SFBG Blogs

Freedom in your genitals

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Nicole Halpern lives and works at the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, an organization/community dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. She teaches naked yoga, regular yoga, and a class called “The Man Course.” I have seen her naked.

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SFBG: So what’s your story? How did you find yourself working at One Taste as a naked yoga instructor?

Nicole Halpern: Well, all my life I’ve had these experiences where I would feel really really connected to everything -to all the people and everything around — and then I just hit a point in my life where I realized I wanted more.

SFBG: Um, what exactly do you mean by that?

Halpern: I just wanted more connection to everything and I kept trying to find it in different ways, but it wasn’t until I moved to One Taste that I finally found it.

SFBG: OK … so where are you from?

Halpern: I grew up in Manhattan. I went to high school in Westchester and lived in a traditional family. It was really traditional. I mean, I went to college. I worked at ABC news for 2.5 years. I worked in marketing. I worked in advertising. I have a very traditional background. But I quit my job in 2000 to travel because I had this deep desire to see more than just the east coast of the United States.

SFBG: Cool. Where did you go?

Halpern: Oh, I went on a long backpacking trip through Nepal, and when I came back I just knew my life had to be different. I couldn’t go back to the way I was before. Then I thought traveling was my purpose, but then I came here and realized my purpose was to teach classes around sex. I want to teach people how to have the life that they want, the sex that they want, and to feel freedom in who they are.

SFBG: So how did you find this place? Was sex the main attraction?

Good-bye Peakers, Hello Wi-Fi!

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This is brilliant. A tech company in Mississippi has bred wi-fi technology with electricity meters, and Burbank, CA, which has a power grid owned by the city is using the technology to cut down usage during peak times.

Why can’t San Francisco put $60 million toward this instead of bringing another fossil fuel power plant into the world?

As Naomi Graychase reports in this article, “An example of the immediate effect of this sort of load control,” says Fletcher, “ would be to send a signal to a grocery store that would turn down lights and turn down the A/C, so we can regulate power when there’s a shortage of power in the grid.”

Hmm…big power plant that runs on gas we have to buy from PG&E and puffs nasty smoke to an already smoky neighborhood…or…better switches and control of the power we use? This is a no-brainer: fossil fuels are so 20th century. WiFi is so 21. The kids love it. We could hip out the city’s Community Choice Aggregation plan with some of these, especially if we can get the Mayor to cut some sketchy back room deal to make them free!

Ammiano on Don Fisher & the Gap

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Gap for kids. It’s a whole new meaning for sweat clothes. No, Mr. Fisher, that’s not what we meant by No Child Left Behind. (From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, Oct. 29.)

Personal note to Tom: Work on your enunciation.

Political note to everyone in San Francisco: Vote no, no, no, a thousand times no, on Fischer’s wrong-headed, wrong-way Proposition to allow more parking spaces for more cars in downtown San Francisco for the new and awful highrise condos. No on H.

Impertinent question: how did so many people and organizations in the small business and neighborhood communities get suckered into voting for Fisher’s proposition? They have a lot of explaining to do. B3

Good music. Bad name.

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Though undeniably accurate, “The Bridge School Benefit” is the worst name for a rock concert ever. The only sexy thing about it (besides giving publicity to the school, which deserves it), is that it sounds a lot better to skip out on helping a friend move or having dinner with your S.O.’s parents to attend a “benefit” than it does to admit you’re going to smoke doobies and listen to the devil’s music.

But for all its bad name-iness, and the fact that I hate the Shoreline Ampitheater (Am I too old to appreciate massive venues? Or have I been spoiled by intimate shows in good-music towns?), the 21st Annual Bridge School Benefit last Saturday was actually quite good.

It may seem like no surprise, given that Tom Waits was on the bill. But with great expectations comes the possibility for great disappointment, and I’m happy to report that Mr. Waits did not disappoint.

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Good old Tom when he was, well, less old.

Leno vs. Migden: A meditation

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By Tim Redmond

The Harvey Milk LGBT Club is all tied in knots over this race. A lot of progressives are arguing that it’s split the community. A lot of people don’t even know how to approach it – two queer community leaders with progressive politics are fighting it out, and in the end, we all have to pick sides (or at least vote for one of them and not the other).

It’s tough: Both have been right sometimes and wrong sometimes. Leno used to be more associated with the moderate side of queer politics, and Migden with the more progressive side, but that’s not entirely accurate today: Leno has moved to the left (in part, no doubt, because that’s easier to do in Sacramento) and has become one of the most accessible, hard-working politicians in town. He’s proven himself trustworthy (although his political consulting firm, BMWL, is involved in some of the worst and sleaziest pro-downtown stuff in the city.

Migden, meanwhile, endorsed the more conservative Steve Westly over the more liberal Phil Angelides for governor. She’s done a few truly embarrassing things, like promoting for state school board a downtown Republican who wants to privatize public schools.
A lot of people say there’s no ideological difference between the two today, that the race is all about style (Migden brash, confrontive, an insider deal-making pol; Leno friendly, conciliatory, able to work well with others). Some say the criticisms of Migden’s style are sexist.

Over the next few months, as this gets more and more competitive and (I fear) ugly, there will be lots of trash talked about both of them. The two candidates will talk about history, records, and (maybe) positions on the few issues on which they don’t agree. They’ll both argue – and they can both make a case – that they will be more effective in Sacramento, better advocates for progressive causes and the city’s needs.

I’d like to offer a different lens.

What to do on Wednesday

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Still not done getting your Halloween party on? Pissed the party in the Castro is officially canceled? Not buying the
recommendation to stay home on Wednesday? Then check out the list of Halloween night events on our website , or stop by one of the fetes after the jump. At the very least, we promise you’ll have a place to potty while you party.

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Newsom’s interests vs. San Francisco’s

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I was writing a story about the long-term damage that Prop. H — which will entitle every land owner to build new parking lots, regardless of their traffic-inducing impacts or the desires of certain neighborhoods to limit parking — could do to San Francisco when Mayor Gavin Newsom called me. Actually, it was just Newsom’s voice in a robo-call urging me and others to vote against Prop. E, the mayoral question time measure, arguing that it won’t fill any potholes or put more cops on the street. Although Newsom is on record supporting the muni reform measure Prop. A and against Prop. H, the campaigns are frustrated that Newsom has done nothing to fundraise or campaign for them. “I think he’s focused on his own race and also question time. That’s where he’s spending his resources,” Newsom spokesperson Nathan Ballard told me when I asked about it.
So, there are two important measures on the ballot which will have a long term impact on quality of life in San Francisco. And there’s a measure that only affects Newsom personally, and perhaps his long term political ambitious if question time shows he can’t handle real unscripted debate. And Newsom ignores the big measures to focus on the small. If there was ever a telling testament to Newsom’s priorities — placing his own interests above San Francisco’s — this is it.

P.S. The Examiner had an interesting interview with London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has a monthly question time with that city’s legislators that it tough but ultimately good for him and for democracy. “It keeps me in touch with the people.” One more reason Newsom should embrace it instead of fighting it.

Seconds for Orange Juice’s Edwyn Collins

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By Todd Lavoie

Comeback of the year? Edwyn Collins, definitely. Back in February 2005, Collins – the former leader of jaunty Scottish post-punk charmers Orange Juice and a solo artist best known for the 1994 vibraphone-peppered finger-snapper “A Girl Like You” – suffered two cerebral hemorrhages that left him hospitalized for months. After undergoing extensive operations, he was unable to speak, and with the workings of the brain remaining a bit of mystery despite all of our progress in medicine, doctors were uncertain as to when he would regain his voice, if at all. Mercifully, Collins’s rigorous neurological rehabilitation program was enormously successful, and the whip-smart crooner got his velvet-and-stinging-nettles baritone back. A gradual process, obviously, but his recovery was coming along at such a steady clip that earlier this year he decided to work on the material he’d recorded prior to his near-fatal attacks. Apparently the road to wellness has been rather smooth for Collins. Here we are, only a few months later, and Home Again (Heavenly/EMI) is already out. And it’s fantastic.

From what I’ve gathered from recent interviews, nearly all of the music on Home Again was recorded before the hemorrhages, which meant the only work that remained to be done was the mixing. However, that’s a mighty big “only” when you consider that Collins’s recovery was a two-step process: first he had to re-acquire the faculties to make words and sentences, and then he had to re-familiarize himself with the sound of his own voice. For a singer – whose sense of identity is so deeply, fundamentally tied to having an intuitive understanding of the voice – such a setback must be daunting beyond belief.

In one interview, Collins revealed that when he was first recovering in the hospital, all he wanted was silence. Gradually, that position changed and all he wanted was his guitar, but it would take months before he was able to indulge that desire. Re-acquiring his voice meant much more than being to able to produce sound with his lips and tongue. It also meant a great deal of (self-)exploration, learning how to use the voice more effectively for conveying emotion. Listening to the tapes in his home studio initially was much like getting to know a stranger, he described in another interview. Chalk it up to a crack team of physical rehabbers and some seriously scrappy fortitude, I suppose, because Home Again is a clear sign that Collins possesses total control of his instrument. If the pre-illness Collins was indeed a stranger upon re-introduction, it mustn’t have taken long before the barriers were broken down and a deeper understanding was achieved.

GCI was the Big Cheese

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You can’t possibly be thinking about how much alcohol you shouldn’t have consumed at the seventeen Halloween parties you went to this weekend, or what kind of witty and ironic costume you’re going to make for the ones you’ll attend on Wednesday (because lord knows you can’t show up in the same thing you wore all weekend). No, I’m sure what you’re really wondering is: how was Oakland’s first Grilled Cheese Invitational?

The answer: badass.

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Everyone knows it isn’t really a party until someone dons a horse head.

Don Fisher’s child-labor fortune

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Why does GOP bigwig and GAP founder Don Fisher have so much money to pour into the campaign to defeat sound planning in San Francisco? Gee, maybe the fact that his company’s clothes are made by child slaves might have something to do with it.

I love the Onion’s hit on this.

Bourgie but blameless

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Intrepid intern Soo Oh checks out custom countertops that are going to save the world.

By Soo Oh

Eco-friendly home improvement couldn’t get classier than Vetrazzo. And by “classier,” I mean “glassier.” (I can’t believe I just wrote that. Intern, get me some coffee! Wait. I am the intern. Damn.) Eight-five percent of Vetrazzo’s smooth surfaces are made from recycled glass, the largest source of the company’s sources coming from neighborhood curbside recycling programs. The rest of the surfaces are bound with a special blend of “cement, additives, pigments and other recycled materials such as fly ash — a waste by-product of coal burning power plants,” according to the web site, which also says that manmade stone countertops contain petroleum-based resin (!).

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This color is called Glass House. Make up the rich-people joke for yourself…

Obama in the House?

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The organizers and speakers from Hip Hop 4 Obama make Chris DeMento wonder: Can Obama really do it?

By Chris DeMento

Barack Obama’s been making the biggest grassroots push since JFK’s presidential campaign, but will it take? I spoke and listened to three very intelligent and spirited Obama supporters at a recent Hip Hop 4 Obama event at Berkeley’s Ashkenaz, all of whom were filled with information and the will to help their man beat a Clinton in a primary. One small problem: nobody showed.

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Annemarie Stephens, founder of Hip Hop 4 Obama

Speed demons!

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Driving out to Altamont Motorsports Park on the night after a full moon, just a few days before Halloween, even my metal-maimed eardrums could faintly hear the sound of Mick Jagger’s famous plea for peace, uttered from the Altamont concert stage in 1970’s Gimme Shelter: “Who’s fighting, and what for?”

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The cars that go boom.

Well, I’ll tell ya, fighting on Oct 27 were some 50 roached-out, jerry-rigged race cars, hellbent less on victory than on the glory of completing 300 laps — or in many cases, somewhat less — at the track’s annual Pumpkin Smash.

What about them pumpkins? The reason for the season, no doubt — hundreds of orange mofos gave their lives valiantly for this event. The asphalt was luridly smeared with pumpkin guts and gallons of soapy water. Facilitating and maximizing smash-ups never looked so festive…nor made onlookers long so much for pumpkin pie.

Darling Nikki

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Don’t try to front like you never liked Motley Crue. You know you shouted at the devil. You know you tapped out the poignant opening bars of “Home Sweet Home” on your big sister’s Casio keyboard. And you know you turn up the iPod when shuffle kicks you into “Dr. Feelgood.”

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Girl, don’t go away mad.

Ok, maybe all of the above — that’s just me (I also own Motley Crue: Behind the Music on DVD, and have routinely claimed band auto-bio The Dirt to be my favorite book of all time). But if you don’t like the Crue, what’s wrong with … uh .. yue?

Founding Motley member Nikki Sixx don’t need no Rock of Love, sex-tape scandal, nor Surreal Life stint to retain his coolness. And I say this because, well, he was always my favorite. (Love you too, Mick Mars.) Now the Sixx-pack’s got a new side-project band (Sixx: AM — get it??), who’ve just put out a soundtrack of sorts to Sixx’s new memoir, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star (Pocket Books, 2007).

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Learn it. Love it.

Head over to Barnes and Noble in San Mateo to pick up a copy and get it signed by Sixx hisself — in person this weekend. Partial proceeds from book sales go to Sixx’s Running Wild in the Night, a fundraising initiative that helps runaway, abandoned, and abused youth via Covenant House California. Here’s the deets:

Sun/28, 2 p.m.
Barnes and Noble
11 West Hillsdale Blvd., Hillsdale Shopping Center
San Mateo, CA
(650) 341-5560

The book, which is designed to look like a diary and is packed with ghoulish, red-white-and-black illustrations, contains some pretty amazing rock ‘n’ roll nightmare-isms:

“April 4, 1987
Van Nuys, 2:30 a.m.

I think things are looking up. Pete and me have now got porn stars doing our drug runs for us.”

“August 28, 1987
Capital Center, Landover, MD
Backstage, 11:55 p.m.

I just got a blow job from a girl who started crying and thanked me after. What the fuck?”

“November 21, 1987
Backstage, Chattanooga, 6:40 p.m.

Fuck, I feel like dog shit.”

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(Author’s note: this was my Halloween costume costume more than once.)

Go, metal monsters Gojira, Go

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By Ben Richardson

Esteemed Guardian staffer Cheryl Eddy was kind enough to sacrifice a sentence of her Behemoth preview this Wednesday, Oct. 24, on the altar of French metal masterminds Gojira. Though the adjective she picked to describe them – “brutal” – is certainly apt, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the band’s Gallic brutality.

Gojira is the brainchild of two brothers from Bayonne: Joe and Mario Duplantier, a guitarist and a drummer who honed their formidable instrumental skills as children before recruiting a bassist and second guitarist to round out their band. Initially calling themselves Godzilla, they soon paid the inevitable price of, well, not coming up with a better band name, and switched over to the Japanese translation.

Describing Gojira’s music is tricky. The music definitely draws on the bludgeoning power of down-tuned death metal riffs, and it harnesses the speed of thrash metal picking, but it’s nigh impossible to call it “death” or “thrash” in good conscience. There’s also the complication of the band’s heavy prog influence, which manifests itself in Gojira’s off-kilter, abruptly curtailed riffs, strange time signatures, and majestic, epic interludes.

SF Weekly loses a big one

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SF Weekly loses a big one

It’s no news to most of you that the Guardian has sued the SF Weekly and its parent company for predatory pricing. We’re arguing that the Weekly, owned by Village Voice Media (which used to be New Times), has been selling ads below cost for the purpose of injuring the locally owned competitor.

Back in July, SF Weekly managing editor Will Harper wrote a long, rather nasty story that sought to portray the suit as groundless. He called the suit “light on witnesses and evidence,” quoted his boss, Mike Lacey, at length, and laid out, in detail, the Weekly’s motion for summary judgment — in essence, a motion to dismiss the suit because of a lack of evidence.

Well: this Wednesday and Thursday, Judge Richard Kramer heard arguments on that motion (actually, three different motions). One of the things that the Weekly’s lawyers argued was that the VVM managers couldn’t possibly have intended to harm the Guardian; after all, the lawyers argued, VVM CEO Jim Larkin denied any such plan.

That’s right: The lawyers said their client couldn’t have done anything wrong, because he (imagine this) said he didn’t do it.

Shortly before noon yeterday, Judge Kramer denied all three motions. In essence, the judge said, just saying you didn’t do it won’t fly; there’s plenty of evidence to take this case to trial, and a jury will have to decide who’s telling the truth and what’s really going on.

The folks at the SFW, of course, are spinning the ruling as just more evidence of our “looney lawsuit”. That’s their opinion, and they’re welcome to it. But in this particular matter, the opinion that counts is the opinion of the Hon. Richard Kramer — and he didn’t see it the SF Weekly’s way.

Trial is scheduled for early January.

Meet the Candidates: Michael Powers

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The Bay Guardian is profiling the candidates for the 2007 elections. We’ll be updating this entry as more information comes in. Post your thoughts or comments below.

Mayoral candidate Michael Powers

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www.powersforthepeople.com

“As a candidate for Mayor it is my intent to accomplish the following tasks for my fellow residents. I will:

*make Muni free and introduce a community bicycle program with 10,000 bikes
as in Paris.

*protect our city’s skyline through slow growth rather than our present program
of Manhattanization.

*lower our crime rate by increasing the number of police officers we have on our
streets by use of Lateral Transfer hiring and insisting that sworn personnel are not
wasted on administrative duties.

*use our bike program to allow the homeless to become its supervised labor pool
in bike maintenance, thus teaching them a trade.

*encourage the promotion of Harvey Milk’s birthday as a national holiday.”

Visit the Guardian 2007 Election Center for updates, more interviews, and 2007 election news.

From Norway to our Bay: A Q&A with Sorcerer

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Daniel Judd of Sorcerer likes racquet sports, so I found it hard to talk about music when I interviewed him. But I like Sorcerer’s White Magic so much — in fact, as I post this interview, I’m listening to it — that for once I was able to shut up about tennis. It was even US Open season, and yet, I was able to exercise restraint when it came to my Dolores Park backhand battles, my friends’ favorite obscure places to play in San Francisco, and my fandom for current players like Rafael Nadal and obscure new players like Agnes Szavay. (See? I can’t shut up.) One insightful aspect of the interview below that I wasn’t able to fit into this week’s cover story is Judd’s discussion of DVDs and the craft of making music and movies. Dive a little deeper, to the bottom of this Q&A’s oceanic floor, and you’ll find some funny banter about fish in tanks and fish on plates.

Guardian: I just read an interview with your where you mentioned ping-pong. Are you going to see Balls of Fury?
Daniel Judd: I saw a preview for that the other day. There’s this Japanese movie I’ve been trying to hunt down called Ping Pong. It came out a few years ago and I don’t know if it even came out on DVD, but it’s been compared to Rushmore and Wes Anderson.

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G: I noticed you’ve listed tennis as one of your interests. You know that really I just want to interview you about racquet sports.
DJ: Some friends and I had a tennis group of various levels that we called the Tennis Jihad.

G: I’ll start out by asking about some of my favorite tracks on White Magic: “Divers Do it Deeper,” “Blind Yachtsman” and “Airbrush Dragon.” Can you tell me about those?
DJ: On “Divers Do it Deeper” I was trying to do underwater, aquatic disco. I was looking at pictures of deep sea diving and I found this funny old bumper sticker that said ‘Divers Do it Deeper.’

From Norway to Our Bay: A Q&A with Dominique Leone

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Yeah, this week’s cover story on Oslo-San Francisco beyond-disco connections is pretty damn long. But there wasn’t enough room to note all of Dominique Leone’s activities. In addition to his November EP on Lindstrom’s Feedelity label, Leone is also readying an LP for release next year. He has another project, Paul and Diane, which pairs him with MaryClare Brzytwa. He’s also working with Katie Vida – the Local Artist featured in this week’s issue – on a dream world installation for Maybeck House in Berkeley.

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Guardian: How did you and Lindstrom get in contact with one another?
Dominique Leone: We first communicated around a year and a half ago. I wanted him to a remix of one of my tunes, so I just wrote [to] him. He asked me to send some music, so I sent him a few songs. When he came back to me he was really positive. He’d sent one email that I never got, and then wrote me again weeks later to ask if I’d received what he’d written.

Today’s Ammianoliner

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Thousands evacuated. State of emergency declared. Boy, those Harvey Milk Club meetings are something.

(From the voicemail of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Thursday, Oct. 25.) For the uninitiated, this is Ammiano’s account of the club’s pandemonium meeting this week to consider whether Assemblyman Mark Leno or State Senator Carole Migden gets the club’s important endorsement in this hotly contested race for Migden’s Senate seat. Note our blogs. B3

Killer queens and Hallo-weiners

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Sorry, the above should say Hallo-winners, not Hallo-weiners — but I’m hella-halla hungover, and that’s why this posting is, well, late. BUT! There so much devilishly great stuff happening this Halloweekend and beyond that I’m running out of annoying puns — a thankful first! I want to go to every party, and I probably will, but below are some that I’ve highlighted because if I don’t, the drag queens involved in several of them will poke a stiletto through my third eye. And isn’t that what drag queens are for, to kill you? They’re like Gattaca. But with robots. I think.

SATURDAY

Surya Dub Halloween Mashdown

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For some reason Halloween always reminds me of Indian food. You too? Weird! Get down to the devilish dubstep and Southeast Asian sounds (no drag queens involved — but maybe) at Surya Dub’s Halloween mashdown, with DJ Maneesh the Twista and a freakin’ pumpkinload of international guests — this is the place to be on Saturday latenight, right dem?
Club Six
60 Sixth St., SF; 863-122.
10pm-3am. $10.
Tons more info: www.suryadub.com

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Dial “X” For Murder
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The best annual lesbian costume party ever. DJs Campbell and Roccoh add to the devil may care atmosphere. (One of my friends just phoned to tell me she was going to cut eye holes out of a flannel shirt and go as a lesbian ghost! Awesome!)
Lexington Club
3464 19th St., SF
863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com. 8pm, Free.

Burrito will eat you

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Ed Note: We know this is a little late, breaking-news-wise, but we just can’t seem to get over it. Especially while we’re eating canned spinach for lunch.

By Duncan Scott Davidson

Boy, am I glad there are no Hardee’s restaurants in California, or I’d have to eat one of these:

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That’s the Country Breakfast Burrito, made, according to www.hardees.com, with “2 loaded omelets, 5 hashrounds, shredded cheddar cheese, and sausage gravy.” Just so you know, a “loaded omelet” has eggs, bacon, and ham in it. Which, in layman’s terms, is 920 calories and 60 grams of delicious, pork-based fat. Which, really, is not a whole lot, compared to eating a whole suckling pig, or a Hardee’s chicken salad, which has 1100 calories and 83 grams of fat. I mean, at least the breakfast burrito won’t dupe you into thinking you’re making the healthy choice by getting the salad. Hell no–there’s no fuckin’ vegetable matter up in this bitch. Lettuce is for suckers. This is the type of thing you order and say, “I’m gonna order that, eat half of it while watching football, get a little comatose, maybe wake up and finish it and/or barf, and/or barf and finish it, then watch some more football, maybe jerk off to porn, and go back to sleep.” It’s not a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gonna start the day right menu item, here, folks. It’s a plan of your Sunday. It’s a low-cost vacation in a tortilla, friends. Look at the gravy and cheese oozing out of that thing…if that doesn’t scream “relaxation,” I don’t know what does.

All the do-gooder internet nutrition-nazis are decrying this one-way ticket to Slumberland, as you knew they would: CNN, Fitsugar, Foodfacts …

Of course, they’re getting it all wrong.

When Clear Channel Attacks Prop. K…

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…they do it dirty and big time

A bunch of huge billboards and fliers popped up all over San Francisco yesterday, like some kind of overnight pox, trying to persuade people to vote against Prop. K

Prop. K is an advisory measure on this Novermber’s ballot that adopts a policy of restricting advertising on street furniture and City buildings.

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But until yesterday, when I drove past one of this monster billboards while stuck in traffic, I had never heard of the No on K-Citizens to Protect Muni Services Committee.

What caught my eye, other than the enormous ad, was the line that said “Major Funding by Clear Channel Outdoor and Outdoor Advertisers.”

Clear Channel numbers, of course, among the folk who would lose big time if ads such as these were restricted, so their opposition is predictable.

Clear Channel are also the folks who want to place ads on all the City’s bus shelters, in return for fixing the shelters up and installing new ones.

These are also the folks who argued that they don’t have to tell us their projected profits from coating our shelters with signs, because they are “renting” City space, rather than using it for free.

Curious, I called the Ethics Commission this morning to find out why I had never seen this Committee’s name before.
tThe guy on the other end of the line had never heard of them either, and it took an hour before someone got back to me and said, ‘Wow, How did you find out about them? They only filed with us today. Which is in violation of Ethics’s own rules.”

Turns out that this mystery committee already has $100,000 to play with, so expect to see more of the above ads all over, and expect that Clear Channel isn’t worried about having to pay some piddling, to their mind, fine to Ethics, later on.

PS The treasurer for No on K is Bill Hooper, President/General Manager of Clear Channel Outdoor, Nothern California Region.

Superfriends for world peace

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Get your tights in a twist for peace with the cwaaazy kids of Sugar Valley this Saturday before the UN Anniversary and Peace Parade! Oh — and don’t forget that the event (that includes a die-in at Dolores Park) will coincide with the world’s attempted biggest “Thriller” dance-a-thon!

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Join Sugar Valley artists on United Nations Day at the San Francisco Parade for World Peace
Sat. Oct 27
UN Plaza, 7th Street and Market, SF
Event at 1pm, parade starts at 2pm
At 4:15, 67 doves released — plus formation of a human peace sign
Superhero attire encouraged — look for others underneath the big red ballon!
More info: www.sugarvalley.org

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