BART Archives — Page 5 of 29 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Media misses connection between BART tragedy and settlement

Sasha Cuttler

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October 30, 2013

Media misses connection between BART tragedy and settlement

BART continues to stonewall important questions about whether it was training scab drivers to break the recent strike by its unions when its trainee-driven train killed two workers on Oct. 19 — a stance made possible by the failure of the mainstream media to connect the dots or correct the anti-union bias that characterized its coverage of this long labor impasse.

The failure of local journalists to highlight the connection between that tragedy and the subsequent decision by the district to suddenly soften its stance and sweeten its offer — within hours of the National Transportation Safety Board revealing that a trainee was driving and that BART’s “maintenance run” story was a deception — is as myopic as it is appalling.

After all, the daily newpapers, television stations, and wire services did finally, dutifully report that a trainee was driving, even as they failed to point out to readers and viewers the significance of that disclosure or ask the district, “Why were you training drivers during a strike? Were you planning to offer service during the strike?”

We have asked those questions of the district, and when we got misleading obfuscations, we asked again and again, and our questions are still being largely ignored (actually, we just got a limited but important response, see below). And here’s why they matter: Because if the district was planning to run trains during the strike, it reinforces the unions’ contention that the district was hard-bargaining to force a strike that it was preparing to break, a plan that became untenable when two people died, just as the unions warned might happen if the district ran trains without experienced drivers.

This should be a huge scandal, the kind of thing that might force General Manager Grace Crunican to resign and BART directors to lose their seats — except for the fact that the media is ignoring this simple, obvious narrative and failing to do its job.

The East Bay Express, which today published an excellent article on how the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group (which includes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News) mislead the public about the BART standoff, is the only other media outlet in the region to join the Bay Guardian in highlighting the relevant facts in this story.

Not only have these newspapers written some truly atrociously anti-worker editorials, but even the supposedly objective news stories have been clearly biased in their emphasis and omissions. Why else would they repeatedly emphasize a proposal by an obscure Republican member of the Orinda City Council to prohibit future BART strikes — a bit of election-related grandstanding that has no chance of passing in Democrat-controlled Sacramento — while failing to analyze why BART suddenly sweetened its offer beyond what Crunican said the district could afford?

But this could be a situation that backfires on local media managers considering that the truth will probably come out eventually, even if it’s long after the media spotlight has moved on. NTSB investigations can take up to a year, but they are remarkably thorough and it will probably eventually discuss why these drivers were being trained.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment announced yesterday that it will also hold a hearing to “get to the bottom” of the tragedy, and one can only hope that someone on that committee will grill the district about its intentions in running that ill-fated train and conducting new driver training just one day into the latest strike.

UPDATE: As I was posting this story, I finally heard back from BART spokesperson Alicia Trost, who made it sound like preparations to break the strike weren’t news — even though it may be news to most newspaper readers.

“The District has publicly acknowledged, dating back to a September 13, 2013 Metropolitan Transportation Commission subcommitee meeting, that BART has been training some non-union employees to operate limited passenger train service in the event of an extended strike if so authorized by the Board of Director. The Board was never requested to authorize revenue service during the strike,” she wrote by email.

Yet those public aknowledgements don’t appear to have made it to the public. And when the Chronicle’s Matier & Ross did run an anonymously sourced item breaking the news that BART may be training replacement drivers, BART refused to comment, the duo soft-peddled the scoop, and the relevation failed to make it into the larger narratives the newspaper offered about BART.

And even now, Trost followed up her admission by minimizing its importance, saying that the ill-fated train was also being run for maintenance purposes, which the NTSB had also reported.

“BART has to ‘exercise the system’ by running trains on the tracks to prevent rust build up. Rust can build up quickly and will interfere with train service. BART continued to run inspection trains throughout the entire strike just as it did during the July strike,” she wrote.

But the real issue is whether the district deliberately triggered two strikes that the heavily impacted public angrily blamed on workers, thanks largely to how the standoff had been cast by the mainstream media and the district. After all, BART chose a notoriously anti-union labor consultant as its lead negotiator, a decision that even Willie Brown criticized in his Sunday column, although Brown cast the district as just dumb instead of intentionally forcing a strike.

I’m still waiting for Trost to answer my follow-up questions, and I’ll update this post if and when I hear back. I’m also still waiting to hear from BART Board President Tom Radulovich, whose progressive credibility has been tarnished in the eyes of some for playing such a lead role in BART’s media strategy.

Thankfully, the divisive standoff between BART and its unions seems to be over, but the questions about what really drove it and how its conclusion came about are still relevant and largely unanswered. And that says a great deal about the state of journalism today.

Gilded Age of Austerity breaks down

Sasha Cuttler

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October 23, 2013

9

It was a week when it seemed that civil society in the US was on the verge of collapse.

Most of the federal government was already shutdown when Congress came without hours of letting the US default on its debts, a fate avoided late on Oct. 16 with legislation to limp along for a few months before repeating the partisan budget standoff again.

That same day, both BART and the AC Transit were headed for strikes that would hobble the Bay Area’s transportation system after long contract impasses between workers and management. Gov. Jerry Brown then ordered a 60-day cooling off period for AC Transit, just like the one he imposed on BART that had just ended, leading BART to be shut down by a strike that started Oct. 18 (for more on BART, including what caused two fatalities in the system on Oct. 19, see related story).

It may not be the End of the World as We Know It (the title and subject of our 12/18/12 cover story), but this is a striking confluence of events that should cause us all to take stock of the things we take for granted, from reliable public transit systems to a functional federal government to the ability of politics to resolve our differences.

This era could be called the Gilded Age of Austerity, a duality marked by huge and growing concentrations of wealth for the few, but for the rest of us: increasing economic insecurity, a tattered social safety net, crumbling public infrastructure, and few signs of hope that things will get better.

Democracy is a fragile experiment that needs to be regularly reaffirmed by all sides. The US electoral system was already heavily skewed toward the interests of the wealthy, who sponsor both major political parties, to the point where many consider elections to be a sham. But there was still a political system, a basic framework for running the country even during tough times, and that seems to be breaking down.

For the radical right-wingers responsible for hobbling the federal government, this might appear to be a dream come true: Most of the regulators furloughed, funding for most social services stopped, and only the police state remained largely intact (86 percent of Department of Homeland Security employees were on the job and soldiers were still getting paid).

But these anti-government ideologues have never fully understood or appreciated the myriad things that government does to keep civil society functioning over the long term. Our economy relies on federal spending, our health relies on the CDC spotting coming epidemics and the FDA inspecting our food, justice needs a civil court system, our travels depend on roads, and our future depends on today’s young people getting educated (ie Head Start) and fed (ie Food Stamps), and that’s all come to a grinding halt.

It’s a similar situation with public employee unions, like those that operate BART trains and AC Transit buses. As we’ve reported (see “Last train,” July 9), private sector wages and benefits often rise or fall with those negotiated by unions. So when unions can’t win good contracts or maintain funded pensions for workers, we’re all dragged down.

The Gilded Age gets better for the bosses as the Age of Austerity gets worse for the workers.

BART’s unions had an understandable expectation that they would share in the agency’s recent budget surpluses, particularly after accepting wage and benefit concessions of $100 million over the last four years to help with projected budget deficits that never materialized.

BART managers argue that the district has offered enough and that the rest of the money is needed for its ambitious expansion plans, but there should have been a solution here somewhere short of ultimatums (strike vs. the district’s “last, best, and final offer”). When the center still held, before the new Gilded Age fused with the Age of Austerity, people of goodwill could find common ground.

Maybe we’ll pull ourselves back from the brink and learn our lessons. Or maybe we’ve entered the endgame, a place where the desperation of those living in the Age of Austerity finally matches the greed and self-interest of those living in the Gilded Age, where one must defeat the other to survive, like two fighting birds plummeting to the ground in a death spiral.

And if that’s the case, are we ready for the next era? Have we sown our seeds and tended our gardens? It took World War Two to really get us out of the Great Depression, and I’d like to think we’ve evolved since then. But given recent events I’m not so sure.

Tragedy follows strike

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 23, 2013

2

news@sfbg.com

On Oct. 19, the second day of a BART strike that hobbled the Bay Area transportation system, two BART workers were struck and killed by a northbound train in Walnut Creek, adding a tragic and surreal element to the charged blame-games that have characterized this labor impasse.

Both the striking unions and BART management struck respectful tones following the accident, even as sources privately told journalists that the district may have been secretly training replacement drivers aboard the ill-fated train to offer limited service during the strike, a charge first printed by the San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 21.

NTSB investigator in charge James Southworth confirmed at a press conference on the afternoon of Oct. 21 that the train was “in operation for training and maintenance purposes,” and that two of the six people on board were trainees, one of whom was driving at the time of the accident, although the train was in automatic, not manual, mode.

Asked whether the drivers had their safety certification, Southworth said, “the training is part of the certification process,” and refused to elaborate further. He said the train was going 60-70 miles per hour at the time, and it attempted an emergency stop. Just hours after the NTSB press conference, BART reached a tentative deal with its unions, ending the strike.

The district’s decision to run the trains without their regular operators was against the safety advice of the three striking unions, one of whom — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 — even filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent BART from doing so.

A helmet at the scene of the crash, which a source says is possibly from one of the workers fatally struck.

“The use of uncertified training personnel to provide uncertified managers with a crash course in how to operate BART trains also presents a public safety issue,” the union’s attorneys wrote in the suit, which was filed in Alameda County Superior Court on Oct. 7.

BART workers undergo 15 weeks of safety training every three years, the suit said, training that saves lives. “All three of us, time and time again, told BART it would be unsafe to operate the system without trained current personnel,” SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian.

BART officials have avoided directly answering the question about whether Saturday’s accident involved a training run, saying only that the train was on a “maintenance run,” initially reporting it was on its way to Richmond Station for graffiti removal and that an experienced driver was at the helm.

“The Board of Directors would need to approve limited passenger train service and at no point was this on an agenda to take up. The Board President has made comments saying it would be a decision for the board and that they had no plans to take up that issue at this time,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Guardian by email when we asked whether managers aboard the train were being trained to drive it, before the NTSB press conference, ignoring follow-up questions seeking a more direct answer.

When we asked BART Board President Tom Radulovich about the issue, he told us, “We were all told that BART would be running infrequent maintenance or inspection trains during the strike, in part to keep the system ready for re-start when workers return. Running passenger trains during a strike would be a decision for the Board, and we haven’t been asked to approve that.”

Daly stopped short of charging BART with compromising safety to train replacement workers, but he told us that union members have heard from managers for weeks that the district was considering operating with replacement drivers. And he said it “would fit BART management’s entire campaign to bust the unions.”

Pushed to strike

The belief that BART intentionally provoked what could be a long and costly strike was widely held and expressed by union members that gathered outside the Lake Merritt BART station to picket and rally on the first day of the strike. Many of them still openly grappled with the previous day’s surprising turn of events that put them in the position of going out on strike for the second time this year.

That morning on KQED’s Forum program, both Trost and SEIU Local 1021 President Roxanne Sanchez confirmed it was the district’s 11th hour demand for more authority to set work rules that caused negotiations to break down after days of intensive talks had gotten the two sides close to an agreement on the other issues.

BART officials publicly cast the work rule issue as about the district’s ability to modernize, citing how the district is still using fax machines and paper pay stubs rather than fully converting to electronic communications, blaming the requirement to consult with unions on procedural changes.

An NTSB spokesperson confirms that the train was being run for training purposes at a press conference Oct. 21.

But Daly told the Guardian that Trost and Radulovich had “completely mischaracterized” the conflict, and he speculated about whether Radulovich — who must approve the contracts but hasn’t been a party to the talks — was “being lied to” by BART’s management team and high-priced labor consultant.

Daly and other union leaders say work rules such as requiring union approval for changing past practices related to scheduling, hours, and the kind of tasks workers perform are essential to protecting things like the eight-hour workday, worker safety, and whistleblowing and free speech rights.

“It gets to the heart of workers having a voice on the job and what a union is,” Daly told us, acknowledging that “it’s an inherently unpopular move” to go on strike and a decision forced on the union by the district’s bargaining tactics.

“We had a basic framework understanding on the economics, but then BART illegally tied that to this work rule change on past practices,” Daly said. “And what that meant for us is in order to get a reasonable economic package, we needed to swallow this poison pill.”

George, a train engineer at the rally who wouldn’t give us his last name, said the work rules have been developed over decades, but that they shouldn’t be a barrier to modernizing.

“We have long term work contracts because we’re here for the long haul and the employer is here for the long haul, so we try to work these things out,” he told us, saying that the workers strongly support their union leaders and have told them, “Do not bring us back a lousy offer to vote on, do your job.”

But not all BART workers feel that way, and some have supported the district’s demand that the union put its “last, best, and final offer” up for a vote of the membership.

“I’m really pissed. Obviously there’s been a decision in our union. I don’t think the union is representing us, the [transit vehicle mechanics]. Nobody wanted to strike, not us,” said Robert Earl Bright, a BART engineer/mechanic profiled in the Guardian this summer. “None of the TVMs wanted to strike. Work rules, I have no concept of them.”

SEIU Local 1021 Executive Director Peter Castelli told the Guardian that he understands the concerns of workers like Bright, but that he think most members will support the decision to strike once they get more information.

“It’s a fast evolving situation, with the stewards and union leadership saying ‘we gotta go out.’ So explaining things to our own membership takes time,” Castelli told us.

He ridiculed statements by district officials that the unions are resisting modernizing the system. “Some of the people in BART have technology degrees,” Castelli told the Guardian. “They’re keeping the trains from wrecking, so we’re not afraid of technology.”

Instead, both Daly and Castelli said that the district was deliberately trying to provoke a strike by making a last minute demand that it knew would be unacceptable to the unions. “It’s to make us strike. The public is devastated by this, and for good reason, and we’re very sympathetic. So they’re thinking that, ‘Maybe we make them strike one more time and they’ll fold,” Castelli told us. “Our only other option is submission and surrender.”

Safety issues

On the second day of the strike, Oct. 19, two BART workers were struck and killed by a northbound train in Walnut Creek, and the NTSB investigation could take as long as a year to draw conclusions about what happened.

What we do know is this: Christopher Sheppard, a BART manager and member of the AFSCME union, and Larry Daniels, a contractor, were inspecting a “dip in the rail” before they were hit by an oncoming train. There was a camera inside the train facing the cabin, but no camera facing out towards the track.

Longtime BART safety trainer Saul Almanza arrived at the scene shortly after the public was notified of the accident. He described the site of the crash as gruesome, in an interview with the Guardian. He had Sheppard and Daniels in his safety classes. He knew them. He stared downward as he remembered seeing the forms of his fellow workers under yellow sheets.

Shortly before NTSB’s Southworth revealed that the operators were in training for their safety certification, one longtime BART safety expert sat with the Guardian to explain the rules that protect workers lives out on a track — rules that have been a big part of the labor negotiations, with unions insisting on better safety protections.

Almanza spent years training workers in the rules that may have failed the workers who died over the weekend. Much of training revolves around safety procedures of BART’s Simple Approval process, meant to protect workers on the rail.

Simple Approval keeps the Operations Control Center “aware of the presence of personnel in a specified location in the trackway,” according to a BART safety manual. When workers are preparing to work on a track, they must recite the simple approval to the control center, also known as central control. It works like signing a waiver, saying that you understand the rules of safety, and more importantly, that you can work on the track without diverting trains.

Cars of steel can whip by at any moment, so it’s important for workers to use simple approval to signal to central control that they are prepared. But it’s also a warning system. Once simple approval is given, train operators are supposed to be notified that someone is working on the tracks.

When central control enters that information into the computer, an automated message is relayed to all of the BART system, including trains, warning which tracks have workers in harm’s way. Alarmingly, audio from BART dispatch, obtained by journalist Matthew Keys, revealed that the automated message from central relayed that there were no workers on the tracks.

It was wrong.

Freelance journalist Matthew Keys captured dispatch audio from BART erroneously reporting no workers were on the tracks.

“A message from BART operation: there are no personnel wayside,” the automated message said in a female tone (wayside means on the tracks). Afterward, a voice piped up on dispatch to correct the automated message. “Disregard, attention all personnel, we have personnel wayside,” said the next message, this time by a human worker.

But the erroneous message could have confused the train operator, Almanza said, and possibly led to a fatal error.

A more experienced operator may have caught the subtleties in the communication, he said, but someone who was refreshing their skills might not have caught the second message. Catching shifting commands quickly is “one of the nuances” of train operations, Almanza said.

Even if the train operator wasn’t expecting the workers to be on the tracks, there were still measures in place to ensure their safety. One of these is the 15-second-rule.

BART’s 15-second-rule says a worker can’t work somewhere on the track from which they can’t see a train coming 15 seconds away — like around a curve, elevation, or track shrouded by vegetation. If they need to work in a section of track with less visibility, they have to follow a different set of procedures by obtaining a work order.

Almanza said a lingering question is whether the section of the track Daniels and Sheppard worked on fell under the standards of the 15-second rule. Having a sight line is important, he said, because you can’t use your ears to hear a train coming.

“It’s like a jet flying over you, you don’t hear it until it’s past you,” he explained. “I always teach in my class: ‘You don’t listen for trains, you look for trains.'”

When the workers follow the letter of the 15-second-rule to a tee, he said, they see a train coming and retreat to safety. Yet Almanza said the accident is perplexing because these workers had years of experience. Paul Oversier, BART’s head of operations, also confirmed the men in the accident were experienced professionals.

“They understand the railroads and understand moving trains, they were doing today something they’ve done a thousand times,” Oversier said at a press conference just after the accident.

But even experienced workers need to be recertified in safety protocol, Almanza said. With most of the experienced transit workers on strike, the BART train that struck the two workers was used for training. It’s still unclear what role that played in the tragedy.

Tim Daw contributed to this report.

NOW: Bay Area Rapid Transit workers gather for vigil for those killed in train accident http://t.co/yICELBkMXE #BART pic.twitter.com/bbXwqGAbNH

— NewsBreaker (@NewsBreaker) October 21, 2013

Lessons of the BART standoff

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 23, 2013

99

EDITORIAL BART and its unions reached a tentative deal on new contracts late Monday (10/21) night, the next day restoring service that had been disrupted by the second four-day strike this year. Now, it’s time for everyone to move on from this impasse — and the ugly demonization of workers that accompanied it — and try to heal the damage that was done.

Sadly, it appears to have taken the senseless deaths of two BART employees on Oct. 19 to reinforce the safety concerns that unions have raised from the beginning, undermine critics’ belittling claims that “the trains run themselves” and don’t need trained workers, and back the district down from its aggressive brinksmanship and preparations to run limited service during what could have been a long strike.

There are still many questions to be answered. Was the district forcing a strike with its “final offer” and last minute decision to seek more authority over work rules? Would it really have offered service to the public using scab drivers? Was the driver training that was happening on that ill-fated train a factor in the tragedy?

We may not have a definitive answer to that last question for quite awhile, but we already learned from the NTSB that BART officials were deceiving the general public when they claimed the train was simply on a maintenance run to remove graffiti and when they offered misleading answers to the Guardian’s direct questions about whether driver training was being done.

Unfortunately, that was just the latest example of a pattern of behavior unbefitting of officials in a public agency. It began with the decision to pay almost $400,000 to a notoriously anti-union contract negotiator. It continued through stall tactics and an aggressive public relations strategy. And it culminated with seeking sweeping authority over work rules at the 11th hour and following up with training new drivers as soon as a strike was underway, apparently hoping to run enough service that the unions would be forced to accept a bad contract.

None of that should have happened, and it was only possible because the financially healthy district played off of the conservative campaigns against public employee unions of recent years to undermine the public image of their workers and deny them reasonable raises and safety improvements.

The media is also culpable, particularly the editorial writers at the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group, which ran vitriolic and false rants condemning workers and unions, even supporting Republican calls to outlaw strikes by transportation workers.

Only in the funhouse mirror they created was it possible to credibly push the ridiculous claim that unions were striking because they were afraid of using email. It’s not necessary to dehumanize and demean our adversaries. We in the progressive Bay Area are better than that, and maybe now we can act like it.

The Performant: Cheers for fears

Sue Vaughan

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October 22, 2013

0

If you consume the news at all you’ll find a lot to be afraid of that seems endemic to the modern age: swine flu, restless leg syndrome, Ellis Act evictions, terrorist sleeper cells, compromised data privacy, zombie attacks. But despite its almost constant presence in our lives, this kind of fear merely creates a continuous low-grade malaise, an emotional state which appears to benefit only the evolution of pharmaceutical companies and the self-help book publishing trade.

So it’s no wonder that in our search for “real” sensation, we often turn towards a more primal state of fear. The sort of fear that compels us to skydive out of airplanes, ride roller coasters, and surf giant waves, activities designed to trigger that survivalist fight or flight instinct that we then harness for our own adrenaline-generating, sensation-seeking purposes. The kind of fear that compels us to visit that most seasonal of attractions: the haunted house.

There are haunted houses designed to make you laugh and haunted houses designed to make you scream, and ideally a bit of each, a giddy state of being which San Leandro’s Fear Overload makes a considered effort to provide.

Conveniently located just steps away from the Bayfair BART, in an innocuously suburban shopping center, the R-rated Fear Overload contains two separate labyrinths for its patrons to struggle through: “Ward 9” (a supposed asylum for the criminally insane), and the macabre Abusement Park. Both are equally blood-drenched and disorienting, and are welcome throwbacks to the glory days of haunted houses where the highest-tech prop on display was a guillotine, and the real scares came from the all-too human element lurking in the shadows ready to pounce. Let’s just say ironic detachment won’t get you very far in Fear Overload, and thank goodness for that.

At the door to Ward 9, my companion T and I are handed an almost completely useless flashlight and bid a hearty farewell, the door slamming behind us like a butcher’s cleaver. To navigate the dark and claustrophobically narrow corridors with a pencil-thin beam of intermittent light proves both unnerving and hilarious, and as each twist of the path leads to room after room of blood-splattered furniture, swinging doors and rattling cupboards, rotting corpses with dramatically gory headwounds and severed limbs, dungeon walls lined with bodies in straitjackets, oh, and living monsters who delight in leaping out of random corners our anticipation grows into a kind of delightful dread.

I’ve chosen the right partner for this foray into fear. T’s suspension of disbelief is willing and open, her cool quotient, like mine, hovers close to zero, and she is more than happy to let me hold the flashlight, which I figure could at least serve as a makeshift bludgeon should it come to that. In the FAQ comes the promise that the actors won’t touch you, at least not intentionally, but there’s no promise that won’t get in your face, and we wind up getting pretty close and personal with a lot of great makeup jobs and mask designs. Their timing, I have to say, is mostly impeccable. We scream every time.

From a theatrical standpoint, both haunted “houses” are a scenic designer’s wet dream, full of intricately-conceptualized nooks and crannies filled with scenes of extreme splatter gore. In Ward 9 we find the disturbingly shambolic nursery and the “morgue” inhabited by a double-jointed creature that slithers as much as crawls into our path to be especially evocative, and in the Abusement Park, our theatre-geek hearts are filled with admiration for the atmospheric boiler room and the horrifyingly stark and bloody women’s room, which also proves the hardest room to find our way out of (tip: ask a monster for help).

Sure, there’s not a lot of character development per se, or at least not enough to compel us to stick around and hunt for backstory, but as the protagonists of our own survival story, we make it through to the final xit relatively intact, which is really the only storyline that matters when confronting fear as a means of accessing fun.

Through Nov. 2, $19.50-35

Fear Overload Scream Park

Bayfair Center

15555 East 14th St., San Leandro

(510) 730-2221

www.fearoverload.com

BART reaches tentative deal with unions, ending the strike

Sasha Cuttler

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October 22, 2013

79

BART reaches tentative deal with unions, ending the strike

The BART strike ended this morning — the second four-day strike of the current labor contract impasse, both of which hobbled the Bay Area’s transportation system — after the district reached a tentative contract with its three unions late last night.

The agreement was spurred by the tragic deaths of two BART employees on Saturday and by yesterday’s National Transportation Safety Board revelation that the train that struck the workers was being used by the district to train drivers, presumably in preparation for offered limited public service during the strike.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with union leadership that will bring the trains back into service, starting tomorrow, while union members consider the agreement and vote on it,” BART General Manager Grace Crunican said in a public statement issued at 10pm last night, withholding details of the deal. “This is a good package for our union members while still allowing the District to make the necessary investments in our infrastructure. That investment is critical to the future of the Bay Area.”

Union sources tell the Guardian that Saturday’s tragedy definitely created the conditions to reach an agreement, with the district softening its hardline insistence on its “last, best, and final offer” and the unions agreeing to some work rule changes, which they say the district and media had mischaracterized their position on. Technological modernizing will go through, but the unions retained authority over safety and other working conditions.

For more on the breakdowns that led to the strike, the circumstances surrounding Saturday’s accident, and the aftermath of that tragedy, read tomorrow’s Guardian print edition, which goes on line this evening.

Train that struck and killed two BART workers was operated by trainee

Erica Hanna

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October 21, 2013

103

Train that struck and killed two BART workers was operated by trainee

National Transportation Safety Board investigator James Southworth confirmed at a press conference on the afternoon of Oct. 21 that the train that struck two BART workers was “in operation for training and maintenance purposes,” and that the operator at the time of the fatal crash was a trainee. He said two of the six people on board were trainees.

The NTSB conducted interviews for 8-10 hours with the train operator, the operator’s supervisor and someone from the dispatch office.

Asked whether the driver had received safety certification, he said, “the training is part of the certification process.”

When asked if the driver was previously certified, Southworth said “that is information I don’t have.” It’s unclear if the driver was a new trainee or if his certification had lapsed.

He said the train was going 60-70 miles per hour at the time, and there was an emergency stop. The train was driven by computer under “Automatic Train Operation” and was not in manual mode.

The district’s decision to run the trains without experienced operators would come against the safety advice of the three striking unions, one of whom — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 — even filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to prevent BART from doing so. The case is pending, the union’s lawyers told the Guardian.

Driver of train who struck workers was in operator training. Had held other positions with BART.

— NTSB (@NTSB) October 21, 2013

“The use of uncertified training personnel to provide uncertified managers with a crash course in how to operate BART trains also presents a public safety issue,” the unions wrote in the suit.

BART workers undergo 15 weeks of safety training every three years, they wrote, training that saves lives.

For more on the concerns around safety training and certification for track inspection workers, read our interview with BART safety trainer Saul Almanza.

BART chief outlines rules for avoiding Saturday’s fatalities UPDATED

Erica Hanna

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October 21, 2013

62

BART chief outlines rules for avoiding Saturday’s fatalities UPDATED

UPDATED 5:30 PM: Guardian News Editor Rebecca Bowe filed a report from the latest NTSB press conference on the BART accident that claimed the lives of two workers in the midst of the BART strike, which can be read here.

For more on the concerns around safety training and certification for track inspection workers, read the following piece, which was published this morning but has not been altered to reflect new information.

After two BART workers were struck and killed by a northbound train in Walnut Creek on Saturday, there are many questions to be answered: Why was the train moving in a district shut down by a labor strike? Were normal safety procedures being followed? And, most importantly, what could have prevented this tragedy?

Those of the some of the many questions that are now being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which it said could take as long as a year to answer publicly.

That’s a year without answers. “This is going to take a long time to investigate,” Grace Crunican, BART’s general manager, said at a press conference after the accident.

The investigation won’t be conducted entirely in the dark, an investigator said. For the first few weeks the investigation will focus solely on fact gathering and be reported to the public without opinion. Jim Southworth, an NTSB investigator, hammered that home at a press conference on Sunday.

“I will not speculate,” he said, with the site of the accident just nearby.

What we do know is this: Christopher Sheppard, a BART manager and member of the AFSCME union, and Larry Daniels, a contractor, were inspecting a “dip in the rail” before they were hit by an oncoming train Saturday afternoon. There was a camera inside the train facing the cabin, but no camera facing out towards the track. The two workers were required to go through what’s called a Simple Approval process to get permission to work on the track, and the NTSB will be looking at how that and other safety rules were adhered to.

Longtime BART safety trainer Saul Almanza arrived at the scene shortly after the public was notified of the accident. He described the site of the crash as gruesome, in an interview with the Guardian. He had Sheppard and Daniels in his safety classes. He knew them. He stared downward as he recalled seeing the forms of his fellow workers under yellow sheets. Four workers have died on the job at BART before this, he said.

Drawing on his many years teaching safety to BART workers, Almanza explained what safety rules should have been adhered to when workers were out on a track.

Automated message error

BART has a brochure for workers outlining trackside safety procedures, called The Wayside Safety Program. This February 2013 manual lays out how workers signal to train operators that they’re about to work on the tracks.

Simple Approval is a process workers use to keep the Operations Control Center “aware of the presence of personnel in a specified location in the trackway,” according to the manual. When workers are preparing to work on a track, they must recite the simple approval to the Operations Control Center, also known as central control. It works like signing a waiver, saying that you understand the rules of safety, and more importantly, that you can work on the track without diverting trains.

Cars of steel can whip by at any moment, so it’s important for workers to use simple approval to signal to central control that they are prepared.

But it’s also a warning system. Once simple approval is given, train operators are supposed to be notified that someone is working on the tracks.

When central control enters that information into the computer, an automated message is relayed to all of the BART system, including trains, warning which tracks have workers in harm’s way. Alarmingly, audio from BART dispatch, obtained by journalist Matthew Keys, revealed that the automated message from central relayed that there were no workers on the tracks.

It was wrong.

Radio dispatch reveals an erroneous automated message. Audio by freelance journalist and blogger Matthew Keys.

“A message from BART operation: there are no personnel wayside,” the automated message said in a female tone (wayside means on the tracks).

Afterward, a voice piped up on dispatch to correct the automated message. “Disregard, attention all personnel, we have personnel wayside,” said the next message, this time by a human worker.

But the erroneous message could have confused the train operator, Almanza said, and possibly led to a fatal error.

A more experienced operator, like the ones BART uses every day, may have caught the subtleties in the communication, he said, but someone who was refreshing their skills might not have caught the second message. Catching shifting commands quickly is “one of the nuances” of train operations, Almanza said.

Even if the train operator wasn’t expecting the workers to be on the tracks, there were still measures in place to ensure their safety. One of these is the 15-second-rule, and there’s a chance this process could have saved their lives if it had been observed.

15 second rule

BART’s safety policies outline that if an inspector working on the track obtains simple approval, they must adhere to the 15-second-rule. Basically, a worker can’t work somewhere on the track from which they can’t see a train coming 15 seconds away — like around a curve, elevation, or track shrouded by vegetation. If they need to work in a section of track with less visibility, they have to follow a different set of procedures by obtaining a work order.

But under Simple Approval, they just notify central dispatch and set out to work. A worker also needs to set a predetermined, safe, and clear location to move to once he or she sees a train coming.

Almanza said a lingering question is whether the section of the track Daniels and Sheppard worked on fell under the standards of the 15-second rule.

He said the track near the accident “crested the hill a little bit.” Having a sight line is important, he said, because you can’t use your ears to hear a train coming.

“It’s like a jet flying over you, you don’t hear it until it’s past you,” he explained. “I always teach in my class: ‘You don’t listen for trains, you look for trains.’”

It’s not clear at this point if the workers tried to get out of the way of the train or were caught completely by surprise. But when the workers follow the letter of the 15-second-rule to a tee, he said, they see a train coming and retreat to safety.

A helmet at the scene of the crash, which a source says is posisblyfrom one of the workers fatally struck.

Relearning

Another rule explicitly outlines that for every five or fewer workers present on the tracks, at least one must be a “watchperson.” It was created only after another unfortunate accident, in which a train fatally struck a BART worker.

“This was a new rule that came out in 2009 after James Strickland was killed,” Almanza said, darkly.

The rule is explicit: BART workers can get simple approval to work on a track without a watchperson only when “a person is moving from one location to another and the person’s full attention is focused on watching out for trains or other on-rail vehicles.”

It is not yet known if the workers inspecting the rail were inspecting the rail while moving, or if they were stationary.

Audio from the dispatch when the fatally struck workers were discovered, obtained by freelance journalist Matthew Keys.

Even more perplexing, though, is why their watchperson missed the oncoming train, Almanza said, because these workers had years of experience. Paul Oversier, BART’s head of operations, also confirmed the men in the accident were experienced professionals.

“These are two long-term railroad track specialists, I cannot overemphasize how long they’ve been in the business,” Oversier said at a press conference just after the accident. “They understand the railroads and understand moving trains, they were doing today something they’ve done a thousand times.”

But even experienced workers need to be recertified in safety protocol, Almanza said.

BART employees are required to test for safety certification once every three years, and contractors must test for safety annually. That leads to a lingering question: were all of the workers involved in the accident certified in safety? There were three sections of workers involved, Almanza said. The train operators, central control, and the workers on the tracks themselves. With most of the experienced transit workers on strike, BART has not yet revealed if the replacements were all up to date on safety protocol.

In fact, when a reporter asked Oversier at a press conference if he knew who the driver was, he replied, “no, we don’t,” adding, “we believe the train was under (Automatic Train Operation).”

A computer was in control of the car, essentially.

Flowers left near #BART tracks where 2 workers killed yesterday. @ktvu pic.twitter.com/7bAA5DEfFi

— cara liu (@CaraSFBay) October 20, 2013

While the BART community continues asking questions, it also prays for those it lost. A vigil was held for Sheppard and Daniels yesterday, and flowers can be found on the fence near the accident. For a short time, the bitterly divided BART union and management have an unfortunate common ground.

They’re both grieving the loss of their own as they look for answers.

Vigil at Walnut Creek #BART station for two men killed in yesterday’s track accident @ktvu pic.twitter.com/a5Kjv4zhNs

— cara liu (@CaraSFBay) October 21, 2013

BART workers say the district deliberately caused the strike

Sasha Cuttler

-

October 18, 2013

125

Photos by Tim Daw

Members of BART’s three striking unions gathered, rallied, and picketed outside the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland for much of today, many of them still openly grappling with yesterday’s surprising turn of events that put them in the position of going out on strike for the second time this year.

As BART spokesperson Alicia Trost and SEIU Local 1021 President Roxanne Sanchez both confirmed this morning on KQED’s Forum, it was the district’s 11th hour demand for more authority to set work rules that caused negotiations to break down after days of intensive talks had gotten the two sides close to an agreement on the other issues.

BART officials such as Trost and BART Board President Tom Radulovich (who hasn’t yet returned our call for comment) publicly cast the work rule issue as about the district’s ability to modernize, citing how the district is still using fax machines and paper pay stubs rather than fully converting to electronic communications, blaming the requirement to consult with unions on procedural changes.

But Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian that the pair had “completely mischaracterized” the conflict, and he speculated about whether Radulovich — who must approve the contracts but hasn’t been a party to the talks — was “being lied to” by BART’s management team and labor consultant.

Daly and other union leaders say work rules such as requiring union approval for changing past practices related to scheduling, hours, and the kind of tasks workers perform are essential to protecting things like the eight-hour workday, worker safety, and whistleblowing and free speech rights.

“We had a basic framework understanding on the economics, but then BART illegally tied that to this work rule change on past practices. And what that meant for us is in order to get a reasonable economic package, we needed to swallow this poison pill,” Daly told us.

George, a train engineer at the rally who wouldn’t give us his last name, said the work rules have been developed over decades and are important to the management-worker balancing act, but that they shouldn’t be a barrier to modernizing.

“We have long term work contracts because we’re here for the long haul and the employer is here for the long haul, so we try to work these things out,” he told us, saying that the workers strongly support their union leaders and have told them, “Do not bring us back a lousy offer to vote on, do your job.”

But not all BART workers feel that way, and some have supported the district’s demand that the union put its “last, best, and final offer” up for a vote of the membership.

“I’m really pissed. Obviously there’s been a decision in our union. I don’t think the union is representing us, the [transit vehicle mechanics]. Nobody wanted to strike, not us,” said Robert Earl Bright, a BART engineer/mechanic profiled in the Guardian this summer. “None of the TVMs wanted to strike. Work rules, I have no concept.”

SEIU Local 1021 Executive Director Peter Castelli told the the Guardian that he understands the concerns of workers like Bright, but that he think most members will support the decision to strike once they get more information.

“It’s a fast evolving situation, with the stewards and union leadership saying ‘we gotta go out.’ So explaining things to our own membership takes time. But it shows the unity and how they trust their leadership,” Castelli told us.

He ridiculed statements by district officials that the unions are resisting modernizing the system. “We’re not afraid of technology, so that’s really grasping,” Castelli told the Guardian. “Some of the people in BART have technology degrees and they’re keeping the trains from wrecking, so we’re not afraid of technology.”

Instead, both Daly and Castelli said that the district was deliberately trying to provoke a strike by making a last minute demand that it knew would be unacceptable to the unions. “It’s to make us strike. The public is devastated by this, and for good reason, and we’re very sympathetic. So they’re thinking that, ‘Maybe we make them strike one more time and they’ll fold,” Castelli told us. “Our only other option is submission and surrender.”

BART on strike after talks break down UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler

-

October 17, 2013

20

Buckle up, Bay Area, BART workers go on strike at midnight. After intense negotiations over the last few days, the two sides have failed to reach an agreement.

Leaders of the two unions fault the district for refusing to bend on the “last, best, and final” offer that it issued a few days ago. They say agreements have been reached on pension and health care contributions, but that the two sides remain far apart on pay and benefits, and the unions say the district rejected their offers to settle the remaining disagreements through binding arbitration.

[UPDATE: On KQED’s Forum this morning, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost and SEIU Local 1021 President Roxanne Sanchez each said it was the district’s 11th hour demand for more authority over work rules that led talks to break down. While Trost casts it authority to make changes like switching from faxes to email, Sanchez said the issue is more fundamental: protecting the eight-hour workday, giving workers predicability in scheduling, and preventing punitive changes aimed at whistleblowers and union activists — essentially, preventing union busting. Sanchez wants that issue submitted to binding arbitration, the district has refused, with Trost saying the district isolate it from the pay and benefits, where Sanchez said the sides have agreed to a “basic framework.” BART workers and union officials are current gathered at Lake Merritt Station and we’ll have more on the strike and contract impasse later in the day.]

Both sides are blaming the other for a strike that will likely have a huge impact on the Bay Area, particularly if it drags on past tomorrow (Fri/18).

Meanwhile, BART General Manager Grace Crunican issued the following statement after talks broke down:

“I am very disappointed that even after six months of day after day, night after night intense negotiations we are still unable to reach a deal. It hasn’t been all for nothing, we were able to make progress but a large gap remains.

“Today I gave an updated final offer to the unions on behalf of the Board. It reflects the limited progress we’ve made over the past four days of work and it addresses the essential work rule efficiencies BART desperately needs to modernize our operations.

“The package is a 3 percent raise per year for a total of a 12 percent, with a chance to earn up to $1,000 a year if ridership grows. It calls for contributions of 4 percent for pension and 9.5 percent for medical. I think the offer is good for the workers and good for BART. We’ve given our unions until October 27th to consider the offer and take it to a vote of the members.

“I appreciate the riders’ and the Bay Area’s support in standing by us during these difficult negotiations. We are not going to agree to something we can’t afford. We have to protect the aging system for our workers and the public.

“Thank you to the mediators that were involved, BART staff, and Caltrans for their hospitality.

“We gave it our all and it didn’t come together and that is disappointing to everyone involved. We have a lot to do to build the future: a new fleet of rail cars, modern stations, better access, and a stronger partnership with our unions. I believe we can get there, but we have to get there together.”

Information on alternative commute options can be found at www.bart.gov andalert.511.org.

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST COMMUTER CRUSTS

Michael Redmond

-

October 15, 2013

1

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST COMMUTER CRUSTS

The Mexican-Italian house of Juan Gutierrez opened The Sandwich Place in 1979 when Gutierrez was only 14 years old. A tiny shop that just fits its refrigerator cases full of bevs and counter, the shop sits a stone’s throw from the 16th Street BART station in a bustling milieu of commuters, street preachers, and the occasional demonstration or spoken word open mic. In such a space, one would expect strict utilitarianism. But Gutierrez would scoff at such assumptions — quickly, in his exuberantly bilingual manner. One look at the Place’s vast menu reveals everything from chicken milanesas and bacon-wrapped hot dogs to a superb Portobello-and-balsamic sando from an impressive veggie section, all served on his fresh homemade breads in standard and gluten-free varieties. Better than the chain stores? By a million miles. And chances are, you won’t have to travel even one to find out.

2029 Mission, SF. (415) 431-3811

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST TWERK QUAKE

Michael Redmond

-

October 15, 2013

0

Long before Miley irrevocably shifted the national conversation in the direction of feverishly jiggling glutei, there were the Twerking Girls. This unabashedly trio of bootylicious women joyfully — but with hilariously straight faces — rapidly oscillated that which their mothers gifted unto them up and down the city. They shimmied through the Apple Store and all around Union Square. They headstood on cable cars and cafeteria tables, invaded laundromats and tiny GoCARS, stunned ’em on BART and at Macy’s. In the sight of God and 2Chainz, they twerked their way right down the veggie aisle at the Safeway. The hypnotically undulating hijinks of Cherry Red, Dollface, and Tastee were captured this summer in a viral video, “Twerking in San Francisco Prank” by the Simple Pickup crew (a trio of dudes made infamous by filming themselves aggressively hitting on unsuspecting women; this celebratory video proved there is a spark of good in everyone). At first watch, you can’t stop laughing at the befuddled, bewildered, or frozen faces of some of the people shocked by the Twerking Girls’ hypnotic undulations. But then a larger, deeper point takes over: damn, San Francisco’s gotten mighty uptight. Thank you, Twerking Girls and friends, for shaking some soul in the city’s face.

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST LADY-LOVING BIKE GANG

Michael Redmond

-

October 15, 2013

0

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST LADY-LOVING BIKE GANG

Roll up hot and cruise in the cool company of other bike-loving women who make up Fixed With Out Dix—a nonexclusive weekly ride for female-identified folks and their two-wheeled BFFs. The crew meets every Wednesday at the Lake Merritt BART station and pedals around parks, crushes hills, and rolls through town with the wind in its grinning faces. Whether you straddle a flashy fixie, speedy road bike, rusty cruiser, or your aunt’s muddy mountain ride, FWOD welcomes your wheels and the company. Share a snack, make new friends, and discover fresh trails for adventure. They’re pumped to empower women and encourage cycling, and these badass biker babes want others to feel good, be safe, and revel in camaraderie on the move.

Weekly rides meet Wednesdays, 6:30pm, free. Lake Merritt BART station, Oakl. fwodoakland.tumblr.com

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST COMMUNITY CENTERING

Michael Redmond

-

October 15, 2013

0

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST COMMUNITY CENTERING

As San Francisco’s Mission District undergoes rapid rent increases and neighborhood demographic change, spaces like the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics become fewer and farther between. We need spaces like this, where artists and activists come together to share stories of their fights for economic and social justice, or deliver stirring performance through music, poetry, art, and dance. Named for beloved Mission dweller and Guatemalan activist Eric Quezada, who lost his battle with cancer in 2011, the space seeks to be a cultural gathering spot that is both affordable and accessible — just blocks from 16th Street BART, and in the middle of a stretch of Valencia more known for spendy restaurants and hipster bars than progressive candidate forums and multicultural celebrations. An apt setting for those seeking to retain their sanity in a shifting SF.

518 Valencia, SF. www.518valencia.org

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

Michael Redmond

-

October 15, 2013

0

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

We all got a four-day taste of Bay Area life without BART during the labor strike in early July (with another one coming in October, or so it seems at press time) — and it was hardly a transit flavor we savored. But amid all the bitter, there was a sweet worth noting, for anyone who used the opportunity to finally try commuting by San Francisco Bay Ferry. What a way to go! For instance, did you know we actually live on a bay, with water and everything? It’s true! With the ferry, you’re out on that very water, viewing the Bay’s waterfront cities from new vantage points, traveling in comfort, usually right on schedule — with access to an on-board bar serving reasonably priced beer and cocktails, no less. Plus, the ferries travel to Marin County, that land considered so inaccessible for adherents of non-aquatic public transportation. It’s almost enough to avoid the underground for good. Almost.

www.sanfranciscobayferry.com

Best of the Bay 2013 Editors Picks: City Living

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

-

October 15, 2013

0

CITY LIVING

BEST RENEGADE RECITAL

And then one day in June, a piano appeared. Not a tiny Schroeder model, but a full-size, stand-up set of ivories, plopped on top of Bernal Hill with an open invitation attached for giggly renditions of “Chopsticks” and gorgeous, soul-stirring Chopin scores alike. Bernal Heights being the magical neighborhood it is, a full-on recital was planned and performed for a grinning crowd of over 200 very lucky folks. The Bernal Heights piano lineup of skilled musicians sent sassy jazz numbers and symphonic pleasures into the breeze and charmed the perching crowd, as the sun set over the city below. The piano may not be a permanent fixture on the Bernal bedrock — indeed, the instrument used for the recital was a replacement, hastily lugged up by the same start-up workers who donated the first, after it disappeared. (“One does not simply get rid of a piano,” one of the gifters wrote in a blog post. “[We] concocted a plan to bring it to a public place so that it could be enjoyed by many.”) All the more reason to hike to the top and play sweet, sweet songs for the city you love.

www.tynan.com/bernal

BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

We all got a four-day taste of Bay Area life without BART during the labor strike in early July (with another one coming in October, or so it seems at press time) — and it was hardly a transit flavor we savored. But amid all the bitter, there was a sweet worth noting, for anyone who used the opportunity to finally try commuting by San Francisco Bay Ferry. What a way to go! For instance, did you know we actually live on a bay, with water and everything? It’s true! With the ferry, you’re out on that very water, viewing the Bay’s waterfront cities from new vantage points, traveling in comfort, usually right on schedule — with access to an on-board bar serving reasonably priced beer and cocktails, no less. Plus, the ferries travel to Marin County, that land considered so inaccessible for adherents of non-aquatic public transportation. It’s almost enough to avoid the underground for good. Almost.

www.sanfranciscobayferry.com

BEST SUPERGENIUS BAR

Look, we’ve all done it: accidentally spilled a tall glass of vodka on our laptop keyboard, but kept watching our Breaking Bad marathon anyway. Sure, a few of the keys have stopped working, but we’re far too engrossed in the saga of Walter White to shut down, wipe down, and store that sucker in a bag of rice for a couple days until it dries out. Uh oh, though — the next morning it won’t turn on at all, or the morning after that. No need to hover around the Apple Store’s genius bar in dismay, hoping for a shot at paying $750 for a basic diagnostic — and who knows how much to actually repair the thing. The superfriendly, incredibly attentive folks of Keane Mac Repair can save the day quickly, professionally, and far more cheaply. (Recently they charged us $150 for an out-of-warranty diagnostic.) Full-service, fully licensed, and located somewhat incongruously in the gorgeous historic Flood Building — no wonder were keen on Keane.

870 Market, SF. (415) 835-9800, www.keanesf.com

BEST COMMUNITY CENTERING

As San Francisco’s Mission District undergoes rapid rent increases and neighborhood demographic change, spaces like the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics become fewer and farther between. We need spaces like this, where artists and activists come together to share stories of their fights for economic and social justice, or deliver stirring performance through music, poetry, art, and dance. Named for beloved Mission dweller and Guatemalan activist Eric Quezada, who lost his battle with cancer in 2011, the space seeks to be a cultural gathering spot that is both affordable and accessible — just blocks from 16th Street BART, and in the middle of a stretch of Valencia more known for spendy restaurants and hipster bars than progressive candidate forums and multicultural celebrations. An apt setting for those seeking to retain their sanity in a shifting SF.

518 Valencia, SF. www.518valencia.org

BEST LADY-LOVING BIKE GANG

Roll up hot and cruise in the cool company of other bike-loving women who make up Fixed With Out Dix—a nonexclusive weekly ride for female-identified folks and their two-wheeled BFFs. The crew meets every Wednesday at the Lake Merritt BART station and pedals around parks, crushes hills, and rolls through town with the wind in its grinning faces. Whether you straddle a flashy fixie, speedy road bike, rusty cruiser, or your aunt’s muddy mountain ride, FWOD welcomes your wheels and the company. Share a snack, make new friends, and discover fresh trails for adventure. They’re pumped to empower women and encourage cycling, and these badass biker babes want others to feel good, be safe, and revel in camaraderie on the move.

Weekly rides meet Wednesdays, 6:30pm, free. Lake Merritt BART station, Oakl. fwodoakland.tumblr.com

BEST REPAIR GRAND CENTRAL

Should you need a custom cabinet, a staircase rehab, perhaps a new cupola on your clock tower, you can turn to Clipper Construction’s Mathieu Palmer. But 501 Waller, the storefront Palmer owned and used as storage space — as he told local blog Haighteration — wasn’t the best use of a neighborhood-facing corner shop. Enter Palmer’s friend Dan Daniel, who created Clipper Repair from this clutter, a friendly place for fixing up, designing, or refurbishing anything you could imagine: lamps, cabinets, antique furniture, electrical things. The interior is a gorgeously organized wonderland of screws, nails, tools, gears, and random curiosities. And then! Garret Peters turned Clipper’s back storage room into a bike shop called Wiggle Bikes, conveniently located off the Wiggle, our crosstown thoroughfare for the two-wheeled. Could there be a more useful stop-off for lovers of sustainable transportation and reuse than the Clipper Repair-Wiggle Bikes complex?

501 Waller, SF. (415) 621-4733, www.clipper-construction.com

BEST ROLLING TWEETS

This is the Bay Area — of course our most ubiquitous meteorological feature has a Twitter, and that Twitter belongs to Karl the Fog. Also of course: Karl trains CrossFit, Karl writes poetry about Folsom Street Fair, Karl creeps the “young, new, and pretty” eastern span of the Bay Bridge (although he’s gentlemanly enough to shout out the “babe” western span as well). Oh, and as befits a major part of our cultural landscape, Karl gets political, too. “The Tea Party and I have a lot in common: we’re great at obstruction, we’re really dense, and we’re almost entirely white,” Karl quips. And yet, like a silver-skinned Barry White, this smooth mover rolls a comforting blanket of seduction over all our areas, high and low, uniting and reminding us that there’s no place like home.

www.twitter.com/KarlTheFog

BEST EXCUSE TO ORGANIZE

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission adopted Plan Bay Area, a regional recipe for funneling an influx of new residents into San Francisco and the Bay’s other urban cores. It calls for San Francisco to somehow absorb 280,000 new souls, who will live in 92,000 new housing units and drive 73,000 more cars, by the year 2040 (see “Planning for displacement,” 5/28/2013), while doing little to preserve the homes of current residents, expand public transit, or discourage driving. In other words, it’s a free pass for developers, masquerading as environmentalism. Though the plan been challenged in court, activism is our best hope at mitigating the worst parts of it. To get involved, visit sfbay.sierraclub.org, www.cbecal.org, www.earthjustice.org, and the websites of other good activist organizations — and keep reading the Guardian.

BEST ANTI-GENTRIFICATION ELECTRO-PUNK SINGLE

It certainly touched a nerve. “Hey gurl, where you moving to? Moving to the East Bay, living life the broke way. SF keep your money. FUCK YOUR MONEY!” Esta Noche drag star Persia and local electro duo Daddies Plastik’s “Google Google Apps Apps” single came bouncing through the Web early this summer and ricocheted off hyperlocal blogs, paradoxically gaining speed through the power of social media. A bouncy yet sardonic party track that seriously skewers the tech industry and its effects on the San Francisco cost of living, the song (and wacky-genius video featuring the whole freak posse) successfully captured the rage of a city caught up in a tragic transition. It was an anger Persia herself felt when Esta Nocha, the Mission’s Latino gay bar, was in danger of closing. But she took that rage and turned it into summer anthem gold. Hey girl, could you tag me in that pic?

www.soundcloud.com/persia415

BEST TIP-TOP SPIFF UP

It has been remarked that West Portal is quite the happy village in the middle of this teeming city. We concur. Tucked into the side of a hill topped by a Twin Peak, slung happily along a leafy central promenade, the neighborhood is not the worst model for Main Street, USA. Tip and Top Vacuum & Shoe Service, particularly seen in this light, is an all-American gem. Bring in your dirt sucker for a fix-me-up and the capable staff will get it back to dirt bunny-busting in two shakes of a dusty rug. And like any good member of a small community, Tip and Top is a multitasker, as evident from the boots in the window. The shop also repairs shoes, and will even custom-cobble you a boot or slipper. To recap: Tip and Top fixes vacuums and shoes, it’s cute as a button, and you kind of need to check it out.

173 W Portal, SF. (415) 664-9320

BEST LITERARY BYWAY

Though the neighborhood can fascinate in a historic sense, sensory overload is a constant threat among the chain stores, tour buses, and souvenir sweatshirts of Fisherman’s Wharf. One can always head to Richard Henry Dana Place for a brief respite, however. Incongruously tacked onto the waterfront edge of Leavenworth Street, the quiet dead end — placid in a sea of tourist turbulence — was renamed in 1988 as part of a City Lights Bookstore proposal to name a dozen streets after local artists and authors. Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s renowned contribution to our canon, Two Years Before the Mast, contains some of the first accurate descriptions of the West Coast from aboard a merchant vessel. (Melville famously wrote of it, “But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana’s unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle.”) Dana’s namesake street therefore manages to combine both literary and sea-faring history in one charmingly ramshackle locale.

Leavenworth and Jefferson, SF.

BEST TWERK QUAKE

Long before Miley irrevocably shifted the national conversation in the direction of feverishly jiggling glutei, there were the Twerking Girls. This unabashedly trio of bootylicious women joyfully — but with hilariously straight faces — rapidly oscillated that which their mothers gifted unto them up and down the city. They shimmied through the Apple Store and all around Union Square. They headstood on cable cars and cafeteria tables, invaded laundromats and tiny GoCARS, stunned ’em on BART and at Macy’s. In the sight of God and 2Chainz, they twerked their way right down the veggie aisle at the Safeway. The hypnotically undulating hijinks of Cherry Red, Dollface, and Tastee were captured this summer in a viral video, “Twerking in San Francisco Prank” by the Simple Pickup crew (a trio of dudes made infamous by filming themselves aggressively hitting on unsuspecting women; this celebratory video proved there is a spark of good in everyone). At first watch, you can’t stop laughing at the befuddled, bewildered, or frozen faces of some of the people shocked by the Twerking Girls’ hypnotic undulations. But then a larger, deeper point takes over: damn, San Francisco’s gotten mighty uptight. Thank you, Twerking Girls and friends, for shaking some soul in the city’s face.

BEST PLACE TO PADDLE AND WADDLE

The de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences have the giant advertising budgets and thus get all the press, but Golden Gate Park’s hidden gem lies just down JFK from those twin attractions: the Stow Lake Boathouse, perched alongside the built-in-1893 lake. The historic, recently renovated boathouse (it was getting a little creaky) contains a café stocked with handmade piroshkis and serves as the launch spot for Stow Lake’s fleet of boats, including the iconic paddleboats so beloved by tourists — and locals who aren’t too cool to admit it. If hanging out on the water’s not for you, stroll around the lake, dodging rapidly waddling geese and ducks on the paved path. More ambitious hikers can cruise to Strawberry Hill atop Stow Lake’s tiny, wooded island. On days when the fog lifts, the view there is well worth the huffing and puffing.

50 Stow Lake Dr. E., Golden Gate Park, SF. www.stowlakeboathouse.com

BEST PUBLIC ART-CHITECTS

When the Exploratorium reopened at Pier 15 earlier this year, tech wizards Obscura Digital transformed the historic waterfront building’s façade with an ultra-high definition light projection show, dazzling nighttime gazers who flocked there with an array of spectacular, nature-themed dreamscapes. Enormous blooming crystals, fast-forward budding plants, time lapse microorganism interactions were all brought to life, precisely projected in a way that contained them within the lines of the building’s architecture — yet totally screwed with viewers’ perception. It wasn’t the first time this 13-year-old design studio has treated San Francisco audiences to surreal sound-and-light shows in public spaces. Its “Corazon Under the Dome” exhibit at downtown’s Westfield Centre dazzled shoppers with convex architectural mapping, and Obscura’s “Digital Arts Panorama” at the new San Francisco Public Utilities Commission building offers visitors a dynamic virtual tour of the regional watershed.

www.obscuradigital.com

BEST HOME RUN

If you’re a local baseball fan and you haven’t yet run the Giant Race, you’re missing out, and not just because race entry includes a bobblehead (this year: sparkle-eyed Sergio Romo decked out in running gear) and a shiny medal (also this year: an homage to the World Series ring … with glitter, because WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS). The late summer race, which benefits Project Open Hand and offers nearly pancake-flat 5K, 10K, and half-marathon distances, begins just outside AT&T Park but ends on the field. Sure, certain parts of the sacred grass are roped off, but the bulk of the diamond is open for post-race stretching, hydration, and field-of-dreams fantasies galore. Die-hards take special note: There are companion Giant Races in San Jose and Scottsdale, too. No AT&T Park finish, obviously, but think of the superfan bragging rights!

www.race-sfgiants.com

BEST SCHOOL OF THRASH

Between competing coffee shops and obscured by the whirl of growing foot traffic on Divisadero Street sits an old Victorian, surrounded by a fence, upon which hangs a hand-painted sign. The SF Skate Club‘s mission says it all: “[The club] strives to provide a safe, positive, and fun environment for youth of diverse backgrounds to pursue their passion to skateboard.” Skate Club creators, skateboarder Shawn Connolly and educator Thuy Nguyen, are on their grind to use skateboarding as a medium of youth empowerment and community building, and their school is a hub of fast friendship and solid ollies. Summer, weekend, and after-school programs for kids of most ages are offered which teach the basics and tricks. The school also organizes mobile outings, and hosts drop-in visits from professionals. If its pupils’ enthusiasm is any indication, after just a few months it’s already on a roll.

635 Divisadero, SF. (415) 572-2065, www.sfskateclub.com

BEST EYE ON THE OCEAN

Perched above Sutro Baths near Ocean Beach, on a cliff whose face always seems to be exploding with colorful blooms, the exceedingly graceful 4,050 sq. ft. National Park Service visitor center at Point Lobos known as Lands End Lookout is one of our new favorite places in the world. (Although it’s closed as of this writing due to the government shutdown, boo.) Opened earlier this year, it contains a smart little cafe, oodles of info on the area’s environmental features, wildlife, and historical hot spots, and a nature-loving staff. Most people will come here at a starting point of an energizing down to the or through the surrounding hills. But the low and angular yet surprisingly capacious design of the Lookout itself, by EHDD, fits so perfectly into its Point Lobos surroundings (and puts further to shame the industrial barn-like Cliff House next door) that you may find yourself lingering beyond a cappuccino to enjoy the light and light-filled space, waves frothing on the rocks far below.

www.parksconservancy.org

BEST BAR FOR A SECOND DATE

Fancy foodie joints, indie movies, trendy pop-ups, and all that jazz: all great ways to unwind the weirdness of date No. 2, but when it’s a Tuesday, you worked all day, and exhausted yourself in yoga, let’s be real: you’re hangry and horny. This evening out requires two things immediately: food and liquor. Forget trying to be impressive, go with our proven routine. We call up the Little Chihuahua on Divisadero, order something to go, and walk your awkward and excited date next door to The Page — one of the few chill, homey spots left on the rapidly developing (and stressing out) “Divisadero Corridor” — where one can snag a bar stool, drink some whiskey, and feast on your delicious assortment of salsas and burrito fare. This neighborhood staple is cool with your takeout as long as you promise to clean up your foils and spills — and generously tipping your bartender never hurts. Your date will be well fed, your confidence levels will be on the up, and the night is young. It’s time to turn the page on this.

298 Divisadero, SF. (415) 255-6101, www.thepagebar.com

BEST NEW DRONE HIVE (WITH BUZZ)

Face it: cafes do not want an all-day camper leeching off their wi-fi (and scaring away their customers), and people working on their laptops want a place to work where they don’t have to keep buying single espressos just to get that last report done. Now we out-of-office worker bees can bow to our caffeine-overlords guilt-free: The Workshop Cafe is a spot where laptop use is not only condoned, its encouraged. In fact, calling it a cafe may be a misnomer — it’s really a hip and sleek public office space that a cafe snuck into and never left. (And it’s already looking to expand to a location near you.) Each table is equipped with rows of outlets to charge your gear, and there’s a smartphone app to order coffee without moving your rump. Cubbies deep inside the FiDi coffee joint-cum-workspace come equipped with white boards and markers for impromptu meetings, and widescreen monitors await your PowerPoint-laden laptops. Workshop even offers scanning and printing services: no need to head to FedEx or Kinko’s or whatever the heck they call themselves these days. Pro tip: there are free portable batteries to plug your laptops into if you want to toil at the tables outside. For only two bucks an hour, you can work as long as you like, minus snide looks from annoyed baristas. Now we can work forever! Free time, what’s that?

180 Montgomery, SF. (415) 322-1048, www.workshopcafe.com

BEST SUPER-WELLNESS INSURANCE

Clamber up to the Queen Anne Victorian home on a quiet Richmond corner to find some of the best free health care in the city. For 20 years, the SF Free Clinic has tended to the uninsured and underinsured, doing the work that our great federal government is only just now starting to get to. Started in 1993 by Tricia and Richard Gibbs, two general practitioners who wanted to make the connection between low-income San Franciscans and the city’s high quality health resources, the facilities offer preventative health screenings, vaccines, and non-emergency care. Services like free diabetes screenings are aided by health facilities and pros from across the city who lend a hand at the California Street location. Example: renowned yoga instructor Betty Roi offers a regular healthful yoga class. The SF Free Clinic has seen more than 70,000 patient visits since it opened its doors, a staggering number that shows how valuable the clinic is to the city’s health and wellness.

4900 California, SF. (415) 750-9894, www.sffc.org

BEST MEMOS FROM HELL

“I’m so disappointed in Tartine. They can’t make a real croissant. They’re too heavy!” “I’ve had a really hard weekend, I’m exhausted. All I’ve done is go to music festivals.” “You know him, he’s a serial entrepreneur. We are going to have him give a talk!” Nothing could be more indicative of the tragically funny contemporary state of San Francisco than the exclamations posted to the Dispatches from Entitlementistan Facebook page. As the page’s anonymous proprietor explains “I overhear the most asinine snippets of conversation outside of our window. Here is a handcrafted, artisanal, seasonal, locally-sourced, curated selection of comments from the heart of the Mission.” Links to cringe-worthy tech exposes, snaps of “only in privileged SF” moments, and even some nuanced critiques of the state of this rapidly changing city are posted almost daily. Dispatches is no mere anti-tech hate fest, however. It showed some serious viral power when it posted a Bud Light “Party on the Playa” Costco banner at Burning Man time, and a now-iconic pic, shot by Meredith Perry and picked up by Valleywag, of a Google Glass-sporting nerd with a bicycle at Dolores Park selfie-ing while two leather clad unicorns frolicked in the background. The caption? “Perfection.”

www.facebook.com/entitlementistan

BEST GUIDE FOR A CHALLENGING FUTURE

The organization has offered lectures and panel talks on key policy issues to Bay Area audiences for years, but the Commonwealth Club of California’s Climate One series deserves a shout-out for bringing the most pressing environmental issues of our time to the fore. Climate One was founded by Commonwealth Club Vice President Greg Dalton in 2007 after he visited the arctic circle in a Russian icebreaker boat and saw firsthand the effects of climate change on life in that part of the world. So far, the series has brought together public officials, academic experts, key business players, and advocates for serious, in-depth conversations on everything from fracking and the implications of rising sea levels to “Corn, Cows, and Cars.” The result: scary stuff, but with a reach toward actual solutions. Educate thyself with a Climate One talk at the Club’s San Francisco headquarters or download a podcast from a recent event.

www.climate-one.org

BEST SAIL FROM SOBRIETY (ON WAVES OF NOTORIETY)

The cocktail menu at Virgil’s Sea Room pays homage to our city’s unfathomably quirky, endlessly entertaining heroes: fashionista twins Marian and Vivian Brown, departed philanthropist and devoted banjo player Warren Hellman, drag queen Empress I Jose Sarria, perennial 12 Galaxies sign-hoister Frank Chu. But when speaking of our burg’s best loved, mustn’t we also mention progenitors of accommodating neighborhood watering holes? If indeed we must, hoist a glass to the triple-threat owners of one of Bernal Heights’ new favorite hangouts. Lexington Club owner Lila Thirkield, DJ-promoter-political dervish Tom Temprano, and former Nickie’s drink slinger Gillian Fitzgerald opened their watering hole early this summer in the space that once housed karaoke dive-a-rama Nap’s III. They’ve slapped on some nautical accents, spruced up a surprisingly roomy patio, and nurtured a relaxed, quirky ambience that raises a welcoming flag to buoy local spirits — while saluting San Francisco’s rambunctious past.

3152 Mission, SF. (415) 829-2233, www.virgilssf.com

Best of the Bay 2013 Editors Picks: Food and Drink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 15, 2013

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FOOD AND DRINK

BEST ALL-NATURAL SWEETIE

Juice may be the perky cheerleader in a made-for-tweens drama, but smoothies are the quiet girl that the plot eventually turns on — you know, the one with deeper substance, a touch of shy sweetness, perhaps a few creamy curves. Maybe smoothies aren’t hip to the cleansing trend, and maybe they don’t come packaged in a collectible glass bottle, but nobody puts them in the corner. The ingredient list for Morning Brew Cafe’s Happiness smoothie is deliciously minimal — avocado and whole milk — but your satisfaction will reach maximal heights. The silky combination of rich, ripe avo and thick dairy makes for a delicious sip and a full belly of healthy fat and vitamins. It’s a real meal, great as breakfast or post-workout replenishment. If you’re not a fan of the animal products, request almond milk and reap the additional protein benefits.

401 Sansome, SF. (415) 986-4206, www.morningbrew.com

BEST BUN NOODLIN’

Yes, you will do it in part for the Instagram. However, the hypebeasts were right on this one: Nombe’s ramenburger is something any self-respecting gourmand in this town has to try. (Curious folks waited over an hour to try one at the SF Street Food Festival, and no one laughed at them.) The burger of Wagyu beef and pork belly tucked between two ramen noodle buns is a culinary voyage, sometimes accompanied by miso, shiitake, and blue cheese if you’re looking for a true umami blast-off. Pro tip: come to Japanese-style izakaya Nombe on half-off wine bottle Wednesday and please, sort out the appropriate photo filter after you eat the thing. This is one burger that is best devoured straight from the kitchen, before the hype (or noodle) has had a chance to cool.

2491 Mission, SF. (415) 681-7150, www.nombesf.com

BEST “MADE” PIZZA

If San Francisco’s classier pizza joints ever threw down in some kind of mozzarella-fueled turf war, the smart money would be on Capo’s — the year-old North Beach joint that’s just as versed in Prohibition Era gangster culture as it is in tasty pizza. Chef Tony Gemignani clearly knows what he’s doing with his award-winning, Chicago-style pies (four choices of crust, from deep dish to “cracker thin”), but the man also has a flair for décor: hand-painted tin ceiling, a 1930s phone booth that actually functions, a bar that pays homage to the Golden Gate Bridge, and snappy red leather booths themed around gangsters of note — with memorabilia to match. Where else can you enjoy Quattro Forni (a pie specialty made using four ovens!) while admiring poker chips once owned by Al Capone? Nowhere else, wise guy. Capisce?

641 Vallejo, SF. (415) 986-8998, www.sfcapos.com

BEST BORSCHT IN BERNAL

Even if you don’t much care for piroshkis (although if that’s the case, we feel only sorrow in our hearts for you), the borscht will keep you coming back to Anda Piroshki. Tucked away in the local mini-mall of the Marketplace on Cortland, the counter’s proprietor Anna Tvelova keeps things simple by offering only a handful of menu options. The signature Anda Piroshki borscht is one of the tastiest we’ve ever encountered — no mushy puree, this savory-sweet beet soup is a chunky, earthy stew of slow-cooked veggies and copious dill simmered in a broth and sold in six-dollar pints so flavorful it’s hard to believe that they’re vegan. But they are.

The Marketplace, 331 Cortland, SF. (415) 821-9905, www.andapiroshki.com

BEST ZAP IN A GLASS

One of the most amazing recent dishes to smack the local foodie scene upside the head: Mission Chinese Food’s Chongqing chicken wings, the little crispy limbs buried in so many “explosive” chili peppers that one bite actually numbs your entire mouth. It’s the weirdest, most viscerally addictive experience on our menus. But what if we told you it was also available in cocktail form? Wow and ouch! The Alembic’s Nine Volt leapt onto the ever-innovative Haight Street bar’s summer cocktail menu this year (crafted by bar manager Danny Louie) and zapped us to attention. Served with white Szechuan peppers — yep, sourced from Mission Chinese — but gorgeously balanced with Aviation gin, green tea, and grape juice, this baby gives out a recharging tongue-in-the-socket thrill without any battery-acid stomach repercussions. Here’s hoping the Nine Volt sticks around through winter: we could use the heat.

1725 Haight, SF. (415) 666-0822, www.alembicbar.com

BEST BARLEYWINE BLAST

Although it’s been absorbed to an extent by SF Beer Week, Toronado’s annual Barleywine Festival has been around much longer (20 years as of last February), and it eschews the exuberant trappings of most of its festival kin to focus strictly on what’s most essential — the booze. As strong as wine but brewed as a beer, barleywines fall beyond stouts, doppelbocks, and tripels on the strong beer spectrum, and are best savored slowly and with a degree of reverence, which Toronado facilitates with generous, inexpensive sample pours of over 50 varieties from around the world. And, dear hearts, the festival always falls on the weekend closest to Valentine’s Day, making it the perfect destination (or distraction) for the lovers and loners alike.

547 Haight, SF, (415) 863-2276, www.toronado.com

BEST BURMESE BRUNCH BRUSSELS SPROUTS

The wait line to get into excellent Inner Richmond Burmese restaurant Burma Superstar is legendary — so legendary that most of us stopped considering it as a dinner option. So when, a few years ago, the owners announced they would be opening a “little sister” down the block named B Star Bar, we rejoiced. B Star Bar kept some of Burma Superstar’s favorites, like the lauded tea leaf salad, but it specialized in innovative Asian comfort food twists. Among the surprises: one of the best brunch menus in the city, including a delectable duck hash quesadilla, succulent tocino (bacon-like Asian jerk pork) with garlic rice, and a full selection of jooks (rice porridge) with all the fixings. But the real brunch superstar here is B Star Bar’s brunch “B Sprouts” — perfectly roasted Brussels sprouts tossed with furikake (rice seasoning), fish sauce, Parmesan, and popped rice that adds a cheery wake-up crunch. The diverse flavors combine so well, we could brunch on these little green gems forever (with mimosas, of course).

127 Clement, SF. (415) 933-9900, www.bstarbar.com

BEST SURPRISE SANDWICHES

“Pastries for lunch?” Your friends might scoff, but oh, what a surprise they’re in for upon entering this hidden gem tucked between office buildings and business folks. “Banh mi!,” they will exclaim, and although there will not be streamers or confetti to complement their shocked expressions, these little sandwiches will do the delighting in both taste and value. Muffins Muffins, tucked innocuously off Second Street, serves up delicious, made-to-order banh mi for as little as five bucks. The vegetarian option features some tasty faux meat with a tangy finish, topped with jalapeños and hugged by a soft bun. Carry your lunch to nearby Yerba Buena Gardens for a Financial District adventure that doesn’t require a suit or a fatty wallet.

123 Second St, SF. (415) 342-7588

BEST WORMWOOD WARLOCKS

There aren’t many in the craft-spirit making movement who can boast of having a US Navy nuclear engineer as a master distiller. The story goes: Lance Winters came to St. George Spirits and presented founder Jörg Rupf with a homemade batch of whiskey in lieu of resume. He got the job, and under his watch, St. George churned out its single malt whiskey and a line of gins. In 2007, it became the first in the nation to legally release a wormwood liqueur, and continues to be well known for its excellent Absinthe Verte. In a retrofitted Alameda naval hanger turned HQ, test stills are charmed into producing oddball booze flavors including oysters, Dungeness crab, or even the company Christmas tree. “If we’re not pushing the limits of our creativity,” they explain, “our spirits aren’t going to be any different or better than stuff that’s already out there.”

2601 Monarch, Ala. (510) 769-1601, www.stgeorgespirits.com

BEST CELEB BREAD

Oh, you thought Food Network personality Tyler Florence was the celebrity most likely to appear at the elegant American bistro he owns in the Financial District? Nope. Before you even order off the classy-comfort-food menu, you’ll have your brush with fame. Instead of a bread basket (boring!), at your table will appear Wayfare Tavern’s popovers — crisp, golden brown, egg-battered treats so delicious you’ll be tempted to spoil your meal with multiple servings. (And so legendary that several staff members sport popover tattoos.) In August, Florence tapped a new executive chef in Joey Elenterio and word on the street is new menu items will follow, so this might be a grand time to make a reservation. Just keep those popovers coming, please!

558 Sacramento, SF. (415) 772-9060, www.wayfaretavern.com

BEST POPPED-UP BOTTLES

You know what this place could use? Some no-frills, open-to-all wine tasting. Enter Mugsy Wine Bar, a pop-up most often spotted at El Rio that knows how to class up a place without bringing down the mood, aided by sips from local vintners. The Mugsy tasting notes: “a wine bar with an emphasis on women, urban, and people of color winemakers” with a mouth-feel of “all-around enjoyment.” And this pop-up is pop-cultured. Witness, theme nights: “Mugsy is the New Black” (a play on Netflix smash-hit prison drama series, “Orange is the New Black”) for which the team brought out lesbian-owned Oakland winery Fraina Blanco. Then there was “Popping up for Pride” night, when bottles were uncorked from Alameda’s Rock Wall Wines and Urban Legend Cellars of Oakland. Hooray for local vino pride.

mugsywinebar.tumblr.com

BEST PALETA CLEANSER

So you’ve just gobbled down an incredible meal at Nopalito that began with a heaping bowl of melted-cheese-covered tortilla chips, followed by carnitas and several bites of your tablemate’s chicken mole. You sipped multiple mezcal-laced cocktails (try the Killer Bee). You are officially stuffed. But when the server comes around asking if you want dessert, there’s only one answer: yes, yes you want in on Nopalito’s housemade popsicles. These paletas hechas en casa may be the only dessert option at either of the restaurant’s two locations, but they’re a thick, rich cut above anything you’ll find in the corner store freezer. There’s a choice of flavors: seasonal fruit or chocolate-cinnamon — the latter like eating a big, ice-cold hunk of Mexican chocolate.

306 Broderick, SF. (415) 437-0303; 1224 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 233-9966, www.nopalitosf.com

BEST LUNCH PARTY IN THE USA

Perish all lunchtime thoughts of those tea-sipping, watercress sandwich-prone Windsors across the pond — in America, our royalty slurps down such delights as fried peanut butter and banana sandos. But, if you’re the worldly sort and prefer a slightly more elegant take on Elvis-inspired cuisine, point your pink Cadillac toward the Lunchpad. At this daytime sandwich pop-up inside new Hayes Valley wine bar Noir Lounge, one can king oneself with an “Almost Elvis,” Nutella and banana on pain de mie (with an add-bacon option, natch). Savory Lunchpad hits include twists on the classics (roast turkey with habañero candied bacon!) and specials (fried chicken sandwich). Oh, and fans of Hollywood royalty take note: A recent lox-and-eggs concoction paid tribute to Leonardo DiCaprio.

581 Hayes, SF. (415) 552-6647, www.thelunchpadsf.com

BEST CULTURED CACAO

Born of owner Arcelia Gallardo and co-owner Amelia Gonzalez’ passion for Latin America’s rich pre-Colombian heritage, Casa de Chocolates offers spicy, artisanal iterations of the divine sweet, expertly accented by the flavors of Mesoamerica’s traditional food staples. The women’s dual interests in the culinary and cultural make for an exciting, informed menu — one can pick up a box of mole, passionfruit, guayaba, and tamarind-filled handmade bon-bons, or leave the realm of cacao entire for a silky pumpkin flan or a chipotle caramel. There is such a thing as a tequila-filled chocolate butterfly! Though many items, like a foot-wide dark chocolate rendering of the revered Aztec calendar, are available in the shop’s online store, you’ll have to make an in-person appearance for some specialties including a piquant glass of frozen Mexican chocolate, or standout tres leches cupcakes.

2629 Ashby, Berk. (510) 859-7221, www.casadechocolates.com

BEST RETRO EGG CREAM

Did you think egg creams were something you’d only ever experience onscreen in a teens-of-the-1950s movie? Then welcome the sweet, bustling counter here — named for its owner’s great-grandmother — which is doing its part to bring retro sippin’ to the FiDi lunch masses. While you’re there, it’s well worth sampling one of the Jewish-style deli’s delicious, rye-bread sandwiches or bagel concoctions, but Shorty Goldsteins’ egg creams (made with syrup, milk, and seltzer) are a cult classic in the making, with flavors that usually include vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and salted caramel. And if you’d prefer not to drink your dessert … Shorty’s thick, decadent cheesecake just might put your head on swivel instead.

126 Sutter, SF. (415) 986-2676, www.shortygoldsteins.com

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER BAR

A cozy bar with unbeatable drink deals, a genre-spanning variety of DJ nights (soul! Classic country! Brazilian! 1950s mod!), undiscovered by the mouth-breathing masses, yet conveniently located just a few meatball-lengths away from the Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack? What is this magical establishment? Look no further than the spot so friendly it’s named El Amigo — offering late-night drink specials and stocking 40 kinds of tequila. Hi! The joint is owned by the same team behind the ever-popular Emmy’s, providing a great perch for drinking away your wait for a table. And join us there for a cheap beer and a shot at midnight, you might become our BFF.

3355 Mission, SF. Facebook: El Amigo Bar

BEST ESCAPE EN ESPAÑOL

Hayes Valley is a neighborhood in constant flux — witness the condo complex that’s rising where the Hayes Valley Farm’s beehives and veggie rows once stood. Just across Fell Street from this construction is year-old specialty market Nosa Ria (speaking of change, the space was previously a hair salon), selling what its sandwich-board sign dubs “quintessential Spanish foods” — and we dub indubitably delicious. Its list of unique, hard-to-find imports includes grocery staples (cured meats, cheese, olive oils, etc.), wines and sherry, and treats (chocolate! Chupa Chups!). Oh yes, there is that ever-elusive jamon serrano in the house, as well as squid in ink, thick and sweety turron, and all the paella fixings you need, including tha pans. That trip to Galicia and/or Andalusia may be still in the planning stages, but you can start refining your palate ahora.

500 Laguna, SF. (415) 529-1506, www.nosaria.com

BEST PASTRY ERUPTION

Certainly, you can visit this Marina bakeshop without ordering Le Marais Bakery’s Volcan, but this is foolhardy. On your last island getaway did you dither about in the airport gift shop, fretting over gaudy short-sleeve button-downs and plastic leis, tempting as they may be? Of course not, you went straight to the top of Kilauea and delighted in its heart-racing flows and crispy geological crusts. And so you will, bold one, at Le Marais. You’ll save that baguette for later and dive straight into a Volcan, one of the shop’s deep dishes of light and flakey crust, molten ricotta, and some kind of something — Llano Seco pork perhaps, or a smattering of sharp Parmesan. But be warned: any tummy rumblings after this first taste of paradise may signal another trip to Chestnut Street for a buttery, savory baked eruption.

2066 Chestnut, SF. (415) 359-9801, www.lemaraisbakery.com

BEST REASON FOR VEGANS TO BRAVE THE FOG

Ramen is a staple of many an SF diet — especially in the chilly summer months laced with our trademark fog. But the dish almost always includes meat, or at the very least those so-called vegetarian noodles and veggies are floating in warm fish broth. It can seem particularly rude to dissect each element of the noodle bowl at a traditional spot, causing headaches for servers and hungry vegans alike. Enter Ken Ken Ramen, a popular Mission brick-and-mortar location that started as a pop-up. It proudly serves both the traditional stuff, unique nightly specials, and the noodle bowl of vegan dreams. No guessing, it’s labeled clearly on the menu: “Miso Vegan Ramen.” Ah, such a relief filling your belly with warm, tender noodles. And that sizzling bowl includes vegan broth, vegan noodles, and “veggies galore.” Vegans rejoice!

3378 18th St., SF. (415) 967-2636, www.eatkenkenramen.com

BEST PATCHED-UP WATERING HOLE

Perhaps it is, as the official line of the newly renovated Dogpatch Saloon goes, high time for a 100-year-old bar to undergo a facelift. The bar’s new ownership headed by Christopher Barry, the mind behind downtown’s 83 Proof, seemed like it had its heart in the right place, but the neighborhood bar’s clientele had a right to be worried about the integrity of its comfy watering hole in a rapidly evolving area. Lo and behold: the change was good. Fresh new cocktails lubricate a complete (but not drastic) rehash of the age-old interior, and the characters assembled around the bar continue to convey the scruffy ragtagliness of the dockside ‘hood. We like it when well-loved institutions move smoothly with the times, especially when that motion involves a cocktail shaker.

2496 Third St., SF. (415) 643-8592, www.dogpatchsaloon.com

BEST OUT-THERE GROCERIES

Houses in the Sunset may be built on dunes, but make no mistake, the neighborhood is no food desert. The flagship of the snacktastic stretch of outer Judah Street (see also: locavore haven Outerlands, beloved Mexican resto Celia’s by the Beach) is without a doubt grocery co-op Other Avenues, about to round the bend on year 40 in the western neighborhood. This is world-class healthy food: happy-making bulk bins, raw milk, vivacious produce, with a thoughtful wine selection and holistic med shelves so complete you’ll never have to trek into neighborhoods that look down on wearing sandals to re-up on herbs and tonics. Plus it’s cute, friendly, and neatly crammed into a smallish storefront, you’ll never lose the gist of your shopping list after giving your neighborhood a hearty “howdy.”

3930 Judah, SF. (415) 661-7475, www.otheravenues.coop

BEST COMMUTER CRUSTS

The Mexican-Italian house of Juan Gutierrez opened The Sandwich Place in 1979 when Gutierrez was only 14 years old. A tiny shop that just fits its refrigerator cases full of bevs and counter, the shop sits a stone’s throw from the 16th Street BART station in a bustling milieu of commuters, street preachers, and the occasional demonstration or spoken word open mic. In such a space, one would expect strict utilitarianism. But Gutierrez would scoff at such assumptions — quickly, in his exuberantly bilingual manner. One look at the Place’s vast menu reveals everything from chicken milanesas and bacon-wrapped hot dogs to a superb Portobello-and-balsamic sando from an impressive veggie section, all served on his fresh homemade breads in standard and gluten-free varieties. Better than the chain stores? By a million miles. And chances are, you won’t have to travel even one to find out.

2029 Mission, SF. (415) 431-3811

BEST GROWTH IN THE YARD

Back in 1992, inmate counselor Catherine Sneed started pioneering programs for former offenders that eventually led to the implementation of the San Francisco Jail’s Garden Project. This in-jail option gives inmates the time and space to plant and tend their own organically grown food gardens at the Jail’s San Bruno complex as a healthy add-in to their rehabilitation. The program has recently been expanded under Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who pushed for and won a new food service contract to ensure more of this yummy nutrition ends up on the plates of inmates who have traditionally had to endure less than wholesome fare. Soon, if the program catches on, jails might have more shared garden space than San Francisco itself.

www.gardenproject.org

BEST CHILL TREAT

“Rich and creamy, baked with love, and served chilled for the California heat” — did Schulzies Bread Pudding sound intriguing until that “chilled” part? Open your mind, bread pudding snob: Sarah Schulz’s Venice Beach-born, super-moist dessert sensation, which added a Hayes Valley location last year, is too delicious to deny (and the shop has warm options to balance out the cold, FYI). Who needs a cupcake or a cronut when you can spoon up fresh-made flavors such as Maple Bacon Lovers (tasty with optional add-ins like whiskey sauce and chocolate chips), Blissed Out Blueberry, or Salted Caramel Charisma? Seriously — who needs to eat any other type of food, ever again?

364 Hayes, SF. (415) 565-7336, www.schulziesbreadpudding.com

BEST NORTH BEACH FRY BOMB

Oh, the end of a long night in North Beach. There you are, mercifully relieved of your singles after oh-so-lovely times watching the ladies of the Penthouse Club clack their mega-heels all up and down the two-story stripper poles. You’re satiated in the “make it rain” department … but damn, are you hungry. Enter Taqueria Zorro’s Zorro burrito, there to stuff your belly and slash “satisfied” across your chest. What’s in the Zorro, you ask? Well, all the same things you’ve come to expect from a burrito, except instead of using traditional rice and beans they stuff the burrito with French fries. This so-called “California burrito” version, supposedly hailing from San Diego in the ’80s is all the carb-filled rage these days — GQ even claimed last month that it would soon replace the ramenburger (see above) in hip factor. And yeah, you can spot it soaking through menus across the Mission. But Zorro got there first and left its greasy, irresistible mark.

308 Columbus, SF. (415) 392-1299, www.taqueriazorro.com

BEST POP SCENE

You’re welcome to play it safe tastewise in Willy Wonka-like soda paradise The Fizzary. Pop a familiar bottle of orange into the joint’s charming quick chill device, crack, and glug. But even amid that flavor’s designated shelf of sodas you’ll find intriguing variations — a bottle flown in from the Phillipines, a blood orange variation innocuously lounging, a five-gallon jug of your childhood favorite fizz to take your sugar highs to new altitudes. Venture out of the known soda universe — that seems to be what local bubble bottlers Taylor’s Tonics wanted when they opened up this quirky shop selling theirs and other carbonated treats — plus retro and hard-to-find candies — in the Mission. A quick listing of the other flavors you may encounter on the shelves and your tastebuds quiver. Chocolate, lavender, clove, bacon, spruce, amaretto, and cucumber from manufacturers the world over.

2949 Mission, SF. (877) 368-4608, www.thefizzary.com

BEST CURRY QUEUE

Light fare it is not, but are we ever glad to have come around to the gravy-like consistency and rich, complex flavors of Japanese curry. Nothing seems more homey or satisfying than when the comforting heft of a curry-laden lunch plate — chicken or pork katsu, tender cubed beef, steaming veggie, etc. versions available — is directed toward your waiting mouth, a feat made possible at the Financial District’s Muracci’s (a joint that now has a sister location in Los Altos.) Venture here for some of the best Japanese curry that we’ve found in town, served up in a small, no-frills space with less than a dozen seats. Plus: sides of pickles! Be not afraid of the line, an apt indicator of the number of J-curry fans in this town — thanks to Muracci’s efficient express plates, the queue moves fast enough to satisfy even our most ravenous lunchtime cravings.

307 Kearny, SF. (415) 773-1101, www.muraccis.com

BEST SURROUND SOUND DINING

When the sound system at your restaurant outstrips the food when it comes to rave reviews, you might have a problem. But the folks at Berkeleys’s elegant, spare, and forward-thinking Comal are confident enough in their menu to take us to the next level of sensual experience. The haute-Mexican cuisine, emphasizing deep flavors and grilled textures, speaks for itself. But the sound of the place speaks volumes. In order to better control the sonic ambiance of the place — and perhaps to diffuse the persnicketiness of SF’s most prominent food critic, whose aversion to dining room noise is legendary — Comal’s owner John Paluska installed a new, state-of-the-art Libra acoustic image system and complementary Constellation active acoustic system from Meyer Sound. Through a series of unobstrusive iPad-controlled speakers and acoustic absorption tiles, managers can control the “buzz” levels of the place, “washing” and basically “whitening” the noise as needed to quiet things down. The can even turn up the buzz around the bar — although with several flights of tequila on the menu, there’s probably enough buzz already.

2020 Shattuck, SF. (510) 926.6300, www.comalberkeley.com

BEST FREEKEH-BEET TO FREAK ABOUT

It is with good reason that Hella Vegan Eats’ doughnut burger was the runaway star of the San Francisco Street Food Festival this year. No false modesty here: the Bay Guardian had already been praising that sticky delicious beet burger for months, even giving it top billing in our “Vegan Junk Food” feature. But no matter who broke the story; the real scoop here is that special dish, lovingly crafted by couple-founders Tiffany and Sylvee Esquivel, and showing up regularly at places like Dear Mom, Timeless Coffee in Oakland, and Dolores Park through La Cocina. Dig its moist-yet-crunchy patty fashioned from freekah (an ancient cereal) and beets and plopped between two (vegan) sugar donuts, piled high with pickled veggies, and laced with a tangy secret sauce. So wrong that it’s right.

www.hellaveganeats.com

BEST NOLA WEST

Appropriately, the Chapel opened last year with a string of concerts by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, a group named for its origin point at NOLA’s Preservation Hall jazz venue. That’s the spot Valencia Street’s new place for music worship (officially known as Preservation Hall West at the Chapel) is modeled after, and endlessly inspired by, be it in in the form of design, live music, or eats. This year, the well-crafted, multilevel, many-roomed Chapel has expanded its musical offerings, dabbling in folk, rock’n’roll, and indie bands like La Sera, Magic Trick, and Weekend, along with more traditional jazz acts, and what-the-hell randomly awesome offerings like Sparks or actor-musician John C. Reilly with Lavender Diamond. It also opened the attached Vestry Restaurant, which offers a full menu leaning more on the SF gourmet side, with items like the duck confit flatbread or seared scallops with beet risotto. During shows, patrons can peep live acts from the open upstairs balcony, from the dramatic main room down below, or perched on a bar stool in the shiny wooded lounge with closed-circuit flat screens, high-end cocktails like the Old Overholt rye-based Ward Eight, and yummy bar bites like shrimp po’ boys that subtly wink at NOLA pride.

777 Valencia, SF. (415) 551-5157, www.thechapelsf.com

BEST POW WOW PUNK CHEF

You may see Rocky Yazzie at the best live venues around town doing one of two things. Either he’s rocking coveralls and slinging authentic Native American fry bread, or banging it out with his self-described “pow wow punk” band, Sweat Lodge. Either way, you’ll be glad to have stumbled into his special Rocky bubble. A few words on his Rocky’s Fry Bread snacks, perhaps the better known of the two projects. The New Mexico native and member of the Diné tribe makes deliciously deep-fried taco-like handheld meals, stuffed with beans and fresh veggies (there are non-veg versions as well), behind his own pop-up stand. There’s something about that fry bread that just perfectly soaks up all the boozing without landing like a log in your tummy. As the friendly slinger once explained it to Scoutmob, “I love life and it shows in the food.”

www.twitter.com/RockysFrybread

BEST POT LUCK

An invention that seems perfect for the busy-yet-locavore-obsessed Bay Area (though test markets are popping up in Brooklyn, New Orleans, and LA) sustainable ready-to-eat delivery service Good Eggs seems to have it all. But for our money — and yes, it’s not exactly cheap — there is one among Eggs’ many intriguing, locally produced offerings that intrigues the most: caterer Max Pouvreau’s Petit Pot. Did you know that everything tastes better in a Weck jar? This is the height of Bay food trendiness on the go: Try jarred lamb shoulder and spring onion tagine with prunes and roasted almonds, followed by a jarred dark chocolate buttermilk cake with coffee whipped cream and cocoa nibs. All delivered to your door! Bonus: $3 deposits on your round glass meal carriers means return customers get a sweet (savory?) discount.

www.goodeggs.com/petitpot

BEST LATE NIGHT HOT POCKETS

Spurn the crowds across the street at ever-popular Taqueria Cancun’s Bernal-side outpost. You, a seasoned Missionite, have had your fill of what one of our dear ones likes to call “the Mexican death log.” Burrito fiend you are not — which is why in your wisdom your tummy’s late night call has led you to a late-night Salvadorean restaurant, sounding thusly: “pupusa…” They’re no baby-sized gut bomb, the pupusas at El Zocalo. These traditional steaming pocket-like snacks come stuffed with cheese (of course), but also zucchini, loroco, feta even for those sick of stringy quesos. And lucky you, the family joint stays open until three in the morning, so it’s ready for whenever you graduate to the next level with San Francisco snacking.

3230 Mission, SF. (415) 282-2572

BEST WORLD SOUND BITES

Watch live flamenco and Arabian fusion music while you dance with a side of papas bravas and plantains. Take in the All-Star Latin Band on weekly Cuban and world music nights while munching Andean fresh corn tamales and yuca frita with cashew cream. Yes, North Beach’s intimate cultural center and restaurant Peña Pachamama (“on a little side street in San Francisco’s old Latin Quarter somewhere between Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, and endless Italian late-night cafes”) offers up such startlingly refreshing culinary-auditory pairings, nearly every night of the week. The friendly South American restaurant and performance venue offers an exceptional range of cultural treats for your tummy and mind, and begs this simple question: why is it so damn hard to find vegan, gluten free, and/or deliciously organic cuisine at other music venues in veg-friendly San Francisco? No matter — Peña Pachamama has already delivered the goods, and they are spicy.

1630 Powell, SF. (415) 646-0018, pachamamacenter.org

BEST NEW GOLD RUSH

Friends, we have eaten gold leaf. That’s what they’re serving these days at the new digs of the most lauded restaurant in SF, Saison: a voluptuous dish of sea urchin over grilled root custard in a handmade Japanese ceramic bowl, topped with a generous skin of melted gold. (Let’s settle one question right away: no, our toilet wasn’t gilded the next morning. Nor did we use the leaf to fake a grill.) It’s part of the $248 tasting menu, $396 with insane wine pairing, at this two-star Michelin hotspot. Don’t worry, there’s a bar menu featuring reserve caviar dolloped over corn pudding and grilled Australian black truffle stew, both at $88, cough. Look, we have to hand it to renegade chef Joshua Skenes and sommelier and co-owner Mark Bright — if you ever can/want to shell out $400 for a meal (ours was a press comp), this is the absolutely perfect one. Fourteen courses of the best the world has to offer, served in jaw-dropping ways. Yet it was the metaphorical combination of the dish mentioned above — gold smothering an urchin — that rang particularly true of this moment in San Francisco history. The delicious, flashy rush. And then what lies beneath it, left behind.

178 Townsend, SF. (415) 828-7990, www.saisonsf.com

The Gilded Age of Austerity and the breakdown of civil society

Sasha Cuttler

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October 15, 2013

121

The Gilded Age of Austerity and the breakdown of civil society

Is this the week that civil society in the US finally collapses? It’s starting to feel that way. Most of the federal government is already shut down, and on Thursday, it could start defaulting on its debts, possibly dragging down the global economy. And here in the Bay Area, our transportation system will descend into gridlock if strikes shut down BART tomorrow and AC Transit on Thursday, as their unions are threatening.

It may not be the End of the World as We Know It, but this is a striking confluence of events that should cause us all to take stock of the things we take for granted, from reliable public transit systems to a functional federal government to the ability of politics to resolve our differences.

This era could be called the Gilded Age of Austerity, a duality marked by huge and growing concentrations of wealth for the few, but for the rest of us: increasing economic insecurity, a tattered social safety net, crumbling public infrastructure, and few signs of hope that things will get better.

Democracy is a fragile experiment that needs to be regularly reaffirmed by all sides. The US electoral system was already heavily skewed toward the interests of the wealthy, who sponsor both major political parties, to the point where many consider elections to be a sham. But there was still a political system, a basic framework for running the country even during tough times, and that seems to be breaking down.

For the radical right-wingers responsible for hobbling the federal government, this might appear to be a dream come true: Most of the regulators furloughed, funding for most social services stopped, and only the police state remains largely intact (86 percent of Department of Homeland Security employees are on the job and soldiers are still getting paid).

But these anti-government ideologues have never fully understood or appreciated the myriad things that government does to keep civil society functioning over the long term. Our economy relies on federal spending, our health relies on the CDC spotting coming epidemics and the FDA inspecting our food, justice needs a civil court system, our travels depend on roads, and our future depends on today’s young people getting educated (ie Head Start) and fed (ie Food Stamps), and that’s all come to a grinding halt.

It’s a similar situation with public employee unions, like those that operate BART trains and AC Transit buses. As we’ve reported, private sector wages and benefits often rise or fall with those negotiated by unions. So when unions can’t win good contracts or maintain funded pensions for workers, we’re all dragged down. The Gilded Age gets better for the bosses as the Age of Austerity gets worse for the workers.

BART’s unions had an understandable expectation that they would share in the agency’s recent budget surpluses, particularly after accepting wage and benefit concessions of $100 million over the last four years to help with projected budget deficits that never materialized.

BART managers argue that the district has offered enough and that the rest of the money is needed for its ambitious expansion plans, but there should have been a solution here somewhere short of ultimatums (strike vs. the district’s “last, best offer”). They shouldn’t have needed Gov. Jerry Brown to order the recently ended 60-day cooling off period — the same stall tactic that AC Transit is now asking for — in a world where the basic social contract behind civil society was still intact. When the center still held, before the new Gilded Age fused with the Age of Austerity, people of goodwill could find common ground.

“People’s very livelihoods hang in the balance adding to the additional frustration felt throughout the Bay Area today when both parties failed yesterday to reach an agreement,” Mayor Ed Lee said yesterday in a prepared statement about the BART strike as he cancelled plans to leave on a trade mission to China sponsored by business elites to help carry out their agenda.

Yes, people’s very livelihoods — and their quality of life, and sometimes, their lives — are at stake in these political struggles, those I mentioned and those happening in San Francisco around gentrification and taxation. Anyone who thinks that modern capitalism is sturdy enough to withstand any shock doesn’t have a very good grasp of either economics or history.

Maybe we’ll pull ourselves back from the brink and learn our lessons. Or maybe we’ve entered the endgame, a place where the desperation of those living in the Age of Austerity finally matches the greed and self-interest of those living in the Gilded Age, where one must defeat the other to survive, like two fighting birds plummeting to the ground in a death spiral.

And if that’s the case, are we ready for the next era? Have we sown our seeds and tended our gardens? It took World War Two to really get us out of the Great Depression, and I’d like to think we’ve evolved since then. But this week, I’m not so sure.

BEST OF THE BAY 2013

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 15, 2013

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SONGS OF THE CITY

By Marke B.

marke@sfbg.com

Visitors flock to the Bay Area for its enchanting sights, of course. But if you’ve lived here for a while, you know the actual sounds of San Francisco and its neighbors weave the true spell that binds us. Cable car clang and fog horn blast, “ding-ding” of bike bells and cries of wild parrots. The wave organ and the Audium, the BART station busker and the underground dance floor, the protest and the crackdown, the echoes of the Beats and the roar of the stadium crowd.

Jazz and hip-hop floating through the Fillmore. Paleta carts and acoustic guitars ringing in Dolores Park. Pretty French tourists asking directions downtown. (Or maybe they’re Croatian?) “Woo!” girls partying in the Marina. Robyn pumping from Castro cars.

Free bluegrass, fine reggae, geeky ringtones, player pianos, new operas, earnest indie, sick bass. “I Left My Heart…,” “San Francisco, Open Your…,” “If You’re Going To….” Paul McCartney leading 50,000 people in a “Hey, Jude” singalong at Outside Lands. Everybody make some noise!

(Outside your window, just before dawn, a couple argues halfheartedly, and a nearby walk sign chirps.)

Even that golden moment every late sunny afternoon when, no matter what’s going on, a lovely hush falls across the city, as if in preparation for the soon-incoming fog.

This is the local wall of sound we honor in this edition of Best of the Bay, our 39th annual celebration of the people, places, and things that make living here such a great experience.

More than 15,000 of our readers voted in our Best of the Bay Readers Poll this year for their local, independent favorites in more than 200 categories like Best Burrito, Best Band, Best Strip Club, Best Shoe Store, Best Place to Watch the Sunset, Best Drag Queen, and beyond. You’ll find the results inside — as well as 150 Best of the Bay Editors Picks highlighting some Guardian favorites, old and new, that we think deserve some special recognition for brightening our lives this year. Rest assured, there’s a whole lot to love in the Bay.

In 1974, Esquire magazine asked us for ideas for its Best of the USA issue, which led us to publish the original Best of the Bay. Thirty-nine years later — and 47 years after we opened our doors — we’re still going strong, powered by our readers and the idea that the strength of our community can make the world a better place.

Editing this year’s issue was a hoot. I shower grateful smooches on all my fabulous collaborators, especially creative ace Brooke Ginnard; the awesome Guardian editorial, sales, and production staff; and the ever-supportive Hunky Beau, my own personal Best of the Bay.

But most of all we thank you, dear reader, for your generous participation, for making the Bay Area such an astounding place to live, and for turning us on to great new things this year. Enjoy the celebration on the pages that follow. But first close your eyes for a minute, and listen to this audaciously beautiful place we call home.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Robert Trujillo is a visual artist and father who employs the use of illustration, storytelling, and public art to tell tales. These tales manifest in a variety of forms and they reflect the artist’s cultural background, dreams, and political and personal beliefs. “My motivation to do what I do is to be a positive and nurturing influence on my son,” he says. “It is to honor my ancestors and my family by passing on our visual art traditions, to give, to learn, to challenge the educational system both public and private, and to make sure more artwork that fuses ethnic studies, political commentary, personal history, and dynamic visual styles using a variety of media is prominent, loud, unapologetic — and just what some of us need.”

BEST OF THE BAY STAFF

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

BROOKE GINNARD

EDITOR

MARKE B.

ILLUSTRATOR

ROBERT TRUJILLO

COPY EDITOR

STEWART APPLIN

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

REBECCA BOWE, CAITLIN DONOHUE, CHERYL EDDY, NICOLE GLUCKSTERN, STEVE JONES, JOE FITZGERALD RODRIGUEZ,, EMILY SAVAGE, AMBER SCHADEWALD, DAVID SCHNUR

PHOTOGRAPHER

EVAN DUCHARME

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

MOSHEN CHAN, SHAWN CONNOLLY, MOLLY DECOUDREAUX, MARIA DEL RIO, TYLER DRISCOLL, NICOLE GLUCKSTERN, TIM GRIFFITHS, BETH LABERGE, AMANDA RHOADES, WES ROWE, TABLEHOPPER

Anti-eviction rally in the Mission tomorrow supporting the Mission and Rene Yanez

Erica Hanna

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October 11, 2013

78

Anti-eviction rally in the Mission tomorrow supporting the Mission and Rene Yanez

Tomorrow (Sat/12 at 2pm) advocates and defenders of working class San Francisco will march to protest a rash of recent Mission evictions, including the potential ouster of artists and activists Rene Yañez and Yolanda Lopez from their Mission district home.

The organizers want the mayor to declare a state of emergency in the city as the recent Ellis Act evictions have intensified — 125 Ellis Act eviction notices have been filed this year, with the most recent numbers going to the end of August, according to the SF Rent Board. But 175 requests for Ellis Act evictions were filed, meaning 70 percent of Ellis evictions were upheld. The march follows recent wins against gentrification, including blocking a Jack Spade store from opening in the Mission.

Organizer Roberto Y. Hernandez said that since he announced the march he’s been getting calls of support from all over the city, but most notably in Chinatown, the Bayview, and the Castro.

“I heard horror stories of what’s happening to the gay community in the Castro,” he said. “This doesn’t just affect the Mission, this affects the whole city.”

Each of those evictions represents a person or family whose ouster from their apartments may mean ouster from San Francisco altogether. Ellis evictions gained more notoriety this year, first with the plight of the Lee family and now the ouster of Mission artists Yañez and Lopez.

Yañez is widely credited with bringing the celebration of Day of the Dead to the city. He co-founded the Mission’s Galeria de la Raza and practiced art in his home of the Bay Area since the 60s. Now, while suffering from cancer, the 71 year old is being forced from the neighborhood he helped to shape. Lopez, his former wife, is an artist with deep roots in the Chicano/a movements of the ‘60s, and is facing eviction as well.

After 35 years in their home, the artists face the same plight as the Lee’s and even San Francisco’s local nonprofits — ouster in the face of the tech boom’s ever rising rents.

Rene Yañez’s son Rio is an established artist in his own right and rents a unit in the same building. Rio faces the same Ellis Act eviction as his father.

In an open letter to Yañez and the community, artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña wrote, “Rene, you are my artistic godfather and needless to say, you are an icon; the artistic Capo of the Bay Area Chicano movement…Our city has become a bohemian theme park for consumer fools with the latest gadgets in hand, but what happens when there are no more bohemians left?”

Juan Gonzalez, the founding publisher of the Mission’s local newspaper, El Tecolote, said that Yañez’s ouster from the neighborhood is part of a larger context.

“He’s a leading force, someone who puts his energy in making the city aware that Latinos are here and here to stay,” he said. And of the Mission’s slow but brutal gentrification, “It’s not right. There’s always going to be change, but to see this lost — I think the city as a whole will lose. I’m waiting for the city leaders, beyond our supervisors, to use their powers to stop what’s happening.”

One opportunity to call for change will happen tomorrow.

Honoring Rene Yanez/Yolanda Lopez at @sfbos, great artists facing an #EllisAct eviction after 35 yrs in the Mission. pic.twitter.com/ss8s7mcpi1

— David Campos (@DavidCamposSF) October 1, 2013

The march for Yañez and Yolanda Lopez, “Our Mission: No Eviction,” will hit the streets Saturday, Oct. 12 at 2pm at the Brava Theater, which is on 24th Street between Hampshire and York. The march will move towards Mission where they’ll hold a rally at the 24th street BART station.

“The mayor was involved in the I-Hotel movement back in the day, when they evicted my Asian brothers and sisters,” Hernandez said. “We’ve got to wake him up. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, but now he’s gotta move, he’s gotta do something.”

Later this month the Brava Theater will have a benefit for the family, and you can learn more about it here.

BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler

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October 8, 2013

105

BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

With the 60-day cooling off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown coming to an end on Thursday, raising the specter of another Bay Area Rapid Transit shutdown, BART’s two main unions announced yesterday that they were holding off on calling a strike for now. [UPDATE 10/11: BART unions today issued a 72-hour strike notice, meaning they could strike on Monday].

“We’ve listened to the public and we share their concern about a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period. We do not want to strike. That is why we’re not giving a 72-hour notice at this time, because we want to leave every opportunity open to try to get this deal done. Of course we are keeping all options on the table,” Service Employee International Union Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 said in a joint statement.

Some media reports indicate that there has finally been some progress in the long-stalled negotiations, with a framework on pensions being agreed to, although the two sides still seem far apart on wages, benefits, and the length of the contract.

The unions cast it this way: “To this point of doing everything possible to avoid a strike: over the past 10 days, the unions have moved publicly three times, to BART’s zero times. If this were a score in the baseball playoffs – we, the Oakland A’s would be three and they, the Detroit Tigers would be zero.

“At this point, if there is a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period, it will be for one reason and for one reason alone: our elected BART leadership has not shown leadership.”

BART Board President Tom Radulovich disputed that the concessions have been one-sided, but he said that, “They continue to want to negotiate in the media and we’re not really down with that.”

Asked to characterized where things stand and the prospects for resolving the impasse without another strike, Radulovich said, “We’re still cranking away and trying to get it done…It’s really not up to us whether there’s a strike or not. We just have to get this done.”

Meanwhile, while conservatives clamor to use the situation to get the Democrat-controlled Legislature to ban unions from striking (good luck with that one), Sup. John Avalos held a hearing yesterday at City Hall to examine some of the larger issues at play in the impasse, such as retirement security, that the Guardian covered in our July 9 issue.

Asked how the hearing went, Avalos told the Guardian, “We talked a lot about how BART has been villifying workers in the court of public opinion in an effort to weaken workers’ bargaining power.”

Music Listings: Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 2013

Tony Robles

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September 25, 2013

0

WEDNESDAY 25

ROCK

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Books on Fate, Ghost Town Jenny, River Shiver, 8:30 p.m., $10.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Love Dimension, Electric Magpie, Mario Delia, DJs Joel Gion & Al Lover, 9 p.m., $5.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Bell Witch, Badr Vogu, Larvae, Abstracter, 8 p.m., $8.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Blue Sky Black Death, Sister Crayon, Real Magic, 8 p.m., $12-$14.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Joshua Cook / The Key of Now, The Jacktones, Jam, 8:30 p.m., $2.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Cellar Doors, Sandy’s, Eagle, 8 p.m., $10.

DANCE

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$10.

Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks: Animalistic – A Wild Things Jungle,” 18+ dance party, 9 p.m., $10-$20.

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. Mount Kimbie, Jonwayne, D33J, 9 p.m., $17.50-$20.

Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “1964,” w/ DJ Matt B & guests, Second and Fourth Wednesday of every month, 10 p.m., $2.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Bodyshock,” w/ Mark Pistel, Ben Stokes, Blk Rainbow, DJ Crackwhore, 9 p.m., $7.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Housepitality,” w/ Dwynn, Carlos Souffront, Miguel Solari, Stacey Hotwaxx Hale, 9 p.m., $5-$10.

Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Qoöl,” w/ Mark Slee, 5 p.m.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10 p.m.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9 p.m., free.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10 p.m., free.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9 p.m., $3.

HIP-HOP

Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. BPos, 9 p.m., free.

Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Cash IV Gold,” w/ DJs Kool Karlo, Roost Uno, and Sean G, 10 p.m., free.

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9 p.m., $5.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Guitar Showcase, w/ Jeff Titus, Doug Young, and host Teja Gerken, 7 p.m.

Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7 p.m., free.

Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Happy Hour Bluegrass, 6:30 p.m., free.

Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, Every other Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Chris Trapper, Robert Gillies, 8 p.m., $10.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. The Toast Inspectors, Last Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m.

JAZZ

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7 p.m., free.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bjelde & Bros., Fourth Wednesday of every month, 9:30 p.m., $5.

Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7 p.m., free.

Martuni’s: 4 Valencia, San Francisco. Tom Shaw Trio, Last Wednesday of every month, 7 p.m., $7.

Oz Lounge: 260 Kearny, San Francisco. Hard Bop Collective, 6 p.m., free.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Macy Blackman, 6 p.m., free.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Michael Parsons Trio, Every other Wednesday, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9 p.m., $10.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sebastian Parker Trio, 8 p.m.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30 p.m., $5.

United Nations Plaza: Market, San Francisco. Ben Goldberg, Sheldon Brown, and Vijay Anderson, presented by the Center for New Music, noon, free.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jason Marsalis Vibes Quartet, 8 p.m., $21-$25.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Chris Duggan, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Salsa-XS,” queer salsa night, 8 p.m.

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. Timba Dance Party, w/ DJ WaltDigz, 10 p.m., $5.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7 p.m., $5-$10.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Cafe LatinoAmericano,” 8 p.m., $5.

Ruth’s Table: 580 Capp St., San Francisco. Ka-Hon Ensemble, 7 p.m., free.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Craig Horton, 8 & 10 p.m., $15.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Big Bones & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Little Jonny & The Giants, 9:30 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Trance Mutations #5,” w/ Black Thread, Bonus Beast, Jungle Jim, Chasms (DJ set), Caitlin Denny, 10 p.m., $5.

THURSDAY 26

ROCK

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. “Mods v. Rockers,” w/ The Fadeaways, The Ogres, DJs Russell Quan & Dutch Crunch, 9 p.m., $5.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Acorn Project, Feral Fauna, 9:30 p.m., $8-$10.

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. The Burning of Rome, B. Hamilton, Once & Future Band, 9 p.m., $10.

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Suzanne Sundfør, Big Eagle, 9 p.m., $12-$15.

S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. Thursday Nite Live: Folsom Weekend Kickoff Party, w/ The Ethel Merman Experience, Lucky Jesus, The Whoa Nellies, 9 p.m., $8.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. White Cloud, Fine Points, Dylan Shearer, 8:30 p.m., $6.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Wild Eyes, Occult Wisdom, Heavy Action, 9:30 p.m., $7.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. The Hangover Brigade, The Moonlight Orchestra, Cassandra Farrar & The Left Brains, 8:30 p.m., $8.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Breakdown Valentine, Flaamingos, I Am Animal, 8 p.m., $10.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Sweat Lodge, Industrial Priest Overcoats, Snit, 9 p.m., $7.

DANCE

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “A Light in the Attic,” w/ Desert Dwellers, Govinda, David Starfire, Saqi, Le Portal, Jocelyn, Beli3ver, Aire Redtree, more, 10 p.m., $10-$15.

Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10 p.m., free.

Asiento: 2730 21st St., San Francisco. Charlie Prowler, benefit for Mutiny Radio, 9 p.m., free.

Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. “Phonic,” w/ Joachim Garraud, Tall Sasha, 9:30 p.m.

Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9 p.m., $5-$7.

BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Jukebox,” w/ DJ Page Hodel, 9 p.m., $10.

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9 p.m., $5.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10 p.m., $5.

Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30 p.m., $10, 18+.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and live guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10 p.m., $10.

Lone Star Saloon: 1354 Harrison, San Francisco. Raunch: Folsom Weekend Kickoff Party, DJ Brian Maier spins beats for bears., 9 p.m.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Cub Camp S.F.,” w/ DJs Scooter, Taco Tuesday, and Guy Ruben, 9 p.m., $5.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9 p.m., $5 after 10 p.m.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9 p.m., free.

Raven: 1151 Folsom St., San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.

Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Awakening,” w/ Norin & Rad, Maor Levi, 9 p.m., $15-$20 advance.

The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Porno: Folsom Edition,” w/ DJs Hotwire & Kidd Sysko, 8 p.m., $10-$15.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Solid,” w/ Mancub, Influence, Kimba, Sychosis, 10 p.m., $10.

The Tunnel Top: 601 Bush, San Francisco. “Tunneltop,” DJs Avalon and Derek ease you into the weekend with a cool and relaxed selection of tunes spun on vinyl, 10 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10 p.m., free.

Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base: Local Label Night,” w/ Bardia F, ThuyVu, Mac Vaughn, DJ Playdoughboy, Rishi K, Andrew Shatnyy, Ray Kang, Fabian Campos, Konam, 10 p.m., free with RSVP.

HIP-HOP

Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9 p.m., free.

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Cypher,” w/ resident DJ Big Von., 10 p.m., $5-$10.

John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Quattro,” w/ DJ Dino, Fourth Thursday of every month, 9 p.m.

Park 77 Sports Bar: 77 Cambon, San Francisco. “Slap N Tite,” w/ resident Cali King Crab DJs Sabotage Beats & Jason Awesome, free.

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Jam Session, Last Thursday of every month, 8-10 p.m., free.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Open Mic with K.C. Turner, 7:30 p.m., $5.

Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. The Neckbeard Boys, 8 p.m.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Addie & The Subtrax, Amy Matarazzo, Seapora & Mikus, 9 p.m., $10.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. John Caufield & Friends, 9 p.m.

SFSU Campus/Cesar Chavez Student Center: 1650 Holloway, San Francisco. “Strung Out,” acoustic showcase with Tino Drima, Dovetail, Ariana Tibi, Karli Helm, Honeyfingers, 6 p.m., free.

JAZZ

Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30 p.m., free.

Bottle Cap: 1707 Powell, San Francisco. The North Beach Sound with Ned Boynton, Jordan Samuels, and Tom Vickers, 7 p.m., free.

Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Nova Jazz, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums, 7:30 p.m.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Ned Boynton & Friends, 7 p.m., free.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eddy Ramirez, 7:30 p.m., $5.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Stompy Jones, 7:30 p.m., $10.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Jeff Lorber Fusion, 8 p.m., $25.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10 p.m., $5.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. La Fuerza Gigante, DJ Good Sho, 8 p.m., $12.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8 p.m., free.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Dúo del Sol, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Latin Breeze, 8 p.m.

Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9 p.m., $10-$15.

REGGAE

Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9 p.m., free.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Tommy Odetto Group, 8 & 10 p.m., $15.

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Jo Jo Diamond, 8:30 p.m.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. T-Wrex & The Primitive Rhythm, 4 p.m.; Cathy Lemons, 9:30 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Fred Frith & Phillip Greenlief Duo, Eat the Sun, 8 p.m., $6-$10.

FRIDAY 27

ROCK

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Finish Ticket, Holychild, Ghost (tet), 9:30 p.m., $12-$14.

Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. The Inciters, Rue ‘66, The Invisible Cities, 9 p.m., $10.

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. The Autumn Defense, Bart Davenport, 9 p.m., $15.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: The Galloping Sea, DJ Emotions, 10 p.m., free.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Synthetic ID, Manatee, Cold Beat, The Riflemen, 8:30 p.m., $7.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Pebble Theory, On Telegraph, Jimbo Scott & The Hot Mess, 9 p.m., $9.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. The Fadeaways, The Dukes of Hamburg, 7 p.m., $5.

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Peter Hook & The Light (performing New Order’s Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies), Slaves of Venus, 8 p.m., $25.

Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. Mister Loveless, Cannons & Clouds, The Hundred Days, Mammoth Life, Danyolsan, Miles the DJ, 8 p.m., free.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Acid King, Black Cobra, Buffalo Tooth, 9 p.m., $12-$14.

DANCE

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. Lapalux, Evian Christ, Kode9, DJ Rashad, Ikonika, Brap Dem DJs, 10 p.m., $17-$22.50 advance.

4Fourteen: 414 Mason, San Francisco. “Helix 4th Fridays,” Progressive techno tunes spun by resident DJs Means+Function, David Gropper, Derek Ryan, and rotating guests, Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $20.

BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Haus of Stiel,” w/ DJ Shane Stiel, 10 p.m., $15-$20.

Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Kinky Beats,” w/ DJ Sergio, 10 p.m., free.

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9 p.m., $5.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Dark Shadows,” w/ DJs Daniel Skellington, Sage, Melting Girl, and Skarkrow, 9:30 p.m., $7 ($3 before 10 p.m.).

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10 p.m.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “120 Minutes,” w/ Pharmakon, DBC, DJs Santa Muerte & Chauncey CC, 10 p.m., $8-$15.

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Fever,” 10 p.m., free before midnight.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Vintage,” w/ DJ Toph One & guests, 5 p.m., free; “Hidden Measure,” w/ Splatter, Daya, Alex Xipit, Worker/Parasite, Nackt, Petko Nikolov, 9 p.m., $5 advance.

The Factory: 525 Harrison, San Francisco. Recon Full Fetish, Official Folsom Street Fair dance party with DJ Gordon John, presented by gay fetish hookup site Recon.com., 10 p.m., $30-$40.

The Grand Nightclub: 520 4th St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30 p.m.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Escape Fridays,” 10 p.m., $20.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL,” 9 p.m., $3.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “I ♥ the ‘90s,” w/ DJs Samala, Teo, Mr. Grant, & Sonny Phono, Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.

Manor West: 750 Harrison, San Francisco. “Fortune Fridays,” 10 p.m., free before 11 p.m. with RSVP.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9 p.m.

Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. Dusty Rhino After Burn, w/ The Scumfrog, Zach Moore, DJ Loomer, DJ Dane, Nugz, Alvaro Bravo, Clarkie, Mystr/Htcht, DJMK, 10 p.m., $15-$17.50 advance.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Planet Booty, 8th Grader, dudha.us, 9:30 p.m., $10.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. Âme, Solar, DJ M3, Job Jobse, 9:30 p.m., $15-$20.

OMG: 43 6th St., San Francisco. “Release,” 9 p.m., free before 11 p.m.

Powerhouse: 1347 Folsom, San Francisco. Steam Does Folsom, DJ Harry Cross brings a bathhouse vibe to a nightclub setting., 9 p.m., $8.

Project One: 251 Rhode Island, San Francisco. “Rouge,” w/ DJ Mike Parsons, R&D, and Danny Firpo, 9 p.m., $5.

Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. Bearracuda: Folsom Street Friday, Bear dance party with DJs Hifi Sean, P-Play, Mark Louque, Ryan Smith, and Bil Todd., 9 p.m., $20 advance.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9 p.m., $3.

Truck: 1900 Folsom, San Francisco. “Satisfucktory,” w/ DJ Brower, 9 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10 p.m., $5.

Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Project X,” w/ DJs Mario Mar, Rufio, and Elvi, 10 p.m., $10-$30.

Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9 p.m.

John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “#Flow,” w/ The Whooligan & Mikos Da Gawd, Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., free befoe 11 p.m.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. The Shut-Ins, 7 p.m.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Culann’s Hounds, 9 p.m.

The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.

JAZZ

Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8 p.m., free.

Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Chuck Peterson Quintet, Fourth Friday of every month, 5:30 p.m.

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Project: Pimento, 9 p.m., free.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Jules Broussard, Danny Armstrong, and Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Carol Luckenbach, 7:30 p.m., $8.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9 p.m., $10.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Nick Colionne, 8 & 10 p.m., $21-$26.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Baxtalo Drom, International shimmying for lovers of Balkan music, bellydancers, and burlesque., Fourth Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5-$10.

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.

Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Trio Garufa, 7:30 p.m., free; Trio Garufa, 7:30 p.m., free.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30 p.m., $15 (free entry to patio).

Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Montuno Swing, 8 p.m.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15 p.m., $15-$18.

The Ramp: 855 Terry Francois, San Francisco. “Samba Soirée,” w/ Sambaxé, DJ Alfie1Bateria, 6 p.m.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Claudio Santome, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

REGGAE

Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30 p.m., free.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Shane Dwight, 8 & 10 p.m., $20.

Cafe Royale: 800 Post, San Francisco. Allister’s Chicago Blues Jam, Last Friday of every month, 9 p.m.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Little Wolf & The HellCats, 8:30 p.m.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Pugsley Buzzard, 8 p.m., free.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Jan Fanucchi, Last Friday of every month, 4 p.m.; Ron Thompson, 9:30 p.m.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Adrian Costa, 8 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

Center for New Music: 55 Taylor St., San Francisco. Happy Hour with A/B Duo, 6 p.m., $10-$20 (includes complimentary drinks & snacks).

FUNK

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Sophistafunk, Wicked Mercies, Trio Subtonic, 9:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Angelo Moore & The Brand New Step, A Million Billion Dying Suns, Rondo Brothers, Vau de Vire Society, Heart Touch, 9 p.m., $12-$15.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, & Tom Thump, 10 p.m., $5.

SOUL

Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Sissy Strut,” w/ The Handsome Young Men (DJs Ponyboy, Lil MC, Katie Duck, & Durt), Fourth Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $3-$5.

SATURDAY 28

ROCK

Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Lost Puppy, Pineapple Princess, 10 p.m., $5.

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Teenage Bottlerocket, The Queers, The Copyrights, 9:30 p.m., $15.

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Kelley Stoltz, The Mantles, Sopwith Camel, 9 p.m., $12-$15.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Dialectic, Tall Sheep, Kaizok, 9 p.m., $5-$10.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. The Wrong Words, Once & Future Band, City Deluxe, 9:30 p.m., $7.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. Victory, Blue-Eyed Son, 7:30 p.m., $8.

Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. Cold Fronts, The Jaded, The Wearies, Flaggs, 9 p.m., $8-$10.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. The Mermen, plus a screening of the surf documentary Discovering Mavericks, 9 p.m., $20.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Electric Shepherd, El Topo, Sweet Chariot, 3 p.m., free.

DANCE

111 Minna Gallery: 111 Minna St., San Francisco. “Barracuda,” 10 p.m., $5.

Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Droog, Pedro Arbulu, MFYRS, 9:30 p.m.

Balancoire: 2565 Mission St., San Francisco. Raime, Josh Cheon, Austin Cesear, TDM, 10 p.m., $12-$15 advance.

Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. “Dark Room,” w/ High-Functioning Flesh, Lady Bear & Her Dark Drag Dolls, DJs Justin Anastasi & Le Perv, 9:30 p.m., $15.

Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Bistrotheque,” w/ DJ Ken Vulsion, 8 p.m., free.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Villainy: The Dance Club with a Dark Side,” w/ DJs Tomas Diablo, Chris Zachos, Donimo, Saint James, and Andy T, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.

Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. Aftershock, Magnitude after-party with DJ Abel (starts 4 a.m. Sunday morning)., $20-$40.

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ Smash-Up Derby; A+D; DJ Dada; DJ ShyBoy; Freddy, King of Pants; more, 9 p.m., $10-$15.

S.F. Eagle: 398 12th St., San Francisco. “Sadistic Saturdays,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “The Revival: 25 Years of Acid Jazz,” w/ Tom Dick & Harry, Julius Papp, The Selecter DJ Kirk, 10 p.m., $10-$15.

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. Shangri-La, Asian queer dance party., Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $15-$20 (free before 11 p.m.).

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. Luther: Folsom 2013, The “roving fetish party and secret supergroup” presents DJs Harry Cross and Aaron Clark., 10 p.m., $15-$20 advance.

The Factory: 525 Harrison, San Francisco. Magnitude, Folsom Street Fair’s biggest — and admittedly priciest — nightlife event, featuring DJs Tony Moran, Jack Chang, Phil B, and Russ Rich (also includes DJs next door at Terra, 511 Harrison)., 9 p.m., $90 advance.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Set,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $20.

Lexington Club: 3464 19th St., San Francisco. “10th Annual Infamous Uniform Party,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Rapid Fire, 9 p.m., free.

Lone Star Saloon: 1354 Harrison, San Francisco. “Bearometer: Leather Edition,” w/ DJ Eur-O-Steve, 9 p.m.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9 p.m., $3; “Pop the Zipper!: Pre-Folsom Party,” w/ DJ Chi Chi LaRue, 9 p.m., $5.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Blunted Funk,” w/ resident DJs Sneak-E Pete & Chilipino, Fourth Saturday of every other month, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 10 p.m.).

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Falcon & Raging Stallion Studios Annual VIP Party, The gay porn filmmakers present a free Folsom weekend party with DJ Ricky Sinz., 8 p.m., free.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Spilt Milk,” w/ The Beat Broker, C.L.A.W.S., Taylor Fife, Shaky Premise, 7 p.m., $5.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Lights Down Low,” w/ Waze & Odyssey, Locked Groove, South London Ordnance, Sleazemore, Richie Panic, 10 p.m., $15-$20.

Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Indian Summer Block Party,” w/ Speedy J, Henrik Schwarz, Tiger & Woods, Midland, Woolfy, Solar, Galen, Rich Korach, Mossmoss, Bells & Whistles, 2 p.m., $20-$40.

Qi Ultra Lounge: 917 Folsom St., San Francisco. V Is for … Virgins in Leather, Lesbian leather party with DJs China G and Saratonin., 9 p.m.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Club 1994,” w/ DJs Vin Sol & Jeffrey Paradise, 10 p.m., $10-$20.

The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Growl: Official Bearwww Leather Party,” w/ DJ Mike Biggz, 9 p.m., $5.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Life,” w/ The Schmidt, Sk0step, That Sound, J Funk, Omar Johnson, Eddie House, more, 10 p.m., $20.

Truck: 1900 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throttle,” 9 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Black Milk, 9 p.m., $15.

John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Nice,” w/ DJ Apollo, Fourth Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

ACOUSTIC

Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6 p.m., free.

Center for New Music: 55 Taylor St., San Francisco. Mobius Trio, 8 p.m., $10-$15.

Exit Theatre: 156 Eddy, San Francisco. “Songwriter Saturdays,” hosted by Melissa Lyn, Last Saturday of every month, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Old Belle, 9 p.m.

JAZZ

Alfred’s Steakhouse: 659 Merchant, San Francisco. “The Best Is Yet to Come: A Tribute to Tony Bennett,” w/ Mark Robinson & Trio de Swing, 8 p.m., $25.

Cafe Claude: 7 Claude, San Francisco. Vijay Anderson Quartet, 7:30 p.m., free.

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Rite Spot Cafe: 2099 Folsom, San Francisco. Mr. Lucky & The Cocktail Party, 9 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Bryan Girard/Wayne Fettig Quartet, 7:30 p.m., $8.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9 p.m.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Anne O’Brien, Last Saturday of every month, 8 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Pura,” 9 p.m., $20.

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. La Gente, Non Stop Bhangra DJ Jimmy Love, 9:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Avance, DJ Luis Medina, 8 p.m., $15.

Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Conjunto Picante, 8 p.m.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Mango,” Fourth Saturday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.

The Emerald Tablet: 80 Fresno St., San Francisco. Beaucoup Chapeaux, 8 p.m., $10.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10 p.m., $5.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Peña Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8 p.m., free.

The Ramp: 855 Terry Francois, San Francisco. Orquesta Borinquen, 5:30 p.m.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Sol Tevél, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Arsenio Rodriguez Project: Las Estrellas de Arsenio, 8 & 10 p.m., $25-$45.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Earl Thomas & The Blues Ambassadors with Tia Carroll, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $24.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Willie G, 8:30 p.m.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Dave Workman, Fourth Saturday of every month, 4 p.m.; Ron Hacker, Last Saturday of every month, 9:30 p.m.

FUNK

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Monophonics, AM & Shawn Lee, DJ B.Cause, 9 p.m., $20.

SOUL

Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Nightbeat,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and Dr. Scott, Fourth Saturday of every month, 9 p.m., $3.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Freddie Hughes & Chris Burns, 7:30 p.m., free.

SUNDAY 29

ROCK

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Youth Code, Night Sins, Intimatchine, 9 p.m., $10-$12.

Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Hand of the Hills, Great Apes, 8 p.m., $10-$12.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. 3 Cards Down, Evil Beaver, Kittenhead, 8 p.m., $6.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Life Leone, Kongos, Hello Echo, 8 p.m., $6.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Savages, Duke Garwood, 8 p.m., sold out.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. Night Drives, Little Heart, Windham Flat, 7:30 p.m., $8.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Zorge, Tinavie, Kiwi Time, 7 p.m., $35-$45.

DANCE

440 Castro: 440 Castro, San Francisco. “Sunday Furry Sunday,” Last Sunday of every month, 4-10 p.m., $1.

BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. Climaxx: Folsom After Hours, DJ Tristan Jaxx plays late-late-night tunes for Folsom leathermen who don’t wanna let the weekend end (starts 3 a.m. Monday morning)., $20-$25; Deviants: Adult Arcade, Official closing party of the Folsom Street Fair with DJ Boris, Matrixxman, Olga T, and Aaron Clark., 4:30 p.m., $25-$35.

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9 p.m., free.

The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8 p.m.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ Blaze Kulcha vs. No Dough Dub, DJ Sep, Ludichris, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6 p.m.; “Strictly Soul,” w/ Gene Hunt, Stephen Rigmaiden, Bryan Boogie, Steve Madera, Jaclyn Marie, M.D. Mayes, 8 p.m.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Stamina Sundays,” w/ guest DJ Robin Weber, 10 p.m., free.

Holy Cow: 1535 Folsom, San Francisco. “Honey Sundays,” w/ Honey Soundsystem & guests, 9 p.m., $5-$10.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10 p.m., free.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8 p.m., $2.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10 p.m.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ Michael Perry, Sharon Buck, Adam Beyer, Prehistoric Reptiles, 9 p.m., $5-$10.

Ocean Beach: Great Highway, San Francisco. “Silent Frisco: Ocean Beach,” w/ Mark Farina, J-Boogie, Motion Potion, Shouts!, Derek Hena, Black 22s, NVO, 1 p.m., $25.

Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 11 p.m.).

The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 10 p.m., free.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8 p.m., free.

Qi Ultra Lounge: 917 Folsom St., San Francisco. Drtybtch, DJs Ms. Jackson and Kidd Sysko spin electro, trap, hip-hop, and other booty beats at this “music, sex, and fashion experience.,” 7 p.m., $10.

The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. Massive: Folsom 2013 Edition, Tea dance for bears at the legendary South of Market gay bar., 6 p.m., $5.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “The Gift,” w/ DJ Holiday, Ruby Red I, 9 p.m., $20-$40.

HIP-HOP

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30 p.m., free.

SOMA StrEat Food Park: 428 11th St., San Francisco. “The Beat Down: Summer Beats & Eats,” w/ resident DJ Mr. E, Last Sunday of every month, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. continues through Oct. 27, free.

ACOUSTIC

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Emily Jane White, Spectre Spectre, King Woman, 9 p.m., $7-$10.

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. The Hill People, Cara Sarelli, 6 p.m.

The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Sunday Bluegrass Jam, 4 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8 p.m., free.

Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement St., San Francisco. “iPlay,” open mic with featured weekly artists, 6:30 p.m., free.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with John Sherry & Kyle Thayer, 9 p.m.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5 p.m., free.

JAZZ

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10 p.m., free.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Terrence Brewer Trio with Dmitri Matheny, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4 p.m., free/donation.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

Union Square Park: 333 Post, San Francisco. Darren Johnston & The Trans-Global People’s Chorus: “Letters to Home,” 2 p.m., free.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Lisa Lindsley, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30 p.m., $10 ($15-$20 with dance lessons).

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30 p.m., free.

The Ramp: 855 Terry Francois, San Francisco. BrazilVox, 5:30 p.m.

Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30 p.m.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Rana Farhan, 7 p.m., $30-$35.

REGGAE

Il Pirata: 2007 16th St., San Francisco. “Ragga Ragga,” w/ DJs Vinny Ras, Kure All, & Theory, Last Sunday of every month, 7 p.m., free.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Golden Gate Blues Society IBC Regional Final, 5 p.m., $20.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Phil Berkowitz & The Dirty Cats, 4 p.m.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. HowellDevine, 8:30 p.m., free/donation.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4 p.m.; Takezo, 9:30 p.m.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 9 p.m., free.

EXPERIMENTAL

San Francisco Community Music Center: 544 Capp, San Francisco. T.D. Skatchit & Company, 8 p.m., $10-$20.

SOUL

Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10 p.m., free.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Feelosophy, 5 p.m., free.

MONDAY 30

ROCK

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. The Secret Secretaries, Saturn Cats, CIVC, 9 p.m., $6.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. CCR Headcleaner, Life Stinks, 9 p.m., $5.

DANCE

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $3-$5.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Earl Brothers, 9 p.m., free.

The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7 p.m., free.

Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open mic with Brendan Getzell, 8 p.m., free.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. S.F. Acoustic Sessions #3, w/ Scott Mickelson, Dan Coyle, Jordan Carp, Ash Thursday, 7 p.m.

Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7 p.m., free.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4 p.m.

JAZZ

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7 p.m., free.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8 p.m.

The Union Room at Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. The Session: A Monday Night Jazz Series, pro jazz jam with Mike Olmos, 7:30 p.m., $12.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Nora Maki, 7:30 p.m., free.

REGGAE

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10 p.m., free.

BLUES

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30 p.m.

SOUL

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8 p.m., free.

TUESDAY 1

ROCK

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Major Powers & The Lo-Fi Symphony, 9 p.m. Starts . continues through Oct. 29.

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Sweat Lodge, Balms, The Cairn, 9 p.m., $8.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. “Wood Shoppe,” w/ Holly Miranda, There’s Talk, Evil Eyes, Different Fur DJs, 9 p.m., free.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. Down & Outlaws, Down Dirty Shake, Wag, 9 p.m., $6.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Peach Kelli Pop, Meat Market, The Shanghais, 8:30 p.m., $7.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. The Del-Lords, 8 p.m., $12-$15.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. Permanent Collection, Useless Eaters, Mane, DJ Ack Ack Ack, 9:30 p.m., $7.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Young Galaxy, Mister Lies, Silver Swans, 8 p.m., $12.

DANCE

Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10 p.m., $2.

Laszlo: 2532 Mission, San Francisco. “Beards of a Feather,” Enjoy classy house records, obscuro disco, and laid-back late-’80s jams with DJ Ash Williams and guests, First Tuesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10 p.m., free-$10.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9 p.m., $3.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10 p.m., free.

Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “True Skool Tuesdays,” w/ DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Songwriter-in-Residence: Olivia Clayton, 7 p.m. Starts . continues through Oct. 29.

Cafe Du Nord: 2170 Market, San Francisco. Jesse Ruben, Caitlin Crosby, 8 p.m., $8-$10.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with Suzanne Cronin, 9 p.m.

JAZZ

Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7 p.m.

Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7 p.m., free.

Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.

Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7 p.m.

Jazz Bistro At Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. M.B. Hanif & The Sound Voyagers, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7 p.m.

Oz Lounge: 260 Kearny, San Francisco. Emily Hayes & Mark Holzinger, 6 p.m., free.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5 p.m., free; Conscious Contact, First Tuesday of every month, 8 p.m., free.

Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9 p.m., $10-$12.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Tommy Igoe Big Band, 8 p.m., $22; Dayna Stephens Quartet, Pascal’s Triangle, 8 p.m., $24-$28.

INTERNATIONAL

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Descarga S.F.,” w/ DJs Hong & Good Sho, 8 p.m., $12.

The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. “Conga Tuesdays,” 8 p.m., $7-$10.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Cheb i Sabbah, Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

REGGAE

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10 p.m.

BLUES

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Lisa Kindred, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30 p.m., free.

FUNK

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Fat Tuesday Band, 7 & 9 p.m., $15.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Boogaloo Tuesday,” w/ Oscar Myers & Steppin’, 9:30 p.m., free.

SOUL

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. The JRo Project, First Tuesday of every month, 9:30 p.m., $5.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30 p.m., free.

SFSU police get Tasers

Michael Redmond

-

September 24, 2013

1

Just because the San Francisco Police Department can’t get Tasers doesn’t mean all the cops in San Francisco are missing out.

The San Francisco State University Police Department will soon arm its officers with conducted electrical weapons, known by the brand name Taser, following a statewide push from the California State University Chancellor’s Office to arm all of its campus police statewide with the weapons.

The university police started training with their new weapons Sept. 12, according to university spokesperson Ellen Griffin, but haven’t armed its 28 officers with them just yet. The department still has to set rules for their use and the cabinet of SF State President Leslie Wong will soon meet to advise him on Taser policy. Details on what shape that policy will take are still hazy, the university told us.

“What I can say is that Dr. Wong is deeply committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our campus community,” said Shawn Whalen, a member of the president’s cabinet.

For the past decade the SFPD has tried at various times to have their officers armed with Tasers but have met loud opposition and are without them to this day. One of the most vocal opponents of the weapons, Police Commissioner Angela Chan, is concerned that the Tasers can be fatal.

“Tasers can cause serious injury or death and have cost law enforcement that use them millions of dollars in lawsuits,” she told the Guardian. About 500 people having been killed by Tasers in the US since 2001 according to a report Amnesty International released last year.

Of those killed, Amnesty International said, 90 percent of the victims were unarmed. Despite the statistics, Tasers are in widespread use around the country and in the California State University system.

Mike Uhlenkamp, spokesperson for the CSU chancellor’s office, said that 17 campus police forces were armed with Tasers, and now all 23 will have them, including SF State.

The arguments Taser advocates make for having the weapons is that they can be used in lieu of a gun. Steve Tuttle, spokesperson for Taser, said that was the reason 17,000 law enforcement agencies use Tasers worldwide.

“I think it’s a loud minority that’s gotten their way in San Francisco,” Tuttle said. The idea that SFPD is the lone holdout had him saying that the “vocal minority” got their way.

But Chan said that’s a myth. Tasers are often used as a compliance weapon when an individual is passively resisting arrest or not responding to an officer’s commands, she said. “Unfortunately, this can lead to overuse and unnecessary use, especially on young people and people of color, as we’ve seen around the country, including on college campuses.”

She has reason to be concerned about the safety of the campus community. When activist squatters were arrested in May by the SF State’s university police, allegations of excessive force streamed in.

The activists printed a zine documenting their experience. Melissa Nahlen, 25, reportedly wound up with “cuts near her eyes, a bruised and swollen lip, a swollen left hand … and cannot bend her neck downward due to being stomped on by the police.”

A campus police officer also sustained injuries, according to news reports.

Tasers are used to avoid just that kind of situation, Training Lieutenant Randall Gregson of the BART Police Department told us. Though policies differ from department to department, Gregson ran the Guardian through BART’s tactics in using Tasers to provide a glimpse in the things SFSU will need to consider.

BART police carry their Tasers on the “support” side of the belt, meaning the non-dominant side, he said. They also have a choice of carrying it in their duty belt on a thigh holster. “It’s an officer’s individual preference,” he said.

That preference is important, and sometimes could mean the difference between life and death.

When BART officer Johannes Mehserle reached for his Taser but mistakenly drew his gun and shot and killed Oscar Grant back in 2009, issues about where to holster weapons came to the fore.

“How could a trained officer mistakenly pull and fire his gun if, as he claims, he intended to deploy his Taser?” Mehserle’s lawyer wrote in a rhetorical question in a court brief, arguing that BART’s Taser policy was a factor in the shooting.

That’s the exact kind of incident President Wong’s policy will address for his officers, and the lives of the students of San Francisco State University may depend on it

Battle of the Bulb

Michael Redmond

-

September 24, 2013

33

news@sfbg.com

On a sunny September afternoon, Osha Neumann slowly walks onto the dirt path leading to the Albany Bulb, using a walking stick for balance against the pebbles. With a white beard and lanky frame, the 74-year-old artist and attorney is no stranger to this landfill turned art space turned homeless encampment that juts out of the East Bay shoreline near the Berkeley Marina and the Golden Gate Fields racetrack.

Neumann has been coming for more than a decade, with his son-in-law Jason DeAntonis to build driftwood sculptures, and as an attorney fighting for the rights of the homeless who live on the 31-acre plot. He’s witnessed its evolution from rubble-filled no man’s land to one of the last undeveloped stretches of open shoreline in the Bay Area.

“The Bulb has been a refuge, a solace, a place of inspiration,” he said. “It’s a place where I can get off the grid and live in this wonderful, successful, fruitful anarchy. I came to really love this place.”

But the Albany Bulb is now facing another transition point in its evolution, one that pits nature lovers and city officials against those who have call this strange stretch of shoreline “home.”

>>Check out a slideshow of the Albany Bulb here

TRASH TO TREASURE

The Albany Bulb is a radical space of massive debris sculptures and structures, huge concrete slabs of graffiti, tents and tree houses, and artifacts from wreckage that, incorporated into the natural landscape of acacia and eucalyptus trees, is a unique and beloved slice of land symbolizing the free spirit of the region.

It’s where sparrows and other birds come to nest, and where dog walkers take dirt paths to the water’s edge. It’s also a space that major organizations such as the East Bay Regional Parks District, the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, the state park system, and the city of Albany have all fought for decades to preserve, with the idea that humans should not be allowed to live there. And in October, due to the enforcement of a no-camping policy approved on May 6 by the Albany City Council, the people living at the Albany Bulb will have to tear down their makeshift homes and say goodbye permanently.

“This has been in the works for 40 years,” said Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and the current president of Citizens for East Bay Parks.

The Bulb became a part of the Eastshore State Park, a stretch of land with a trail along the East Bay shoreline that connects Oakland to Richmond, in the mid 1980s. And with the proclamation of a park came the people. Cheasty has become one of the most outspoken critics of people occupying the Bulb.

“It cannot be allowed to be privatized by any group or person,” he said.

It’s an argument that’s been made many times over the years, but now it seems to be on the verge of coming true.

The first people living in the Bulb came to take up residence after the eviction of the homeless campers from People’s Park in Berkeley in the mid ’90s. Before that, it was used as a landfill for BART and highway construction materials.

Nature inevitably took over, and much of the debris has been moved to certain areas within the park. Some of the first residents were immortalized in the documentary film Bum’s Paradise, where they lived in harmony with four artists known as Sniff, whose paintings and sculptures came to beautify the unconventional living space. In 1999, the first major eviction took place.

“Then, as now, the city provided them no place to go,” Neumann said. “People just scattered with no place to go, into the surrounding jurisdictions primarily.”

Neumann said he worked unsuccessfully with the people living at the Bulb in fighting the 1999 eviction, telling the Guardian, “People were unorganized and it felt hopeless and despairing.”

Neumann said little has changed. The Bulb remained the same, a landfill, albeit without a regular crew of humans living on it. In 2002 the planning of the Eastshore State Park moved ahead, and Neumann, not content to let the Bulb become homogenized, formed the group Let It Be, advocating to keep the “wildness” of the space. It didn’t go over well, and plans moved forward to clear the plateau of its coyote bush, in an area directly north of the racetrack, and fill it in with dirt.

Norman Laforce, who chairs the Sierra Club’s East Bay Shoreline Park Task Force and East Bay Public Lands Committee, has been involved in the planning since its creation. He says hundreds of people worked to make the park possible. He believes that because the city of Albany did not engage in strict enforcement of illegally camping after 1999, it was ripe to be occupied again. And it was.

The city of Albany handed over the deed of the park to the state park system, and the cap and seal order from the Regional Water Board — which stated that the area was clear of any hazardous waste leaching into the bay — was lifted in 2005. Over time, the Bulb’s current 64 residents sought refuge there, about the same number of people who were forced to leave in 1999.

Of those, at least 36 residents don’t have any regular income, while those who do rely mostly on government programs such as Supplemental Security Income. Laforce and Neumann may not agree on much, but both understand the impending enforcement of the no-camping policy to be a new chapter in the Bulb’s story.

WHOSE PARK?

As Neumann makes his way to one of the resident campsites, he stops to take in the view. It’s an unrivaled panoramic portrait of the San Francisco skyline against the glittering bay. He shakes his head when I ask him about the people who oppose campers at the Bulb.

“I think there is a small group of people who are committed to kicking people out of here,” he said.

“Our position has been that the Albany Bulb is a part of the McLaughlin East Shore State Park and is not to be privatized,” Laforce said of the Sierra Club’s view. “We fully support the removal of the illegal campers that are currently out there.”

The Sierra Club and the Citizens for East Bay Parks cite safety concerns as a reason the campers need to leave.

“I was attacked by somebody’s pit bull,” Cheasty said. “It’s happening regularly out there. It’s the antithesis of open space and public land.”

The city of Albany, hesitant at first to ruffle feathers, now supports the removal of campers. “The City Council is working to achieve the Strategic Plan Goals, adopted in 2012,” said Albany City Clerk Nicole Almaguer in an email.” The goals include maximizing park and open space for all members of the community.”

Almaguer noted that the Albany City Council retained the services of Berkeley Food and Housing Project with a $60,000 contract to conduct outreach and engagement services to the city’s homeless, and voted unanimously to extend this agreement to help the campers at the Bulb.

But she made it clear that once October arrives, the people will need to leave. They will receive verbal and written warnings if they don’t. (A camping violation generally amounts to $161 in fines, according to one of the Bulb campers.) One of the major problems, both Laforce and Cheasty say, is that some of the campers don’t want BFHP’s or the city’s help.

They just want to stay on the Bulb.

Neumann introduces me to three-year resident Katherine Cody, or KC. With pink hair and a wide smile, she seems younger than her 60 years. She babies her shih tzu Eva and makes beaded jewelry. Before living in a tent at the Bulb, she lived in her van. One of the perks to living at the Bulb, she explained, is seeing dolphins swimming in the bay, and watching the 50 to 100 hummingbirds nest in the tree above her tent every year.

KC’s past isn’t so idyllic. She said she was stabbed 20 years ago and the traumatic experience of yelling for help to no avail made her grateful to find a place like the Bulb.

“I am terminally ill,” she said on a recent afternoon, “So I need a lot of help sometimes, and without my having to ask or go begging door to door, my neighbors show up.”

After losing a lot of blood from the stabbing, Cody contracted Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion. Despite its rough exterior, KC and other residents argue that their neighborhood at the Bulb is not any more conducive to drug addiction or infighting than any other neighborhood or town.

“They are not capable of doing this job,” KC said of the Berkeley Food and Housing Project’s efforts. “It’s ridiculous to expect in that time span to be able to get the job done. It’s just long enough to make it look like they were being kind and not throw us out immediately, but it’s not long enough to really do anything.”

For Neumann, who has never been homeless himself, watching his friends and people he has known for years struggle to find a place to live makes him want to resist the city’s enforcement.

“They are criminalizing the status of being homeless in Albany,” Neumann said outside of KC’s tent. “Albany doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t have a shelter, it doesn’t have transitional housing, it doesn’t have available subsided housing, doesn’t have any services. Nothing. Zero.”

Neumann and some of the Bulb campers claim that police from surrounding jurisdictions told many homeless people, forced to leave their encampments in other areas, to go to the Bulb. Albany Police deny the charge, with a spokesperson telling us, “the Albany Police Department did not/does not have a policy of instructing homeless people to relocate to the Bulb.”

Nonetheless, Neumann says, “For a long while, this was Albany’s homeless shelter.”

Amber Lynn Whitson, 32, said that she will celebrate her seventh year living at the Bulb on Oct. 31, if she is able to stay. But she is one of the few inhabitants, she said, who is actually preparing to leave.

“Me and my boyfriend have gotten rid of almost everything we own,” she said between cigarettes. Whitson said she came to stay at the Bulb after moving around a lot.

“It’s so nice here,” she laughed. “When you have been kicked around from place to place and told you don’t belong here, you don’t belong there, it’s so refreshing to be told by the local authorities you belong there.”

Whitson said she isn’t sure where she will go after the no-camping policy is enforced. She is sure though, that the fight to resist will continue.

“This won’t be over in October,” she said. “Even if we are out, it won’t be over in October.”

LIGHTS OUT

After we speak with some of the residents, Neumann and I part ways. Before he leaves, he encourages me to take a look around, meet people, and enjoy the art.

Along with the people residing at the Bulb, the art has become a major sticking point surrounding what the Bulb is and what it could be. Cheasty, while not wanting the people to stay, personally doesn’t see the harm in keeping the art intact. In contrast, Laforce believes that part of making the Bulb into a “usable” park requires the removal of the art.

But many people want it to stay. An activist group known as Friends of the Bulb organized a concert with Santa Cruz band Blackbird RAUM at the Bulb for Sept. 28, hoping to draw a large crowd to resist the city’s efforts to remove the campers, and discuss the future of the Bulb.

“We hope it will bring people that live on the Bulb and those that use it to enjoy it together, because who knows how much longer it’s going to be there,” said Doug Gilbert, one of the event’s organizers.

Gilbert said the group started out of the necessity to answer the question of who will control the space: “There are two fundamentally different world views. Those that use the space are the ones in control of it, and those who are truly privatizing it, by deciding who can go there, if the dogs have to be leashed, if the art will stay.”

In the coming month, Laforce said the Sierra Club will continue to support the city’s efforts to relocate the people living there.

“The Albany Bulb is not going to be the homeless solution to the East Bay,” he said. “It’s not just some wasteland.”

Neumann, for his own part, remains skeptical about what will actually take place in October, but he’s certain that, from now on, things at the Bulb will be different. “They do not want to have a repeat of what happened in ’99,” he said before he left for the day. “And that will be the end of this incredible experiment.”