SFBG Blogs

The Mission ‘douchebags’

Zelda Bronstein
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The Mission ‘douchebags’

Okay, you have to read this. When a 1990s tech-startup guy who admits he was part of the last generation of gentrification is now so fed up with the new arrival of high-paid techies that he’s ready to leave, it’s pretty serious.

Chris Tacy makes an excellent point: When you move into the Mission, you need to understand that there are already other people living there, some of whom have been there a long time, and that it isn’t just you’re rich-kids playground:

Be considerate. That little old hispanic lady at the bus stop? Help her onto the bus instead of loudly bitching about how she’s going to make you late to your meeting at The Creamery. Be respectful. This neighborhood was here before you and will be here after you leave. It’s not your trashcan, your toilet or your playground. Understand the history and the culture and the people and act in a manner that isn’t stupidly offensive. Be sensitive. The traditional residents of this neighborhood are not rich and never will be. Flaunting your wealth and your opportunities is a douche move.

A guy I knew in college came from a very wealthy family, and his parents set up a trust fund for him. But he wasn’t going to get a penny until he was 30, and most of it would come to him later in life. His dad’s rationale: People who have a lot of money in theirs 20s become assholes. They don’t have enough life experience to handle the sudden riches. Get a job, live like a normal person, find out what life is like.

That’s how riches used to happen — the great industrial fortunes of the previous American generations tended to come to people who had worked for a while first; there weren’t a lot of 20-something millionaires. I think that’s a big change in the current economy. Some people are just too young to be rich.

I know, I’m an old fart who is not rich and never will be. Sometimes I feel like a curmudgeon. But if you’re lucky enough to be rich in your 20s, show some respect.

Thunder from West Portal: Quentin Kopp savages the Warriors’ Embarcadero Wall and its $220 million taxpayer subsidy

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(Scroll down to read Kopp’s column from the Westside Observer)

When then State Sen. Quentin Kopp was appointed to the bench in San Mateo County, some of his fellow judges took him out to lunch.  “We hope you realize you have now given up your First Amendment rights,” he was told.

Judge Kopp did as he was told and kept silent for years on the bench on the many issues he felt strongly about and would have taken on in the public arena.   Today, however, he is retired, given up judicial restraint, and is back in action exercising his First Amendment rights with gusto. Operating from a desk in the office of Atty. Peter Bagatelos in West Portal, Kopp blasted the scavengers on behalf of an initiative aimed at upending the scavenger monopoly and controlling rates (he was right.) He has fired away at the RosePak/Willie Brown/Chinatown power structure on the Central Freeway.
He regularly blasts Mayor Lee for “compliancy” on big development, District Attorney for any number of misdemeanors and indiscretions, and former Sup. Sean Elsbernd for being Sean Elsbernd.

Now, in the current edition of the Westside Observer, Kopp has hit his stride with an acidic but well argued column titled appropriately, “The Art of Picking the Public Purse.” 

His lead: “It’s all privately funded!  Those aren’t my words; those are the words of the billionaire owners of the San Francisco Warriors and compliant Mayor Edward Lee respecting the proposed (and financially complicated) Warriors proposal to build a mammoth sports and entertainment arena on San Francisco Piers 30-32.”

Kopp wryly urges his readers to forget that the proposed project, “with Lee as the spear carrier (proudly proclaiming that the wrongly placed arena would be his ‘legacy’) would, if ever built, be higher than the “hated Embarcadero Freeway, which many San Franciscans spent years detesting and attempting to eliminate.”

Instead, he said taxpayers should concentrate on the “taxpayer subsidy of up to $200,000 (including interest) to the Warriors.” And he lays out the arguments and stats that demolish the Warriors’ line that “it’s all privately funded.”  Warming up, Kopp writes that the Warriors demand that Piers 30-32 be fully reconstructed, at Port cost, to a standard that will support the immense 19,000-seat arena.  The reconstruction cost is an estimated $120,000,000. Every single penny of such $120,000,000 is public money, i.e. the Port. The Port must borrow the money to reconstruct those piers.

“From whom? The Warriors, of course, and for the privilege of borrowing such money (for the Warriors’ benefit), the Port will pay the Warriors an exorbitant 13% per year as interest.”

More: “the port must sell the Warriors an enormously valuable piece of public land across the Embarcadero (Seawall 330) for a highrise hotel, condominium and retail development (b3: gulp).” Still more: “under the proposed Warriors’ deal, the $120,000,000 borrowing would be approved by a simple majority of the Board of Supervisors. The San Francisco Giants in 1996 and the San Francisco 49ers in 1971 were not afraid to secure voter/taxpayers approval. Maybe Lee and the Warriors are afraid the truth is that $120,000,000 is needed for the extraordinary cost of bearing the proposed arena’s weight, and supporting facilities the Warriors want to build on a platform over San Francisco Bay (b3: gulp again.)” You get the idea. 

Kopp’s arguments cry for an independent analysis by Harvey Rose, the city’s respected  budget analysis, who did a prescient assessment of the costs of the America’s Cup project. Kopp’s columns, along  with the excellent reporting of Patrick Monette-Shaw on Laguna Honda and George Wooding on the Ethics Commission and others, demonstrate that the Westside Observer under Editor Doug Comstock and Publisher Mitch Bull has become a sharp critic of City Hall from a neighborhood point of view and the best neighborhood paper in town.

Click here to read Kopp in full: http://westsideobserver.com/columns/quentin11.html#jun13
The paper is distributed monthly  West of Twin Peaks but you can see it easily by going to the Observer’s website at westsideobserver.com  b3

(Bruce B. Brugmann, who signs his blogs and emails b3, writes and edits the Bruce blog at the Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the editor at large of the Bay Guardian and former editor and co-founder with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012.  He is now off to attend his 60th reunion of the dream high school class of 1953 in Rock Rapids, Iowa. He will keep you posted.)

Distance and racism

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Right now, I’m approximately 116 miles from the Mexican border.

When I was growing up, I was 1600 miles from the same border. I was in Boston–I had a discussion today with some musicians from Boston that are “alarmed” at “the end of America” because of “amnesty”. When I pointed out that in the last 24 years, LA had become more “Latino” (I sussed out that the issue wasn’t illegal immigration as it never really is, when they started in with “press 2 for English”) and that crime and pollution was down and land values up–might as have been talking to my toenails.

I think it’s the same syndrome that crazy white folks in gated communities have about “the end of our way of life”–the further removed they are from the actual human beings that terrify them the more terrified they are.

Why do you think Coeur D’Alene, in Idaho’s northern tip was the capital of white power, hundreds of miles away from non whites?

It’s race.

Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

Sasha Cuttler
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Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted to approve compromise legislation that will allow more than 2,000 tenancy-in-common homeowners to convert to condominiums in exchange for a 10-year moratorium on the city’s current condo conversion lottery that now allows 200 conversions annually.

Approved by a veto-proof 8-3 majority after some last amendments were shot down by the six supervisors who most steadfastly supported the version that Board President David Chiu took the lead on crafting, this was a big victory for tenant groups who strongly opposed the original legislation, which did not include the moratorium and other restrictions.

“It’s great. We’re going to see a significant drop in condo conversions in the future. All of us tenants are very happy,” San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen told us after the hearing, which was packed with tenant supporters.

Sup. Mark Farrell, who sponsored the original legislation, decried how divisive the issue had become, criticized the approved version as deviating from his original intent of helping TIC owners in exchange for a fee that would help fund new affordable housing, and said, “This doesn’t need to be a zero sum game.”

But Chiu and the five supervisors who supported his version – Jane Kim, Norman Yee, David Campos John Avalos, and Eric Mar – noted the finite number of rent-controlled apartments in the city and the need to protect them from being converted into condos.

“How do we balance the needs of tenants who fear being evicted with TIC owners looking for relief?” Chiu said of the balance he aimed to strike, which he continued to tweak with new amendments today, including allowing TICs with all owner-occupied units to move forward if the legislation is challenged in court, an event that would otherwise freeze all condo conversions until the lawsuit is resolved.

Sup. London Breed wanted even greater flexibility in that so-called “poison pill” aspect of the legislation, which tenant groups had insisted on to prevent the bypass from going through even if the moratorium was challenged. Breed proposed allowing condo conversion applications to proceed for a year after a lawsuit was filed, but Chiu said that would let TIC owners convert to condos while challenging other aspects of the legislation, such as the lifetime leases for tenants in converted buildings.

Breed and Sup. Malia Cohen, who privately and rather grimly conferred with one another and sometimes Chiu before the item began a little after 4pm, were clearly the two swing votes on the question of whether the legislation would reach the crucial eight-vote threshold needed to override a possible mayoral veto. Mayor Ed Lee has refused to take a position on the issue, leaving both sides in the dark.

But after the motion to insert Breed’s amendments failed on a 5-6 vote, the board voted 8-3 to approve Chiu’s version of the legislation, with Sups. Farrell, Scott Wiener, and Katy Tang opposed. A subsequent vote on a version of the legislation backed by Farrell and Wiener – which contained a weaker poison pill and more flexible owner-occupancy provisions – then failed on a 4-7 vote, with Breed joining the three dissenting supervisors.

Underscoring this legislation was what some supervisors called a “housing affordability crisis” in San Francisco, an issue that Mayor Lee was asked about at the start of the meeting, which he deflected by claiming “our city has some of the toughest anti-displacement laws in the nation.”

We’ll analyze that discussion and offer more details on the condo conversion debate and the politics behind it tomorrow in the space, so check back then.      

Bully for the ACLU! It went after the real lawbreakers

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Scroll down to read the ACLU complaint in the New York Times story

For me, the crucial question was not whether Edward J. Snowden broke the law but whether the U.S. government had broken the law in secretly setting up and secretly expanding what the American Civil Liberties Union called its “dragnet”collection of logs of domestic phone calls.

The ACLU, filing on Tuesday one of its most important lawsuits ever, stated that “this practice is akin to snatching every American’s address book, with annotations detailing who we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where.  It gives the U.S. government a comprehensive record of our associations our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations.”

The suit stated that this mass tracking violates the Patriot Act and the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  The ACLU asked for the court to stop the Obama Administration from the practice and expunge the records.

“Every American” needs to read the ACLU suit embedded in the New York Times story. Let’s get our priorities straight and go after the real lawbreakers. Bully for the ACLU. b3

Click here to read the Times story and complaint.

Bruce B. Brugmann, who signs his blogs and emails B3, is the editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He writes and edits the Bruce Blog on the Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012.

Dede Wilsey re-elected prez of Fine Arts Museums board with little fanfare

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Dede Wilsey re-elected prez of Fine Arts Museums board with little fanfare

At a quarterly meeting on June 6, Diane “Dede” Wilsey was summarily re-elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). The election marks her sixth consecutive term in a post she’s held since 1998, a tenure made possible when the board eliminated term limits in 2009.

She ran uncontested, and her unanimous endorsement by the board’s Nomination Committee was granted, in the words of Committee Chair Lisa Zanze, to be “mindful of the need for continuity” at FAMSF.

Earlier this year, Wilsey was the subject of harsh criticism by former and unnamed current employees at FAMSF, who anonymously submitted information to the Bay Guardian demonstrating that, among other things, Wilsey was directing staff members to assist with the maintenance of her personal art collection on museum time. Curator Emeritus Robert Flynn Johnson was even quoted in the New York Times as saying the museum was in a state of “Orwellian dysfunction” under Wilsey’s leadership.

Other allegations of mismanagement have included the ouster of several well-regarded, veteran members of the museum’s staff, such as European art curator Lynn Orr. Eyebrows were also raised over the exhibition of Wilsey’s son Trevor Traina’s photography collection at the deYoung last summer. Incidentally, Traina was re-elected to the FAMSF board last week after briefly retiring in April 2012, just before his show opened.

Despite the controversy, Wilsey’s position was never questioned at last week’s meeting. The need for “continuity” ostensibly stems from a gap in leadership at the museum following the death of Director John Buchanan in December 2011. The protracted recruitment effort for Buchanan’s replacement finally came to an end earlier this year, in the wake of the controversy, with the appointment of Colin Bailey, former deputy director and chief curator at The Frick Collection in New York. (On Thursday, Wilsey likened working with the selection committee to “herding cats.”)

It’s true that Wilsey has an extensive record of arts patronage in San Francisco. But with Wilsey retaining her post as president of the board, it’s unclear whether the “points of great concern amongst a broad range of professional staff” highlighted in an anonymous note sent to the Guardian this past February have been adequately addressed. The outcome of Wilsey’s re-election, perhaps, was the quiet dismissal of an ugly period in an institution otherwise concerned with beauty.

8 Washington and the Warriors

Zelda Bronstein
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8 Washington and the Warriors

I won’t be a bit surprised if the Warriors start putting money behind Simon Snellgrove’s efforts to win ballot approval for his 8 Washington condo project. And it won’t be just because of general developer solidarity. And I don’t think the basketball team owners are counting on a lot of fans living just down the Embarcadero — odds are a lot of the people who buy Snellgrove’s ultra-luxury condos won’t live in San Francisco much of the time anyway.

No: What the Warriors realize is that the fate of their arena could be linked to the fate of the height-limit battle on Snellgrove’s lot.

The mayor has called the Warriors Arena his legacy project. The head of the Planning Commission says it’s a done deal. Despite the screwy financing and the serious problems with traffic and transit, this thing is moving forward through official San Francisco on greased skids.

But given the way things work in this city, it’s almost certain that the arena will wind up on the ballot. Either the Warriors will organize an initiative campaign to put it before the voters, or the opponents will. And in this case, both sides will have money — the neighbors who don’t want the project are a relatively well-off bunch.

It’s too late for anything to happen for the Warriors this fall, which means a likely battle in November, 2014. But the voters this fall may very well reject the condo towers, and if they do, it will likely hinge on the notion that San Francisco has historically reduced height limits near the Bay. Polls show most voters don’t want tall buildings on the waterfront. And a strong vote to reinforce that would have impacts for any future projects.

“If 8 Washington goes down,” former Mayor Art Agnos, who opposes both projects, told me, “then the people will have spoken out about big buildings on the waterfront, and the Warriors will be in trouble.”

Remember: The arena is only one piece of the Warriors’ project. There’s also a shopping mall, hotel and highrise housing planned for the area — and without the highrise on Seawall Lot 333, the arena doesn’t pencil out. So you can love the idea of a big ol’ flying saucer thingy on a concrete pad four times the size of Union Square sitting on the edge of the Bay and still not like the idea of (once again) spot-zoning a waterfront lot for high-end condos that will block people’s views.

If I were opposed to the arena, I’d be reaching out to the folks fighting Snellgrove and throwing some cash their way. Because this is the first in a series of battles over the use of waterfront land, and its importance goes far beyond 134 condo units.

Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir talks asylum options for NSA whistleblower

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Birgitta Jónsdóttir is waiting for Edward Snowden to drop her a line.

The Icelandic Member of Parliament and Wikileaks supporter happens to be in San Francisco at the moment, working to raise awareness about the trial of Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, and preparing for a speaking engagement this evening where she’ll appear alongside Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Snowden, meanwhile, is presumed to be somewhere in Hong Kong – but as of the most recent media reports, his exact whereabouts were unknown (at least to reporters). Snowden is the 29-year-old former employee of intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, who came forward Sunday as the source responsible for leaking top-secret U.S. government documents to The Guardian (UK) and The Washington Post revealing a widespread digital surveillance program.

Jónsdóttir’s International Modern Media Institute issued a statement on June 9 vowing to “discuss the details of his asylum request” and to investigate the legal and security implications of the Iceland option.

“I have not gotten into contact with him,” Jónsdóttir said in a phone interview with the Bay Guardian this morning. “But … we have sent out the message that he can be in contact with us if he chooses, to let us know exactly what he wants.”

She added, “I’m quite concerned, because there are no direct flights to Iceland. … I’m just worried about the extradition process in other countries – if he needs to do a layover, or if we’re not quick enough to grant him asylum. And, frankly speaking, one of the parties in the government in Iceland is never going to agree to support it. So, it’s tricky.”

There may be better places for Snowden to seek asylum, Jónsdóttir added, but she and others are still investigating the possibilities. “I don’t know if Ecuador can take any more refugees from the political prisoners of the information age,” she said, referencing the country that granted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange political asylum, and has granted him residency in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a year.

“But I really think emphasis in this case should be on all this heavy sentencing on … whistleblowers and people that are doing research and trying to bring information into the public domain,” Jónsdóttir said. “I feel this is more like a witch hunt than the ordinary justice system,” she added, “if you look at the crimes they’re accused to have done, which in many people’s opinion, are not crimes at all.”

For now, it’s still too early to say where Snowden will ultimately wind up. “The ball is in his hands,” Jónsdóttir said. “In the meantime, we will check out all the legalities and possibilities. We would obviously have to do it through secure ways. We have reached out to [journalist] Glenn [Greenwald] and James Ball, who has also been writing about this for The Guardian. And we’ll see if we get a message from him or if we can communicate directly. As soon as we have any information, we will make a statement.”

Supervisors pose tough but important questions to Mayor Lee

Sasha Cuttler
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Supervisors pose tough but important questions to Mayor Lee

There’s a full agenda at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting today, from the condo conversion lottery bypass legislation to approval of the term sheet from the massive development project at Pier 70, but some of the most interesting and potentially newsworthy items are at the very beginning of the agenda, when Mayor Ed Lee will answer questions posed by the supervisors.

Unfortunately, if past is prologue, Lee won’t give direct, substantive answers to the vitally important questions that he’s being asked, just as he dodged a question on the condo conversion debate in February and has kept everyone in the dark of which of the rival measures he supports and which he may veto. Mayoral leadership was desperately needed on that protracted debate, just as it’s needed today on some of the questions he’s being asked.

The first question, posed by Sup. Eric Mar, concerns Plan Bay Area and how it plans to pack 280,000 more people into San Francisco by 2040, which was the subject of a May 28 Bay Guardian cover story and panel dicussion that we’re sponsoring at the LGBT Center tomorrow night.

Mar lays out the massive displacement of existing residents and the traffic gridlock that the plan will create in San Francisco and how the approval process from much of this streamlined development may be given waivers from California Environmental Quality Act review.

Mar notes more than 40 regional groups have come together to try to improve the plan and mitigate its damage, and he plans to ask Lee:

“A consensus has formed around the following recommendations for making Plan Bay Area better:

– Provide $3 billion in additional operating revenue for local transit service and commit to a long-range ‘Regional Transit Operating Program’ to boost transit operating subsidies by another $9 billion over the coming years.

– Move 5 percent of the housing growth from low-income communities (mainly San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) to transit-connected suburban job centers.

– Incorporate strong anti-displacement policies for community stabilization measures, such as land banking and preservation of affordable housing in at-risk neighborhoods.

– Director the Planning Department to analyze the impacts of potential CEQA streamling as soon as possible and create strong mitigation measures.

Do you support these measure, and are you committed to a plan with lower displacement level than the current proposal? If you do not support these ideas, why not?”

Excellent  question, and definitely an appropriate one for our chief executive officer, who would have more clout to push for these changes than any of the supervisors.

The second question comes from Board President David Chiu, who makes news by noting that Mayor Lee has continued his predecessor’s underhanded practice of refusing to fill city positions to provide services that the supervisors have decided to fund in the budget, undermining the city’s balance of power and Lee’s rhetoric on collaboration.

“In recent months, Controller data indicates that positions allocated by the Board for librarians, recreation and park staff, building inspection, health and labor enforcement, urban agriculture and other Board priorities were either not filled or only recently hired. Will you commit to ensuring that when the FY 13-14 budget is approved, our Board of Supervisors’ priorities are treated equally to your Administration’s, with positions filled as soon as possible?”

Again, great question about an important current issue, the kind of thing that voters created this question time for, to ensure that there was communication and collaboration between these two branches of government.

The last two questions concern San Francisco’s housing crisis. Sup. David Campos cites the scatching report that he commissioned from the Budget and Legislative Analyst on the dysfunctional and mordibund Housing Authority, which Lee controls, asking “what is your long term vision to save public housing — a significant public asset to San Francisco?”

Sup. John Avalos cites data on the skyrocketing rents in San Francisco and asks, “Are you concerned that your administration’s policies to stimulate economic activity, especially supporting the tech industry, have created one-sided development and only job for high-income ‘appsters,’ and have exacerbated the already extremely limited housing market? Do you have any plans to address the increasing rents, and increasing rate of evictions and displacement of long-time San Francisco renters?”

These are tough questions, but they are central to what kind of city San Francisco is becoming. They were all submitted last week, so the mayor has had time to think about them and he should provide answers and show leadership on these difficult issues. That is his job.

Will he? Check back later and I’ll let you know. The meeting starts at 2pm.

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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Dear 2 Chainz: we’d like to formally apologize on behalf of our city, if you were indeed robbed at gunpoint (details are a bit murky at this point). Terrible things happen in every city, and San Francisco is no exception. But we must trundle forward, as a city of sonic fiends who love this place called home, always exploding with new bands, and welcoming traveling acts from around the world.

This week, we celebrate a particularly beloved member of own pack: Sonny and the Sunsets has a new record, and it’s a leap in yet another direction for the singer-songwriter and his crew. There’s also a Date Palms album release, a visit from New Zealand rockers the Bats (locals the Mantles open), the return of Cold Cave, some existential slop-punk from the Trashies, and a tribute to “rock‘n’roll specialist” Buddy Holly. Music lives on, despite despair.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Sonny and the Sunsets
It’s the record release party for Sonny and the Sunsets’ newest, Antenna to the Afterworld. The confessional record, which hints at Modern Lovers and Silver Jews (a shift from country break-up record Longtime Companion), opens with Sonny Smith talk-singing a call-and-response conversation, “Something happened/I fell in love/but it was weird/Real weird.” “Good weird?” the voice on the other side implores.
With Burnt Ones, Cool Ghouls.
Tue/11, 8pm, $7
Eagle Tavern
398 12th St., SF
www.sf-eagle.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoUjLj7Lp2w

The Trashies
What would you get if you paired those slimy Garbage Pail Kids with primal 1960s garage rock band the Monks? It’d probably turn in to something like the Trashies. A few weeks back, the Bay Guardian premiered a new video from the sloppy Seattle-and-East Bay act, featuring the band writhing in the mud at the Albany Bulb, screeching and freaking out psychedelically on guitars, and yelping “I’m a worm!/watch me squirm.” If it all sounds a bit familiar, this beach squelch shimmy, it’s because Uzi Rash frontperson Max Nordile also has a hand in Trashies, lending his particular style to the band’s intoxicating sounds.
With Buffalo Tooth, Scrapers
Wed/12, 8:30pm, $7
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg4fgl9jnT0

The Bats
“New Zealand rockers the Bats got their start 30 years ago, and have stayed together all this time, with all four original members still in the fold, an almost unheard of feat these days. The cult Kiwi favorites released their latest album, Free All The Monsters (Flying Nun Records) in 2011, imbued with an almost ethereal sound and feel, which could be partly due to the fact that it was recorded in a former lunatic asylum. The video for the single “Simpletons” shows haunting scenes of the aftermath of the major earthquake that struck the Bats hometown of Christchurch that year — but like their fellow countrymen, the band is as resilient as ever.” — Sean McCourt
With the Mantles, Legs
Fri/14, 9pm, $15–<\d>$17-
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zi4Ec2Fr2E

Date Palms
There’s this sense of impending doom ever-present in any given Date Palm piece. The instrumental band — which once described its sound to me as “psychedelic minimalism with Eastern tinged melodies driven by cyclical, distorted bass patterns” — has thriller cinematic appeal. Without the distraction of vocals, the mind is left to wander in these unsettling patterns, wobbling toward the deep unknown, creating eerie visions. In this way, it’s the soundtrack to the mini movies fluttering through your brain. This is never more apt than in single “Dusted Down,” off new album, Dusted Sessions, out this week on Thrill Jockey. And yet, one needn’t conjure a mind-flick for that particular track. There’s already a video, and it’s as trippy as deserved, with blurry visions of the band, analog video feedback, and a looping rainbow of madness.
With Jackie O-Motherfucker, Soft Shells, Lady Free Mountain
Fri/14, 9pm, $7
Night Light
311 Broadway, Oakl.
www.thenightlightoakland.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImOJP_Pp7EY

Cold Cave
Your two favorite parties (120 Minutes and Lights Down Low) come together this weekend for one spooky-special mashup of noise, ideas, and freaks, with live performances by darkwave duo Cold Cave backed by underground post-punk legend Boyd Rice, R&B/dance music-mixer Brenmar, and Jokers of the Scene, who are known to “craft epic nine-minute Salem remixes or rave out with their own anthemic tracks.” With 120 Minutes residents S4Nta_MU3rTE and Chuncey_CC, Lights Down Low residents Sleazemore and Richie Panic.
Sat/15, 9pm, $15-$20
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
www.publicsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqcy96QzeRg

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
“Everything about the story of Aly Spaltro’s transformation into Lady Lamb and the Beekeeper seems old and out of time. In the Maine town where she went to high school, she practiced in the basement of that bygone establishment, a video store, and produced her first recordings through another, an independent record store. Then there’s her alter ego, the name of a Victorian woman who came to her in a dream (for real), which maybe that explains the biggest leap of time: Spaltro performs far beyond her 22 years. With her preternatural understanding of human feeling and her unique ability to sing about it, the very old and young Lady Lamb should not be missed.” — Laura Kerry
With Torres, Paige and the Thousand
Sun/16, 8pm, $10
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqsUML8wv0

“A Radio Silence Live Tribute to Buddy Holly”
With all legend surrounding his untimely death, one tends to forget the most important thing about Buddy Holly: the bespectacled kid (age 22) had a serious knack for songwriting. He was a prolific musician who wrote a bunch of timeless rockabilly-blues blended rock’n’roll juke classics in his relatively short career. (“That’ll Be The Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “True Love Ways,” “Crying, Waiting, Hoping,” “Everyday.”) As a small gesture to correct the collective direction of remembrance — and to prove the music didn’t really die that day on the “Winter Dance Party” tour — local lit mag Radio Silence presents a tribute night to the songs of Holly. There’ll be Greil Marcus, an icon of rock journalism, reading from his as-yet-unpublished new book, plus conversations with and performances by Eleanor Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces, Van Pierszalowski of Port O’Brien and WATERS, and singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen. As with any proper SF event, there’ll be DJs and food trucks as well.
Sun/16, 7pm, $20
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
(415) 779-6757
www.publicsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQiIMuOKIzY

Drama queens (and kings), start your engines: SF Opera’s summer season is here

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Drama queens (and kings), start your engines: SF Opera’s summer season is here

The annual SF Opera summer season is always a treat — the programmers get a little wild, and the risks, like last year’s extraordinary Nixon in China, always pay off in adventurous spirit. (Ticket prices, starting at $22, aren’t bad, either).

Honestly, I have no idea how they manage to squeeze all the creativity of three whole productions onstage in the space of one month, but that’s opera for you. Kinda magic, kinda crazy, all pretty fascinating.

Oh, and music. Incredible music.

This year’s season opened June 5 and runs through July 7, It includes Mozart’s cheeky Cosi fan tutte, a high-spirited tale of a “school for lovers,” full of that lilting, chattery Mozartian goodness, where the characters excitedly (and excitingly) talk over one another, and if a particular song gets a good audience response, heck, they might just sing it twice.

Cosi fan tutte also contains a nugget of annotation that’s pure genius: “Mozart disliked prima donna Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, [librettist] da Ponte’s arrogant mistress for whom the role of Fiordiligi had been created. Knowing her idiosyncratic tendency to drop her chin on low notes and throw back her head on high ones, Mozart filled her showpiece aria Come scoglio with constant leaps from low to high and high to low in order to make Ferrarese’s head ‘bob like a chicken’ onstage.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKd3NshZGKE

Also on the menu, Offenbach’s grand Tales of Hoffman (Les Contes d’Hoffman) based on three psychologically resonant fairytale-like stories from E.T.A. Hoffman that twist from quasi-absurd to darkly tragic, but retain a strange, affirming liveliness in the music.  (So French!)

The buzzy highlight of the season, though, is new work The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Mark Adamo. Mary is based on an apocryphal gospel found in 1896, “the Gospel of Mary,” and sprang from six years of Adamo’s own research. It gives a different spin on the Jesus tale, and it’s bound to raise a few eyebrows.

Mary opens Weds/19 and stars Sasha Cooke and Nathan Gunn: the opera hasn’t released any audio or video preview yet, but you can find out more here. And here’s an interesting interview about the costumes:

SF OPERA SUMMER SEASON

Through July 7, various prices and times

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF.

www.sfopera.com

There’s gonna be a morning after (pill)

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The Obama adminstration has decided not to block the over the counter availability of “morning after contraceptives”. Simply put, any woman or girl (or man, assuming he’s either motivated or very confused) can buy a medication that prevents pregnancy up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse.

Naturally, the mainstream media is claiming that this move is fraught with negative implications for Obama, but as this polls well with one of the president’s truest bases, single women, where might this be? In reality, this is not just a no-brainer among the supposedly “enlightened” progressives but should be very popular among the strong anti-abortion opposition of same–after all, no pregnancy, no abortions.

Of course it isn’t. The “morning after pill” is considered an “abortifacient”, even though its purpose is to prevent the very beginning of pregnancy. Plus, that the pill is available to young women without parental notification, this supposedly “encourages promiscuity” (much in the same way that a clean glass would encourage alcoholism, right?). As such, it removes more power from the parent and is a very easily attainable contraceptive which by fiat means acknowledgement of pre-marital sex. Yeah, I know it isn’t the 1950’s for the rest of us, but…..

What no one dares say, well, what the hell, I will: The real reason they oppose this availability is that is may render abortions obsolete. You’d think that as sanctity of life types they would applaud this. They don’t–abortion opposition is a major industry and fund raising tool. After the 2010 midterms, the new Tea Party favorites in Congress introduced bill after bill limiting abortions (that they knew had no chance of passing the Senate). It’s a game to them–fact is, with “pro life” President Bush/Speaker Hastert/Maj.leader Frist in power for 4 years and a weak opposition–the best they could do was a “partial birth abortion” limitation, a procedure that accounts for less than 1% of all abortions.

This terrifies the Planned Parenthood phobes to the core of their bones. No abortions mean no contributions. Means a new scourge is gonna have to be found fast and they don’t have one.

Too effin’ bad. 

Stop meddling

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Stop meddling

The mega flap over the National Security Administration’s electronic surveillance rages on this week. The chief leaker, Edward Snowden is hied away in Hong Kong, President Obama has assured the American people that he’s “only do this to protect the people”, which is apparently how most Americans see it. Civil libertarians are outraged, the Republican “gotcha” media overjoyed and as there has been relative peace post 9/11 on the homefront (plus the realization that “online privacy” is mythical in and of itself), this too shall pass.

Too bad that it will. Not just because government snooping (and its corporate twin) are an ugly intrusion but really because the underlying story–also the story of 9/11 itself–will fade. The actual cause of Middle Eastern nationalism and the terrorism that comes with it isn’t that “Muslims are crazy” or “they don’t know how to be free and we must show them” but is actually the ceaseless meddling in the affairs of these nations that has characterized US and the UK’s dealings with same for 100 years.

Overthrowing popular regimes hostile to American interests like Iran, 1953 or propping up the Shah, Mubarak, Saddam (a former “ally”) or Assad has created legions of pissed off Middle Easterners (that at various points admired the US as the #1 nation in the world). High unemployment among the young plus ceaseless anti-American propaganda from their state run media’s is part of it, but were it not for a few incontrovertible facts–The US’ automatic backing of Israel in all matters as well as fealty to the Saudi royal family’s autocracy has convinced millions of people that America is no friend to them at all. 

Drone bombing ain’t helping, either.

It isn’t like they don’t know why, either. Protecting the interests of petroleum companies has been priority #1–used to be called “protecting the oil supply” (the “Carter Doctrine”), but at this point, that is a major league load of bovine poop. The US gets less than 13% of the oil it uses from the Persian Gulf and is now a net exporter of petroleum. Therefore, the protection in question isn’t for the US consumer or its security, but for oil company’s revenues and profits–all subsidized by (you guessed it) American taxpayers.

Stop fucking meddling. Stop fucking meddling in their affairs–remove the US military from the Gulf (let the oil companies create their own security minus the military that’s paid from our taxes), stop the bowing and scraping to Al Qaeda backing Saudis, stop reflexively assuming “Israel good, Arabs, bad” and acting accordingly and guess what? Out of sight, out of mind—the notion that “Muslims hate our way of life and want to wage a holy war against us” is belied by the simple fact that the world’s largest Muslim nation has so far ignored most things American. “Live and let live” is the sanest philosophy one can embrace in one’s personal life, why not in one’s political life as well? 

Poor Scott Walker–the sun ain’t gonna shine anymore

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Anyone that believes that merit and achievement in governing mean anything at all should stay away from Wisconsin.

The Badger state, cheesehead central, home to the Packers, Brewers, Bucks and Violent Femmes. Also home to perhaps the most dismal head of state in the US, Scott Walker.

(To any music fan, the image conjured up by “Scott Walker” is that of the legendarily reclusive, Jaques Brel-like vocalist. But I digress).

Having won the governor’s seat in that state without having said anything about busting up public employee unions, that’s what Mr. Walker aimed to do. And set off massive protests in Madison and escaped recall by the hair of his chinny chin chin. Walker’s claim is that unburdening the state of the pensions and bloated salaries would set off an economic wave of growth–and did it?

No. The state plummeted in job growth and real wages declined at twice the national level. 87,000 Wisconsins have been heaved off the state’s massively successful BadgerCare program, presumably to join all the other unemployed Wisconsins that were gainfully employed before Walker took office. 

One would think that given the state’s atrocious fiscal performance that Walker’s ambition to ascend would be over. Wrong again–he is considered a viable presidential candidate in 2016. How can this be?

It’s simple: To win over the Republican base, the most important quality a candidate can have is a gleeful sadism when it comes to people of modest means plus a directly proportionate propensity to salad toss the very wealthy (Walker was pranked figuratively doing same to the nation’s big bankroller of lunacy). Even though the vast majority of said base are people of modest means themselves. 

A few weeks ago, I noted polling that showed the Republican party at 59% disapproval, a record high. Recent polls have shown the GOP getting annihilated in 2016 by the AntiChrist herself, the only Republican that polls decently is perhaps their last sane figurehead. Which makes sense–if what turns your base on is pointless cruelty, then you really have become a “crazy clown cult”. Venerating a complete failure is exhibit A, case closed. 

 

A tale of two signings: Kluwe and Tebow

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Two very disparate signings in pro football in the last month. First, punter and outspoken gay rights advocate Chris Kluwe has signed with the Raiders (after being let go by the Vikings). The former UCLA star has been a pro ball player eight years, the Raiders are his third team. Whether or not his views on same sex marriage had anything to do with Minnesota letting him go is not clear (The Vikings MVP running back Adrian Peterson is not an equality advocate) . Maybe they didn’t like his band. Who knows?

Of far more note and unlikely pairing is the newest member of the New England Patriots, Tim Tebow. Signed as a possible third string quarterback (or possible halfback or replacement for the Patriots star tight end Rob Gronkowski), the poster boy for the pro-life movement and the “libertine” present QB Tom Brady would seem to be an odd couple. Given that Tebow’s last coach was a foot fetishist and wife swapper, I think Brady’s activities will seem mild by comparison.

Fact is this: If Kluwe is an upgrade on the generally dreadful Raiders and Tebow is the missing ingredient for the NFL’s recent champions of the “near miss”, what they think or stand for off the field is irrelevant. Raiders fans are among the most devoted in the world (among other things) and the last few years have been brutal in Oakland. The Patriots collapse in the last AFC championship game (and the crap out against the Giants twice) has re-ignited that old sorrow from the bleak, pre-Brady era. As a QB is by nature more significant than a punter, Tebow will be under massive scrutiny. But he has the best coach in the world and New England sports fans (that hated him a week ago) loving him now (kind of).

Training camp for both teams did get a whole lot more interesting though!

 

Tonight: Watch Amy Goodman discuss NSA leaks on MSNBC’s Chris Hayes show at 5:40 p.m.

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Monday, June 10, 2013

Watch Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman tonight at 5:40pm  on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes. She will discuss the NSA leak and Edward Snowden.

In the meantime, see all of Democracy Now!‘s coverage of the National Security Agency including interviews with NSA whistleblowers William Binney, Thomas Drake and Russell Tice, as well as reporter Glenn Greenwald, who exposed the secret PRISM spy operation, among other revelations.

 

San Onofre, RIP (no more nukes)

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“No news is good news” went right out the window last Friday. San Onofre’s nuclear power plant has announced it will close permanently.

After failed and costly equipment swaps and steam generator failures, So Cal Edison threw in the towel. A half billion in unpaid bills is its legacy.

To say that this is incredibly great for the people of LA, Orange County and San Diego is an understatement of enormous proportions. As the residents of Fukushima, Chernobyl or Three Mile Island might tell you, a nuclear power plant is not conducive to the well being of anyone. The former nuke plant was, like Onofre, proximitous to a fault line and as the disaster in Japan unfolded, surely the people of Carlsbad and Oceanside could feel their guts tighten–well, no more.

Nuclear power–for all of its “bang for the buck”–is yet another taxpayer subsidized disaster. And even Edison admits that with moderate conservation, the plant’s customers may make it through summer as they seek an alternative.

Not to pound the too obvious drum, but as Onofre already has generator infrastructure and is adjacent to uninhabited and bare field and hills, why not do what the Antelope Valley is doing? Cover the giant bubble in panels and kick out the sunny jams. Cover those barren hillsides in same. Given that the cost of solar has plummeted and liability insurance at about nil, it’s about time.

SoCal Edison is loathe to do this, as it does usher in their eventual demise. But the future is headed that way no matter what they think. And with San Onofre down, the trad surfers, the fisherman, the beach lovers–can all return. We won!

A map of SF’s wealth — and poverty

Zelda Bronstein
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A map of SF’s wealth — and poverty

There’s a cool interactive map that gives you a visual picture of wealth and poverty in San Francisco. Check it out here. Just type in “San Francisco, CA” and click “income.”

What you see is a city full of green (wealth), with a few pockets of poverty. The data is at least two years old, so it’s almost certain that, say, the inner Mission no longer has a median income of $36,000 and the median in Noe Valley is above $108,000. The median in Vis Valley is (or was) $17,000. Nobody at that level could buy a house in VV now, not even close.

The fun thing is to imagine the income map overlaid with this map to see where housing costs — and thus median income — is rising fast. Check out, for example, the tiny Duboce Triangle area, with median income of $84, 000 (certainly no more than middle class by San Francisco standards). There were at least 17 buildings in that one census tract cleared of tenants by Ellis Act evictions; I wonder how much the median income has gone up.

It’s interesting to contrast SF to, say, Oakland and Berkeley, or to Los Angeles, where there are plenty of rich people (on the coast and in the hills) but also large swaths of more middle-income middle-class communities.

Just some thoughts for a Monday afternoon.

 

Save the white lion: Author on a quest to re-wild rare kitties

Andrew Lam
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Save the white lion: Author on a quest to re-wild rare kitties

WE DO NOT EAT THE KITTIES. I mean, some people do/would be excited to do so, given the meat-lust stirred up by the recent appearance of lion meat skewers on the menu at a Burlingame restaurant. But not us, not meow, not ever. 

Let’s instead focus on the arrival in the Bay Area of a woman famed for her work rescuing the technically-extinct white lion. Linda Tucker, take the bad taste out of our bewhiskered mouths, will you?

Tucker’s in town to read to us from her new journal Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal, which is a rundown of her efforts to preseve the white cats for future generations. The quest led her to start the Global White Lion Protection Trust, and she’ll be appearing today Mon/10 at Modern Times Bookstore Collective, and on Wed/12 at Book Passage in the Ferry Building to talk about her organization’s crusade.

The white lion is a relatively recent discovery in the Western world — Europeans didn’t first spot them until the early 1940s in the Greater Timbavati and southern Kruger Park region of South Africa. The white people promptly started hunting the white kitties, breeding babies for eventual slaughter as trophies, and installing them in zoos far afield from the Savannahs where they like to stay. The last white lion in the wild was seen in 1994. 

Tucker’s organization is attempting to establish the white lion genotype as a subspecies of Pantera leo, which would allow the cats to be officially classified as endangered and help stop hunting in their geographic area and the sale of their body parts, as well as those captive breeding practices which stress their gene pool. The group also works on re-introducing the cats into the wild — which Tucker says it’s successfully accomplished for three prides. 

The Global White Lion Protection Trust also recently saved the life of Nyanga, a white lioness whose cage was left open at the Johannesburg Zoo the day she killed a worker there. She’s since been relocated to a wildlife sanctuary, where the stresses of zoo life won’t kill anyone else. (RIP Tatiana, we miss you girl.)

Of course, Tucker is not the only hero here. Consider her website’s description of Marah, the lioness who started it all: 

her name means ‘mother of Rah, the sungod”, she formidably shattered all misperceptions about white lions not being able to hunt and survive in the wild — she successfully raised her cubs (Zihra, Letaba and Regeus) to adulthood under free-roaming conditions and taught them to hunt self-sufficiently. Her hunting success rate was comparable to the wild-born tawny lionesses that were observed in the same environment, under the exact same conditions.

Linda Tucker

Mon/10, 7-9pm, free

Modern Times Bookstore Collective

2919 24th St., SF

www.moderntimesbookstore.com

Wed/12, 6-7:30pm, free

Book Passage

Ferry Building, Embarcadero and Market, SF

www.bookpassage.com

Democratic Party chair signs on with Realtors

Zelda Bronstein
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Democratic Party chair signs on with Realtors

Gee, which is worse: Having the chair of the local Democratic Party working for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which blows up neighborhoods, or for the San Francisco Board of Realtors, which pushes anti-tenant legislation and whose members profit from gentrification and evictions?

Either way, Mary Jung, the Democratic County Central Committee chair, isn’t exactly a good representative for the city’s progressive Democracts. She just left her job as a lobbyist for PG&E and took a new position running government affairs for the landlords. From the Realtors press release:

Jung stated, “I am excited to have this opportunity to build upon and expand the REALTORS® Association role in the community. I look forward to working collaboratively with our local, state and national elected officials, and with our members, to ensure that the robust housing market continues to grow and our voice is heard effectively at City Hall.”

The “robust housing market.” In other words, displacement central. From the elected chair of the Democratic Party in San Francisco. I can’t think of the last time the chair of the local party was paid to represent corporate interests. Not a good sign.

The “L” word

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Friend of mine sent me a great piece from the (I hope this isn’t verboten) SFGate about the gentrification of South Boston, the section of Boston once ruled by the iron fist of Jim “Whitey” Bulger. Landmarks that were once the alleged mobster’s HQ’s now turned wineries, the death of the local Irish pub, all the elements you’ve seen in a million stories about ethnic enclaves turned “Starbucks Nation”. 

Pretty good read as things tend to be (I lived in Boston for 12 years and rarely spent any time in Southie), but one quote stood out like a sore thumb: “The liberals came in and started to buy real estate. They realized how beautiful it is and they started throwing money at it.” This from a “Jamie Donnelan”, a 41 year old electrician. 

What’s that you say, Jamie? “Liberals?” Why, by gosh almighty, I’d a thought “liberals” never worked and were lazy and all on welfare (as that’s the meme one sees all over the Net and radio and cable news). Now, it seems that these sloth-like parasites are driving up land and property values–a strange thing occurs to me here. It isn’t possible, Jamie my lad, that “liberals” are two polar opposites of each other. Either they’re a drain on the hard working people of (name any place) or they’re the scourge of “the working class” (a critical distinction) by being successful in business and pricing them out of their homes. (South Boston is a hop, skip and jump over the channel to the business district).

So, which one is it?

I doubt that Mr. Donnelan could answer that one. Because the word “liberal” is now the “L-word”. Just as there’s an “N-word” and an “S-word” and a “K-word” for the “hated others”, “liberal” has become the all purpose epithet of choice for every resentment-addled reactionary, coast to coast. And it isn’t that “liberal = bad”, it is, astonishingly, “bad = liberal”. All bad things are not only the result of liberalism, they ARE liberalism. By making a political point of view (and a vague one at that)synonymous with evil, “liberal” no longer means anything.

After all, the “liberal media” is the one that tells us things we don’t want to hear. “Liberal academics” brainwash children (Liberty University and others like it, nah). And were it not for “liberals in the church”, none of the pedophile scandals would have happened (yes, they actually believe this!!!!).

All that’s wrong with the world = liberal, all good, conservative. Never mind that the rich yuppies that are pricing Southie’s long time residents out are doing so because of financial deregulations implemented by, erm……….Nope, that can never be it. Never and ever.

 


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