BART Archives — Page 8 of 29 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The Performant: Cracks in the pavement

May 30, 2013

Gentrification-proof poetry

Although the ongoing eviction saga (and upcomng relocation!) of Adobe Books, “the living room” of the Mission, from its 16th Street digs dredges up memories of all the neighborhood bookstores that have closed/moved in recent years, it’s worth being reminded that the book trade has only ever had a limited impact on the persistence of the written (and spoken) word, particularly where poetry is concerned.

In fact, the more tenuous the economic climate, the more tenacious poetry becomes, pushing itself like a hungry weed through the unavoidable cracks left in the superficially smooth pavement of gentrification. That poets are themselves accustomed to staying hungry yet artistically fruitful is a condition immortalized in the famous Robert Graves quip that “there’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.”

There’s not much money, but plenty of poetry outside the 16th Street BART Station every Thursday night, rainy or not, when a constantly rotating crew shows up to the unnamed, (un)official poetry jam, armed with the essential tools of urban poets everywhere—tall boys in brown paper bags, open ears under fleece hoods, and a cache of words waiting to be unleashed.

As nightlifers in expensive shoes stroll out of the station en route to the increasingly upscaled Valencia Street, they pass by the chalk circle ringed by a throng of scrappy street poets, belting out their offerings with the hoarse-throated projection of people without a microphone to hide behind. Instigated in 2004 by a passel of performance poets from the now-defunct New College up the road, Thursday nights have continued to attract a wealth of wordsmiths for almost ten years: some published some not, some regulars some newbs, some lifers some dilettantes. There’s may be some good-natured vying for stage time, but the bottom line is anyone with something to share is welcome to jump into the circle, and there’s almost always at least one participant who electrifies beyond anticipation, making even the otherwise mostly oblivious passerby stop in their tracks and pay attention.

Meanwhile, in the Lower Haight, a more carefully curated reading series takes place at The Squat, attracting its own adherents with its appealing blend of irreverence and celebration. Conceptualized and commanded by one “Janey Smith,” The Squat is less of an actual squat (no-one actually lives in it) than a liminal territory for an underground intelligentsia to congregate without the burden of pretension.

Beware the published starting time—the real determiner is the setting of the sun, since readings at The Squat are conducted, perhaps by necessity, in the dark. After night falls sufficiently, the group is led in abrupt silence from Smith’s iconic San Francisco apartment to the “venue,” a completely empty apartment upstairs, barely illuminated by rows of flickering tealights (“if you have hair, try not to catch on fire” Smith cracks). We squeeze into the “living room” together, encircling a pile of sawdust, the “stage.”

Of the four readers, three locals (Ben Mirov, Erica Lewis, and Cedar Sigo) and a special “guest star” from the East Coast (Alex Dimitrov), the one whose poems most stick in my mind are Mirov’s, whose chilly distillations of word and image and deliberately affectless tone perfectly suit a body of poetry written in and for a digital age. Lewis reads from her latest project, a linked series called darryl hall is my boyfriend for which she provides mixed tapes of Darryl Hall’s music for emphasis, Sigo, most recently published by City Lights, presents a series of short poems rife with lush imagery, and Dimitrov works the increasingly vocal crowd with his confessional anecdotes, both written and spontaneous. The police don’t show and no-one catches on fire, so the event is deemed a success. Housing scarcity being what it is in this town, surely this apartment can’t stay empty forever, so get down there while you still have a chance, or head down to 16th Street on any Thursday around 10 p.m. Either way you’ll quickly discover that though our bookstores might be under siege, our poets refuse to surrender the fight.

Planning for displacement

Andrew Lam

May 28, 2013

tredmond@sfbg.com

The intersection of Cesar Chavez and Evans Avenue is a good enough place to start. Face south.

Behind you is Potrero Hill, once a working-class neighborhood (and still home to a public housing project) where homes now sell for way more than a million dollars and rents are out of control. In front, down the hill, is one of the last remaining industrial areas in San Francisco.

Go straight along Evans and you find printing plants, an auto-wrecking yard, and light manufacturing, including a shop that makes flagpoles. Take a right instead on Toland, past the Bonanza restaurant, and you wander through auto-glass repair, lumber yards, plumbing suppliers, warehouses, the city’s produce market — places that the city Planning Department refers to at Production, Distribution, and Repair facilities. Places that still offer blue-collar employment. There aren’t many left anywhere in San Francisco, and it’s amazing that this district has survived.

Cruise around for a while and you’ll see a neighborhood with high home-ownership rates — and high levels of foreclosures. Bayview Hunters Point is home to much of the city’s dwindling African American population, a growing number of Asians, and much higher unemployment rates than the rest of the city.

Now pull up the website of the Association of Bay Area Governments, a well-funded regional planning agency that is working on a state-mandated blueprint for future growth. There’s a map on the site that identifies “priority development area” — in planning lingo, PDAs — places that ABAG, and many believers in so-called smart growth, see as the center of a much-more dense San Francisco, filled with nearly 100,000 more homes and 190,000 new jobs.

Guess what? You’re right in the middle of it.

The southeastern part of the city — along with many of the eastern neighborhoods — is ground zero for massive, radical changes. And it’s not just Bayview Hunters Point; in fact, there’s a great swath of the city, from Chinatown/North Beach to Candlestick Park, where regional planners say there’s space for new apartments and condos, new offices, new communities.

It’s a bold vision, laid out in an airy document called the Plan Bay Area — and it’s about to clash with the facts on the ground. Namely, that there are already people living and working in the path of the new development.

And there’s a high risk that many of them will be displaced; collateral damage in the latest transformation of San Francisco.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND “SMART GROWTH”

The threat of global climate change hasn’t convinced the governor or the state Legislature to raise gas taxes, impose an oil-severance tax, or redirect money from highways to transit. But it’s driven Sacramento to mandate that regional planners find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California cities.

The bill that lays this out, SB375, mandates that ABAG, and its equivalents in the Los Angeles Basin, the Central Coast, the Central Valley and other areas, set up “Sustainable Communities Strategies” — land-use plans for now through 2040 intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent.

The main path to that goal: Make sure that most of the 1.1 million people projected to live in the Bay Area by 2040 be housed in already developed areas, near transit and jobs, to avoid the suburban sprawl that leads to long commutes and vast amounts of car exhaust.

The notion of smart growth — also referred to as urban infill — has been around for years, embraced by a certain type of environmentalist, particularly those concerned with protecting open space. But now, it has the force of law.

And while ABAG is not a secret government with black helicopters that can force cities to do its will — land-use planning is still under local jurisdiction in this state — the agency is partnering with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal transportation money. And together, they can offer strong incentives for cities to get in line.

Over in Contra Costa and Marin counties, at hearings on the plan, Tea Party types (yes, they appear to exist in Marin) railed against the notion of elite bureaucrats forcing the wealthy enclaves of single-family homes to accept more density (and, gasp, possibly some affordable housing). In San Francisco, it’s the progressives, the transit activists, and the affordable housing people who are starting to get worried. Because there’s been almost zero media attention to the plan, and what it prescribes for San Francisco is alarming — and strangely nonsensical.

Under the ABAG plan, San Francisco would approve 92,400 more housing units for 280,000 more people. The city would host 190,000 more jobs, many of them in what’s called the “knowledge economy,” which mostly means high tech. Second and third on the list: Health and education, and tourism.

The city currently allows around eight cars for every 10 housing units; as few as five in a few neighborhoods, at least 10 in many others. And there’s nothing in any city or regional plan right now that seeks to change that level of car dependency. In fact, the regional planners think that single-occupancy car travel will be the mode of choice for 48 percent of all trips by 2040 — almost the same as it is today.

And since most of the new housing will be aimed at wealthier people, who are more likely to own cars and avoid catching buses, San Francisco could be looking for ways to fit 73,000 more cars onto streets that are already, in many cases, maxed out. There will be, quite literally, no place to park. And congestion in the region, the planners agree, will get a whole lot worse.

That seems to undermine the main intent of the plan: Transit-oriented development only works if you discourage cars. In a sense, the car-use projections are an admission of failure, undermining the intent of the entire project.

The vast majority of the housing that will be built will be too expensive for much of the existing (and even future) workforce and will do little to relieve the pressure on lower income people. But there is nothing whatsoever in the plan to ensure that there’s money available to build housing that meets the needs of most San Franciscans.

Instead, the planners acknowledge that 36 percent of existing low-income people will be at risk for displacement. That would be a profound change in the demographics of San Francisco.

Of course, adding all those people and jobs will put immense pressure on city services, from Muni to police, fire, and schools — not to mention the sewer system, which already floods and dumps untreated waste into the Bay when there’s heavy rain. Everyone involved acknowledged those costs, which could run into the billions of dollars. There is nothing anywhere in any of the planning documents addressing the question of who will pay for it.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Projecting the future of a region isn’t easy. Job and population growth isn’t a straight line, at best — and when you’re looking at a 25-year window in a boom-and-bust area with everything from earthquakes to sea-level rise factoring in, it’s easy to say that anyone who claims to know what’s going to happen in 2040 is guessing.

But as economist Stephen Levy, who did the regional projections for ABAG, pointed out to us, “You have to be able to plan.” And you can’t plan if you don’t at least think about what you’re planning for.

Levy runs the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, and he’s been watching trends in this state for years. He agrees that some of his science is, by nature, dismal: “Nobody projects deep recessions,” much less natural disasters. But overall, he told me, it’s possible to get a grip on what planners need to prepare for as they write the next chapter of the Bay Area’s future.

And what they have to plan for is a lot more people.

Levy said he started with the federal government’s projections for population growth in the United States, which include births and deaths, immigration, and out-migration, using historic trends to allocate some of that growth to the Bay Area. There’s what appears at first to be circular logic involved: The feds (and most economists) project that job growth nationally will be driven by population — that is, the more people live in the US, the more jobs there will be.

Population growth in a specific region, on the other hand, is driven by jobs — that is, the more jobs you have in the Bay Area, the more people will move here.

“Jobs in the US depend on how many people are in the labor force,” he said. “Jobs in the Bay Area depend on our share of US jobs and population depends on relative job growth.”

Make sense? No matter — over the years it’s generally worked. And once you project the number of people and jobs expected in the Bay Area, you can start looking at how much housing it’s going to take to keep them all under a roof.

Levy projects that the Bay Area’s share of jobs will be higher than most of the rest of the country. “This is the home of the knowledge industry,” he told me. So he’s concluded that population in the Bay Area will grow from 7.1 million to 9.2 million — an additional 2.14 million people. They’ll be chasing some 1.1 million new jobs, and will need 660,000 new housing units.

Levy stopped there, and left it to the planners at ABAG to allocate that growth to individual cities — and that’s where smart growth comes in.

For decades in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco, activists have waged wars against developers, trying to slow down the growth of office buildings, and later, luxury housing units. At the same time, environmentalists argued that spreading the growth around creates serious problems, including sprawl and the destruction of farmland and open space.

Smart growth is supposed to be an alternative: the idea is to direct new growth to already-established urban areas, not by bulldozing over communities (as redevelopment agencies once did) but by the use of “infill” — directing development to areas where there’s usable space, or by building up and not out.

ABAG “focused housing and jobs growth around transit areas, particularly within locally identified Priority Development Areas,” the draft environmental impact report on the plan notes.

The draft EIR is more than 1,300 pages long, and it looks at the ABAG plan and several alternatives. One alternative, proposed by business groups, would lead to more development and higher population gains. Another, proposed by community activist groups including Public Advocates, Urban Habitat, and TransForm, is aimed at reducing displacement and creating affordable housing; that one, it turns out, is the “environmentally preferred alternative.” (See sidebar).

But no matter which alternative you look at, two things leap out: There is nothing effective that ABAG has put forward to prevent large-scale displacement of vulnerable communities. And despite directing growth to transit corridors, the DEIR still envisions a disaster of traffic congestion, parking problems, and car-driven environmental wreckage.

THE DISPLACEMENT PROBLEM

ABAG has gone to some lengths to identify what it calls “communities of concern.” Those are areas, like Bayview Hunters Point, Chinatown, and the Mission, where existing low-income residents and small businesses face potential displacement. In San Francisco, those communities are, to a great extent, the same geographic areas that have been identified as PDAs.

And, the DEIR, notes, some degree of displacement is a significant impact that cannot be mitigated. In other words, the gentrification of San Francisco is just part of the plan.

In fact, the study notes, 36 percent of the communities of concern in high-growth areas will face displacement pressure because of the cost of housing. And that’s region wide; the number in San Francisco will almost certainly be much, much higher.

Miriam Chion, ABAG’s planning and research director, told me that displacement “is the core issue in this whole process.” The agency, she said, is working with other stakeholders to try to address the concern that new development will drive out longtime residents. But she also agreed that there are limited tools available to local government.

The DEIR notes that ABAG and the MTC will seek to “bolster the plan’s investment in the Transit Oriented Affordable Housing Fund and will seek to do a study of displacement. It also states: “In addition, this displacement risk could be mitigated in cities such as San Francisco with rent control and other tenant protections in place.”

There isn’t a tenant activist in this town who can read that sentence with a straight face.

The problem, as affordable housing advocate Peter Cohen puts it, is that “the state has mandated all this growth, but has taken away the tools we could use to mitigate it.”

That’s exactly what’s happened in the past few decades. The state Legislature has outlawed the only effective anti-displacement laws local governments can enact — rent controls on vacant apartments, commercial rent control, and eviction protections that prevent landlords from taking rental units off the market to sell as condos. Oh, and the governor has also shut down redevelopment agencies, which were the only reliable source of affordable housing money in many cities.

Chion told me that the ABAG planners were discussing a list of anti-displacement options, and that changes in state legislation could be on that list. Given the power of the real-estate lobby in the state Capitol, ABAG will have to do more than suggest; there’s no way this plan can work without changing state law.

Otherwise, eastern San Francisco is going to be devastated — particularly since the vast majority of all housing that gets built in the city, and that’s likely to get built in the city, is too expensive for almost anyone in the communities of concern.

“This plan doesn’t require affordable housing,” Cindy Wu, vice-chair of the San Francisco Planning Commission, told me. “It’s left to the private market, which doesn’t build affordable housing or middle-class housing.”

In fact, while there’s plenty of discussion in the plan about where money can come from for transit projects, there’s virtually no discussion of the billions and billions that will be needed to produce the level of affordable housing that everyone agrees will be needed.

Does anyone seriously think that developers can cram 90,000 new units — at least 85 percent of them, under current rules, high-cost apartments and condos that are well beyond the range of most current San Franciscans — into eastern neighborhoods without a real-estate boom that will displace thousands of existing residents?

Let’s remember: Building more housing, even a lot more housing, won’t necessarily bring down prices. The report makes clear that the job growth, and population boom that accompanies it, will fuel plenty of demand for all those new units.

Steve Woo, senior planner with the Chinatown Community Development Center, sees the problem. In a letter to ABAG, he notes: “Plan Bay Area and its DEIR has analyzed the displacement of low-income people and explicitly acknowledges that it will occur. This is unacceptable for San Francisco and for Chinatown, where the pressures of displacement have been a constant over the past 20 years.”

Adds the Council of Community Housing Organizations: “It would be irresponsible for the regional agencies to advance a plan that purports to ‘improve’ the region’s communities as population grows while the plan simultaneously presents great risk and uncertainty for many vulnerable communities.”

Jobs are at stake, too — not tech jobs or office jobs, which ABAG projects will expand, but the kind of industrial jobs that currently exist in the priority development areas.

Calvin Welch, who has been watching urban planning and displacement issues in San Francisco for more than 40 years, puts it bluntly: “It is axiomatic that market-rate housing drives out blue-collar jobs,” he said.

Of course, there’s another potential problem: Nobody really knows where jobs will come from in the next 25 years, whether tech will continue to be the driver or whether the city’s headed for a second dot-com bust. San Francisco doesn’t have a good record of building for projected jobs: In the mid-1980s, for example, the entire South of Market area (then home to printing, light manufacturing, and other blue-collar jobs) was rezoned for open-floor office space because city officials projected a huge need for “back-office” functions like customer service.

“Where are all those jobs today?” Welch asked. “They’re in India.”

TOO MANY CARS

For a plan that’s designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by moving residential development closer to work areas, Plan Bay Area is awfully pessimistic about transportation.

According to the projections, there will be more cars on the roads in 2040, with more — and much worse — traffic. The DEIR predicts that a full 48 percent of all trips in 2040 will be made by single-occupant vehicles — just slightly down from current rates. The percentage of trips on transit will only be a little bit higher — and there’s no significant increase in projected bicycle trips.

That alone is pretty crazy, since the number of people commuting to work by bike in San Francisco has risen dramatically in the past 10 years, and the city’s official goal is that 20 percent of all vehicle trips will be by bike in the next decade.

Part of the problem is structural. Not everyone in San Francisco 2040 is going to be a high-paid tech worker. In fact, the most stable areas of employment are health services and government — and hospital workers and Muni drivers can’t possibly afford the housing that’s being built. So those people will — the DEIR acknowledges — be displaced from San Francisco and forced to live elsewhere in the region (if that’s even possible). Which means, of course, they’ll be commuting further to work. Meanwhile, if current trends continue, many of the people moving into the city will work in Silicon Valley.

Chion and Levy both told me that the transit mode projections were based on historical trends for car use, and that it’s really hard to get people to give up their cars. Even higher gas prices and abominable traffic delays won’t drive people off the roads, they said.

If that’s the case — if auto culture, which is a top source of global climate change, doesn’t shift at all — it would seem that all this planning is pointless: the seas will rise dramatically, and San Franciscans ought to be buying boats.

“The projections don’t take into account social change,” Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University and a local transportation expert, told me. “And social change does happen.”

Brad Paul, a longtime housing activist who now works for ABAG, said these projections are just a start, and that the plan will be updated every four years. “I think we’re finding that the number of people who want to drive cars will go down,” he said.

Henderson argues that the land-use policy is flawed. He suggests that it would make more sense to increase density in the Bay Area suburbs along the BART lines. “Elegant development in those areas would work better,” he said. You don’t need expensive high-rises: “Four and five stories is the sweet spot,” he explained.

Most of the transportation projects in the plan are already in the pipeline; there’s no suggestion of any major new public transit programs. There is, however, a suggestion that San Francisco adopt a congestion management fee for downtown driving — something that city officials say is the only way to avoid utter gridlock in the future.

SIDELINING CEQA

ABAG and the MTC have a fair amount of leverage to implement their plans. MTC controls hundreds of millions of dollars in transit money; ABAG will be handing out millions in grants to communities that adopt its plan. And under state law, cities that allow development in PDAs near transit corridors can gain an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act.

CEQA is a powerful tool to slow or halt development, and developers (and some public officials) drool at the prospect of getting a fast-track pass to avoid some of the more cumbersome parts of the environmental review process.

Under SB 375 and Plan Bay Area, CEQA exemptions are available to projects that meet the Sustainable Community Strategy standards and are close to transit corridors. And when you look at the map of those areas, it’s pretty striking: All of San Francisco, pretty much every square inch, qualifies.

That means that almost any project almost anywhere in town can make a case that it doesn’t need to accept full CEQA review.

The most profound missing element in this entire discussion is the cost of all this growth.

You can’t cram 210,000 more residents into San Francisco without new schools, parks, and child-care centers. You can’t protect those residents without more police officers and firefighters. You can’t take care of their water and sewer needs without substantial infrastructure upgrades. And even if there’s state and federal money available for new buses and trains, you can’t operate those systems without paying drivers, mechanics, and support workers.

There’s no question that the new development will bring in more tax money. But the type of infrastructure improvements that will be needed to add 25 percent more residents to the city are really expensive — and every study that’s ever been done in San Francisco shows that the tax benefits of new development don’t cover the costs of public services it requires.

When World War II and the post-war boom in the Bay Area brought huge growth to the region, property taxes and federal and state money were adequate to build things like BART, the freeways, and hundreds of new schools, and to staff the public services that the emerging communities needed. But that all changed in 1978, with the passage of Prop. 13, and two years later, with the election of Ronald Reagan as president.

Now, federal money for cities is down to a trickle. Local government has an almost impossible time raising taxes. And instead of hiking fees for new residential and commercial projects, many communities (including San Francisco) are offering tax breaks to encourage job growth.

Put all that in the mix and you have a recipe for overcrowded buses, inadequate schools, overstressed open space (imagine 10,000 new Mission residents heading for Dolores Park on a nice day), and a very unattractive urban experience.

That flies directly in the face of what Plan Bay Area is supposed to be about. If the goal is to cut down on commutes by bringing new residents into developed urban areas, those cities have to be decent places to live. What would it cost to accommodate this level of new development? Five billion dollars? Ten billion? Nobody knows — because nobody has run those numbers. But they’re going to be big.

Because just as tax dollars have been vanishing, the costs of infrastructure keep going up. It costs a billion dollars a mile to build BART track. It’s costing more than a billion to build a short subway to Chinatown. Just upgrading the sewer system to handle current demands is a $4 billion project.

And if the developers and property owners who stand to make vast sums of money off all of this growth aren’t going to pay, who’s left?

The ABAG planners point out, correctly, that there’s a price for doing nothing. If there’s no regional plan, no proposal for smart growth, the population will still increase, and displacement will still happen — but the greenhouse gas emissions will be even worse, the development more haphazard.

But if the region is going to spend all this money and all this time on a plan to make the Bay Area more sustainable, more livable, and more affordable in 25 years, we might as well push all the limits and get it right.

Instead of looking at displacement as inevitable, and traffic as a price of growth, the planners could tell the state Legislature and the governor that it’s not possible to comply with SB375 — not until somebody identifies the big sums of money, multiples of billions of dollars, needed to build affordable housing; not until there are transit options, taxes, and restrictions on driving.

Because continued car use and massive displacement — the package that’s now facing us — just isn’t an acceptable option.

Vanishing city

Andrew Lam

May 21, 2013

239

rebecca@sfbg.com

On a recent Tuesday night, some of the city’s most influential developers, architects, and land-use lawyers gathered in a conference room at the ritzy W Hotel for a panel discussion, titled, “San Francisco’s Housing Crisis: Can the Tech Boom Help Us?”

It was a provocative question by any measure, but equally intriguing was the lack of even a hint of objection to the dead-serious framing of increasing unaffordability as a “crisis.”

Even among well-heeled property brokers at the event, which was hosted by San Francisco Magazine and the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, there appears to be universal acceptance that the city stands at a crossroads.

“The question asks itself: Who gets to live in San Francisco?” Tim Colen, HAC’s executive director, stated by way of introduction.

To break it down into extremely simplified terms: High-salaried professionals easily make the cut, while tenants of modest means who lack stable rent control are more hard-pressed to find housing they can afford. Opinions on how to approach this problem differ sharply.

Colen and other panelists posited that the solution is to build as the city has never built before, aiming for the construction of 100,000 units in the next two decades. But panelist Peter Cohen of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations countered that today’s development projects aren’t being constructed for people who actually live in the city, 61 percent of whom make less than 120 percent of the Area Median Income.

The city’s real-estate market is invariably described by those who closely track it as “hot,” or “bubbly,” bringing to mind a cappuccino, perhaps, that induces a jittery feeling. Speculation abounds.

The ripple effect extends beyond residential units. All across the seven-by-seven peninsula that once represented a haven for misfits and iconoclasts, stories abound of arts organizations, nonprofits, and community gathering spaces getting priced out, pressured to move, or otherwise swept away due to economic circumstances beyond their control.

From 2009 to 2013, UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti noted, explosive job growth coincided with San Francisco bearing the third-largest spike in rental prices on average, nationwide. In 2011, San Francisco rents were 34 percent higher than they had been 2003; by 2012, they had jumped to 53 percent higher, according to a market analysis prepared by The Concord Group. According to San Francisco Rent Board data, 1,757 eviction notices were filed from March of 2012 to February of 2013, reflecting a 12-year high.

“The problem has serious social consequences,” Moretti said at the event, sounding for an instant like a tenant advocate. “There is a serious amount of displacement.”

Every upheaval is messy, every tenant-landlord rift is complicated, and circumstances vary case by case. But taking a broad view, the overwhelming consequence of San Francisco’s gale-force property market pressure is a cultural shift; the fabric of a longstanding community is unraveling. Below are a few stories of the people and projects that are finding they won’t be able to stay in the San Francisco spaces they occupy for much longer.

THE CORNER OF HAIGHT AND RESENTMENT

Jon Zuckman, better known as Jon Sugar, showed up for a May 15 court appearance on his pending eviction proceeding with an entourage in tow. He was flanked by LGBT housing activist Tommi Mecca, perennial political candidate and sex worker Starchild, and radical activist Jerry the Faerie, among others, all longtime characters of the city’s lefty, radical LGBT scene.

Judge James Robertson, citing a letter he’d received from Zuckman’s doctor, agreed to grant a 60-day continuance, “for the purpose of allowing the defendant to try and locate alternative housing.”

A former KPFA radio personality, comic, writer, and DJ, Zuckman moved to San Francisco in his early 20s and lived in the Haight for 40 years. He’s now 63. He played in a band, ran an underground sex venue called the Mini Adult Theater, helped organize against a Republican-led 1978 proposal to ban gay teachers from California schools, supported AIDS benefits and battered-women support groups, and founded GAWK, the Gay Artists and Writers Kollective. He’s getting evicted from the Stanyan Street apartment building he’s lived in for 25 years, and has no idea where he’ll go after that.

Officially, he’s being evicted for violating the terms of a legal stipulation hashed out with landlord Al DeLorenzi pertaining to a bedbug infestation treatment. Zuckman claims he notified his landlord about the pest problem two years ago and no action was taken until he phoned the Department of Public Health.

DeLorenzi told the Bay Guardian that Zuckman is to blame for the bugs and that he’s just trying to keep the infestation in check. “There is no comment, he can say what he wants to say about this and that,” DeLorenzi said when reached by phone.

Complaints filed with the city’s Department of Public Health reveal a host of issues associated with the property over the years, from mice to broken light fixtures to a malfunctioning door buzzer.

Zuckman lives with a roommate in a rent-controlled unit, paying considerably less than tenants who pay market rate to live in the building. “I live,” he tells people, “on the corner of Haight and resentment.”

Zuckman is disabled, and says he’s undergone seven surgeries on his foot, plus a knee replacement. Asked if he’s on a fixed income, he responds, “It’s broken. I am on disability. It’s $869 a month. My rent is $600. My phone and Internet is like $55 to $60. And the rest is like, party, party, party.”

Tony Robles, of the elder advocacy organization Senior Disability Action, submitted a letter to the court in support of Zuckman. Robles said his office has experienced a spike in demand for services lately. “We’ve been having a large increase in calls, and people walking in and wanting to know if there’s available housing,” he says, adding that most clients are seniors grappling with eviction. “A lot of these folks, they’re scared.”

For his part, Jon Sugar is trying to maintain his sense of humor. “If I curl into a ball and let out with great heaving sobs, it’s not going to help,” he says. He doesn’t know of any good answers for stemming the tide of evictions currently sweeping San Francisco. “There’s got to be other ways than throwing crippled old DJs out into the street,” he says. Then he lets out a laugh. “I crack me up.”

URBAN FARMS AND CIRCUS ARTS: MAKE WAY FOR DEVELOPMENT

On a recent Saturday, the collective that started Esperanza Gardens hosted an event at its tiny fenced-in San Francisco garden plot, billed as a “be-in.” Ukulele music floated in the air as several people painted sweeping brushstrokes onto a mural. Volunteers dished up organic pizza with donated ingredients, cooked in a handcrafted cob oven. A dreadlocked gardener named Ryan Rising was preparing to host a permaculture workshop. The sun was hot, and flowers bloomed in vibrant hues.

Esparanza Gardens was started four years earlier, and the suntanned gardeners gathered under the shade of a 20-foot high cypress that had been a wee sapling when they first started out. But the afternoon gathering was bittersweet; this was a farewell ceremony.

They’d always known the project would be temporary. “We definitely understood what we were getting into,” explained Jonathan Youtt, an urban farmer clad in purple overalls and a straw hat, who’s recently been devoting more time to an urban farming project in Oakland.

The landlord, Lloyd Klein, had granted rent-free use of the space to the underfunded farmers with the stipulation that they’d have to clear out when the time came. He’s since secured entitlements for an ultra-green, four-unit building for that lot and told the Guardian he hopes to break ground by July, if he can secure building permits in time. “We’re trying to accomplish a net-zero energy usage building,” Klein told the Guardian in a telephone interview. “It will create its own energy from solar.”

None of the gardeners seemed to harbor bitter feelings toward Klein, who sanctioned their all-volunteer effort, but all those interviewed expressed concern that the loss of Esperanza coincides with the loss of two other urban farming plots in San Francisco. This was a space where they’d raised bees, harvested produce together, and led workshops with groups of at-risk youth from the surrounding area.

“The loss of space to teach farming is what the issue is,” Youtt says. “Without that, we’re going to have a void. It’s tragic in light of what’s happening simultaneously.”

The Hayes Valley Farm, at Fell and Octavia streets, is also on its way to being cleared to make way for housing, an outcome that was anticipated from the start of the project. Another urban agriculture project on Gough and Eddy, called the Free Farm, also has to vacate by the end of the year, when a development project goes up on that lot.

For years, the produce grown at Esperanza and Free Farm has supplied the nutritious bounty that is freely distributed every Sunday at a Mission intersection via the Free Farm Stand. An urban farmer, who goes simply by Tree, spearheaded the all-volunteer project in 2008. “We wanted to make sure that low-income people have access to fresh, locally grown produce,” Tree explained when reached by phone. “Everywhere I look in the Mission, there’s new restaurants. But wherever there’s affluence, there’s always people thrown in the cracks.”

The loss of a sliver of urban farms is just one change that could dramatically transform that Mission District parcel, located on Bryant between 18th and 19th streets. The Esperanza garden plot is sandwiched up against an arts venue called Inner Mission, which has been hosting events like circus and burlesque shows and aerial arts performances in its recently renovated space since January. Inner Mission is located in the same building that previously housed CELLspace (“CELL” stood for Collective Exploratory Learning Lab), a famed underground San Francisco arts collective launched in the 1990s.

An online “obituary” penned for CELLspace by caretaker Devin Holt offered a glimpse into what it was like in the early days: “It was 1996 in San Francisco. A time when you could still find a room in the Mission for $300, and the dotcom boom hadn’t turned empty warehouses into prime real estate. When the screen printing business moved out, the dreamers moved in. … The early years at Cell were marked by chaos and construction. Dave X was known to test his flamethrowers behind the building on Florida St., Jojo La Plume created an open craft loft in the homemade mezzanine, and the Sisterz of the Underground offered free break dancing lessons for aspiring b-girls on the main space floor.”

On March 14, the Nick Podell Company, a development firm, submitted a project review application to the San Francisco Planning Department, city records show. The developer has initiated talks about a proposal to raze the warehouse where Inner Mission operates and erect a six-story, 166-unit apartment complex in its place, with parking for 141 vehicles. The company is under contract to purchase the property, according to company representative Linsey Perlov, but it has not yet changed hands. Klein declined to discuss the sale or development proposal at this stage, saying, “I’m not at liberty to speak about it.”

A statement distributed at the “be-in” noted that a group called Mission of the Commons envisions a crowd-funding project that would raise enough funds to purchase the warehouse, though details are sketchy on how exactly this would be accomplished. “Selling off this block to a developer will deeply disable our community, displace many,” the notice reads, “and perpetuate these very issues [of gentrification] we seek to mitigate and stop.”

MISSION BUILDING IS NO PLACE FOR RADICAL ACTIVISTS

The thwack of a stick against a Google-bus piñata at the 16th Street BART station attracted considerable attention on Twitter a few weeks ago during a May 5 event billed as a Mission Anti-Gentrification Block Party. It was organized in part because a 5,200-square feet collective space run by a group of activists is facing eviction from 3265 17th Street. Sometimes called the 17 Reasons building, the property houses Thrift Town, Discount Fabrics and several other businesses at Mission and 17th streets.

The activists signed a four-year commercial lease on the space in August of 2011. Since then, they’ve been using it as a Food Not Bombs cookhouse, where volunteers prepare giant vats of food for the homeless using donated ingredients, and serve it up weekly at the 16th and Mission BART station. The Food Not Bombs collective and two other collective groups, known as In the Works and Rincon, have used the space to host political events, fix bicycles, and provide a place where penniless activists can get projects off the ground.

“The whole point was to make an accessible space,” explained Chema Hernandez Gil, who is involved with the In the Works collective. “We don’t have that in the Mission anymore.”

Now, their idealistic endeavor is quickly spiraling toward a messy legal clash. This past April, Rick Holman, a managing partner at Asher Insights Inc. whose background is in investment banking and corporate finance, purchased the property. On April 10, leaseholders received a three-day notice to quit, the first step in an eviction, charging they’d subletted the space in violation of their lease terms.

In the Works collective members told the Guardian that the building’s locks were changed and they still haven’t been issued new keys, although they are able to gain access using a keypad. They’ve hired an attorney and are exploring their legal options. They view their plight as part of a wider trend of Mission gentrification.

“Every legitimate tenant who was asked has been issued keys,” Holman said when reached by phone. He declined to answer questions about the eviction, saying, “I’m respectful of these people and their privacy.”

TIME’S ALMOST UP FOR BOOKSTORE OF 41 YEARS

On May 8, Modern Times Bookstore Collective sent out an email blast inviting supporters to a town hall meeting to address the loaded question of what their future holds.

“For 41 years, Modern Times has had its doors open to activists, educators, rabble-rousers, queers, and scholars of all stripes,” the collective members of the bookstore wrote. “We’ve maintained our position as a progressive resource, stocking thousands of titles and collections that you’d be hard-pressed to find at most bookstores: queer theory, sex/uality, disability justice, well-curated and left-leaning section of libros en espanol, critical race studies, anarchy, radical retellings of US history, political economy, socialism, Raza studies, African American and Asian American history and analysis, criticisms of the Prison Industrial Complex, and global activism (just to name a few).”

There are myriad reasons why the bookstore is facing challenges, one being the declining market for print books. But there’s also been an erosion of the store’s membership and customer base; so many of the former shoppers have been priced out.

Collective member Lex Non Scripta described the collective’s community as “politically radical, rabble-rousing activists, artists, and a variety of just total weirdos.” But a lot of them “just can’t afford to be in San Francisco anymore,” they went on, singing a familiar tune. “There’s just been a huge shift over to the East Bay.”

On May 16, the bookstore held a town hall meeting with supporters to hash out possible future scenarios. “We don’t want to close. We’re all very attached to it,” they said. But at the same time, “we want a more sustainable model, and it’s hard to figure out what it looks like for books.”

The future of Modern Times remains unclear, and Non Scripta chalked it up to this: “Capitalism and community don’t really mix well.”

No need to drop names: Freak City is the Internet’s IRL cultural center

Andrew Lam

May 21, 2013

No need to drop names: Freak City is the Internet’s IRL cultural center

STREET SEEN I like LA because outfits don’t have to be as functional. In San Francisco, you’re always worrying about whether you’ll flash someone disembarking from your single-speed, about what exactly is going to happen to those white platform sandals inside the Montgomery Street BART station. Oh lord, sandals in San Francisco?

In Los Angeles, you can wear whatever the hell you want. After all (just to be SF-bitchy about it), they don’t dance down there, they certainly don’t walk, and you probably won’t broach the waterline at the beach, so the gold braid on your swimsuit? Appropriate, necessary. (Just take it off when you go in the pool.) In Los Angeles, you are allowed to dress like you are at the white-hot center of the hip universe, free of earthly fetters. Buy the dress in midriff.

And in this year of 2013 AD, Freak City is the place to shop for one’s interstellar journey.

Freak City hosts Rye Rye concerts. Also, it’s a clothing store.

If you can find it. This is not a store that deals much with walk-in traffic. Located in a dilapidated old department store on Hollywood Boulevard amid stripper stores and concrete stars, a few blocks from a combination health food store-spa where one can buy raw juice and a B12 injection in a single high-powered errand, Freak City encourages the art of the shopping appointment.

After spotting the Day-Glo-tagged interiors in the latest Gucci Mane-Wiz Khalifa spot directed by Video God, we were thrilled to bits when FC co-owner Justin Time responded in the affirmative to our Sunday morning voicemail pleas.

Soon enough, he was leading us past FC’s Internet-famous club space to the chainlink fence that marked the start of the retail area.

“I think that was in a Miley video.”

Full-length fleece hoodie dresses, digital garden wear, frenetic usage of charm bracelet motif. These are the markings of LA Rap!, the in-house Freak City brand designed by Time’s co-owner and partner-in-crime Vally Girl. She sits at the cash register answering our questions politely in front of a short white mock turtleneck dress bedazzled by a hundred plastic toys hanging on the chain-link. She tells us Queen Cyrus picked it up for a video not too long ago.

You get used to those throwaway references to pop culture domination here — the marijuana leaf lab coat you’re crusing on the LA Rap! website is shown modeled by Lady Tragik, sitting on a car hood with a “GURL” beanie-wearing Kreayshawn. The list of in-house performers in the Freak City club is long: Rye Rye, Mykki Blanco, Peaches, M.I.A.

Vally has styled Nicki Minaj on tour. Diplo told Mix Mag back in 2011 that the ramshackle department store, retrofitted with troll doll-decorated fitting rooms and terrifying mannequins that loom over us on our Sunday afternoon visit, was his favorite club in the world.

Freak City is a cultural center for the Internet generation — check the ski masks emblazoned with the arcing wi-fi symbol above the eyesockets that, retailing at $100 a pop, probably show up in more Tumblr feeds than closets.

Things I cruised at Freak City: a lime green, tightly-knit shirt with strips of mesh an inch wide down the center, side seams, and breastbone. A deadstock purple ‘90s swimsuit, again with mesh where mesh should not be, and duh gold braid. I bought some cross-strap white platform sandals, which have against the odds insinuated themselves in my San Francisco wardrobe.

Later, I hit up Vally Girl YEP ON THE INTERNET to figure out how hype that hot comes about.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Tell me how Freak City got started.

Vally Girl It all started when this lil’ school girl met this street boy … fast-forward three years — after living in Hollyhood, playing warehouse shows, throwing underground parties, making artwork and creating a line — to Justin convincing me to go in on a commercial space in East Hollywood off Melrose, which was found accidentally and was offered to us with no credit check due to the poor economy and we set up shop.

We threw a few events there and the space served as our store, gallery, and music studio.

Our psycho neighbor next door hated us for rehearsing for our shows, for beatboxing, rapping, and playing our 808. He “hated hip hop.” How Freak City actually got it’s name is pretty random … Justin wanted to do a party with his friend, and had doodled the logo “Freak City” (which was one of the first of our logos) on a Post-It note that I had seen. At the time we were calling our space the Lipstick Gallery, but when I saw the Post-It note, a light bulb went on, and I announced to everyone, “why don’t we call this place Freak City?” We all agreed and ran with it.

SFBG What was in your building before you guys? It’s so creepy.

VG This is the third location that we’ve been in, which is also the creepiest. This place was an old department store-fashion graveyard. It was full of old merchandise, alien-like mannequins, men’s ’90s fancy suits and silk shirts, Calvin Klein fixtures, cross-colors displays, tons of Timberlands, and really, really baggy Phat Farm jeans and Ralph Lauren ads. There was also a bunch of tacky club girl and quinceanera dresses.

SFBG Had you two collaborated on past projects?

VG Our first collaboration was music, our bedroom band The Keyishe. We also worked on art together and painted a few murals. One was with Raven Simone for an orphanage. Then we started the clothing line LA Rap! We also started working on music videos together, music production, set design, and art direction.

SFBG Describe the Freak City aesthetic. What artists or brands do you see as part of the same school of style?

VG Freak City is Ghetto Tech Hood Couture, bridging the past, present, and future of the underground. There are freaks all around the world, no need to drop names 🙂

SFBG Please tell me about shooting the Gucci Mane video in the Freak City space.

VG Naked video vixens, a lot of body paint, Ferraris, black lights, and blunts … It was fun, Gucci showed us a lot of love. He was freestyling over some Freak City beats and chilling with his posse. Even his girl copped some custom pieces from the shop. The director Video God is the homie, so it was all love that night.

SFBG What other kinds of events have you used the space for?

VG We hosted a Fader magazine party with Lil B, had Peaches perform here, Egyptian Lover live, Limelight movie screening, tons of other underground nights, and some baller birthday parties.

SFBG Who would you want to dress who you haven’t yet?

VG I’d actually like to design some pieces for Bjork.

Freak City 6363 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles. freakcity.la. To schedule a shopping appointment email freakcityla@gmail.com

New BART director wants to raise fares in San Francisco and end “A” Fast Pass

Sasha Cuttler

May 21, 2013

Are BART passengers in San Francisco being subsidized by Muni riders and by BART customers from the suburbs? Or is it the other way around? And does it really matter, or should we just be thankful that people are choosing BART over clogging the roadways in this transit-first city?

These are some of the questions arising from an aggressive effort by the newest, youngest member of the BART Board of Directors, Zakhary Mallett, who has proposed severing BART’s partnership with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority to end their joint “A” Fast Pass program that allows unlimited rides on both systems for $74 per month.

And after he’s done with that, Mallett says he’ll take aim at the BART fare structure that charges $1.75 for rides of six miles or less, saying that San Francisco residents shouldn’t be able to access BART’s relatively luxurious trains for less than the $2 it costs to catch a Muni bus.

These are arguments that the 25-year-old Mallet started making last year when he successfully ran against longtime Director Lynette Sweet of San Francisco, with the El Sobrante resident snatching the District 7 seat that represents slivers of San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties.

Mallett, who has a master’s degree in city planning from UC Berkeley, claims his stand is about “fairer fares” and ending “cross subsidies” among various transit riders. But BART President Tom Radulovich — the Livable City executive director who has represented San Francisco on the board for more than 16 years — said his new colleague is simply wrong in his assessment, and that’s he’s pushing it in inappropriate ways.

“I think the Fast Pass works,” Radulovich told us. “I’d love to see us go in the opposite direction [that Mallett is proposing], with more passes for more parts of the system.”

Mallett’s basic argument concerns the difference between the “M” Fast Pass, which allows unlimited rides on Muni for $64 per month, and the “A” Fast Pass, which lets riders also use BART for an extra $10 per month. SFMTA pays BART $1.02 for each of those rides, so Mallett believes that riders who take more than 10 trips per month on BART are being subsidized by other Muni riders. Nevermind the fact that the reason people buy Fast Passes is precisely because they are a bargain for heavy users of the transit system.

“My ultimate goal is equity in fares,” Mallett told us. “My concern is certainly subsidies. I’m guessing that there are subsidies.”

Yet Radulovich said that some simple, back-of-the-envelope math shows that Mallett is wrong, as he believes the more detailed fare study now underway will also show. Radulovich said that given Muni fare-box recovery rates of less than 25 percent, it would cost the agency more than $4 to pay for the trips it is paying BART just over $1 to provide.

“If [Fast Pass A] didn’t exist, Muni would need to pull buses off of other lines and put them on the BART lines,” Radulovich said. “What I told Muni is that if BART carried all your passengers, you’d make money. So that argument [being made by Mallet] is really absurd to me.”

Plus, there’s the simple fact that all transit is subsidized by taxpayers because of the public good it does, both as a direct service and as a diversion for people who might otherwise add congestion to the roadways. So we asked Mallett: What’s the harm? Isn’t it good that people are using public transit?

Mallett responded that, “The harm is who is paying for the subsidies, and it is other transit riders.” In fact, he even makes the racial argument that African-American Muni riders from Bayview shouldn’t be subsidizing white BART riders from Glen Park.

Yet for all his concern about fare equity, Mallet seems to have tried to avoid doing the federal Title VI analysis that would look at whether low-income individuals and certain ethnic or geographic groups of citizens are being hurt by changes in the fare structure.

In late February, Mallett began contacting officials with the Federal Transportation Administration with a series of phone calls and emails to get information and debate the issue, and that written correspondance was obtained by the Bay Guardian.

“BART needs a way out of this agreement and the agreement stipulates that its way out is to provide a ninety (90) day notice, period. But depending on how Title VI requirements are interpreted, it can greatly hinder our ability to impose a termination of this agreement,” Mallett wrote to Jonathan Ocana of the FTA’s Office of Civil Rights in a March 5 email, apparently following up on their phone conversation.

Mallett tells the Guardian that he wasn’t trying to avoid a Title VI analysis, only to clarify which agency was required to perform it and to let BART move forward with termination if the SFMTA drags its feet on the study. But he also did seem to make arguments that such a study shouldn’t be required.

“I want to point out that, should this agreement be terminated, the ‘value’ of the FastPass is only impacted in that it would no longer work on BART. That is, the price of the FastPass would remain the same and could still be used on SFMTA/MUNI services at that same price. The only change is that the convenience of using it on a third party’s service (i.e., BART’s service) would be discontinued,” Mallett wrote.

Marci Malaster, deputy director of the FTA’s Office of Civil Rights, didn’t agree with Mallett’s analysis, as she told him in a March 14 email: “Once a transit rider enters the BART system, he/she is a BART fare-paying customer, regardless of the fare media used. From the passenger’s perspective, a fare media currently available for use on BART (the Muni Adult “A” FastPass) would no longer be available for use on BART. Since this effectively results in a fare increase, BART would need to conduct a fare equity analysis to determine whether elimination of this fare media would result in a disparate impact. In addition to Title VI concerns, Federal transit law requires a public participation process when a fare is increased.”

That seems clear enough, but Mallett didn’t let it go, responding to Malaster by writing, “the mixed messages I have received in my discussions with FTA staff prior to receiving the below response from you makes this determination somewhat suspect in my mind. Among other things I suspect is that my arguments/viewpoints that I articulated to Mr. Ocana telephonically were not properly relayed for your consideration. I requested that he allow me to speak to whomever the decision maker is and that request was never granted.”

BART General Manager Grace Crunican was apparently not pleased with Mallett for the tenor and content of his communications with FTA staff, particularly after BART got in trouble with the agency last year for avoiding Title VI analysis on its Oakland Airport connection.

She became aware of the correspondance when Mallett CCed her on one of his emails — which he apparently forget about, writing to her on March 19 that “I am not sure where or from whom you received information about my communications” — and when she was contacted by the FTA with concerns about what BART was up to.

“A plain reading of your inquiry could easily lead the FTA to conclude that BART was looking for a way to avoid doing a Title VI analysis in its haste to terminate the FastPass Agreement with SFMTA. Furthermore, you called into question the integrity of FTA staff in your correspondence. My letter to the FTA was intended to clearly express to them BART’s intent to comply with whatever determination is made by the FTA and to nip in the bud any impression that we were less than committed to Title VI compliance,” Crunican wrote to Mallett in March 20 email. “I acted because the issue seemed to be escalating quickly, involving both the S.F. and D.C. offices of the FTA. As you must be aware, the FTA is critical to our success and we are in repair mode following past Title VI issues. We work very hard to maintain a good relationship with the FTA and anything that appears to be inconsistent coming from the District could be damaging to maintaining that relationship.”

But Mallett told the Guardian that his comments have been misinterpreted. “It is incorrect that I don’t want to do that analysis,” Mallett said, maintaining that it was simply a question of who does the analysis. “I was confused who does what. I understand now that BART and SFMTA have to work together.”

Yet he’s showing no signs of backing off of pushing for San Francisco BART riders to pay higher fares. Mallett made a detailed argument on his campaign website that San Francisco BART riders are being subsidized by other BART and Muni riders. He is hoping the current fare study supports raising fares on short BART trips in San Francisco.

“I’m of the opinion it is an inefficiently low price. You get more for less, that’s why it’s an inefficient fare,” Mallett told us of BART being cheaper than Muni in San Francisco. “My goal is to efficiently price transportation.”

But Radulovich said that since BART’s inception, the heavy ridership in the system’s core has helped hold down fares for longer trips, which use more energy and staff time and create more wear-and-tear on the system, necessarily making them significantly more expensive than the average San Francisco trip.

“He’s making the opposite argument and it’s not substantiated in my mind,” Radulovich said. “The heavy usage in San Francisco subsidizes the rest of the system.”

Beyond just this issue, Radulovich said he’s bothered by the larger neoliberal ideology that Mallett is representing, which treats transit as a commodity that should use pricing to achieve maximum efficiency, rather than a vital public service that should be available to all income brackets in roughly equal measure, which is the progressive position.

“There is a danger of this neoliberal argument that ignores equity,” Radulovich said of Mallett’s focus on fare efficiency, particularly as it tries to privilege BART use over Muni. “People who are relatively rich will stay on BART and there’s something unsettling about that. Let’s push the poor people onto the bus.”

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said the agency is currently working on renewing its FastPass agreement with SFMTA and that they are pleased with the arrangement: “We are working with SFMTA to get a new agreement pass and that’s separate from what Director Mallett has said publicly,” she said. “It helps comply with the city’s transit-first policies and we’re supportive of that intent.”

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us the new Fast Pass agreement woud increase what SFMTA pays for each BART ride from $1.02 now up to $1.19 in the new agreement, but other than that, “We don’t have any specific plans to make any changes.”

Radulovich said BART has come a long way from its early days, that were characterized by the mantra “the rich ride, the poor pay,” because San Francisco and Oakland paid a disproportionate amount of money to become accessible by white people in the suburbans of Contra Costa and San Mateo counties.

“For the first time in our history, we’re really looking at these equity issues,” Radulovich said, a study that Mallett said he also supports and looks forward to reviewing. But when that involves pitting transit riders against one another, Radulovich said, “We send the wrong message to people who want to use transit.”

The zero-sum future

May 8, 2013

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s going to take longer, sometimes, to get from here to there. Acres of urban space are going to have to change form. Grocery shopping will be different. Streets may have to be torn up and redirected. The rules for the development of as many as 100,000 new housing units in San Francisco will have to be rewritten.

That’s the only way this city — and cities across the country — can meet the climate-change goals that just about everyone agrees are necessary.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, lays out that case in a new book. He argues, persuasively, that the era of easy “automobility” — a time when people could just assume the ease and convenience of owning and using a private car as a primary means of transportation — has come to an end.

Henderson isn’t suggesting that all private vehicles go away; there are places where cars and trucks will remain the only way to move people and supplies around. But in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans live, the automobile as the default option simply has to end.

“In 10 years, there will be less automobility,” he told me in a recent interview. “It’s a simple limit to resources.”

And the sooner San Francisco starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.

BIG NUMBERS

Henderson’s book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco, focuses largely on the Bay Area. But as he points out, the lessons apply all over. The numbers are daunting: Cities, Henderson reports, “use 75 percent of the world’s energy and produce 78 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.” He adds: “Transportation is the fastest growing sector of energy use and [greenhouse gas] emissions, and this fact is in great measure owing to the expansion of automobility.”

And the United States is the biggest culprit. This nation has 4 percent of the world’s population — and 21 percent of the world’s cars.

To turn around the devastating impacts of climate change, “America will need not only to provide leadership, but also to decrease its appetite for excessive, on demand, high-speed automobility.”

And buying a lot of Priuses, or even electric cars, isn’t going to do the job. “Americans must undertake a considerable restructuring of how they organize cities, and that must include the rethinking of mobility and the allocation of street space.”

The Bay Area is about to enter into a long-term planning cycle that, according to groups like the Association of Bay Area Governments, will involve increased urban density. ABAG, according to its most recent projections, would like to see some 90,000 new housing units in San Francisco.

That’s got plenty of problems — particularly the likelihood of the displacement of existing residents. Henderson agrees that more density is going to be needed in the Bay Area — but he’s surprisingly bullish on the much-denigrated suburb.

“It’s actually quick and easy to retrofit suburbia,” he told me.

And like so much of what he discusses in his book, the primary solution is the old, venerable, human-powered contraption known as the bicycle.

“Existing communities like Walnut Creek are eminently bikeable,” Henderson told me. He suggests expanding development in three-mile circles around BART stations — after getting rid of all the parking. “We could easily get 20 to 30 percent of the trips by bike,” he noted.

In fact, he argues, it’s easier to put bicycle lanes and paths in the suburbs than in San Francisco. The streets tend to be wider, there’s more room in general — and it’s fairly simple to provide barriers from cars that make biking safe for everyone.

In fact, a lot of European cities are less dense than San Francisco — and have far fewer drivers. Even in California, the city of Davis is famous for its bike culture; “In Davis,” Henderson said, “There are all these children riding their bikes to school.”

ACRES OF PARKING

One of the most profound changes San Francisco is going to have to make involves coming to terms with the immense amount of scarce space that’s devoted to cars. Parking spaces may not seem that big — but when you combine the 300-square-foot typical space (larger than many bedrooms and offices) with the space needed for getting into and out of that space, it adds up.

“Parking for 130 cars amounts to about an acre, and the aggregate of all non-residential off-street parking is estimated to be equal in area to several New England states.”

Cars need more than a home parking space — they need someplace to park when they’re used. So in a city like San Francisco that has more than 350,000 cars, a vast amount of urban land must be devoted to parking. In fact, Henderson estimates that parking space in San Francisco amounts to about 79.4 million square feet — or about 79,400 two-bedroom apartments. Off-street parking alone takes up space that could house 67,000 two-bedroom units.

And it’s hella expensive. Building parking adds as much as 20 percent to the cost of a housing unit. He cites studies showing that 20 percent more San Franciscans could afford to buy a condo unit if it didn’t include parking.

But the city still mandates off-street parking for all new residential construction — and while activists have managed to get the amount reduced from a minimum of one parking space per unit to a maximum of around eight spaces per 10 units, that’s still a whole lot of parking.

And if San Francisco is expected to absorb 90,000 more housing units, under current rules that’s 72,000 more cars — which means a demand for 72,000 more parking spaces near offices, shopping districts, and parks. Crazy.

So how do you get Americans, even San Franciscans, to give up what Henderson calls the “sense of entitlement that we can speed across town in a private car?” Some of it requires the classic planning measures of discouraging or banning parking in new development (AT&T Park works quite well as a facility that is primarily accessed by foot and transit). Some of it means putting in the resources to improve public transit.

And a lot of it involves shifting transportation modes to walking and bicycles.

San Francisco has had significant success increasing the use of bikes in the past few years. But there are limits to what you can do by tinkering around the edges, with a few more bike lanes here and there.

There are, for example, the hills. And there’s grocery shopping for a family. Those things need bigger shifts in the use of urban space.

San Francisco’s street grid, for example, sends travelers straight up some nearly impossible inclines. Young, healthy people in great physical condition can ride bikes up those hills, but children and older people simply can’t.

Henderson suggests that the city could install lifts in some areas, but there’s another, more radical (but less energy-intensive) solution: Reroute the grid.

If city streets wound around the sides of hills, instead of heading straight up, walking and biking would be far easier. That would involve major changes, particularly since there’s housing in the way of any real route changes — but in the long term, that sort of concept should, at least, be on the table.

Bikes with cargo trailers make a lot of sense for shopping, Henderson told me — and once big supermarkets get rid of all that parking, the price of food will come down.

THE POLITICS OF NEO-LIBERALS

The biggest challenge, though — and the heart of Henderson’s book — is political. Transportation, he argues, is inherently ideological: “It matters how you get from here to there.” And he notes that progressives, who are willing to think about social responsibility, not just individual rights, see the choices very differently than the neo-liberals, who in this city are often called “moderates.” If the neo-libs have their way, he says, the changes will be too little, too late, and mostly ineffective.

Because Americans are facing a series of choices — and there are no solutions that preserve the old way of life without sacrificing the future of the planet. It’s entirely a zero-sum game: We can slow global climate change, or we can keep driving cars. (Oh, and electric cars — which still require large amounts of power, mostly from fossil-fuel plants — aren’t going to solve the problem any time soon.)

We can shift to bicycles and transit as our primary ways to get around, or we can leave our kids an ecological disaster of unprecedented scope. We can overhaul the entire way we think about urban planning — to make streets friendly to bikes and buses — or we can go down a deadly path of no return.

We can accept the fact that moving around cities may be a little slower, particularly while we adapt. Or we can join the climate-change deniers. “There are a lot of neo-liberals out there who say we can’t start controlling automobility until we have a gold-plated transit system,” Henderson told me. “But this is not a chicken and egg problem. First you have to create the urban space. Then you can build a better system.”

Music listings

Andrew Lam

May 7, 2013

Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Andy Cabic and Eric D. Johnson Band, Neal Casal, Bart Davenport Chapel. 9pm, $17.

Michael Barrett Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Born Ruffians, Moon Kings Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

Great American Cities, Kallisto, DJ Creepy B Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Michael C. vs. Rags Tuttle.

Laura Stevenson Band, Field Mouse, Haunted Summer Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Low Magic, Yellow Dress, Jaberi and Deutsch Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Tom Odell, Cillie Barnes Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Joshua Radin, My Name is You Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $41.

Teddy Riley and Blackstreet featuring Dave Hollister Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10pm, $39.

Two-Tone Steiny and the Cadillacs Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn Independent. 8pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Big Bones Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Edward Schocker Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF; www.meridiangallery.org. 7:30pm, $8-10.

Sophisticated Ladies Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Daniel Seidel Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Curt Yagi and the People Standing Behind Me, Katie Garibaldi, Salet, Lauren Sturm Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Debut DNA Lounge. 8pm, $5 suggested donation. SFEIC students showcase their work in a hair and make-up show, with DJ C-Lektra.

Timba Dance Party Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Timba and salsa Cubana with DJ Walt Diggz.

THURSDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Allah-Las, Blank Tapes Chapel. 9pm, $17.

Chrysta Bell, Emily Jane White Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $20.

Brasil Couches, Old & Gray Amnesia. 9pm.

Cloud Cult, JBM Independent. 8pm, $17.

Paula Cole Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $32.

"An Evening with Chris Thile and Michael Daves" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $19.

French Cassettes, Ash Reiter, yOya, Annie Girl and the Flight Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Glitter Wizard, Carlton Melton, Joy Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Gunshy Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Nathan Temby vs. Michael C.

Machine Gun Kelly Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Rolando Morales Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Picture Atlantic, Little Daylight, Finish Ticket Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $10. Plus Popscene DJs.

Spanish Moss, Feeding People, Holy Wave, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

That1Guy, Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club Café Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Zodiac Death Valley, Leopold and His Fiction, Sporting Life, Rusty Maples, DJ Neil Martinson Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Haesemeyer Lost Church, 65 Capp, SF; www.thelostchurch.com. 8pm, $15.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-15. Six-year anniversary celebration with hosts Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus the Afrolicious 12-piece band, DJ Smash, J Boogie, and Captain Planet.

DAMSF DNA Lounge. 10:30pm, $10-20. Hip-hop performance showcase.

DJ Kaos, Mozhgan, Jason Greer Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; monarchsf.ticketfly.com. 10pm, $10.

8bitSF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $11. Chiptunes with DJ Cutman, A_Rival, E.N. Cowell, and more.

Pa’lante! Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Electro-cumbia, dancehall, and soca with DJs Juan G., El Kool Kyle, and Mr. Lucky.

FRIDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Tjutjuna, 3 Leafs Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

B.A.P. (Best.Absolute.Perfect.) Warfield. 7:30pm, $40-100.

Body and Soul Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Chris Duarte Group Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Dead Winter Carpenters, Cody Canada and the Departed Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Justin Townes Earle Chapel. 9pm, $20-25.

Greyboy Allstars Independent. 9pm, $25.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Greg Zema, Nathan Temby, and Michael C.

Pokey LaFarge, West Coast Ramblers Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13-15.

Of Montreal, Wild Moccasins Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

Paul Collins Beat, Courtney and the Crushers, the Cry Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Lydia Pense and Cold Blood featuring Rick Stevens Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $19-26.

Secret Chiefs 3 Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

Technicolors, Fictionist DNA Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Thrive!, Dewey and the Peoples, Sono Vero, Da Mainland Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Tomihara, Fox and the Law, Tokyo Raid Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Mike Burns Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Regina Carter, John Blake, Jr. SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $20-40.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Big Lion, Rich McCulley Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Underskore Orchestra, Sour Mash Hug Band Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-15. Six-year anniversary celebration with hosts Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus the Afrolicious 12-piece band and DJ Smash.

DJ What’s His Fuck Pop’s Bar, 2800 24th St, SF; (415) 401-7677. 9pm, free. Old-school punk and metal.

Indie Slash Amnesia. 10pm. With DJ Danny White.

Kitsune Club Night Mezzanine. 9pm, $17. With Fred Falke, Chrome Sparks, and Beni.

Makossa West Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Classic salsa, funk, Afrobeat, reggae, and more with DJs Wonway Posibul and Joe Quixx.

That 90s Dance Party DNA Lounge. 10pm, $7-9. With DJs Devon, Netik, Sage, Starr, and Myster C.

TBMA, Syd Gris, DJ Icon, Ultraviolet Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; monarchsf.ticketfly.com. 10pm, $10.

SATURDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Blu Soul Revue Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Blame Sally, Lia Rose Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26-31.

Jay Brannan, Rin Tin Tiger, Plastic Arts Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Bright Grey Wing, Rebecca Pronsky, Eight Belles Amnesia. 6:30pm, $7.

Fonseca Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $38.

Greyboy Allstars Independent. 9pm, $25.

Hanalei, Divided Heaven, Rob Carter, Keeley Valentino Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Michael C., Greg Zema, and Nathan Temby.

K’Jon Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24-28.

Kids on a Crime Spree, Number One Smash Hits, Manatee Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Man or Astro-Man?, Terry Malts, Ogres Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $18.

Meat Sluts, Thee Merry Widows, Dirty Shakers Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Kate Nash Chapel. 9pm, $18-20.

Rose Windows, Extra Classic, Zig Zags Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Rustangs Riptide. 9:30pm, free.

Secret Chiefs 3 Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

"Slim’s Goes British: Revue #3" Slim’s. 8:30pm, $15. With RaveUps, Blondies, Haunted by Heroes, and Whitecliff Rangers with special guest Girl Named T. 8:30pm, $15.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

2 Men Will Move You Amnesia. 9pm.

Wild Rumpus Salle Pianos, 1632 C Market, SF; www.wildrumpusmusic.org. 8pm, $15-25.

Wolf + Lamb, Soul Clap, Pillowtalk, Nick Monaco Mezzanine. 9pm, $10-20.

X-Static Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Regina Carter SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 11am (family matinee), $5-15, and 7:30pm, $25-60.

Cottontails Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Flux Pavilion, Cookie Monsta, Funtcase, Brown and Gammon, Roksonix Warfield. 9pm, $42.

Fogo Na Roupa, DJs Ras Rican, Sake One, and Epic, live percusion by Quique Padilla Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Fundraiser for Mission Girls Violence Prevention Program.

Lovebirds Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Mision Flamenca Bissip Baobab. 7:30pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Mash-ups with A Plus D and others.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. Queer dance party with DJs Nuxx and Zax.

Dark Days Eagle. 3-6pm. Lady Bear and her Dark Dolls host this beer bust (tickets benefit the AIDS Emergency Fund) with beats from DJ Le Perv and guests.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. With resident DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro11, and guest DJ Quality.

SUNDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Karina Denike and friends Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Hydrophonic, My Victim, Bad Bones Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Jamaican Queens, Maus Haus, Black Jeans Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $7.

Merchants of Moonshine, DJ Quarterman Jack Champion Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Max Gomez Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $23.

Dave Moreno and friends Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Rotten Sound, Early Graves, Hellbeard, Aurgurs, Parasitic Explosion DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $16.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Regina Carter and Carolina Chocolate Drops SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3 and 7pm, $25-50.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Lavay Smith Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brazil and Beyond Bissip Baobab. 6:30pm, free.

Hipwaders Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; www.thecjm.org. Sun, 11am. $10-12 (kids under 18 free).

Junior Brown Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $25.

Darcy Noonan, Richard Mandel, Jack Gilder, and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Thee Old Country Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 4pm, free.

MONDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damir Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Highlands, Orange Revival Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Yngwie Malmsteen Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

Collin Ludlow-Mattson and the Folks, Casual Dolphins, Air Surgeon, Catharsis for Cathedral Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Milk Carton Kids, Barefoot Movement Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17-19.

Sweat Lodge, Photo Atlas, Father President Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm, free.

"The Pick: Open Bluegrass Jam" Amnesia. 6pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

TUESDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Buffalo Tooth, Joy, A Million Billion Dying Sons, Disappearing People, DJ Dahmer Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $9.

Go Time, pseudotunesmith, Reliics Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

IAMX, Moto Boy Slim’s. 8pm, $20.

John Garcia Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Kisses, Sister Crayon, Astronauts etc. Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-12.

Laurels, Moonbeams, Fleeting Joys Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Pow, Cold Beat, Cold Circuits, Daisy World, DJ Ack Ack Ack Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Stan Earhart Band Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Steve Adamyk Band, Needles // Pins, Primitive Hearts, Adam Widener Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Frisky Frolics Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

"sfSoundSalonSeries: Xenoglossia/Leishmania (Christopher Burns and Bill Hsu)" Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; www.centerfornewmusic.com. 7:49pm, $10.

Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.
DANCE CLUBS
’90s Hip-Hop Sample Night Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free. With Mr. Murdock and DJ Haylow.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

May 7, 2013

EDITORS NOTES It’s a good thing the Giants were at home Friday night, or I might have tried to drive across the Bay Bridge. Always a bad idea after work, always a worse idea on a Friday, when the backup starts somewhere around SF General Hospital. I spent almost two hours getting past Berkeley one Friday when I thought we could leave at 3:30 and beat the traffic. When the Giants are in town, it’s impossible.

It’s so crowded nobody drives there any more. Or something like that. I didn’t.

Instead, I got on my bike and rode to BART, took the Richmond train to North Berkeley, and rode a few blocks to a birthday party on University Avenue. Cost $7.70, I think, for the round trip. Took less than an hour each way, including biking home up Bernal Hill. The late train back was party central, with the bridge and tunnel crowd all decked out in club finery and a woman singing full-volume along with her phone.

“How was I?” she asked me. “Ready for American Idol,” I said.

I could have been stuck in traffic.

This is how life is going to have to be in the future, and it’s not a bad picture. One of the main reasons I like riding my bike in San Francisco, and I hate driving, is that I know exactly how long it’s going to take me to get somewhere on two wheels. On four, it could be 15 minutes, or it could be an hour.

The thing is, we’re so used to the idea that cars are the fastest way to get around — and in some places, sometimes they are. If we fixed up the city the way we should (which would mean changing not only the lane patterns but the directions of some streets) cars would almost always be the worst and slowest way to go most places.

Either way, in this Bike to Work Day issue, were explore the idea that speeding around town at 30 miles an hour in your personal can isn’t a natural right of all people. In fact, Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco state who I interviewed argues that the most environmentally sound thing we can do in urban areas might be to … slow down.

Hard to imagine, that. This city runs on speed: Tech speed, work speed, party speed, frenetic speed … I can’t imagine not being in a serious rush for a large part of my day. It’s nice, sometimes, to think about the alternative.

The warriors arena: How are you going to get there?

Zelda Bronstein

May 6, 2013

The warriors arena: How are you going to get there?

The Warriors and the all-star lineup of nearly every political consultant in town launched a new public relations offensive this week with the release of a new, spiffy set of drawings and a rewritten plan for a waterfront arena. And opponents of the project pretty much shrugged and said: So, what?

Sure, it looks nicer than it did before. Sure, there’s a pedestrian walkway around the arena. Yeah, there’s glass on the inside that will give spectators a nice view of the Bay. Oh, and there’s room for a cruise ship terminal, to give the whole thing a veneer of maritime use.

But the problems with this project have never been the architecture of the 12-story structure or the inevitably dubious links to the water. “The design was never the point,” Randy Shandobil, a spokesman for the Waterfront Alliance, told us. “Is this the best place to put a big arena?”

The new plan calls for a slightly smaller arena — 125 feet high instead of 135 — with slightly less retail space and seating inside. The glass sides will not only allow fans to look out, but allow people walking around the outside to view in and see something going on inside. The scoreboard will probably be visible; the actually play on the floor less so.

The visuals presented by the architects, Snøhetta and AECOM, indicate that the arena will perch on a large pad raised significantly above the level of the current Piers 30-32. From the ground level, the arena looks like a giant flying saucer, taller than AT&T Park, that’s plopped down below the Bay Bridge.

Craig Dykers, a representative of the architects, told a Board of Supervisors committee May 6 that the arena will fill a need for some sort of project along the open stretch of waterfront from the Ferry Building to AT&T Park. His presentation made it sound as if that undeveloped area was by nature a blight; thousands of joggers, walkers, bicyclists and people enjoying the unimpeded views of the Bay might disagree.

In fact, the project will change more than the two piers; it will create a busy residential and commercial shopping district that will increase foot and vehicle traffic even when there are no games or concerts scheduled.

This is, by any standard, a very different project from what the Warriors first proposed back in November, 2012. That’s why the Waterfront Alliance is asking that the scoping sessions for the environmental impact report on the project ought to go back to square one.

No matter what you think about the design, or the views, or the impact on the city’s priceless waterfront, there’s a problem that’s glaringly obvious, and Sup. Scott Wiener made the point very clearly:

This absolutely has to be a transit-first arena. There’s no way that part of the city can handle even half of the 5,000 cars that have been counted at the Warrior’s current home, Oracle Arena in Oakland. And much of that impact is going to fall on the subway, or light-rail vehicle system.

“It absolutely has to have good LRV service,” Wiener said.

The problem: “Our current system is not even meeting our current needs. I have a lot of constituents who say, when there’s a Giants game you just don’t take the subway because there’s not going to be any capacity. We’re close to a breaking point now, even past it. and our ten-year capital plan puts to the side most of Muni’s unmet capital needs.”

Jennifer Matz, the Mayor’s Office point person on waterfront development, said she agreed with Wiener. “I recognize this challenge,” she said. “There needs to be more of a holistic approach.”

But Wiener wasn’t backing down. Adding the capacity that will be needed to serve the new arena, and the new Giants development, and the new residents moving into the waterfront neighborhood, is not going to be cheap. “Where,” he asked, “is the money going to come from?”

Peter Albert, who works for the Municipal Transportation Agency, is looking into the number of passengers that will be riding Muni — and BART, and Caltrain — and the capacity those systems plan to add. But he had no answer to Wiener’s question.

That’s because there is only one answer: The taxpayers will have to come up with something in the range of a billion dollars to solve Muni’s capacity problems in the next few years — or else the developers will. And right now, there’s not a lot of political will at City Hall to ask for either.

Get ready for May Day ruckus and revelry

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

April 30, 2013

May 1 marks International Workers Day, so naturally Bay Area activists are gearing up for a host of marches, rallies, and celebrations. The weather forecast predicts sunny skies with a high of 78 degrees – expect them to come out in droves. Here’s your rundown of May Day festivities.

Immigrants march in SF

Representing just about every corner of the globe, the San Francisco Bay Coalition for Immigrant Justice has organized a May Day rally to call for stronger federal immigration reform. The federal bill unveiled a couple weeks ago, which created an excessively long and complicated path to citizenship, drew criticism from local advocates. They welcomed it as an important first step toward reform but called for stronger provisions on a family-based unification program, an end to deportations, and greater protections for workers’ rights.

Expect chants in Cantonese, Spanish, Tagalog, and English. And watch for a flock of oversized cardboard monarch butterflies. According to a coalition announcement, those migratory creatures “have come to symbolize the dignity of the migrant experience.”

March begins at 24^th and Mission, SF, 3pm. Rally begins at Civic Center, 5pm.

Celebration of resistance and solidarity

After the May Day marches and rallies have come to an end, head over to the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics at 518 Valencia, in the Mission, for a celebration of international worker solidarity. Featuring a theater performance on the history of May Day by the Shaping SF Players, live screen printing, Cumbia beats, Aztec dance, protest art, sangria, and beer.

518 Valencia, SF. 3-8pm.

Screening of Dreamwork China

LaborFest, which holds a labor film festival every July to commemorate the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, will host a screening of Dreamwork China, a film portraying the lives of tech workers in Chinese factories, including workers who produce Apple products.

ILWU Local 34, 800 2nd St., SF. 7pm.

Oaklanders without borders

Across the bay, a celebration and commemoration of International Workers Day and Immigrants Rights will take place in Oakland under the banner Sin Fronteras (that’s español for “Without Borders”). The march, “to demand just policies and conditions for im/migrants and workers,” will begin at the Fruitvale BART plaza and end with a rally at Josie de la Cruz Park.

Fruitvale BART, Oakl. 3pm.

The fight for $15

East Bay organizers with the plan to throw a “May Day noise demo” to call for a livable wage of $15 an hour, following the example set by fast-food workers who recently staged strikes in New York and Chicago calling for a higher wage standard.

14^th and Broadway, Oakl. 5pm.

March on Facebook headquarters

Mark Zuckerberg, whose political group FWD.us is pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, may seem to be an unlikely target for a day so focused on immigrant rights. Nevertheless, the Facebook CEO and his group have pissed off a different segment of Bay Area activists for funding television ads featuring Keystone XL pipeline supporter Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. While not specifically billed as a May Day protest, environmentalists affiliated with Credo Action, Friends of the Earth, Idle no More, and others are planning to march on Facebook headquarters Wednesday morning.

Facebook Headquarters, 1401 Willow Rd, Menlo Park. 11:45am-1:45pm.

Free expression

April 25, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART Los Angeles painter John Millei is mostly known for muscular abstraction writ large, either because he usually applies his cerebral mark making to wall size paintings, or because he produces works in very large series.

So it’s a bit of a switch to see his suite of six new, small paintings made specifically for George Lawson’s pocket-size Tenderloin gallery. Each of the works in “Recent Paintings” is titled by a prepositional phrase that sets out various ways to begin a journey, and the titles down by the stream, past the gate, out the door, and so on refer as much to Millei trying out responses to the size of the space as framing an interpretation for the images. Whatever it is, the architectural constraint is very good for the work — these are some of Millei’s most offhand and unguarded paintings, and colors press and slide against each other with something approaching intimacy. In most of the suite, marks become indistinct from color fields presented in slim, tightly compressed layers, held together by off-balance, looping gestures.

You can’t help but think that these were lots of fun to paint.

In conversation, Millei remarked on how these new paintings were informed by a long-running dialogue with area painter Mel Davis, who coincidentally has a show, “Start Here,” up now at Eleanor Harwood Gallery. It’s probably a stretch to draw too thick a line between the two bodies of work, but knowing about the interplay between them does tease out a sort of common concern.

Davis’ work, semi-abstracted, and knowingly winking at Matisse and Gauguin — especially the way that those two painters in particular have been filtered and lensed over the last hundred years by weekend painters and amateurs — presents a slowly unfolding narrative about the difference between loving painting and trying to love painting. There’s something both subdued and lovely in these floral abstractions, especially ones like Space Between the Trees which layers flat, flesh-colored light on top of tropical blues and greens. Where Millei’s paintings use a variety of visual devices at the service of fairly direct and aggressive compositions, Davis is more ruminative about the burden of expertise, and the possibility of reclaiming a beginner’s naiveté.

John Millei, “Recent Paintings”
Extended through May 18
George Lawson Gallery
780 Sutter, SF
www.georgelawsongallery.com

Mel Davis, “Start Here”
Through April 27
Eleanor Harwood Gallery
1295 Alabama, SF
www.eleanorharwood.com

Spring means open studios in the bay, and the chance to rub elbows (and shoulders, since these things get crowded) with 1000-plus artists in their workspaces. The season kicked off with Art Explosion Open Studios last weekend in the Mission, and continues over the next several weeks throughout the area. If you’re looking to support local artists, or just check in on what ideas are being thrown around by area creatives, there’s no better way. Here’s a rundown of upcoming open studios events.

SOMANIA Open House
Fri/29, 6-10pm
Featuring 30 or so artists at six studio locations between 7th and 9th Avenues south of Civic Center BART. Participants include Arc Studios, Lizland Studio & Gallery, Dickerman Prints, the Oddists, Moss St. Studios, and Misho Gallery. www.somac-sf.org

Mission Artists United
April 20-21, noon-6pm
Approximately 130 artists at two dozen venues peppering the Mission; largest is 1890 Bryant, which houses 38 participating artists. According to the website, you’ll be able to spot open studios by looking for red dots on the sidewalks outside each, including several near the 16th St BART stop. Check the site for a map and guide. www.missionartistsunited.org

Hunters Point Open Studios
May 4-5, 11am-6pm
More than 130 artists work at this Bayview facility. You’ll need a car or the 19 bus to get there, but along the route stop at the separate Islais Creek facility to see the Hunters Point sculpture studios. www.shipyardartists.com

American Steel Studios
May 11, noon-11pm; May 12, noon-5pm
More than 40 participating artists and organizations are in this former West Oakland steel plant. An indoor-outdoor exhibition accompanies the event, which also will include guided studio tours, demonstrations, artist talks, and performances. Oh, and fire: Fire Arts Collective will perform, plus there’ll be fire sculpture and fire-breathing art cars. Check the website for updated schedule. www.americansteelstudios.com

Pro Arts Open Studios
June 1-2 and 8-9, 11am-6pm
More than 400 artists throughout the East Bay make this one of the largest open studios events of the year. Pick up a free Pro Arts guide with map and artist descriptions; you’ll need it to cover the sizable ground. www.proartsgallery.org/ebos

Indicator city

Andrew Lam

April 16, 2013

steve@sfbg.com

When biologists talk about the health of a fragile ecosystem, they often speak of an “indicator species.” That’s a critter — a fish, say, or a frog — whose health, or lack thereof, is a signal of the overall health of the system. These days, when environmentalists who think about politics as well as science look at San Francisco, they see an indicator city.

This progressive-minded place of great wealth, knowledge, and technological innovation — surrounded on three sides by steadily rising tides — could signal whether cities in the post-industrial world will meet the challenge of climate change and related problems, from loss of biodiversity to the need for sustainable energy sources.

A decade ago, San Francisco pioneered innovative waste reduction programs and set aggressive goals for reducing its planet-cooking carbon emissions. At that point, the city seemed prepared to make sacrifices and provide leadership in pursuit of sustainability.

Things changed dramatically when the recession hit and Mayor Ed Lee took office with the promise to focus almost exclusively on economic development and job creation. Today, even with the technology and office development sectors booming and employment rates among the lowest in California, the city hasn’t returned its focus to the environment.

In fact, with ambitious new efforts to intensify development along the waterfront and only lackluster support for the city’s plan to build renewable energy projects through the CleanPowerSF program, the Lee administration seems to be exacerbating the environmental challenge rather than addressing it.

According to conservative projections by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the Bay is expected to rise at least 16 inches by 2050 and 55 inches by the end of the century. BCDC maps show San Francisco International Airport and Mission Bay inundated, Treasure Island mostly underwater, and serious flooding the Financial District, the Marina, and Hunters Point.

Lee’s administration has commissioned a report showing a path to carbon reduction that involves promoting city-owned renewable energy facilities and radically reducing car trips — while the mayor seems content do the opposite.

It’s not an encouraging sign for Earth Day 2013.

HOW WE’RE DOING

Last year, the Department of the Environment hired McKinsey and Company to prepare a report titled “San Francisco’s Path to a Low-Carbon Economy.” It’s mostly finished — but you haven’t heard much about it. The department has been sitting on it for months.

Why? Some say it’s because most of the recommendations clash with the Lee administration’s priorities, although city officials say they’re just waiting while they get other reports out first. But the report notes the city is falling far short of its carbon reduction goals and “will therefore need to complement existing carbon abatement measures with a range of new and innovative approaches.”

Data presented in the report, a copy of which we’ve obtained from a confidential source, shows that building renewable energy projects through CleanPowerSF, making buildings more energy-efficient, and discouraging private automobile use through congestion pricing, variable-price parking, and building more bike lanes are the most effective tools for reducing carbon output.

But those are things that the mayor either opposes and has a poor record of supporting or putting into action. The easy, corporate-friendly things that Lee endorses, such as supporting more electric, biofuel, and hybrid vehicles, are among the least effective ways to reach the city’s goals, the report says.

“Private passenger vehicles account for two-fifths of San Francisco’s emissions. In the short term, demand-based pricing initiatives appear to be the biggest opportunity,” the report notes, adding a few lines later, “Providing alternate methods of transport, such as protected cycle lanes, can encourage them to consider alternatives to cars.”

Melanie Nutter, who heads the city’s Department of the Environment, admits that the transportation sector and expanding the city’s renewable energy portfolio through CleanPowerSF or some other program — both of which are crucial to reducing the city’s carbon footprint — are two important areas where the city needs to do a better job if it’s going to meet its environmental goals, including the target of cutting carbon emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2025.

But Nutter said that solid waste reduction programs, green building standards, and the rise of the “shareable economy” — with Internet-based companies facilitating the sharing of cars, housing, and other products and services — help San Francisco show how environmentalism can co-exist with economic development.

“San Francisco is really focused on economic development and growth, but we’ve gone beyond the old edict that you can either be sustainable or have a thriving economy,” Nutter said.

Yet there’s sparse evidence to support that statement. There’s a two-year time lag in reporting the city’s carbon emissions, meaning we don’t have good indicators since Mayor Lee pumped up economic development with tax breaks and other city policies. For example, Nutter touted how there’s more green buildings, but she didn’t have data about whether that comes close to offsetting the sheer number of new energy-consuming buildings — not to mention the increase in automobile trips and other byproducts of a booming economy.

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City and president of the BART board, told us that San Francisco seems to have been derailed by the last economic crisis, with economic insecurity and fear trumping environmental concerns.

“All our other values got tossed aside and it was all jobs, jobs, jobs. And then the crisis passed and the mantra of this [mayoral] administration is still jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said. “They put sustainability on hold until the economic crisis passed, and they still haven’t returned to sustainability.”

Radulovich reviewed the McKinsey report, which he considers well-done and worth heeding. He’s been asking the Department of the Environment for weeks why it hasn’t been released. Nutter told us her office just decided to hold the report until after its annual climate action strategy report is released during Earth Day event on April 24. And mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey told us, “There’s no hold up from the Mayor’s Office.”

Radulovich said the study highlights how much more the city should be doing. “It’s a good study, it asks all the right questions,” Radulovich said. “We’re paying lip service to these ideas, but we’re not getting any closer to sustainability.”

In fact, he said the promise that the city showed 10 years ago is gone. “Gavin [Newsom] wanted to be thought of as an environmentalist and a leader in sustainability, but I don’t think that’s important to Ed Lee,” Radulovich said.

Joshua Arce, who chairs the city’s Environmental Commission, agreed that there is a notable difference between Newsom, who regularly rolled out new environmental initiatives and goals, and Lee, who is still developing ways to promote environmentalism within his economic development push.

“Ed Lee doesn’t have traditional environmental background,” Arce said. “What is Mayor Lee’s definition of environmentalism? It’s something that creates jobs and is more embracing of economic development.”

Falvey cites the mayor’s recent move of $2 million into the GoSolar program, new electric vehicle charging stations in city garages, and his support for industries working on environmental solutions: “Mayor Lee’s CleantechSF initiative supports the growth of the already vibrant cleantech industry and cleantech jobs in San Francisco, and he has been proactive in reaching out to the City’s 211 companies that make up one of the largest and most concentrated cleantech clusters in the world.”

Yet many environmentalists say that simply waiting for corporations to save the planet won’t work, particularly given their history, profit motives, and the short term thinking of global capitalism.

“To put it bluntly, the Lee administration is bought and paid for by PG&E,” said Eric Brooks with Our City, which has worked for years to launch CleanPowerSF and ensure that it builds local renewable power capacity.

The opening of the McKinsey report makes it clear why the environmental policies of San Francisco and other big cities matter: “Around the globe, urban areas are becoming more crowded and consuming more resources per capita,” it states. “Cities are already responsible for roughly seventy percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and as economic growth becomes more concentrated in urban centers, their total greenhouse gas emissions may double by 2050. As a result, tackling the problem of climate change will in large part depend on how we reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of cities.”

And San Francisco, it argues, is the perfect place to start: “The city now has the opportunity to crystallize and execute a bold, thoughtful strategy to attain new targets, continue to lead by example, and further national and global debates on climate change.”

The unwritten message: If we can’t do it here, maybe we can’t do it anywhere.

ON THE EDGE

San Francisco’s waterfront is where economic pressures meet environmental challenges. As the city seeks to continue with aggressive growth and developments efforts on one side of the line — embodied recently by the proposed Warriors Arena at Piers 30-32, 8 Washington and other waterfront condo complexes, and other projects that intensify building along the water — that puts more pressure on the city to compensate with stronger sustainability initiatives.

“The natural thing to do with most of our waterfront would be to open it up to the public,” said Jon Golinger, who is leading this year’s referendum campaign to overturn the approval of 8 Washington. “But if the lens you’re looking through is just the balance sheet and quarterly profits, the most valuable land maybe in the world is San Francisco’s waterfront.”

He and others — including SF Waterfront Alliance, a new group formed to oppose the Warriors Arena — say the city is long overdue in updating its development plan for the waterfront, as Prop. H in 1990 called for every five years. They criticize the city and Port for letting developers push projects without a larger vision.

“We are extremely concerned with what’s happening on our shorelines,” said Michelle Myers, director of the Sierra Club’s Bay Chapter, arguing that the city should be embracing waterfront open space that can handle storm surge instead of hardening the waterfront with new developments. “Why aren’t we thinking about those kinds of projects on our shoreline?”

David Lewis, director of Save the Bay, told us cities need to think less about the value of waterfront real estate and do what it can to facilitate the rising bay. “There are waterfront projects that are not appropriate,” Lewis said. Projects he puts in that category range from a scuttled proposal to build around 10,000 homes on the Cargill Salt Flats in Redwood City to the Warriors Arena on Piers 30-32.

“We told the mayor before it was even announced that it is not a legal use of the pier,” Lewis said, arguing it violated state law preserving the waterfront for maritime and public uses. “There’s no reason that an arena has to be out on the water on a crumbling pier.”

But Brad Benson and Diana Oshima, who work on waterfront planning issue for the Port of San Francisco, say that most of San Francisco’s shoreline was hardened almost a century ago, and that most of the planning for how to use it has already been done.

“You have a few seawall lots and a few piers that could be development sites, but not many. Do we need a whole plan for that?” Benson said, while Oshima praises the proactive transportation planning work now underway: “There has never been this level of land use and transportation planning at such an early stage.”

The Bay Conservation and Development Commission was founded almost 50 years ago to regulate development in and around the Bay, when the concern was mostly about the bay shrinking as San Francisco and other cities dumped fill along the shoreline to build San Francisco International Airport, much of the Financial District, and other expansive real estate plans.

Now, the mission of the agency has flipped.

“Instead of the bay getting smaller, the bay is getting larger with this thing called sea level rise,” BCDC Executive Director Larry Goldspan said as we took in the commanding view of the water from his office at 50 California Street.

A few years ago, as the climate change predictions kept worsening, the mission of BCDC began to focus on that new reality. “How do we create a resilient shoreline and protect assets?” was how Goldspan put it, noting that few simply accept the inundation that BCDC’s sea level rise maps predict. “Nobody is talking about retreating from SFO, or Oakland Airport, or BART.”

That means Bay Area cities will have to accept softening parts of the shoreline — allowing for more tidal marshes and open space that can accept flooding in order to harden, or protect, other critical areas. The rising water has to go somewhere.

“Is there a way to use natural infrastructure to soften the effect of sea level rises?” Goldspan asked. “I don’t know that there are, but you have to use every tool in the smartest way to deal with this challenge.”

And San Francisco seems to be holding firm on increased development — in an area that isn’t adequately protected. “The seawall is part of the historic district that the Port established, but now we’re learning the seawall is too short,” Goldspan said.

BCDC requires San Francisco to remove a pier or other old landfill every time it reinforces or rebuilds a pier, on a one-to-one basis. So Oshima said the district is now studying what it can remove to make up for the work that was done to shore up Piers 23-27, which will become a new cruise ship terminal once the America’s Cup finishes using it a staging ground this summer.

Yet essentially giving up valuable waterfront real estate isn’t easy for any city, and cities have both autonomy and a motivation to thrive under existing economic realities. “California has a history of local control. Cities are strong,” Goldspan said, noting that sustainability may require sacrifice. “It will be a policy discussion at the city level. It’s a new discussion, and we’re just in the early stages.”

NEW WORLD

Global capitalism either grows or dies. Some modern economists argue otherwise — that a sustainable future with a mature, stable economy is possible. But that takes a huge leap of faith — and it may be the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“In the world we grew up in, our most ingrained economic and political habit was growth; it’s the reflex we’re going to have to temper, and it’s going to be tough.” Bill McKibben writes in Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. “Across partisan lines, for the two hundred years since Adam Smith, we’ve assumed that more is better, and that the answer to any problem is another burst of expansion.”

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, McKibben discussed the role that San Francisco could and should be playing as part of that awakening.

“No one knows exactly what economy the world is moving toward, but we can sense some of its dimensions: more localized, less material-based, more innovative; these are things that San Francisco is good at,” he told us, noting the shift in priorities that entails. “We need to do conservation, but it’s true that we also need to build more renewable power capacity.”

Right now, CleanPowerSF is the only mechanism the city has for doing renewable energy projects, and it’s under attack on several fronts before it even launches. Most of the arguments against it are economic — after all, renewable power costs more than coal — and McKibben concedes that cities are often constrained by economic realities.

Some city officials argue that it’s more sustainable for San Francisco to grow and develop than suburban areas — thus negating some criticism that too much economic development is bad for the environment — and Radulovich concedes there’s a certain truth to that argument.

“But is it as green as it ought to be? Is it green enough to be sustainable and avert the disaster? And the answer is no,” Radulovich said.

For example, he questioned, “Why are we building 600,000 square feet of automobile-oriented big box development on Hunters Point?” Similarly, if San Francisco were really taking rising seas seriously, should the city be pouring billions of dollars into housing on disappearing Treasure Island?

“I think it’s a really interesting macro-question,” Jennifer Matz, who runs the Mayors Office of Economic Development, said when we asked whether the aggressive promotion of economic development and growth can ever be sustainable, or whether slowing that rate needs to be part of the solution. “I don’t know that’s feasible. Dynamic cities will want to continue to grow.”

Yet that means accepting the altered climate of new world, including greatly reduced fresh water supplies for Northern California, which is part of the current discussions.

“A lot of the focus on climate change has moved to adaptation, but even that is something we aren’t really addressing,” Radulovich said.

Nutter agreed that adapting to the changing world is conversation that is important: “All of the development and planning we’re doing today needs to incorporate these adaptation strategies, which we’re just initiating.”

But environmentalists and a growing number of political officials say that San Francisco and other big cities are going to need to conceive of growth in new ways if they want to move toward sustainability. “The previous ethos was progress at any cost — develop, develop, develop,” Myers said, with the role of environmentalists being to mitigate damage to the surrounding ecosystem. But now, the economic system itself is causing irreversible damage on a global level. “At this point, it’s about more than conservation and protecting habitat. It’s about self-preservation.”

What cabs really do

Andrew Lam

April 9, 2013

tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITORS NOTES There are two ways to look at the taxicab industry in San Francisco: Either it’s purely a business, out to serve customers with the products that are most profitable — or it’s part of the city’s public transportation infrastructure, and thus subject to regulations that ensure all parts of the city are properly served.

If you take the first approach, then you’re like the entrepreneurs who founded Lyft, Uber, Sidecar, and Tickengo. They offer a product that the market clearly wants — rides that can be summoned with a smart phone and tracked by geolocation (no more “when the hell is that cab going to get here?”), with both drivers and passengers rated on a Yelp-like system.

The newcomers have no interest in the city’s old-fashioned regulations, which really do, in some ways, date back to the days when cabs were buggies pulled by horses. They’ve got a business model, and they’re going to follow it.

The problem here is that cabs are not just a business. (Housing isn’t just a business, either; that’s why we have, for example, rent control, eviction protections, and code enforcement.) Taxis are an essential part of the transit system in San Francisco. They backfill where buses and trains can’t or don’t go. They provide a lifeline for disabled people and seniors who need a ride, for example, to and from health-care appointments or supermarkets.

They are absolutely essential to the tourist economy, which is the city’s biggest and most lucrative industry (tech is still far behind).

There are problems with this part of the transportation system, as there are problems with Muni and BART and airport shuttles. There need to be more cabs on the streets, particularly at busier times. The existing drivers and operators need better technology and a better dispatch system.

But taxi drivers — the old, traditional type — are required to pick up anyone and drive anywhere; they can’t cherry pick the most attractive rides. They have to go through screening and training that ensures the public is safe.

They are, like many other utilities, almost a part of the public sector. There’s a good reason for that. And it’s what the city and the state regulators should be looking at.

The other home team

April 2, 2013

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

IN THE GAME I still think it’s easier to get to A’s games than Giants ones. You get on BART, you get off BART. Tickets are relatively cheap, and really very all-around available.

What the Giants have on the A’s is a prettier stadium with better concessions, including gluten-free hot dogs and gluten-free beer.

What the A’s have on the Giants, besides tickets, is Jed Lowrie.

Not since my Favorite Player Ever, Omar Vizquel, came to San Francisco from Cleveland in 2004 have Bay Area baseball fans been in for such a pleasant surprise.

Mind, Lowrie is not a flashy defensive shortstop with exciting speed, the world’s sweetest smile, and a sexy Venezuelan accent. He’s just an adorable white guy. From Oregon. Like Omar, he’s also an artist. A photographer. Who plays shortstop very well, and — without drawing too much attention — hits a ton. Well . . . 1,998 pounds, let’s say.

Last Opening Day Hedgehog and I were living in New Orleans, where the only baseball we could get on TV was the Houston Astros. The lowly Houston Astros. The 55-107 Houston Astros.

For once in our life we had a television, a 50-inch one, and a giant leather couch, and what was on was the worst team in baseball.

Bu we watched a lot of Houston Astros games. That’s how we happened to see Matt Cain’s perfect game. And that’s how we happened to fall in love — both of us — with Jed Lowrie.

Who was traded by Houston to Oakland in the off-season.

Lucky us. Lucky him, too. From worst team in baseball to playoff contention is not bad.

In a way, interestingly, Lowrie kind of brought the Astros with him. Like a bad smell, Houston drifts this year from the overcrowded NL Central to the A’s division, the AL West. That means the A’s will see a lot of Lowrie’s old team.

I like the matchup. Combined, the A’s and Astros enter the season with a payroll about two-thirds that of the Giants. Combined.

I know what you’re thinking: what does this have to do with me?

Depends . . .

Who are you? Are you Matt Cain? If so, you won’t be pitching any perfect games this year. Are you Brett Anderson? You might be. Are you neither? Just an average every day cash-strapped alternative weekly sports fan? Well, root root root for the other home team this season, I’m saying. They’ll give you more bang for your buck; it’s kind of a specialty of theirs. Remember? There was a whole movie about this.

Good as we’ve got it on this side of the pond, they have Jed Lowrie and Brad Pitt.

Yeah, but we have World Seriousness, you say.

I say . . . yeah, you’re right. There’s that, but I watched that World Serious, and it was boring. Fun, but boring. The good guys won; but kind of boringly, didn’t you think?

League Championship Series, maybe, but I don’t remember much about the Fall Classic. It went quickly. At the Mission and 22nd Street bonfire, I got spray paint on my favorite coat. Um . . . something about a bus.

Ask me about the Oakland-Texas series, though, and it’s synapse city inside my little head. Ask any A’s fan lucky enough to be there the last day of the regular season, the day the A’s came back from four runs down to sweep the defending (x2) American League champion Rangers and win the division; it is etched in their memory like the 20-game win streak of 2001, or the taste of carnitas in mine.

Texas was in first place all season. They came to Oakland Oct. 1 with three games left and a two-game lead over the surging A’s. On a whim, back in June, when the A’s were at least 10 games back, I had bought $2 tickets for the last game of the season, Oct. 3.

And that’s the other thing: BART $2 Wednesdays. This year there are ten of them, starting April 3. Hey — what are you doing after work?

Oct. 3, 2012, was sold out, the only regular season sellout at the O.co Coliseum except Opening Day. I have never witnessed anything like it in my baseball-game-going-to life. It felt like football in there, that’s how raucous it was. It felt like the fans had a say, like in football. And maybe we did.

And maybe we do.

Wednesday, April 3 vs. the Seattle Mariners. My guy Jed will be playing shortstop, batting probably second.

Oakland A’s

O.co Coliseum

http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/oak/ticketing/bart_2_wed.jsp

Reality rap: Q&A with Saafir, the Saucee Nomad

Tony Robles

March 27, 2013

Reality rap: Q&A with Saafir, the Saucee Nomad

Ed. note – this week’s music feature is all about emcee-producer Saafir, the Saucee Nomad. The wheelchair-bound associate of Hobo Junction and Digital Underground (and actor in ‘Menace II Society’) opened up to Guardian music writer Garrett Caples about his recent health struggles, making music, and what’s keeping him in check. Here’s the extended interview we couldn’t fit in the print edition:

San Francisco Bay Guardian Did you have any idea [Digital Underground leader] Shock-G was going to post about you on Davey-D’s blog?

Saafir Actually I had no idea that he was going to put that out. Shock had came and saw me one time and I didn’t really tell nobody that I was in a wheelchair as far as the DU crew. I wasn’t really in contact with anybody. Nobody really stayed in contact with me. If you ain’t really hollerin’ at me, I’m not just gonna call you and be like, “Hey bruh, what’s up? I’m in a wheelchair.”

But I had ran into Money B and he told Shock, and Shock came by and saw me in that wheelchair and it kinda hurt him. He was like, “We really need to do something for you, man. We gotta try to bust a move and do something to make this shit right.” I told him I was down for whatever.

As far as [Shock’s] article is concerned, I’m not really gonna go into it. [Laughs] I’m just gonna say that. The focus is to try to get some awareness up with my condition and my situation. My situation is that I’ll have to have surgery to get my shit corrected. So I’m trying to raise awareness and get as much assistance with it as possible just to make it happen. But shout out to Shock-G for his effort in getting the word out and letting people know about my condition. His way of doing it is unconventional but it’s appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dc8I23sCeI

SFBG But is your condition the result of back injuries or the tumor you had to have removed?

Saafir My back wasn’t really the problem, it was moreso internal. I had a cancerous tumor in my spinal cord and they had to get it out as soon as possible. That was around ’05. The timeline was based off of Shock’s own memories and some of the details got mixed up. I had to have the surgery to get the tumor out. The doctor told me that if I didn’t take it out, by the time I was in my later 40s I would probably be paralyzed. And it’s ironic because I did the surgery and I’m still kinda in that situation. I’m not a paraplegic; my legs are still active and whatnot, it’s just getting the right kind of treatment to spark what needs to be sparked in order to get my legs to work.

I have insurance but insurance only covers so much so I’m trying to make sure I’m able to fully meet the criteria so I can step back into the position I need to be in.

But moreso than that, you have to have a stable environment to even complete the things you need to do with the doctor as far as transportation and living situation. I’ve been out here doing this on my own, but I’m trying to get reestablished into a stable enough situation where I can do the things that need to be done in succession. You have to have a foundation in order to do that so that’s what I’m really focusing on right now, trying to establish that foundation, so that I can complete that.

SFBG Why did you wait so long to reach out to anyone about your condition?

Saafir I didn’t really go into telling people I was in a wheelchair or disabled because a lot of people don’t want to be bothered with it. They pretend like they do but in reality they don’t really want to deal with that shit. And I understand that. I don’t take it personally. So to avoid any harsh feelings or bitterness towards either party, I just keep it to myself and just deal with it. I don’t have a problem with asking anybody for help or allowing people to help me or whatnot but people have their own agenda, people have their own lives. And I need a bit of assistance just to do the basic things, getting into the bathtub, that’s like a marathon for me. And alone it’s damn near impossible. There’s not a lot of people there so I just try to stay concrete and just try to tread through it.

SFBG Why couldn’t they help you at the laser surgery clinic in Arizona that Shock had taken you to?

Saafir At the time I felt that what may have been stopping me from being able to walk was scar tissue surrounding the spinal cord and creating pressure to where my legs wasn’t responding. I had saw that on TV one night on a commercial so I called them. The guy I initially talked to led me to believe that I had action, that it could be done.

My first surgery was like, seven or eight or hours. They split me open. I had to heal for like, 10 months. I was like, “I can’t go through that again.” If I have to I will, but if I don’t have to, I really don’t want to. So I thought the laser surgery would be a good alternative.

Shock helped me get the money together to do the surgery because it’s a private practice. So we get out there and they do a checkup on me and they basically say they didn’t have the facility to do the kind of surgery I needed. I thought that was bullshit. I guess it was more of a situation where they didn’t want to take a chance on messing up something more than what it was, so they just decided, “We don’t really know what was there prior so we don’t want to go in and mess anything up.” And I’m like, man, if you’re afraid to do the surgery, say that. Don’t tell me you don’t have the facility; you just afraid to do the surgery. You know how it is, a lot of them practices are just there to take your money. So we had to come home.

SFBG What’s your prognosis now?

Saafir I got back in touch with the doctor who did the initial surgery. He asked me, “Why you didn’t tell me your legs were going out?” And I was like, “I left messages for you, man, to let you know what was going on with my condition.” I never got a call back so I figured that he couldn’t really do anything for me. And I left multiple messages. But we got past it.

He said, “I think I can get you back walking, we just have to figure out what is the ’cause of the decline.” So that’s what we’re trying to do now. I gotta take a few more MRIs. And from the MRIs they should be able to spot exactly what the decline is and they should be able to work back from there. But again, that shit costs money so I’m trying to raise funds to be able to get that all done.

I keep missing my appointments because I don’t have a car. I try to take the bus to BART but I need assistance getting on the bus. I need to raise funds so I can get back and forth to these appointments and just to help with the basic shit I need every day.

I can’t really move at the capacity I was moving at before. I’m a hustler. I go out and get it on my own, you feel me? But you really don’t understand the blessing you have to be healthy and have access to all your limbs and all your faculties. Don’t take it for granted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9v7cgA3xIM

SFBG Have you still been making music at this time?

Saafir I’m trying to get a place where I can complete an album but right now I’m just writing songs and doing little stuff. But I’m definitely writing about my experience, how I’m dealing with it and going through it. A lot of people look at my shit from the ’90s and think I’m going to do the exact same shit now and that’s just not reality. I’ve evolved as a person.

At that time I was a young man and mentally I was in a young frame of mind. Now I’m a grown ass man and I done been through a lot. Life has shown me a lot more shit than it had at the time when I was doing what I was doing. I tried to be innovative and poetic about what I was doing and at the time that was the flavor.

Now, I don’t even feel like that level of dedication or creativity would even be appreciated. That’s not saying that I’m not going to try to do it. It wouldn’t be a situation where it’s a street record or a hip-hop record. I just call it reality rap. I don’t particularly rap like I did in the ’90s anymore. I’m more focused on substance and content as opposed to how I swing a rhyme. But I’m always going to swing a rhyme with flavor. My rhythm has never been a problem. I understand the rhythm and the beat so it’s nothing for me to do it.

For the full story, see: Injured Player in the Game.

The Performant: Oakland, We’re For You

Andrew Lam

March 20, 2013

Oakland Nights….LIVE! makes a scene

Clear your calendars everybody, Oakland’s own untelevised late-night talk show has returned from a wintry hibernation and found itself some indoor digs, all the better to display their charmingly populist showcase.

The brainchild of art teacher and science nerd Julie Crossman, and sound artist Jeremy Dalmas, Oakland Nights…LIVE! is a giddy mashup of brief lectures/guest speakers, interviews, contests, music, and general goofing around, loosely adhering to a pre-determined theme. Newly located in the recently outfitted hackerspace, the Sudo Room (it used to play in Dalmas’ backyard, and once, memorably, on BART), ONL’s spartan “set” resembles a picked-over yard sale in the late afternoon: a few mis-matched chairs, a desktop crowded with knickknacks, a rotary telephone, a pile of seemingly random toys, including an old fashioned porcelain doll named Spooky Lucy, a basket of (vegan) cookies for participants. A video screen hovers behind the stage, primed for live-cam action, and a winningly upbeat house band, the Hats, stand at the ready.

After an opening monologue about hemorrhoids and hot doctors delivered by Channing Tatum (just kidding, it was Oakland comedian Channing Kennedy who also provides most of the onscreen visuals) the show begins in earnest. There were cue cards (applause, maniacal laughter, awkward cough), and the first oddience competition of the evening “Who’s New?” — the highlight of which was a video of baby goats at the Oakland Zoo, because the highlight of just about everything in this cruel world is a video of baby goats.

The theme of the evening was “The Human Body,” so the first guest lecturer was a dermatologist, Ingrid Roseborough. First thing I learned over the course of the evening from the opening monologue is that there are four kinds of hemorrhoids (lovely). The second, during Roseborough’s Q&A, was about the lines of Blaschko, invisible stripes on the human body that become visible only in conjunction with certain skin conditions. Education and entertainment. It doesn’t get much better.

Except that it does. Among the guests wrangled by the impossibly buoyant Crossman and her laid-back co-conspirator Dalmas are Exploratorium Explainer Raha Behman who dissects a cow eye on the live-cam to predictable gasps and giggles, a duo of intensely-focused dancers, Christine Bonansea and Justin Morrison, whose aggressively industrial soundtrack would fit right in on a Throbbing Gristle album, swallowing expert Lauren Scheiner, who leads the room in a series of tongue exercises, and comedian David Cohen whose stated goal is to uncover what constitutes the perfect smooch.

He raises some hackles with his San Francisco-based safari video, the popular sentiment being that Oakland should be the representative demographic at ONL, a stance that comes off sounding somewhat defensive to my own San Francisco-dwelling perspective (relax, guys, we all know you’re awesome!), but is enthusiastically supported by the general majority.

Cohen promises an Oakland edition, and the crowd settles back down just in time for the grand finale sing-along “Oakland, We’re For You,” a perfect tongue-in-cheek ending to the evening’s many shenanigans. Best of all, ONL’s quirky good fun is scheduled to continue indefinitely on each first Saturday, so plan to tune in, turn it up, and drop by soon.

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

Frankie says feminist pornography

Andrew Lam

March 12, 2013

caitlin@sfbg.com

SEX It is hard to imagine an industry as rich, yet as under-examined as that of pornography. We spend billions of dollars on porn in this country, and billions of hours trying to hide that fact, erasing search histories and wedging DVDs under the bed when our parents are coming over.

So perhaps it makes sense that The Feminist Porn Book, the first of its kind to include writings from porn-studying academics and porn performers, is designed so as to resemble nothing so much as a traffic sign. “What are you reading?” I doofily joked to myself on BART while positioning the Day-Glo paperback with its “FRANKIE SAYS RELAX” massive font in a way I hoped would avoid undue scorn-face from my fellow passengers.

It’s their loss, really. The book is a big deal, a first-time conglomeration of viewpoints from across the pro-sex feminist landscape. Its introduction alone was the most comprehensive history of feminist pornography I’ve ever seen (how appropriate that we’re in the middle of Women’s History Month 2013.) The next time anyone has a question about whether porn can really be anti-sexist, I will direct them to The Feminist Porn Book‘s neon glow.

Within its pages, professionals from a variety of nooks and crannies tackle some issues that even we, as feminists who believe porn can reflect and augment healthy sexuality, have trouble resolving. Penn State’s Ariana Cruz tackles the image of black women in porn (and the no-less-interesting reality of being a black female academic who studies black women in porn.) Am I the only one who gets giddy about heavily-footnoted academic essays on the race issues stirred up by Asian porn star Keni Styles’ participation in locker room orgy scenes?

Performers’ voices are well represented here, mainly in first-person testimonials that explain their career paths, complicated stories that don’t dodge critique of the adult industry. Transman pioneer Buck Angel talks vagina, seasoned pro Nina Hartley about being a role model. The Bay Area’s April Flores explains how she busts up the BBW stereotype. Kink.com model Dylan Ryan and director Lorelei Lee explore society’s conception of their professional lives.

In a brief phone chat, one of the book’s editors and longtime feminist pornographer herself Tristan Taormino explained to me that the book came about after a panel discussion in which she participated that featured both academics and porn stars. That fusion, the participants felt, gave birth to a conversation that had to be continued. A few panelists from that chat can now be found within the anthology’s pages, and Taormino is now organizing a day-long conference to take place on April 6 amid the hangovers from the eight-year-old Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto.

“There are feminists in mainstream porn. I’m not the only one, I swear!” Taormino says this in a jocular manner, but given those billions of dollars, her implication that porn is starting to allow more room for feminist imagery and voices is a rather big deal. For now, I resolve to worry less about what other people on BART think of my reading list.

THIS WEEK’S SEX EVENTS

Three years of Oh! Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom, SF. www.powerhouse-sf.com. Wed/13, 10pm-2am, $3. Darling DJ Robin Simmons will give you something to listen to beyond the slaps and moans at the third anniversary of this gentlemanly meet-up for dirty dappers.

BDSM panel for anarchists California Institute of Integral Studies, Room 304, 1453 Mission, SF. bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com. Sat/16, 6:30-8:30pm, free. Internet flame wars ensued when Native scholar Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz canceled her talk at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair upon realizing it would be held in the event rental space of Kink.com’s Armory this year. Today’s discussion looks to re-unite members of the radical community who disagreed over the issue. Pre-open floor, a history of pornography and feminism will be presented, as well as ways to support sex workers, women, and people who think differently than you do.

On a mission

Andrew Lam

March 12, 2013

tredmond@sfbg.com

Every gang member on the streets knows Cathey and Sands. They’re the cops. They’ve busted dozens of the young men who hang out in the Mission. They know every excuse, every trick, every way you can duck into an alley, hide in a doorway, ditch a weapon or cover up a crime.

But today, as they cruise around 24th Street in an unmarked car, Officers John Cathey and David Sands are not talking about putting bad guys in prison. They’ve been there, done that — and a year or two ago, they got so sick of seeing teenagers ruining their lives that the two tough cops decided to take another approach.

The officers pull their unmarked car into a side street, where two young men are walking together. They’re Norteños, Cathey explains, part of the gang that controls the southern part of the neighborhood, and they’ve got the telltale red colors all over them. Red shirts, red caps, red strips on their shoes.

Cathey approaches the young men and asks them what they’re doing. “Nothing,” they say.

They look at him as if they know what’s coming next, and chances are they do. It happens all the time these days in the world of the Mission District gangs. Cathey is about to give “The Speech.” The one that hundreds of gangbangers have heard, over and over. The one that’s already saved a few of their lives.

“You know what happened last night?” he asks. The kids feign ignorance. “Sure you do,” he continues. “A bunch of your guys got arrested. Your buddy just turned 18 and he got caught. He’s going to big-boy jail.”

The kids in red look at the ground.

“You want to wind up like that, you keep doing what you’re doing,” Cathey says. “You want to do something different, we can get you a job. A decent job, pays real money, in six months you get benefits. You know you don’t have to do this. You know we can help.”

For a second, one young man looks interested. “You come by the station, you leave your number for me, we’ll be in touch,” Cathey says. Then the moment’s over, the Nortenos walk away, and the two cops get back in the car.

“We might have a chance with him,” Cathey tells me. “I’m like water, I wear them down.”

********

Latino gangs — primarily two violent rival operations that run drugs and kill each other — have been a serious problem in the Mission for years. Kids as young as 11 or 12 are getting recruited into a life that typically leads to Juvenile Hall, state prison, or death. The city, and nonprofits that work with youth, have run all sorts of gang-prevention programs, with some success and a lot of failure.

While the Mission rapidly becomes a cool place for rich high-tech workers to live, the violence continues. In the past seven months, 10 people, most of them under 25, have been shot in gang-related incidents; three are dead.

But there’s a new, somewhat radical approach going on now — and it comes largely from two police officers who get paid to arrest gang members and instead are devoting their lives to keeping them out of jail.

Cathey and Sands, 11-year veterans, friends from their days in the Police Academy, have, pretty much on their own initiative, created a grassroots program that allows young men and women who want to get out of the gang life to go to work for the city, typically as landscapers, to earn a paycheck, find a new supportive community and leave The Life.

It doesn’t always work. Some try and don’t make it. The drop-out rate is high; it’s a constant struggle. But for the people who take, and keep, jobs in the program, the success rate is phenomenal.

“It’s pretty simple,” Cathey told me. “One hundred percent of the guys who get the jobs and go to work every day leave the gang life. One hundred percent of the ones who don’t show up for work, who don’t stick with it, go back to the gangs.”

It’s a tiny project right now, involving maybe 20 people. Cathey and Sands, with the support of the brass at Mission Station and Chief Greg Suhr, are trying to expand it to reach kids as early as middle school, before the gangs get to them. They’ve rounded up a construction contractor who spent half his adult life behind bars, an ex-gang member, a City College administrator, and Supervisor David Campos, and, mostly under the radar, are trying to do what all the academics and professionals say is the only effective approach to this kind of crime. They’re trying to stop it before it happens.

********

One day about 18 months ago, Campos was walking down 24th Street, on his way to get a burrito for lunch, when a police car pulled over and two plainclothes cops got out. Campos represents the Mission, and previously served on the Police Commission, but he had never met Cathey or Sands. “I was surprised to see these two tough guys come up to me,” the supervisor recalled recently.

“They just stopped me and said, ‘supervisor, we need your help,'” Campos said. “They said they were tired of the cycle of putting kids in jail and seeing them come back out and do the same thing again, and they wanted to find an alternative. They asked me if I could get some gang members jobs.”

What the officers explained was simple, if counterintuitive: “The young men on the street are smart,” Campos told me. “They have a lot of skills to live the way they do. If they could put that into something constructive, they could be very successful.”

Campos gave the cops his card, told them to call his office — and an unusual relationship between one of the most progressive supervisors and two gang cops was born.

“It was crazy when I told my staff that we were going to be working in the Mission with law enforcement,” Campos said. “I’ve had people stop me and say, ‘Campos, what are you doing with the cops?’ But these guys are great, and they’re doing something really important.”

What the gang cops had in mind was this: If the city could offer jobs — outdoor, hands-on, get-your-fingers-dirty jobs — and Cathey and Sands could convince gang members to step away from the life and try working, there might be a way to end the violence.

The program would be tightly controlled: The two officers would invite gang members to apply for jobs, would screen them, and keep on top of every applicant. People who missed work, or screwed up on the job, would get a visit; Cathey and Sands would watch the streets, follow everyone in the program, check in with families — and let everyone know that their lives and futures were on the line.

“We started with one kid they knew,” Campos said. “We decided to see if we could find him a job.”

Campos contacted the Public Utilities Commission, which hires workers to do landscaping, and convinced the general manager, Ed Harrington, to give it a try.

Cathey and Sands went looking for the young man who would kick off the program (let’s call him J.), and wound up at his house, talking to his mom and dad. That would become a central part of their MO, involving the parents of gang members and trying to bring together what are sometimes not the closest of families.

It wasn’t an easy sell — the family didn’t trust law enforcement. “Then they told the dad that they were working with Campos, and their guard went down,” the supervisor said.

J. started working with the PUC, doing gardening and landscaping work. “He was so successful, nobody could believe it,” Campos said. “We went to see him later, and his dad said his life had completely changed. It changed the whole family.

“When we saw that, we decided we needed to expand this.”

From the start, Mission Station Captain Greg Corrales — a no-nonsense cop who is not known as a starry-eyed liberal — saw the logic and got behind his two officers. Chief Suhr also came on board.

In the early days, Cathey and Sands had no resources at all — not even money to get the young workers Muni or BART tickets. Campos helped track down the funding, and worked with the officers on the next group of kids.

“I bring them into my office at City Hall,” he said. “I explain that there’s a real responsibility here. You are going to change your life.”

********

I am sitting in the community room at the Mission Police Station, talking to two young men who Cathey and Sands have brought into the program. They’ve had some problems — missing work, hanging out with their old gangs — and they’re at risk of losing their jobs. Cathey is blunt: Keep this up, and you’re done. Keep this up, and you’re going back to the streets, back to the life you wanted to leave.

I tell the men I’m not going to print their names, and they agree to talk to me. It’s a dangerous situation — the gangs don’t like members dropping out, and really don’t like to see them at the police station working with the cops.

“Just walking in this door is a hard thing to do,” Cathey says.

But the two officers make it clear to everyone they meet — on the streets, in the program, and everywhere else: These kids are not snitches. “We don’t ask them to tell on their friends,” Cathey said. “I don’t do that, and I don’t want any part of it. This isn’t about us finding out information about the gangs, and that’s not why people come and see us.”

I ask the two young men about what their lives were like before they started working. They’re not interested in talking. When I ask straight out if they were gang members, they shrug, and change the subject.

But they’re happy to talk about their jobs and what it means to be employed. They’re bringing home a paycheck. They can help out their families. They’re also up early in the morning and really tired at night; the idea of going out with their old friends isn’t that appealing.

The handful of people who are working, and not showing gang colors, hasn’t stopped the violence in the e Mission. One of the kids in the program was shot and killed a few months ago. “It was heartbreaking,” Campos said. “I went to see the parents, and they told me how proud their son had been, how he was bragging about being the first one in the house up in the morning, how he loved his job.”

On the other hand, Campos noted, “There normally would have been retaliation for that shooting, and more killing. But the ones who might have retaliated were in our program, so it didn’t happen.”

********

The tech workers from Google and Apple and Facebook who are flooding into the Mission don’t see the signs on the street. Upscale white people who think the neighborhood is cool don’t tend to notice what’s happening in front of their eyes. There are at least 200 active gang members in the small piece of land bounded by Cesar Chavez, Potrero, Castro and 16th. As Cathey and Sands drive around, they see the colors everywhere.

North of 19th Street, the young men and women wear blue. They’re Surenos, southerners; many of them are recent immigrants. Cross 19th and the colors turn red; the Nortenos, who sport the number 14, control the south Mission. They tend to be born in this country.

Back in the 1960s, the two gangs emerged out of the state prison system; Surenos lived south of Bakersfield, Nortenos north. But these days, the geographic lines aren’t always as clear. “They’re really the same guys on both sides of the line,” Cathey explains. “Other than this blind loyalty, they’d probably get along.”

The gangs make their money selling drugs, and much of it eventually goes back to a handful of leaders, many serving long prison terms. Since a lot of the members either die or wind up incarcerated before they get out of their 20s, recruiting is constant.

“They have recruiters outside the middle schools,” Cathey tells me. “Last night we arrested a 15-year-old for possession of a handgun. They older guys made him hold it. Now his life is about to be ruined.”

The two cops are opposites: Cathey is ebullient, outgoing, a former tech worker who is constantly talking, texting and emailing. Sands is quiet, more taciturn, a martial artist who walks the streets with the look of serious business.

But they’re fast friends and partners who can communicate with a quick nod or shake of the head, and nothing in the Mission gets by them.

We pull up at 16th and Mission. “Just watch, the block will clear,” Cathey says. And yes, the minute the gang car is spotted, a guy in a blue hoodie ducks down into the BART station.

There’s a girl who can’t be 16 yet sitting on the bench. Sands hangs back while Cathey approaches her. He asks what she’s doing, what’s going on; she shrugs and ignores him. Not interested.

Cathey speaks with a bit of resignation as we walk back to the car. “She’s already jumped in” — initiated into the gang — he says. It’s going to be hard to reach the girl; the gang members she hangs out with are violent, armed, “and will come down on you in a second.”

It’s hard not to feel the frustration that comes with the territory: Violent and dangerous, maybe — but still, she’s still just a little girl.

We head up to 24th Street, Norteno turf. Here, when you look for it, red is everywhere. “A lot of these kids are living in crowded situations, in relatives houses,” Cathey says. “The gangs tell the young ones that they shouldn’t trust their families, that the gang is their new family. That’s what we’re up against.”

Two young men duck into a jewelry store. Cathey throws the car into park and the officers get out, walking slowly toward the entrance. The men with the red jackets and red highlights on their shoes know the drill. A quick warrant check and they know they’re free to go — but not without listening to Cathey for a few minutes.

This time, “The Speech” is falling on deaf ears.

Later, Cathey shows me a video he’s captured off YouTube. It’s hard to find, hidden under gang names that only insiders would know. It shows some of the guys we’ve seen on the street, beating the living shit out of people. In one scene, a handful of gang members approach a man, punch him in until he falls to the ground, then kick his head until he’s unconscious.

“This is what they do,” Cathey says. “They terrorize the neighborhood.”

********

I am back in the community room at Mission Station. Cathey and Sands have invited me to an “intervention.” A boy and a girl, both of them in eighth grade, are coming in, with their parents, to talk about their flirtations with gang life.

A counselor at James Lick Middle School contacted the officers after seeing signs that the kids were showing gang colors and drifting away from their schoolwork and their families. Cathey and Sands were at Lick a few months earlier, running an assembly and talking about the dangers of gangs; the counselor got their phone numbers.

I have agreed to use no names or in any way identify the participants in the intervention. So I sit and watch as Cathey runs the show.

The boy appears painfully young, small and shy; it’s hard to believe he’s even in eighth grade. He wears a hoodie and makes little eye contact with anyone else in the room. The girl is taller, more self-assured.

I can’t fathom that kids this young – the age of my own son, who is still shedding the soft edge of youth, sliding slowly into adolescence — are already prey to the gang recruiters. But the evidence is clear.

When the parents and other family members are seated, Cathey starts asking the boy about gang life. “What color do the Sureños wear?” Blue, the boy says. “What about the Norteños?” Red. “Where does Norteño territory start?” 19th Street. “What number do the Norteños associate with?” Fourteen. “Can you give me the street names of some gang members?” The boy rattles off a few.

Cathey looks over at the boy’s dad. “He knows a lot, doesn’t he?” The dad is visibly startled. So are the girl’s family members as the officers run through a similar routine.

“We’re seeing younger and younger kids get dragged in,” Cathey tells me later. Often, parents and grandparents — working multiple jobs to pay the rent in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood — have little or no idea how far their kids have gone into the gang life.

Next up is Mike Bowen. He’s a soft-spoken guy whose face bears the scars of a hard life of substance abuse and jail time. In fact, he’s spent much of his adult life running from the law, winding up at one point jumping from a third-story window in a Tenderloin building to avoid arrest.

Two broken legs and months in the hospital put him on a path to sobriety — and a new life. “I used to think the money was in crime,” he tells the group. “Then I got myself together, went back to school, got my contractor’s license, and pretty soon I bought my first Lamborghini.”

That gets the young boy’s attention.

“You have so much going for you,” Bowen says. “You can make it.”

He turns to the boy’s mom, who speaks only Spanish, and asks her how it’s going. Not so great, she says; she just got laid off, and is having trouble finding a new job. Bowen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stack of $100 bills. “Here, take this,” he says. “It will help until you find work.”

That really gets the boy’s attention.

Bowen’s been a key part of the two cops’ efforts, and they met entirely by chance. “I was driving down Folsom,” he told me. “I parked at a store and I saw these two cops, and I said hi and they wanted to check out my car, and we started to talk about my background. They told me what they were doing, and I said I’d love to help.”

Bowen offered money, which they needed, but that was just the start. “They brought me with them to James Lick,” he recalled. “I brought the Lamborghini. That got every one of the kids interested. I let them sit in it, then we talked.

“I told them that the gang members say the only way to get money is to join the gang. But I got out, went to school, and now I have a house and really nice car.”

When Bowen’s done with his talk, Cathey puts his cell phone on speaker and dials a number. The man on the other end is a former gang member. “He’s the real deal,” Cathey whispers to me. And indeed, for about ten minutes, he tells the two young people and their families exactly what their lives will be like if they follow the path he took at their age. By the end, the boy is shaken and the girl is crying.

Cathey’s not done yet. Guillermo Villanueva, a City College counselor, takes over and reads the families a pledge that Cathey and Sands have written. It’s all about family, about staying out of the gang life, but also respecting and taking care of each other. “Family and Education Forever” is the slogan, chosen because the gangs, who tell members that they are their new families, use “family forever.”

Yeah, the language in the pledge is a little bit hokey — but nobody’s laughing.

Cathey asks the boy what he wants from his parents. “I just wish my daddy had more time to play soccer with me,” he says. The officer looks at the father. “Every day, I’ll be there after work,” he says.

The pledge is on a plaque signed by Chief Suhr. Everyone signs it. By the end, there are tears and hugs all around.

“This is what we really need to be doing,” Cathey tells me. “Getting gang members to change is hard. If we can get them early enough, we have a much better chance.”

********

I’ve been a political reporter for 30 years. I write, mostly, about intractable social problems. I know that poverty and desperation lead to crime, that broken families and inadequate schools put young people at risk of falling into violence. I am under no illusions.

When I first heard about Cathey and Sands, I thought: They’re cops. Most of the time, cops aren’t the best answer to deep-seated social problems and the crime that results. And I’m not going to pretend that these guys are softies — you have a warrant out, you get caught in the act, they’ll pull you in, and it won’t necessarily be nice.

What they’re doing won’t end gang violence in San Francisco, not by itself. Everyone knows that. This is a huge issue, one that will become more and more pronounced as the crazy, ancient and pointless war between the Norteños and Sureños plays out in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

Cathey and Sands are by no means the only people fighting to end the carnage. Nonprofits, educators, social service agencies and others have spent years trying to break the gang cycle.

But there they are, every day, two guys with badges who see the blood and the pain on the streets, and are trying, with little bureaucracy or resources, to stop it. To save lives. One kid at a time.

“If we could get into all the middle schools, if we could expand this out, that’s what would really work,” Cathey told me. “That’s where we can have the biggest impact.

Crime would come down; it would have to.

“I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the mayor.” Paging Room 200, City Hall: Is anyone listening?

Big waterfront projects prompt study of new transportation ideas

Sasha Cuttler

March 1, 2013

The massive development projects being proposed along San Francisco’s central waterfront – from the proposed Warriors Arena at Pier 30 through the Giants’ housing/retail project at Pier 48 down to Forest City’s sprawling proposal around Pier 70 – will create huge challenges for the city’s already overtaxed transportation system.

Nobody is more aware of that issue than Warriors President Rick Welts as he seeks approval to build a 17,500-seat arena with just a smattering of parking spaces. “We’re investing a billion dollars in this property, and if people aren’t comfortable getting to it and leaving it, we have a problem,” Welts told a gathering of the California Music and Culture Association on Tuesday night, responding to a local resident who raised the concern. “We have to get that right, it’s at the top of our list.”

With Muni and BART already at capacity during peak hours, and thousands of new housing units being built in the coming years both along the waterfront and from nearby SoMa down through the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan area, city transportation planners are trying to get ahead of potential problems created by the development boom.

“We’re now taking a step back and looking at the long-term needs from the Exploratorium down to Pier 70,” says San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency planner Peter Albert, who is leading a comprehensive waterfront transportation study that will inform the environmental studies done for each of these projects. “What we get is an environmental review that is much smarter because we have all this advanced planning….EIRs are important, but they aren’t really planning.”

Albert is looking at everything from working with various transportation agencies to beef up bus, train, and ferry services to the area; using these projects to complete the ambitious but underfunded and long-stalled Blue-Greenway bicycle path along the waterfront; accelerating capital projects that are already in the SFMTA’s queue; and exploring a dozen or so new ideas.

“What’s also coming out of this are new ideas we’re coming up with, things we weren’t even thinking of that may make sense,” Albert told us, noting that he’ll be doing his first presentation of some of these ideas to the SFMTA Board of Directors on March 5.

They include extending new streetcar service along the Embarcadero to the Caltrain station at 4^th and King or possibly all the way out to the Anchor Steam Brewing-anchored project at Pier 48 (which would probably involve construction of new streetcar turn-arounds); better integrating the Central Subway project into Mission Bay and the Embarcadero with new bus and rail connections around 20^th and 3^rd streets; and expansion of the Embarcadero BART station to increase its peak capacity.

Welts said BART will be an important connector to the new Warriors Arena, noting that the walking distance from Pier 30 to the Embarcadero station is actually about the same distance as the Coliseum BART station is from the entrance to the Warriors’ current arena. He said that he’s excited about Albert’s work and wants to cooperate with helping the city meet its transportation needs: “We have a lot of process to go through and we’re embracing that process.”

Funding the needed improvements will be a challenge, particularly because new development projects generally don’t pay for their full impacts to the transportation system, as SFMTA head Ed Reiskin and Sup. Scott Wiener have told the Guardian. On Monday, Wiener amended the Western SoMa Community Plan to increase how much developers would pay in transportation impact fees.

Albert said funding for the needed improvements to the area’s transportation system would come from a combination of mitigation fees from the developers, reprioritizing the SFMTA’s existing capital budget, and securing state and federal transportation grants by developing impactful projects that are shovel-ready, thanks to this advanced planning effort.

These three waterfront development projects alone could have huge impacts. The Warriors Arena would host more than 200 concerts and sporting events per year, drawing anywhere from a few thousand to more than 17,500 people. The Giants’ Pier 48 proposal involves 27 acres of new development, including retail, office, Anchor Brewing, and about 1,500 homes. And Forest City’s proposal for Pier 70 involves about 1,000 homes, 2.2 million square feet of office space, and 275,000 square feet of retail and light manufacturing.

Addressing the waterfront’s transportation challenges, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu told the Guardian, “It is possibly the most difficult and important question surrounding the Warriors project, and I’ve encouraged all parties to make sure they get it right.”

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

February 26, 2013

WEDNESDAY 27

On the Cheap listings compiled by Cortney Clift. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for listings, see Picks.

After Hours at the Conservatory of Flowers Golden Gate Park, 100 John F. Kennedy, SF. www.conservatoryofflowers.org. 6-10pm, $13. The Conservatory is romantic during the day, but add drinks, an award-winning violinist, and special access to its old Victorian greenhouse, and it’s downright swoon-worthy. Jill Tracy will be playing violins from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and talking about the natural materials used to make them. A musical séance is also set to take place, channeling compositions from beloved treasures that you, the audience, will supply.

THURSDAY 28

Tears of Gaza screening Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. www.mecaforpeace.org. 7-9:30pm, $10. A documentary recording the effects of the 2008-’09 three-week bombing of Gaza by Israeli military (backed by US-made weapons). In this emotional film, Norwegian director Vibeke Lokkeberg and Palestinian cameramen show us the devastating effects of war on civilians. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion including a Palestinian refugee, a former resident of Gaza, and Barbara Lubin, an aid worker who was in Gaza during the assault.

FRIDAY 1

Gay Men’s Sketch art show Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF. www.markichester.com. Opening reception: 8-10pm, free. To celebrate 25 years of weekly meetings and sketch sessions that celebrated the male form, Gay Men’s Sketch wanted to put together a best-of showing of its work. 21 artists were responsible for these pieces, rendered in pencil, pastel, ink, watercolor, and even with an iPad. If you’re in the mood for something a little saucier there will also be work from Hot Draw! a subgroup of Gay Men’s Sketch that focuses on erotic, explicit poses.

Tall ship sailings at Jack London Square Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com. 4-5pm, $3 donation requested. Grab your sea legs and hop on board two historic seafarers. The Lady Washington is a replica of one of the first US ships to explore North America’s west coast. The Hawaiian Chieftain is a steel-hulled replica of a typical 19th century coastal trader. The vessels are set to sail into town on Thu/28 and stay through Feb. 6. For just $3, you can take a tour of the tall ships and speak with the crew.

“Titti Trifecta” MOCO, 371 17th St., Oakl. mocoart.tumblr.com. Opening reception 6-10pm. In celebration of Women’s History Month, head to this all-female show and enjoy art, free wine, hors d’oeuvres, and live music. Later this month the exhibit will host a DIY sex toy workshop, an artist talk entitled “Slut, Cunt, Bitch, Whore,” and a feminist film night.

“UNPLUG SF: Device-Free Drinks” Inner Mission, 2050 Bryant, SF. www.unplugsf.com. 7pm-midnight, free. Feel like a screen-free night out? UNPLUG SF wants to help. Check your phone at the Digital Detox cell phone check-in station and receive a reboot cell phone sleeping bag. While your phone takes a break grab a non-Instagrammed cocktail and step into the analog zone of typewriters and board games. Enjoy community art, live music and vinyl DJs spinning soul, Motown, and oldies.

SATURDAY 2

“Free Your Mind” black literary festival San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org. 11am-5pm, free. An eclectic day-long program for families at the library. Check out a performance by author Kirk Waller and a presentation on African American genealogy, meet revolutionary authors, and take in a keynote talk by Oba T’Shaka, a civil rights leader who spent 38 years as a SF State professor.

“Muni Diaries Live” Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. munidiarieslive9.eventbrite.com. Doors open at 6pm. Show starts at 7pm, $12. Advance ticket purchase suggested. Even if you’ve ridden the Muni just once chances are you probably saw something weird. With usual sightings of crazy cat ladies and men with no pants, a trip on the Muni is anything but boring. Join fellow bus goers (and even a BART operator) as they share their wackiest stories. The evening will also include the second Muni Haiku Battle where writer James Nestor will fight to keep his crown as champion.

Babylon Salon spring reading Cantina SF, 580 Sutter, SF. www.cantinasf.com. Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm, free. Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Terry Bisson and Tamin Ansary, scribe of West of Kabul, East of New York will perform readings from their acclaimed works. Transmedia artist and Lady Gaga blogger Kate Durbin, author of The Plume Hunter Renee Thompson, and short story author Rashaan Alexis Meneses will also be reading.

SUNDAY 3

Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon Marina Green, 500 Marina, SF. www.escapefromalcatraztriathlon.com. Race starts at 7:30am, fitness expo 6:30am-2:30pm. If your New Year’s resolution has long since given way to take-out and TV-filled evenings, pre-register for (or just set up a folding chair and cooler to watch) the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon for some serious motivation. 2,000 triathletes will complete a 1.5-mile swim from Alcatraz to the San Francisco shoreline, an 18-mile bike ride around the Presidio and an eight-mile run in Golden Park, finishing back at the Marina Green. There will also be a fitness expo throughout the weekend featuring dozens of vendors, products, demos, and more.

TUESDAY 5

Bay Bridge Grand Lighting Ceremony Embarcadero, 4 Embarcadero Center, SF. facebook.com/thebaylights. 8pm, free. Designed by artist Leo Villareal, the Bay Lights is a light sculpture set to sparkle everyday from dusk to midnight for two years on the San Francisco Bay Bridge’s west span. 25,000 white individually programmed LED lights will create intricate algorithms and patterns. Head over to the waterfront this evening to be one of the first to take in this monumental moment.

Just chill

February 26, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Four years ago, in the waning days of the aughts, the befuddling adlib term “chillwave” forged in the throes of the blogosphere, accompanied nearly every story about acts like Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro Y Moi. For the uninitiated, chillwave is a cheap, slap-on label used to describe grainy, dancey, lo-fi, 1980s inspired music, and most importantly is a disservice to any band associated with it. Luckily for music writers and listeners alike, this term has died a relatively swift death.

Toro Y Moi, the one-man bedroom project of Chaz Bundick, has exponentially progressed since the chillwave era, in addition to his relocation to Berkeley in August 2011. Bundick is currently on a sold-out tour with his live band and will headline two sold-out Noise Pop shows at the Independent this weekend.

His latest LP, Anything In Return, which came out last month on Carpark Records and was recorded in full in the Bay Area, is a fruitful expansion beyond his earlier albums Causers of This and Underneath the Pine, and a shining foray into experimental styles and sounds.

Anything In Return marks an ambitious departure from anything Bundick has done in the past; Bundick describes it to me as a “bigger sounding album, more accessible and poppy.” The result is a fluent and delicate fabrication of funk grooviness, R&B introspection, and swirling pop melodies. The success — and more importantly, the ethos of the effort — is highly indebted to the late sacrosanct hip-hop producer J Dilla. If Anything in Return signifies a reinvention of Toro Y Moi, then J Dilla and his “try anything, do anything” mantra are its guiding light.

Such a transformation can be daunting to some, but as Bundick notes during our phone call, Dilla “makes everything seem like it’s alright to try.” One of the few Dilla tributes outside of the Paid Dues and Rock the Bells festivals.

Though maturation and cheer remain central themes in terms of sound side of things, Anything in Return is loaded with confessions about Bundick grappling with his relationship and the strain the life of a touring musician has placed on it. The gripes are most poignant on tracks like “Cola” and “Say That,” where he laments the state of flux his and his girlfriend’s different lives have placed on their relationship and the resulting insecurities that arise from such limbo.

His new life in the Bay Area — he moved out here from his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina because his girlfriend enrolled in a grad program at Cal — is expectedly represented in Anything in Return‘s character and aural makeup. One of the first and last things heard on the opening track “Harm in Change” is the crisp noise of a BART train accelerating as it leaves a station — most likely one of the three Berkeley stations.

So far Bundick has fluidly adjusted to life in Berkeley and in the Bay Area in general and signals his health as the biggest benefactor of his relocation. Coming from BBQ-laden South Carolina, the recent vegetarian convert is grateful for the Bay Area’s wealth of veggie options; in a recent interview with SFStation, he listed the revered Berkeley institution Cheese Board Pizza as his favorite food joint. And like pretty much anyone who moves here, he’s been biking, busing, and BARTing more and more.

TORO Y MOI

With Sikane, Dog Bite, DRMS (Fri.), James and Evander (Sat)

Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm, sold out

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

Sundance 2013: a local tragedy, an ongoing romance, and top picks

Sue Vaughan

February 19, 2013

Sundance 2013: a local tragedy, an ongoing romance, and top picks

Ryan Coogler’s Bay Area story Fruitvale picked up the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize; it is, of course, based on the life and death of Oakland’s Oscar Grant, a young man gunned down by a BART cop on New Year’s Day 2009. I emerged from this important, wonderfully-made debut like everyone around me in the sold-out theater — in devastated tears.

Lead actor Michael B. Jordan is absolutely gripping as Oscar — no surprise for anyone who saw him as Wallace on the first season of HBO’s The Wire, or as one of Josh Trank’s accidental superheroes in 2012’s surprisingly gritty Chronicle. Coogler is a skilled director; the way he slowly builds toward his story’s inevitable conclusion is worthy of praise.

But as I thought about it in the days after the screening, I realized I had some reservations about Fruitvale‘s script, despite all of its good intentions. Its characters, including the BART policemen and Oscar, tend to be one-dimensional, which drains the story of nuance. Instead of guiding the viewer though the situation, it ends up telling us what its point of view is.

Rounding out this year’s Sundance picks is the latest film in Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke’s Before series, Before Midnight. I heard multiple critics complaining that they were annoyed with “yet another entry;” frankly, that made me wonder if they themselves are tired of their own lives. The random-yet-precise-ness that Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have allowed these two characters to explore over 18 years has to be experienced to be understood.

Before Sunrise (1995) is perhaps the series’ most relatable, since it embodies the excitement of traveling around in one’s carefree early 20s. Hawke and Delpy embodied their characters’ journey so well that I have actually plotted my own travels over the years with that film in mind.

Then came Before Sunset (2004), with the characters in their mid-30s, and their lives haven’t necessarily gone the way they’d hoped. If you revisit Sunset you may find how spot-on Linklater and company are in capturing the progressive pitfalls of the know-it-all generation.

Heartbreaking and somehow still romantic, neither film can prepare you for what Before Midnight has to offer. Now in their 40s, both Hawke and Delpy have said in interviews that they developed the characters of Jesse and Céline alongside their own hopes and dreams, and use these alter-egos to help understand their own limitations in life.

As for Linklater — who emerged on the Sundance scene with 1991’s Slacker, losing the Grand Jury prize to Todd Haynes’ Poison — even if you don’t have a mini-breakdown as each Before film ends (every time … sniff), there’s no denying his spontaneous yet meticulous Before series has produced magic over 18 years, and is on its way to being the narrative equivalent of Michael Apted’s monumental Up series.

TOP FILMS OF SUNDANCE (and SLAMDANCE) 2013

1. Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (UK/New Zealand)
2. Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight (USA/Greece)
3. Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (USA)
4. Sebastián Silva’s Magic Magic (Chile)
5. Matt Johnson’s The Dirties (Canada)
6. Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Waaseypur (India)
7. Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy (Peru/USA)
8. Nicole Teeny’s Bible Quiz (USA)
9. Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice (USA)
10. James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now (USA)
11. Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie & the Boxer (USA)
12. Sean Ellis’ Metro Manila (UK/Philippines)
13. Michael Winterbottom’s The Look of Love (UK)

Anarchists play rough: Kerfuffle over radical book fair in the porn palace

Andrew Lam

February 14, 2013

Anarchists play rough: Kerfuffle over radical book fair in the porn palace

A la Lord of the Rings, San Francisco (Facebook, at least) has become an epic battleground, the clash of two radical cultures, a reinvigoration of an age-old rancor. The 18^th annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair is set to be held at the Kink.com Armory (a.k.a., the Armory Community Center) March 16-17. The questions being addressed: is BDSM porn radical? Is a corporate dungeon’s event space the right place for the anarchists?

It would seem that some anarchists don’t want to hawk their anti-capitalist zines and lovingly-silkscreened patches, or talk activist history in a place owned by a company who pays women to be submersed in water and gang-banged for the sexual pleasure of others. Feminist pioneer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has canceled her scheduled anti-colonist talk, calling the choice of venue unecessarily controversial.

Poster design by Hugh D’Andrade

“I feel good about the venue,” said Book Fair planning committee member Jen Angel, who called me to explain how the decision to hold the Fair at the Armory was reached. To retain the previous venue at Golden Gate Park’s Hall of Flowers, Angel told me that her group would have had to hire park rangers and pay a rental fee beyond its means. Venues the size and price of the Armory Community Center, she said, are rare in San Francisco.

She cited the Armory Community Center’s affordability and accessibility (the venue is two blocks from the 16^th Street BART station) in the committee’s eventual decision to move, which was announced in a blog post on the Book Fair website in August of last year and included in all subsequent literature released by the Fair.

The Book Fair would not be the first to utilize the massive “Drill Court” hanger — last August SF Beautiful, hardly a radical organization, held its awards ceremony there and the space had been rented out once before, Kink.com staff told me, years ago.

Dunbar-Ortiz – well-known for her organizing work beginning in the 1960s, when she split from groups like Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society to form separatist feminist group Cell 16, eventually going on to teach in the Cal Hayward Native Studies program, help found the school’s Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies degrees, and become a Native activist – said she only became aware of the venue change last week, when she sent a public letter to the organizers explaining that she would no longer be appearing at the Fair.

“I would not in my wildest imagination have thought that anything remotely related to my political circles would take place in that corporate dungeon, just as I wouldn’t imagine that it would take place, say at Bank of America headquarters at the right price,” Dunbar-Ortiz wrote in her February 6 public letter, addressed to the Book Fair organizers [full text below].

She said her planned talk, which was to have commemorated the anniversary of Wounded Knee, was a particularly inappropriate choice for the venue. “I am equally embarrassed as a feminist at a time when violence against women and rape culture are epidemic,” she continued, ending with a call to change the Book Fair venue.

Angel says when Dunbar-Ortiz pulled out, her letter was sent to every Fair vendor and speaker so that all were appraised of the situation. None of them have canceled their appearance, she says, though the Fair’s event wall is marked with attendees who’ve announced they will not be entering the Armory to attend.

There is nothing overtly sexual about Kink’s event space, which has a separate entrance from the porn company’s front doors. Angel confirms that porn and erotica has been sold at previous Book Fairs, although the organization doesn’t monitor what vendors have at their tables.

After Dunbar-Ortiz published her letter, the Book Fair’s event page blew up with debate, both civilized and not. There was nearly 800 comments on it at the time this post was published. Angel said debate over the venue — outside the bounds of Facebook — has been minimal.

For many in the San Francisco kink community, the anti-BDSM stance of Dunbar-Ortiz and other anarchists who’ve announced they won’t be attending shows a lack of education about BDSM and sex work.

Others take issue with Kink.com as a company, but say the debate over “torture porn” on the page is missing the point.

“We’ve spent days arguing with each other about whether or not porn and prostitution should be decriminalized,” wrote local alt-porn performer Kitty Stryker. “The heat has been effectively removed from Kink.com entirely. All too often that suits capitalism and the patriarchy just fine.” Stryker has long been vocal against the company’s hiring and other labor practices. (See local porn performer Maggie Mayhem’s reflection on the company for a good first-person account of these failings.)

Angel says that the Book Fair – which has responded to concerns about the venue in a statement on its website – will be sponsoring a discussion on March 16 (the Saturday night of the weekend the fair is held) at an as-yet undetermined location, not at the Armory. For those interested in learning more about sex-related activism, there will be a panel on the history of sex worker organizing, and workshops on preventing assault within the anarchist community and on queering the anarchist model, all at the Book Fair itself.

We here at the Guardian are fans – legitimate and significant critiques of the company’s practices notwithstanding – of the work Kink has done to bring alternative sexuality into the spotlight.

More importantly, we’ve heard the “BDSM creates violence” arguments and we’re just not buying it. Consensually, safely, sexily-created BDSM subverts societally-accepted power differentials. And we’re stoked that a porn company has a community space, that’s the kind of thing we like.

So we’re bummed to see this business – yes, it’s a for-profit business, at odds with some aspects of anarchist thought. But as some have pointed out, do you know the shady dealings our public institutions are getting into these days, should the Book Fair be moved to a university? – pilloried by activists in what may be their first introduction to BDSM, and the role that Kink.com plays in the SF sex-positive community.

If anything, the mess-of-an-Internet has highlighted the need for more education surrounding BDSM feminism. Surely there are some rad dominatrixes, slaves, daddies, ponies, sluts, pervs who’d be happy to provide just that — in fact, Kink representatives told us they are in talks with the anarchists to provide seminars on power dynamics. Bookfair organizers could have anticipated this necessity.

This could have been a big, sexy learning opportunity. It still can be.

Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

March 16-17, 10am-6pm, free

Armory Community Center

1800 Mission, SF

bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com

The text of Dunbar-Ortiz’s letter follows:

UPDATE: The original letter, a reader has informed us, contained a link to this article by Gail Dines in Counterpunch calling out James Franco’s “feel-good torture porn.” What follows is the version that Dunbar sent us yesterday at our request.

Dear sister and fellow workers,

I received a message this morning informing me that the 2013 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair will be held at the Armory, corporate headquarters of Kink.com.

I did not know about the arrangement between the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair and Kink.com until now. I’m sure that is my fault as I see it is posted on the Book Fair website as well as the Facebook page, now that I look there to find it. However, I would not in my wildest imagination have thought that anything remotely related to my political circles would take place in that corporate dungeon, just as I wouldn’t imagine that it would take place, say at Bank of America headquarters at the right price.

Clearly, Kink.com had a problem from the beginning with its “image” in the family friendly San Francisco Mission District neighborhood and has been working hard during the six years since it paid $14.5 million to buy the Armory, without success–it is shunned like the plague. But what a boon to get the stamp of approval from the anarchist community, in the wake of their courageous leadership role in the Occupy movement! What a dishonor to our Wobbly ancestors (in my case my own grandfather).

The sleazy owner of Kink.com must be exposed for trying to pretend to be a respectable public venue while continuing promoting torture.

I am particularly embarrassed and ashamed to have the 40th anniversary of Wounded Knee and Leonard Peltier–the subject matter of my talk–to be associated with Kink.com. I often consider my actions by thinking of what Leonard Peltier would do, and in this case I have no choice. I have apologies to make to people to whom I am responsible for this error on my part in not having been aware of the venue.

I am equally embarrassed as a feminist at a time when violence against women and rape culture are epidemic.

Please immediately remove my name and the topic from the program and the website. If my name or the topic is already printed on posters they must be destroyed. I urge other speakers, panelists, vendors, and anarchists in general to object to the Book Fair being held at the Armory and consider not walking in the door, ever, while Kink.com owns it.

I call on the organizers of the event who are responsible for contracting with the pornographic industrial complex to take responsibility for this horrific choice, making very clear, with apologies, on the website and the Facebook page and to every vendor and speaker what they are getting in to, as well as to the public you are expecting to attend.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

Bands on the Rise 2013

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

February 12, 2013

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Ask 10 artists the same question, get back a dozen answers. The replies to my very brief questionnaires this year — it’s our second annual On the Rise issue — were revealing, like peeling back the skin of a tender orange, or rather fragrant onion.

Some juicy responses filled me with pride for our fair city and sisters across the bay, some inspired me to dig deeper, some just stunk. Jokes — they were all much appreciated, thank you. As the surveys came floating back in, I got excited by personal sonic descriptions such as “club bangers and sultry club grind jams,” “morbid classics,” and “Brazilian shoegaze.”

Another question that garnered a flurry of diverse answers from the acts: what’s the best part of life as a Bay Area artist? Turns out, the artists like that the crowds here mosh and smile, that making music locally isn’t intimidating like it can be in LA or NY, that new groups pop up whenever you think you’re clued in to it all, that they’re able to see live music every night of the week, the monthly showcases like Sick Sad World, the tight knit community of elder area rappers, and “the widespread non-commercial ethos of groove.”

And like last year’s list, this On the Rise bunch is rather varied, dealing in electronic arts, post-metal, hip-hop hype, ’70s glam, radio-friendly soul pop, and beyond — truly creating unique sounds across the board. One common thread I did find was the location; more than half of those picked for the 2013 list happen to be based in the East Bay, meaning at least six of the 10 are usually spotted across the bridges and BART stations. What that says about our local music scene, I haven’t quite dissected, though I often hear rumblings from artists in the area about rising SF rents and lack of rehearsal space. These are concerns to discuss amongst ourselves.

For On the Rise 2013, this much I know: these are the acts that I’d like to see get more attention this year and beyond. These are the bands, singers, musicians, and rappers that have been creating exciting output for less than a year, or some, for nearly a decade. They’re the ones to keep your eye on, to stay involved with, to hand over your hard-earned cash to see live. They’re keeping the Bay interesting — and weird — and for that, I’m grateful. Here are their stories.

>>A-1

>>CHIPPY NONSTOP

>>HOLLY HERNDON

>>KOWLOON WALLED CITY

>>THE SHE’S

>>SPACE GHOST

>>THE SESHEN

>>TRAILS AND WAYS

>>WARM SODA

>>WAX IDOLS

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