: Records show how Newsom opposed downtown parking limitations.
By Steven T. Jones
Continue reading after the jump for an example of Fischer’s little helper.
Prop H wins in Pakistan
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Prediction: Prop H wins overwhelmingly in Pakistan. Now that’s a parking problem.
(From the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on the day before the San Francisco election. Nov. 5, 2007.)
Personal note to Tom: Remember, you have one day left to keep Fisher and his little helpers on the run. Keep it up.
The A and H battle may hinge on your Ammianoliners. B3
Bechtel and Newsom: a fine pair
What do Newsom and Bechtel have in common?
They both oppose Prop. E, which requires the next Mayor of San Francisco to appear before the Board of Supervisors for public policy discussions.
Up until now, Newsom has been framing Prop. E as work of Sup. Chris Daly that will only lead to “political theater.”
Then, boom, four days before the election, Bechtel goes and plonks down $5,000 to defeat Prop. E, on top of the last-0minute plonking down of $10,000 from Republican Warren Hellman, $20,000 from the San Franciscan Association of Realtors, $25,000 from the Committee on Jobs Government Reform Fund, and $1,000 from socialite Dede Wilsey.
Looking at all these “No on E” money bags, it’s hard not to conclude that what Newsom’s No on E “Let’s Really Work Together Coalition” is really working together on is avoiding having to publicly debate tough issues, like the lack of affordable housing, or the rising tide of violence, or mental health issues among the homeless–issues that folks who aren’t millionaires and realtors would like to see their elected representatives hash out with the Mayor, but that rich folks can chat privately with the Mayor over fund raising dinners.
What’s bizarre about all this is that when you actually get Newsom talking, he seems perfectly capable of carrying out a well-argued and coherent debate.
So why don’t his handlers want their boy to be drawn into public debates? Could it be that they understand that once you get drawn into an argument, and express your opinion, people will take sides? That’s it safer to maintain a remote, inaccessible position, while you prepare for the next big thing, like governor, senator, or President?
But this is San Francisco, where people thrive on debate. So here’s hoping that the next Mayor of San Francisco spares us the fake question time and does as voters requested last fall: show up before the Board and answer their gosh darn questions.
Will & Willie are back!
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Will and Willie are back!
“Keeping it Real” with Will Durst and Willie Brown is now in podcast form at WillandWillie.com. Hear it at the link below.
Clear Channel Communications, the media megaconglomerate with l0 lousy radio stations in the Bay Area, made a terrible decision back in September 2006 when it killed the “Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie” early morning radio show on its 960 a.m. Quake station.
The show, created by the talented radio producer Paul “The Lobster” Wells, featured Comedian Will Durst and former mayor Willie Brown playing themselves and taking on the issues of the day in the spirit and style of the old Herb Caen columns in the old San Francisco Chronicle. They were fun to listen to, brought on guests that nobody else would touch (Peter Phillips from Project Censored, Noam Chomsky, Marie Harrison from the Hunters Point power plant opposition, etc.), sketched out issues the mainstream media ignored, and provided witty conversation and “Bursts of Durst” every week day morning from 7 to l0 p.m.
I was even encouraged to come on the program and blast away at PG&E, its illegal private power utility, and other Guardian issues. Willie promptly suggested on the air that the program stage a debate with PG&E and me. Fine, I said, but they have never agreed to a debate with me since the Guardian started its public power campaign in l969 and I doubted if they ever would. Willie claimed surprise and said he would work on it. Nothing of course happened.
But this was the kind of fun the program encouraged and I, and many others around town, enjoyed going on the show and making points and arguments we could make on no other local show and certainly not in the San Francisco Chronicle and probably not even in Caen’s column (even he was wimpy on PG&E).
Clear Channel just killed the show outright, with no warning, no real explanation, and no real appreciation for what the show had accomplished in a short period of time. And it left the city without a voice or venue on this Progressive station, just as “San Francisco values” became a national phrase and the war and Bush rhetoric heated up, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi ascended to the speakership. Instead, we got all kinds of Quake talent with the sensibility of other places (Al Franken from Minnesota and Stephanie Miller from Los Angeles) and none from San Francisco. (Newsman John Scott does his best, on “The Progressive News Hour” from 4 to 6 p.m., but it isn’t the same.)
The good news is that Will and Willie are back, with producer Paul Wells, in podcast form. Their inaugural episode is the first gathering of Will, Willie, and Paul since the cancellation. They are in good form discussing the San Francisco election and Mayor Newsom running without real progressive opposition and the problem with parking downtown and and and. Their next episode will take on the upcoming Presidential election and other national events.
Cheer them on! Hear them by visiting the following link HERE and going to the Will&Willie podcast. Log in and give them feedback. B3
Don Fisher attacks the supes
The Chron story Sunday portrayed the battle over transportation policy in San Francisco as Don Fisher vs. Aaron Peskin, but actually, Fisher is going further. He’s mounting an all-out attack on the Board of Supervisors — and a pro-Newsom campaign committee is helping out.
Fliers that went to the west side of town attack the supervisors as childish — and attack Prop. A as “another transportation solution from the Board of Supervisors.” The first flier is from the campaign against Prop. E — that’s question time, the measure that would require the mayor to appear before the board once a month. The second is from Fisher’s campaign against Prop. A.
The nearly identical messages aren’t a coincidence — the fliers have the same return address (150 Post St. Suite 405, the office of campaign lawyer Jim Sutton) and both were done by Rich Schlackman, a campaign consultant who is working with both No on A and No on E.
The plan, clearly, is to make people think the supes are idiots — then saddle Prop. A with that image. The fact that Schlackman, who is one of nation’s top direct-mail experts and who also works with Nathan Nayman and the Committee on JOBS, has adopted this strategy signals downtown’s continuing effort to go after the district-elected board. Expect more of this crap in the months to come.
BY THE WAY: The battle over Props. A and H is still close. Labor and environmental groups had 250 people out on the streets talking up Yes on A and No on H over the weekend, but if people don’t turn out to vote, Don Fisher could get his way.
The Yes on A/No on H party is Tuesday night at El Rio.
That Guardian doorhanger
Just for the record, because there’s always some confusion this time of year:
The Guardian doesn’t distribute doorhangers or political fliers. We don’t print them, we don’t pay for them.
We don’t object to them, either.
Every year, someone we’ve endorsed wants to get the word out, and prints up a guardian slate card. That’s fine with me; I want our endorsements distributed as widely as possible. I’m happy that people want to reprint them. We do a lot of work on this stuff; the more people who see it, the better.
In this case, the Quintin Mecke for mayor campaign put the doorhanger together, with some financial help from other candidates. I didn’t see it in advance; if I had, I would have pointed out an error. The flier has our position as NO, NO, NO on Prop. F. We actually support that one. Not a huge deal, since Prop. F – a minor police pension issue – isn’t terribly controversial and is going to pass anyway. If you aren’t sure, just download our official slate here.
The main point is that the Mecke card pushes Yes on A and No on H, and promotes our three alternatives to Gavin Newsom. We didn’t do it, but I hope it helps.
Holla at Molla
By Amber Peckham
It’s quickly approaching the most consumerist time of the year, and in my experience, even the most anti-establishment of people finds themselves responsible for at least churning out a macramé plant holder for Grandma or handwoven hemp scarf dyed with natural plant fibers for the office gift exchange. It feels good to give, and the spirit is infectious as we approach December. If you’re looking for quirky, fun gifts to appease even the most individualistic of your mob of friends and family, Molla Space might be a good place to start.
Tear Shape Clock by Yamato Japan
Dean Singleton still hates your stupid union
The Denver Post, flagship paper for Dean Singleton’s MediaNews chain, went on a blinding-mad rampage against Colorado’s governor in a rare front-page editorial Nov. 4.
If there was any doubt in your mind that Dean “Pinkerton” Singleton hates labor unions, this should be enough to dispel it right away. In a 2003 profile of Singleton that appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Scott Sherman explains that Singleton receives regular calls from the Post‘s editorial-page editor to finalize the paper’s opinion pieces before going to press.
But placing Singleton’s deep animosity toward labor unions on the front page would make even William Randolph Hearst blush. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that they share similar qualities.
In the editorial, the Post decries Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter as “a toady for labor bosses” and “a bag man for labor unions.” Ritter signed an executive order Nov. 2 giving unions that represent state employees official recognition and bargaining powers covering such crazy bullshit Communist principles like improved health care, wages and workplace safety.
A news story that ran in the Post shortly after the announcement implies bargaining will be a bad deal for state workers, and another suggested bidness would flee the state as a result of the decision, a common refrain from anti-union factions.
According to the editorial:
“When Coloradans elected Bill Ritter as governor, they thought they were getting a modern-day version of Roy Romer, a pro-business Democrat. Instead, they got Jimmy Hoffa. Ritter campaigned under the guise of a moderate “new Democrat” but now we know he’s simply a toady to labor bosses and the old vestiges of his party — a bag man for unions and special interests. The governor on Friday unveiled his plan to drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees. We’re concerned this may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor.”
Singleton’s MediaNews empire snapped up nearly every major newspaper in the Bay Area except the Chronicle last year in a complex series of buyouts. The union representing Oakland Tribune employees has since charged Singleton with trying to stamp out guild representation there.
Election roundup
I was on KPFA talking about the election this morning, along with Beyond Chron’s Randy Shaw, and he put out there his prediction that Prop. H is going down, a point he repeated in a column today. Last I heard, this heinous measure was still too close to call, so I’ve been checking with people on the campaign and otherwise in the know this morning and they’re all still worried. In particular, they say polls show Election Day voters evenly split on the issue. So don’t put too much credence in the punditry and political prognostication — get out there and vote No on H and Yes on A (the latter measure, by all accounts, really could go either way).
Thanks for the metal! Even if it does sound like other metal…
By Ben Richardson
Have you ever listened to a song and thought, wow, I’ve definitely heard that part before, in a different song? Vanilla Ice’s oft-derided thievery of the bass part from Queen’s “Under Pressure” is probably the best-known example, but – surprise – it turns out that riff-plagiarism has been rampant for years, especially in the dogmatic world of heavy metal and hard rock. Thanks to the keen ear of YouTube user BaknBlack, we provide you with a nine-volume compendium pilfered, ripped-off, and thinly disguised rock: Metal That Sounds Like Other Metal.
Fingered? Jimmy Page apologies for reunion resked
Jimmy Page back in the day. Photo courtesy of Alex
Reisner’s Led Zeppelin site.
A little message from Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, issued by Warner Bros. today:
As you all know by now I was regrettably put in a situation where I had to postpone my performance at the Ahmet Ertegun Benefit show, on Nov. 26, due to a fractured finger. We have now rescheduled this show to take place, at the same venue, on Dec. 10.
In doing so I was very conscious of the fact that many people are traveling great distances to attend. I do want to let everyone know that this decision was unavoidable. My apologies to anyone who has been inconvenienced by this change.
I would also like to thank everyone else involved for their help with making this change. Harvey Goldsmith, the trustees of the Ahmet Ertegun Foundation, and of course, the other artists who so willingly agreed to join us on the show.
I look forward to the 10th December!
Jimmy Page
Endorsements: Local offices
We’re having some trouble with our Web site — until it’s fixed, here’s our complete local offices endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections. For more endorsements, please visit our 2007 Guardian Election Center, or for quick refence see our Clean Slate printout guide.
Mayor
1. QUINTIN MECKE
2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI
3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI
Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.
It’s a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he’s allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy a house here, and many of them can’t afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.
Get Black&Blue with Five&Diamond
Five and Diamond, the new Mission mecca for all things tribal/wildwest/neuvo-burner, is celebrating its grand opening Monday night. And what better way to do it than with the Black and Blue Burlesque, the world-class dancers known for their performances with the Yard Dogs Roadshow? The event starts with a parade from the store to the Elbo Room, where wacky performances and plenty of happy schmoozing will ensue. See you there! (I’ll be the only one without bone jewelry in my stretched-out earlobes…for now).
9pm, $5
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
www.elbo.com
How do I covet 5&D’s inventory, particularly items made by Wilcard? Let me count the ways…
Step it Up!
Tomorrow! Go to Dolores Park at noon and for the National Day of Climate Change. Woo hoo!
March or ride in the parade of bikes and electric cars and other great, green stuff that’s going down to UN Plaza. Carole Migden, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi are going to be there, as well as mayoral candidates Quintin Mecke, Josh Wolf and Chicken John Rinaldi.
According to the press release, “UN plaza will be transformed into a carnival-like atmosphere complete with a Recycle That! art show filled with recycled and reclaimed art, the Sustainable Living Roadshow’s Conscious Carnival, a carbon-eating generator from the Chlorophyll Collective and smoothies made on a solar powered van. Participants will call for real political leadership on global warming, and will ask San Francisco’s political leaders to pledge to the following:
Put a moratorium on new coal and nuclear plants
Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050
Create 5 million new green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
Get back on track to meet San Francisco’s Climate Action Plan
This is a national event, started by super-eco-friendly-guy Bill McKibben, but San Francisco’s event tomorrow is extra-special because we’re pushing an anti-nuke future, despite the kinder, gentler image that nuclear power plants have been getting lately.
Here’s a fun/gross fact: every year vehicles in San Francisco emit more than 16,000 tons of nitrous oxide (nastiness that makes ozone). The Mirant peaker power plants that everyone’s in a tizzy to shut down emit 92 tons.
Hmmm. The take-away = quit driving. Vote yes on Prop A!
What is torture, really?
Cambodian waterboarding photo by Johah Black from www.davidcorn.com
By Sara Knight, a Guardian intern
Our own Senator Dianne Feinstein announced today that she supports
Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael “waterboarding may or may not be torture” Mukasey.
Due to his equivocating remarks about waterboarding – an interrogation technique that simulates drowning – Mukasey’s nomination was in danger of being stalled in the Judiciary Committee. Now, with Feinstein and Charles Schumer (D-NY) backing Mukasey’s nomination, a full Senate vote is inevitable and will probably result in confirmation.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, continues to oppose the Mukasey nomination. “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.”
Tell that to Mukasey, who hemmed and hawed over that question and ultimately refused to say one way or another.
And what is Feinstein’s justification for supporting Mukasey’s nomination? She and Schumer say the Justice Department is in desperate need of effective leadership.
The Justice Department needs many things, but expanding and exonerating the use of torture by our government under the guise of “effective leadership” is absolutely unacceptable.
Halloween in the Castro: A scary kind of “success”
Photo from www.sfpartyparty.com
Was Halloween in the Castro this year a scary police state and fear-based waste of public resources, or was it an “incredible success” that San Franciscans should be proud of, as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press secretary Nathan Ballard argues? Will we be trying to learn from a year when poorly communicated, top-down planning triggered resentments by many citizens and business people who were intimidated into shutting their doors? When and how will the city start planning for next year, when Halloween falls on a Friday, and will the public be allowed to participate?
I tried to get answers to these questions from Ballard and it wasn’t easy, as the following e-mail exchange shows.
Hannah Montana and me
By Tim Redmond
I suppose Child Protective Services will come and arrest me now that I’m about to admit that I took my kindergarten-age daughter to see a rock concert in Oakland, on a school night, and kept her up until well past 10 pm without a proper dinner … But what can I say: Vivian loves Hannah Montana. She has all the CDs. She watches the TV show. She puts on her best rock-star outfits and sings the songs, over and over, and dances and tells me that she’s going to be a rock star. She was Hannah Montana for Halloween. So when I learned at 4:45 pm Thursday that there were two review tickets available, I grabbed Viv, fed her half a cheese sandwich and loaded her on BART.
For those of you who don’t follow tween-age popular culture, Hannah Montana is a phenomenon. The Chron kind of blasted her a couple of days ago — and for good reason: The hype is out of control. So are the ticket prices.
And yes, we live in a culture where parents will do anything to please the little brats, including shelling out a fortune for a performance that lasted an hour and 15 minutes (almost to the minute; Disney runs a tight ship, and unlike any rock show I’ve ever been to, this one started and ended exactly on schedule).
So I should probably feel bad that I’ve not only allowed my daughter to be exposed to this, but actively encouraged it. I should feel terrible about the materialistic messages in the songs and the over-sexualized image of a 14-year-old girl prancing around onstage with male and female dancers who were all at least five years her senior.
I should feel rotten. I should go seek counseling from some proper-parenting group. I should be ashamed of myself.
And here’s what happened:
The moment Hannah Montana came onstage, after an utterly predictable 30-warm-up by a boy band called the Jonas Brothers, Vivian was transfixed. Her eyes opened like saucers, and she got this smile on her face that I will never forget as long as I live.
And frankly, the kid (the one on the stage, that is) knows how to perform. I’m not a big fan of the Work, as it were, but you have to admit, for a 14-year-old, Ms. Montana has astonishing presence. She sang (I think actually sang, not lip synched) her songs with plenty of energy and managed to dominate and control the stage even when she was surrounded by as many as a dozen other seasoned professional singers and dancers, most of whom looked to be in the early 20s.
At least, when she was Hannah Montana, she did.
Halfway through the show, she went backstage, ditched the wig and the TV persona, and came back out as herself, Miley Cyrus. Somehow, the energy wasn’t the same; I think Cyrus has got the Hannah Montana thing down, but hasn’t quite figured out how to be who she actually is. The last few songs reminded me that the person up on stage was too young to drive a car and barely old enough for high school. For her sake, I hope the Disney thing passes pretty soon and she can stop being a pre-packaged icon and start trying to learn to be Miley Cyrus; she might even turn out to be good at it.
But overall, I have to say, Viv and me had a blast. By a few minutes into the first set, my girl was standing on her chair, dancing madly and singing along. The earplugs I’d carefully installed to protect her young ear drums were ripped out and thrown on the floor (“I’ll put them back in when I WANT to, daddy!”). She’d kicked her cup of soda water into the people behind her, soaking the jacket on the back of her chair. When the rather uptight mom behind me warned that the chairs were tippy and my daughter was in danger and had already spilled her drink, I smiled and said, “it’s all rock and roll;” the woman looked at me in horror.
The place was packed with parents and daughters; our seats were pretty near the bar, so I was able to grab a bud light or two. The tweenage shrieking was almost unbearable, but Vivian didn’t care, and as a veteran of many, many Grateful Dead shows, I have to say it was no more obnoxious than the spaced-out dudes swaying and mumbling “Jerry, man.”
I mean, it was a rock show. In every way that’s right and wrong, for all the best and worst reasons …. And I knew that my daughter would be tired and crabby the next day and her ears will be ringing and she didn’t finish her homework, but fuck it: She danced all the way home.
Mr. Fisher’s little helpers
Sorry, Mr. Fisher. Those are not elves. And this is not Santa’s workshop.
(Today’s Ammianoliner: from the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Friday, Nov. 2, 2007)
Political note from B3: Let us not forget that the Gap’s Don Fisher, of child labor in India fame, is the inspiration and main funder for one of the most wrong=headed propositions in San Francisco history. That would be Prop H, which would open the floodgates to more parking and more cars for the highrise condos in downtown San Francisco and damage years of transit first transportation planning. If Keith Olberman of MSNBC knew what Fisher was up to in San Francisco and India, he would most likely make him the Worst Person in the World. Vote no on H. B3
Ammiano sums up Halloween
Castro fun runs the gamut from A to B. (From the answering macbine of Sup. Tom Ammiano the day after Halloween, Nov. l, 2007.)
Personal note to Tom: Don’t forget Don Fisher. A couple of more good whacks and you may be able to polish him (and his dread Prop H) off before election day. Remember, he can’t take a joke. B3
Who’s Uz? Czech avantists Uz Jsme Doma return
It’s not exactly a Prague Spring, but hope springs eternal that there will be intriguing sounds in the house when venerable Czech underground avant-proggists Uz Jsme Doma come to SF. Cod Liver Oil (Skoda) is the name of the Teplice-based combo’s new CD game – get a dose when they stop here, after what looks to be a moody tour of Praguetowns across America. It happens at the Hemlock Tavern Saturday, Nov. 3.