Cars

Opposing sides rally troops for tech bus throw-down

Erica Hanna
-
39
Opposing sides rally troops for tech bus throw-down

Tomorrow’s (Tue/1) San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting will feature a hearing on the environmental impact of commuter shuttles, including Google buses. In what promises to be a telling moment in a polarizing controversy that started in late 2013, supervisors will be forced to pick a side.

This past January, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) voted to approve a pilot program that would allow private shuttle operators, including a host of tech companies, to stop in designated Muni bus areas for a fee of $1 per stop, per day.

The narrative is by now well-worn, with the well-connected, deep-pocketed tech industry on one side and seasoned local activists concerned about gentrification and private use of public bus stops on the other. 

While tomorrow’s hearing comes amid a larger debate about the tech sector’s role in fueling displacement through rising housing prices, it will focus on whether or not to sanction an appeal of the pilot program under the California Environmental Quality Act. 

The proponents of the shuttles — Google, Genentech, Apple and others — maintain they take cars off the road. Many workers commuting to the South Bay, for instance, would drive were it not for the existence of the shuttles.

The CEQA appeal was filed by the SEIU 1021, the League of Pissed Off Voters, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. The groups contend that the private shuttle system is helping to push long-time residents out of the city. Studies show that in areas around the shuttle stops, rents fly high and displacement is rampant. 

A key argument in favor of conducting an environmental review is that those displaced workers then have to drive into SF to get to work from places like the East Bay, negating any environmental benefits. By calling for a CEQA study, appellants hope to city will study how shuttles are linked to displacement and its associated environmental impacts. 

Tomorrow, the Board must decide whether to allow the 18-month pilot program to move ahead, or to delay it until after an Environmental Impact Review has been completed.

In preparation for tomorrow’s hearing, both sides are drumming up support from their ranks.

SF.citi, an alliance of San Francisco tech companies, sent out an email blast (and web post) that reads like a call to arms: “Divisive shuttle opponents are now suing the City to challenge this pilot program before it has the chance to get off the ground. We need YOU to tell the Board of Supervisors in person that you want them reject this lawsuit and let the pilot program go forward.”

The activists’ call to action takes a similar tone, with liberal use of caps lock: “PLEASE JOIN US TO SUPPORT THE APPEAL AND TO TELL THE CITY TO HOLD BIG TECH ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ACTUAL IMPACT THEY HAVE ON OUR COMMUNITIES AND NEIGHBORHOODS! 

“We can not do this without a thorough review, which includes robust research and study of what the actual broad impact is. Without it, we can not be assured that tech is paying the fair price for their use of our streets and our transit infrastructure.”

To have your say, go to San Francisco City Hall tomorrow afternoon for the Board meeting. 

Poll says SF loves tech buses, doesn’t ask Spanish speakers

-
163
Poll says SF loves tech buses, doesn’t ask Spanish speakers

San Franciscans love tech, they’re totally cool with the Google buses, and care more about job creation than the cost of living, according to a newly released poll of San Franciscans by the Bay Area Council.

But though the poll asked respondents these questions in English and Cantonese, the pollsters left out one pretty important group of people in this debate: Spanish speakers. Yes, a poll about tech buses and the tech industry, and tangentially gentrification — which is now hitting the Mission District hard — failed to ask Spanish speaking voters any questions in their native tongue.

“Considering the tech industry’s impact on the Mission district, that’s a little suspcious,” Cynthia Crews, of the League of Pissed Off Voters told us. That’s an understatement. The “Our Mission: No Eviction” protest last October turned out hundreds of Mission residents, many Latino, against the gentrification of the neighborhood (and the lax regulations of the Google buses). The first Google bus protest took place on 24th and Valencia, in the Mission district.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said it was especially important to include Spanish-speaking voters. “San Francisco is a very multicultural city,” he said. “Even if the [polling] results were the same,” by polling Spanish speakers, “it would be a truer picture.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced a pilot program to study the use of commuter shuttles, including tech buses (known commonly as Google buses), but also shuttles from hospitals and universities. The pilot program came to a halt when a coalition of advocates filed an appeal of the pilot program under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA. Those concerns will be heard at City Hall next Tuesday. The shuttles impacted Latino populations in the Mission particularly hard, leading advocates to say question why their voices were not heard in the poll.

Rufus Jeffris, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Council, who commissioned the poll, told us they just wanted answers on how to move the conversation around tech forward. “Clearly we’re in a time of economic growth, but we want to make sure we’re focused ont he right solutions,” he said.

And the number of Spanish-speaking likely voters was not significant enough to warrant the expense of including them in that conversation, Jeffris told us.

The poll said San Francisco voters’ opinions differed from news coverage of the shuttles: “Despite what it may look like from recent media coverage, a majority of voters have a positive opinion of the shuttle buses and support allowing buses to use Muni stops.”

Of course you’ll find a lot of voters in favor of the Google buses if you fail to interview a major voting bloc of the city that actually lives near them. Latinos make up 15 percent of the city’s population, according to 2012 US Census data. But Jeffris said that may not matter.

“The universe of likely voters does not always mirror [the population],” he said. “Not everyone in the city’s population votes.” Ruth Bernstein, a principal of EMC Research, the pollsters, said the Cantonese speakers usually comprise 9 percent of likely voters.

The poll found that “Tech workers are viewed unfavorably by only a minority.” Just 17 percent of respondents were unfavorable of the tech industry to some degree, while 70 percent were favorable in some fashion. 

pollshuttle

An excerpt from the poll saying most San Franciscans view Google buses favorably.

 But the methodology of the poll may have been flawed regardless of who they talked to. Bernstein told the Guardian that the questions were crafted in sessions between the EMC Research and the Bay Area Council.

“We did a draft,” she said, “and then worked with the Bay Area Council until they were satisfied with what we did.”

The Bay Area Council is a noted pro-business organization, casting a particular narrative behind the questions it asks. Notably, it didn’t ask about the shuttles’ direct ties to displacement in neighborhoods. It did, however, ask many questions about the Google buses, or “shuttles.”

“All I can tell you is what we saw,” Berstein told us, of her company’s methodology. “There are certainly people not happy about [the shuttles]. The voters aren’t opposed to them, but they want regulations.” 

SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly was more plain spoken about the business interests behind this poll. “Well it looks like Jim Wunderman seeking a paycheck!” Daly said, referring to the Bay Area Council’s CEO and President. “Get the nice folks at EMC to do a poll for you, probably costs you close to 20 grand. They’ll get a good day of press out of it tomorrow.”

But even if the poll turned out to be the same, or similar, if it included voices of Spanish speakers, Daly said it still wouldn’t get to the heart of the issue.

“Even if the public does like tech shuttles, it has no bearing on the CEQA hearing Tuesday to determine if the City followed categorical law on this ridiculous policy,” he said. “They claim [the shuttles have] no significant environmental impact. “When it comes to displacement, when it comes to air quality and cancer rates, clearly these things are having a huge impact on San Francisco’s environment.”

And though the corporate shuttles do take cars off the road, if those same shuttles displace low-income workers into the suburbs, those low-income workers will then have to drive into San Francisco for work.

The tech workers get to ditch their cars, and the low-income workers will be forced to drive. Sounds just about as equitable as this poll.

If you’d like to see the poll for yourself, we’ve embedded the slides showing the results below.

San Francisco Shuttle Survey by FitztheReporter

On the Rise: Meklit Hadero

Steven T. Jones
-
0
On the Rise: Meklit Hadero

How to describe a Meklit Hadero performance? Warm, bluesy upright bass; bright trumpet and saxophone. Elements of classic ’60s folk by way of acoustic guitar, a lean toward R&B and soul, lyrics that blend personal and political, the intimate and the universal. The unmistakable influence of the music of Ethiopia — the singer’s country of birth — shapes her music as it darts between genres. But what sucks you in, what keeps your eyes and ears locked on Meklit, what makes an unselfconscious Damn start to grow at the back of your mouth is her voice: Lilting, sensuous, capable of the leap from staccato jazz-cat to honeyed songbird, she conveys both fragility and great strength in a single line.

Meklit, who often goes by her first name, grew up in Washington DC, Iowa, Brooklyn, and Florida after her family moved to the US when she was just shy of two years old. Throughout the moves, she was always singing. “As a kid I saw two paths…[one] that led to a kind of cult of fame, which wasn’t really my thing. The second path was a more academic approach to music, which I also didn’t like,” she says. “I was interested in music that engaged with the world around it, and artists who were cultural voices that mattered.”

She didn’t begin making music professionally until moving to San Francisco, however, post-Yale, at age 24. Here, she found an artists’ community that was “still reeling from the first dot-com bust,” with “artists picking up the slack and making noise with all sorts of street-level organizing.” The Red Poppy Art House and the Mission Arts and Performance Project both served as launching pads for her live performances, which led to recording. Ten years later, she’s been a TED Global Fellow, served as an artist-in-residence at NYU, and completed musical commissions for the San Francisco Foundation and the Brava Theatre.

Meklit’s second full-length album, We Are Alive, has her backed by Darren Johnston on trumpet, Lorca Hart on drums, and Sam Bevan on bass. The record is currently garnering critical praise from NPR, USA Today, and other national media hot-shots, and the year is shaping up to be a busy one — in addition to touring North America and traveling to Rio for a TED conference, Meklit will be working on an arts installation with YBCA called “Home (Away From) Home” with Ethiopian and Eritrean artists based in the Bay Area. We in the Bay Area also get her record release show, at Great American Music Hall on April 2.

Influences: Caetano Veloso taught me that you could write a song about anything, Aster Aweke taught me that the human voice can express absolutely any emotion if you lead it the right way. Michael Jackson taught me that you can create an entire dance style all on your own. Nina Simone taught me that the raw moments are what stay with people once the song is done. Miles Davis taught me to never sit still and sit on a sound that is bring you success. Keep moving! John Coltrane taught me that you can hear when sound comes from intense inner searching. David Byrne taught me that a little humor and absurdity goes along way.

The first album I ever loved was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I remember being four years old and dancing to it in the living room of our tiny Iowa apartment. I really wore the entire record out. I even wrote a fan letter to MJ when I was five. It took more than a year but his fan club wrote back.

Weirdest/coolest thing that’s happened at a show? In 2011, I went on a tour of Ethiopia with my band. We were performing at the foot of the ancient castles in Gondar, with electricity borrowed from the local Red Cross. It had been storming all day long and the power in the whole city suddenly went down. Folks started driving their cars with the headlights on to light the stage. The sense of possibility was palpable. My cousin, emcee Gabriel Teodros, climbed on top of another car and begin rapping to the crowd from there. Suddenly, the electricity was back, the crowd went wild, and the band continued to play. That was pretty epic.

www.meklitmusic.com

Climate fight is a street fight

Michael Redmond
-
41
Climate fight is a street fight

STREET FIGHT

Prolonged warm-weather droughts seem a normal part of California life, but the intensity of drought impacts — shrinking snowpack, intense wildfires, crop failures, and the devastation of wildlife habitat and fisheries — is likely accentuated by global warming.

So it’s not enough to simply save water. In this drought, our sense of urgency about global warming should be ramped up. The science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, respected scientists like James Hansen, and even the World Bank (historically no friend to radical ecologists) all stress that droughts will get worse unless greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade.

The science is clear. If we are to avoid a disastrous future of ecological upheaval, violence, and forced mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people (many of whom produce the least amount of carbon emissions) then we must dramatically reduce emissions now, and we must do it in a globally fair and equitable way. And to be fair and equitable, we must reduce driving. Here’s why.

Globally, transportation is the fastest growing sector of greenhouse emissions, owing in large measure to the expansion of global automobility. Presently 500 million passenger cars are in use (approximately one-third of them in the United States), but by 2030, this figure is expected to reach 1 billion worldwide.

This increase in automobility will contribute substantially to the “trillionth ton” of cumulative carbon emissions, which is an emissions threshold signaling global climate catastrophe. Today we are more than halfway there (556 billion tons). At current rates of consumption, including America’s ownership of 800 cars and trucks per 1,000 persons, we hit the trillionth ton in 28 years.

To avoid this, we must keep as much fossil fuel as possible in the ground. Because the United States is disproportionately responsible for at least 27 percent of the cumulative carbon emissions since industrialization, and has a disproportionate number of cars compared to the rest of the world, we in the United States have a particular responsibility to keep carbon in the ground.

If China, which has produced 10 percent of global emissions so far, had the same per capita car ownership rate as the United States, there would be over 500 million more cars, doubling the current worldwide rate. This would be madness. It would be worse than building the Keystone pipeline, which is what Hansen called “game over” for the global climate because it’s a spigot into the sticky, tarlike oils in Alberta which, if fully tapped, would be a carbon time bomb.

Ask yourself this: If China (and possibly India) successfully copy American-style driving, how much tar sands would that require? What kind of world would that look like? And if Americans (and especially environmentalists) expect the global middle class in China and India to stand aside while we keep on driving, that is stark, crass, and inequitable.

Many well-meaning environmentalists and progressives think that driving a Prius or buying an electric car will be adequate in mitigating this conundrum. They must reconsider. There is no “green” car when a global middle class replicates American driving patterns.

If the world’s fleet of gasoline-powered automobiles magically shifts to electric, hydrogen fuel cells, or biofuels, the change will draw resources away from industrial, residential, and food systems, or it will have to involve an entirely new layer of energy production (more tar sands). Massive quantities of coal and petroleum will be needed to scale-up to wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, and other arrays of energy, as well as for all the new “clean cars.”

Are environmentalists still planning to drive around the Bay Area while waiting for this magic? I sure hope not.

In these global warming days, with drought on everyone’s mind, we must avoid wasting precious water washing cars, and we must reallocate street space with fewer cars in mind. A critical piece of the puzzle is to prioritize public transit and bicycles over automobiles by building exclusive transit and bicycle lanes, remove the lanes and curbside parking available to cars, install signal prioritization for transit and bicycles at intersections, queue-jumping so that transit can bypasses traffic stalled at intersections, restrictions on turns for automobiles, and transit stop improvements including bus stop bulb-outs and amenities.

Reconfigured streets must furthermore exclude car-oriented land uses like more off-street parking in the 92,000 new housing units projected for San Francisco by Plan Bay Area. These units, whatever size or income, should be completely car-free. And this must include removal of existing parking beneath homes, replacing garages with housing and returning the privatized curb cut to the public.

 

VISIONS FOR HAIGHT

In many respects, the Haight Street corridor is a model for the kind of global warming mitigation strategy the rest of America should follow. The corridor has high density, transit dependent, and car-free households (over 30 percent in the Upper Haight and almost 50 percent in the Lower Haight/Hayes Valley) It has several walkable neighborhood commercial districts, as well as several hundred units of new housing (some of which are below market rate) under construction in Hayes Valley. Almost 25,000 passengers take the Haight buses (6-Parnassus and 71-Haight Noriega) daily, making it one of the busiest combined transit corridors in the city.

But the buses are crowded and often stuck in traffic, so the SFMTA has plans to improve service by increasing frequency, converting more of the existing route into faster “limited” service whereby some buses stop only at key points and removing the “jog” at Laguna and Page which adds delay to the inbound buses.

As I’ve written before, the Muni staff has a good plan known as the Transit Effectiveness Project, with a modest reallocation of street space for higher transit reliability, attracting more ridership, and potentially enabling San Franciscans to conveniently reduce driving to half of all trips by 2018 (it was at 62 percent in 2012). But on both ends of Haight Street, the city has fumbled. While not a disaster, hopefully Muni can learn some lessons and tweak the plans.

On the eastern end, Muni will shift buses off Page Street, converting a short segment of Haight back to two-way. The new two-way Haight includes a transit-only lane between Laguna and Gough/Market streets, which will dramatically improve travel times and reliability. Part of it will enable buses to bypass queues of cars making the right turn from Haight onto Octavia.

Where this scheme falls short is in the plans to simply give former bus stops on Page to private cars for parking. A more progressive plan would instead use the space to help make room for needed bicycle improvements on Page between Laguna and Market. Nearby are multiple housing construction sites where curbside parking has been temporarily removed — such as at the 55 Laguna site. The city has a great opportunity to innovate with transit-first policies at all of these construction sites.

Instead of turning space over to private cars when construction concludes, the city could instead build more bus lanes, pedestrian space, curbside car sharing, and bicycle space. The city could also return some of the space to parking, but only in exchange for parking removal upstream, such as at Haight and Fillmore, where bus stop improvements are sorely needed.

Throughout the city, there are block-by-block opportunities like these, where the city can help the climate instead of giving away parking. As the city discontinues bus stops and sees more housing construction, the policy should be to use curbside space for bicycles, pedestrians, or curbside car share — not simply giving it away to private car parking.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Haight, the city has also fumbled in proposing to reroute the 6-Parnassus, an important electric trolley bus line, off the Frederick-Cole-Parnassus segment. Bus riders in the Upper Haight are incensed. At a recent public meeting, a crowd of 90 people balked at the cut. Muni planners defended the proposal, arguing that ridership is low in the hilly segment above, and that a less productive segment would be shifted to the more crowded Haight Street.

This might seem logical but it may also be shortsighted, especially since the existing segment has overhead trolley wires. Drought notwithstanding, the electric trolley buses are the greenest motorized mobility in San Francisco, propelled by hydroelectricity from Hetch Hetchy.

Taking a longer and more progressive view, it might be useful to think of the debate over the 6-Parnassus this way: If the city is hoping to wean motorists from their cars by achieving the laudable goal of having 30 percent of all trips in the city by transit (up from 17 percent today), cutting service, even in relatively low ridership routes, is counterproductive. It raises the question: Is the ridership level low because the service was poor to begin with, including such irritating factors as less frequency, less reliability, or fewer hours of service? What would ridership levels look like if these less-crowded routes had high frequency, all-day and late-night service with high reliability?

Moreover, what would demand for these routes look like if parking were substantially reduced throughout the city while car-travel lanes were removed, creating space for bicycle lanes and transit lanes? Or what if there were a regional gasoline tax, a congestion charge, or other measures that priced automobility closer to its real social cost, thus producing higher demand for transit?

Surely, reducing the footprint of transit service, however inefficient that service might seem now, is not creating a template necessary for carrying 1.4 million daily passengers in the future, which is what it would take to reach significant emissions reduction goals and 30 percent mode share. Removing segments like the 6-Parnassus on Frederick will only make it harder to rebuild and accomplish that goal. And for political expediency it will also make it harder for Mayor Ed Lee to sell his transportation funding ballot proposals to progressive voters in November.

Muni planners ought to ditch the proposal to reroute the 6-Parnassus, and instead focus on maximizing improved reliability and transit efficiency on the other end of Haight Street by removing parking and prioritizing transit and bicycling on Haight and Page respectively.

Thinking globally about climate change means acting locally, on the streets of San Francisco.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco State University’s Department of Geography and Environment.

 

Sundance, part 11: Celebrating the 20th annual Native Forum

Sue Vaughan
-
1
Sundance, part 11: Celebrating the 20th annual Native Forum

The current second-generation movement of Native/Indigenous filmmakers took the spotlight at the Sundance Film Festival’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of its annual Native Forum. 

The event gathered some of the most important figures from around the world to not only screen their most recent films but to share artistic works that inspired them to become filmmakers themselves. Sundance favorite Taika Waitita — a self-proclaimed “Academy Award-losing filmmaker” for his 2005 short Two Cars, One Night, he’s best-known for his wonderfully quirky 2007 film Eagle vs. Shark — read a sequence from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), while his vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows (co-directed with Flight of the Conchords‘ Jermaine Clement) enraptured Midnight Movie audiences at the 2014 festival. 

Heather Rae, director of the powerful 2005 documentary Trudell, read a piece from Trinh T. Minh-ha’s remarkably eye-opening text Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. 

And even though Smoke Signals (1998) helmer Chris Eyre (the defining first generation filmmaker) brought the house down by reading an entire Sherman Alexie short story (Alexie also wrote Signals), filmmaker Billy Luther — who directed the documentary Miss Navajo (2007)  — further took the edge off of things by reading a memorable scene from The Golden Girls. But I found myself most drawn to Sydney Freeland and Sterlin Harjo’s readings. Both filmmakers also had features in the festival.

Freeland wrote and directed her stunning debut, Drunktown’s Finest, which showcases lively performances by Jeremiah Bitsui (Victor from Breaking Bad) and newcomer Carmen Moore. The wonderfully entangled screenplay weaves together its Navajo characters, subjects, and themes with powerful precision, announcing Freeland as a voice to be taken seriously. 

In a post-fest interview I learned that ensemble films — as widely varied as Casablanca (1942) and Amores Perros (2000) — inspired her greatly, which led me and other viewers to retrace some of Drunktown‘s more compelling plot twists. The film’s complicated dealings with a MTF trans-woman are enlightened, as are the ways it explores the Navajo Nation’s beliefs about a third gender: nàdleehì, meaning “one who is transformed” or “one who changes.”

Ironically, the filmmaker explained, “I had to leave the reservation and move to San Francisco to learn about this.” Freeland’s own interests changed dramatically after finding photography and filmmaking in college. “Making movies just was not an option growing up. Other fine arts were being taught, like pottery and weaving, but not filmmaking.” 

When asked about the growing number of native filmmakers, she attributes much of it to technology’s increasing accessibility, via phones and digital cameras.nd Drunktown’s Finest has achieved what second-generation movements have the power to do: complicate matters. 

Part two coming tomorrow, with Sundance vet Sterlin Harjo (who screened his first documentary, This May Be the Last Time, at Sundance 2014) and Smoke Signals’ Chris Eyre.

Cities face legal obstacle to safer biking

Michael Redmond
-
7

San Francisco has been blazing the trail toward safer cycling with innovative designs such as cycletracks, or bike lanes that are physically separated from cars, which have been installed on Market Street and JFK Drive. But cycletracks aren’t legal under state law, something that a San Francisco lawmaker and activist are trying to solve so that other California cities can more easily adopt them.

“Right now, many cities are not putting in cycletracks for fear they don’t conform to the Caltrans manual,” says Assemblymember Phil Ting, whose Assembly Bill 1193 — which would legalize and set design standards for cycletracks — cleared the Assembly on Jan. 29 and is awaiting action by the Senate.

Ting is working on the issue with the California Bicycle Coalition, whose executive director, Dave Snyder, is a longtime San Francisco bike activist. Snyder says Caltrans doesn’t allow bike lanes that include physical barriers against traffic, even though they are widely used in other countries and states and considered to be safest design for cyclists.

“San Francisco is technically breaking the law because they have the best traffic engineers in the state and a good City Attorney’s Office and they know they can defend it in court if they have to,” Snyder said. “Most places in the state won’t do that.”

In addition to the direct benefits of the legislation in San Francisco and other cities, Snyder said the legislation seems to be triggering a long-overdue discussion at Caltrans and other agencies about how to encourage more people to see cycling as an attractive transportation option, with all the environmental, public health, and traffic alleviation benefits that it brings.

“It’s opened up a conversation about bike lane design and Caltrans’ role in encouraging safe cycling,” Snyder told the Guardian, praising Ting for championing the legislation. “It’s having an impact beyond its immediate impact.”

In response to a request for comment, a Caltrans spokesperson said, “It’s our policy not to comment on pending legislation.”

Surveys conducted by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have shown safety is the top concern of those considering riding to work or school more often. Ting said he hopes this legislation will address that concern: “By building more cycletracks in California, there will be increased ridership.”

San Francisco and its cycletracks lead the way toward safer biking statewide

Sasha Cuttler
-
39
San Francisco and its cycletracks lead the way toward safer biking statewide

San Francisco has been blazing the trail toward safer cycling with innovative designs such as cycletracks, or bike lanes that are physically separated from cars, which have been installed on Market Street and JFK Drive. But cycletracks aren’t legal under state law, something that a San Francisco lawmaker and activist are trying to solve so that other California cities can more easily build them.

“Right now, many cities are not putting in cycletracks for fear they don’t conform to the Caltrans manual,” says Assemblymember Phil Ting, whose Assembly Bill 1193 — which would legalize and set design standards for cycletracks — cleared the Assembly yesterday [Wed/29] and is now awaiting action by the Senate.

Ting is working on the issue with the California Bicycle Coalition, whose executive director Dave Snyder is a longtime San Francisco bike activist. Snyder says Caltrans doesn’t allow bike lanes that include physical barriers against traffic, even though they are widely used in other countries and states and considered to be safest design for cyclists.

“San Francisco is technically breaking the law because they have the best traffic engineers in the state and a good City Attorney’s Office and they know they can defend it in court if they have to,” Snyder said. “Most places in the state won’t do that.”

In addition to the direct benefits of the legislation in San Francisco and other cities, Snyder said the legislation seems to be triggering a long-overdue discussion at Caltrans and other agencies about how to encourage more people to see cycling as an attractive transportation option, with all the environmental, public health, and traffic alleviation benefits that brings.

“It’s opened up a conversation about bike lane design and Caltrans’ role in encouraging safe cycling,” Snyder told the Guardian, praising Ting for championing the legislation. “It’s having an impact beyond its immediate impact.”

The Guardian is waiting for a reponse from Caltrans and we’ll update this post if and when we hear back. [UPDATE 1/31: A Caltrans spokesperson got back to us and said, “It’s our policy not to comment on pending legislation.”]

Surveys by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have shown safety is the top concern of those considering riding to work or school more often. Ting said he hopes this legislation will address that concern: “By building more cycletracks in California, there will be increased ridership.”

Broken bodies, broken lives

Michael Redmond
-
42
Broken bodies, broken lives

Motorists driving for rideshare companies have struck and also killed pedestrians in San Francisco, even since state regulations were adopted to make these new transportation businesses safer and more accountable to the public.

Four months after the new rules were created, lawsuits from these incidents reveal that the new regulations contain gaping holes that continue to place passengers, pedestrians, and even drivers at risk.

One recent local story actually started in 2004 in Florida’s Monroe County. A vehicle sped down the Overseas highway at over 100mph. Ever seen the movie The Fast and the Furious? It was like that.

In the Florida heat, the car blazed by palm trees and an ocean view, hell bent for Miami. It accelerated as it took a curve, swerving around two vehicles going half its speed. Brazenly passing a traffic control device, the car cut off one more vehicle, then another, and another. Still barreling over 100mph, the driver swerved across the double yellow lines, forcing an oncoming vehicle to veer off the highway.

A traffic snarl put an end to the thrill ride. According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office incident report, which the Guardian obtained through a records request, driver Syed Muzzafar was accompanied by his wife and three children during his death-defying drive. He told the police officer, “This was just a dumb thing to do. I know I’m wrong.”

Muzzafar was booked for reckless driving. Nine years later, he would be booked again in San Francisco for hitting a family as they crossed the street in the Tenderloin.

On New Year’s Eve 2013, picking up fares for the tech company Uber, Muzzafar’s car struck young Sofia Liu, her mother, Huan Kuang, and brother, Anthony Liu. Six-year-old Sofia did not survive. Her family filed a wrongful death suit against Uber on Jan. 27, and will be represented by attorney Christopher Dolan.

Uber is part of an emerging cast of companies commonly known as rideshares, now legally called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). The gist of how they operate is this: the company’s mobile app connects a driver with a customer, much like a taxi dispatch. Only a few years old, the TNCs initially operated in a wild west, devoid of regulation. But the California Public Utilities Commission passed rules for TNCs in September with the aim of protecting pedestrians, passengers, and drivers in collisions.

Uber, formed in 2009, has drivers in over 50 cities worldwide and an estimated worth of just over $3 billion, according to leaked evaluations. But Uber may still be in need of a version 2.0.

The death of the young Sofia Liu, killed by a driver already arrested for reckless driving, shows the state still has a long way to go on the road to regulating rideshares.

 

NOT MY PROBLEM

The night Muzzafar struck the Liu family, he was ferrying customers using the Uber app — but the company disavowed responsibility for the incident.

“We thank law enforcement for the quick release of information,” Uber wrote in a blog post the day after Sofia Liu died. “We can confirm that the driver in question was a partner of Uber and that we have deactivated his Uber account. The driver was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident.”

But that’s a half-truth: Muzzafar was picking up passengers for Uber all night, but because he’d just dropped off a customer, he allegedly ceased being an Uber driver. With no passengers in the vehicle, Uber did not consider him “on the Uber system.”

If that sounds like a giant loophole, you’d be right — but it’s a legal one, for now.

The new CPUC regulations specify that TNCs must only provide liability insurance when drivers are “in service.” The Taxicab Paratransit Association of California is suing to modify those rules, saying the meaning of “in service” was never defined — and they allege this wording allows companies to disavow responsibility for a driver not carrying passengers at the moment of an accident.

This gaping loophole can also lead to insurance and liability consequences.

“I would guess that’s on the order of a $20 million liability case,” Christiane Hayashi, director of Taxi services at the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, said of Liu’s death. “The question is, who is going to pay for it?”

Muzzafar, and not Uber, may be on the fiscal hook, even though it’s unlikely he could cover the family’s medical and legal fees on his own.

Though much reporting has focused on TNC drivers’ lack of insurance, the collision that killed Sofia Liu on New Year’s Eve raises other questions as well. Just how did a driver with a reckless driving record manage to become a partner with Uber in the first place?

Checking out drivers

The recently drafted CPUC regulations require the TNCs to carry out background checks, a key element for safety. As it turns out, not all background checks are made equal.

Uber hired a private company called Hirease to conduct its checks, the Guardian learned in emails obtained from drivers. While Hirease requires Uber drivers to fill out a form with their personal information, taxi drivers who must register with the city’s transportation agency are screened with fingerprinting, Hayashi from the SFMTA told us.

The fingerprint checks make use of the FBI’s national criminal database, something a company like Hirease lacks access to (since it isn’t a government agency). We called the FBI’s background check department, based in West Virginia, to better understand the two methods.

We spoke to a rank and file employee, not a spokesperson, so he declined to give his name. The FBI employee spoke with a twang, and clearly laid out the problems.

The first snag with private background checks are false positives from common names (like John Smith) or stolen identities, he said.

Self-identification is also a problem. “If you’re a criminal, you’re not going to use your information,” the FBI employee said. “What if you were a lady and you were married six times, which name will you use for a background check? Bottom line, fingerprints are exclusive. Names are not.”

Another flaw is that while background checks performed for entities like the SFMTA make use of a federal database that dates back 100 years, California law doesn’t allow private background checks to go beyond seven years — and Muzzafar’s reckless driving arrest was nine years ago.

“Uber works with Hirease to conduct stringent background checks,” Uber spokesperson Andrew Noyes wrote to us via email. “This driver (Muzzafar) had a clean background check when he became an Uber partner.”

Hirease and Uber did what they legally could, but the summation of laws and regulations blinded Uber to Muzzafar’s background — and nothing in the new CPUC regulations would have prevented this. That may go a long way toward explaining how a man caught recklessly driving with his own family in the car in Florida was driving for Uber the night he allegedly struck and killed a child.

Importantly, California law does allow for a taxi driver to have one reckless driving incident, or one count of driving under the influence, on his or her record. But as Hayashi told us, stricter background checks make it easier for taxi companies to spot a red flag before making hiring decisions.

The relative insecurity of private background checks raises an unsettling question: How many others with reckless driving records or DUIs drive for TNC companies like Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft without the companies’ knowledge?

The results of a collision can be severe, as San Francisco’s tragic New Year’s eve incident demonstrates. But even those who survive are left with bills that Uber, allegedly, isn’t paying.

 

PAYING NO ONE

Last September, Jason Herrera and Nikolas Kolintzas summoned an Uber driver via smartphone, intending to hop from Valencia Street to the Marina district. Driver Bassim Elbatniji responded, and drove the pair down Octavia, where his Prius collided with a Camry.

Herrera suffered a concussion and was knocked unconscious. Kolintzas also suffered a concussion, and they both sustained injuries to their necks and backs, according to court documents.

But when the two sought financial assistance from Uber to cover their medical costs, Uber said it was the driver’s responsibility.

“As far as Uber’s concerned, their insurance isn’t providing any of this,” attorney Colleen Li told the Guardian. Li is representing Kolintzas and Herrera in their suit against Uber, which seeks damages to cover their medical bills, which reached “tens of thousands” of dollars, Li told us.

According to a policy published on Uber’s website, the company maintains a $1 million “per incident insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips,” which is in keeping with requirements under the new CPUC regulations.

Nevertheless, Uber has not stepped up to cover damages in response to a lawsuit arising from a similar incident. Months ago, the Guardian reported on the case of an Uber driver who hit a fire hydrant, which flew through the air and struck Claire Fahrbach, a barista living in San Francisco (“Lawsuit over injury from airborne fire hydrant tests Uber’s insurance practices,” 8/8/13). She sustained lacerations to her body, a fracture in her lower leg, and multiple herniated discs, according to her lawsuit against Uber.

Her medical bills and injuries destroyed her dreams of living in San Francisco, and she moved home with her parents in North Carolina to recover. Her lawyer, Doug Atkinson, told us Uber still hasn’t paid for his client’s medical services.

“They’re still denying they have any liability for the driver,” he said. “They said they wouldn’t fight the CPUC ruling, but in our case they obviously are.”

But the hydrant also sprouted a geyser that flooded a nearby business, Rare Device, and the apartment building above it. “It was horrible. Our store flooded, we lost a bunch of inventory,” Rare Device’s owner, Giselle Gyalzen, told us.

Her insurance covered the damage, but she’s still trying to recover the deductible from Uber.

Uber directed the lawyers to its terms of service, which tell people up front that they won’t cover anything: “Uber under no circumstance accepts liability in connection with and/or arising from the transportation services provided by the Transportation Provider or any acts, action, behavior, conduct, and/or negligence on the part of the Transportation Provider.”

Meanwhile, the drivers also find themselves in a bind when it comes to obtaining insurance. Given the lack of clarity, state agencies have opted to alert TNC drivers that they’re going without a safety net.

On its website, the California Department of Insurance posted a notice warning, “TNCs are not required to have medical payments coverage, comprehensive, collision, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage or other optional coverages.” It goes on to explain that TNCs’ liability policies aren’t required to cover bodily injury to the drivers, damages to the drivers’ cars, or damage and injuries caused by an uninsured or underinsured motorist.

And as the Guardian previously reported (“Driven to Take Risks,” 8/6/13), rideshare drivers don’t qualify for commercial insurance since their vehicles are registered as private automobiles, yet insurance companies won’t grant complete insurance coverage to TNC drivers since it’s considered an insufficient safeguard against risk.

Notably, limo drivers who also work for Uber (and get commercial insurance through those companies) don’t have this problem — just those using Uber or other rideshare apps as independent contractors. Taxi drivers are also eligible for commercial coverage.

Is there any way for an independent TNC driver to legally insure him/herself on the road? “Not that I’m aware of,” said Patrick Storm, a spokesperson for the Department of Insurance.

 

FIXING SAFETY

Paul Marron is an attorney for the Taxicab Paratransit Association of California, the group suing the CPUC to tighten up its regulations. In his view, a key test of the new CPUC regulations is whether they’re enforced — and with a bare bones staff, enforcement is likely to be anemic.

“The CPUC does not have the adequate resources to regulate (transportation) safety statewide,” he told us.

As a lawyer for taxi interests competing against rideshares, Marron obviously has skin in the game, so we looked at the numbers.

We compared the staff counts of the SFMTA, the CPUC, and for some perspective, the New York City Taxi Commission.

The SFMTA has 15 employees who oversee San Francisco’s 1,850 taxi cabs. That’s one staff person for every 123 cabs in the city. The NYC Taxi Commission’s staff of 569 oversees 94,500 taxis, town cars and similar liveries, according to their posted annual report. Though the numbers are greater than San Francisco, the ratio is similar: One staff person for every 166 vehicles.

Now for the CPUC. Though it is now tasked with overseeing “rideshare” TNC vehicles, the agency is also responsible for regulating limos and town cars statewide. Public documents obtained by the Guardian show it oversees 1,900 liveries in the Bay Area, and though there are no official numbers, there are an estimated 3,000 rideshare drivers in the city, according to data compiled by the San Francisco Cab Driver’s Association.

The CPUC has a staff of six based in San Francisco, responsible for overseeing an estimated 4,900 vehicles. That leaves the CPUC with one staffer for every 700 vehicles, a ratio wildly out of sync with other vehicle safety regulators.

Hayashi pleaded with the CPUC to allow cities to regulate rideshares on the local level, saying, “You don’t even have the resources to monitor this stuff.”

Sup. Eric Mar met repeatedly with the SFMTA over these concerns, and will hold a February hearing to get to the heart of the safety culture around San Francisco’s TNC rideshares.

CPUC spokesperson Christopher Chow defended its safety regulations and enforcement. “We can clarify or modify our TNC requirements, if needed, particularly the insurance requirements, as we see how the TNCs attempt to comply with the decision’s directives,” Chow wrote in an email. “If we believe there are any issues that should be addressed, we will take action.”

But as things stand, Claire Fahrbach, Giselle Gyalzen, Jason Herrera, Nikolas Kolintas and the family of Sofia Liu are all waiting for that action.

Reed Nelson contributed to this report.

 

Drought

Michael Redmond
-
41
Drought

steve@sfbg.com

I remember the dead lawns, 90-second timed showers, empty fountains and pools, and water cops issuing tickets for washing one’s dirty car. “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down,” went the toilet edict they taught us in school. Water was too precious to just wantonly flush away.

I was 8 years old in 1976-77 during California’s last severe drought, but I retain vivid, visceral memories of that time. Water was an ever-present concern. I learned how dependent we are on the natural world and the role that individual responsibility plays in collective action, particularly in times of turmoil.

Everyone’s yards were brown; nobody’s cars were clean. We were in it together.

But even deeply implanted memories and learned behaviors fade. I may still feel subtle emotional pangs when I watch the water running down the drain when I shave or wash the dishes, yet I’d content myself with the knowledge that water is a renewable resource and we were no longer in a severe drought.

Or at least I was able to do that until this season. California experienced its driest year in recorded history in 2013, and it’s still not raining as we go to press. Yes, there are welcome predictions of finally getting some rain this week, but not the sustained precipitation we need to make a difference.

If current long-range weather forecasts hold true, this winter could be even drier than last winter, causing by far the most severe drought in state history, worse than ’76-’77, even worse than 1923-24, the driest winter ever and the beginning of a seven-year drought.

“We’re facing the worst drought California has ever seen,” Gov. Jerry Brown told reporters on Jan. 17 as he proclaimed a state of emergency, invoking powers to redirect water resources and asking Californians to reduce their consumption by 20 percent.

Yet as dire as this situation may be — and we’ll have a better idea by the end of March, when more stringent water restrictions will be enacted if we don’t get some serious rainfall by then — one of the scariest aspects to this drought is that it may be just a preview of things to come.

This could be the new normal by the end the century. Most reputable climate change models predict California’s average temperature will increase 3-8 degrees by 2100. That’s enough to radically change our climate, causing shorter winters with less precipitation, and more of it coming in the form of rain than snow, undermining the elegant system of storing water within the Sierra snowpack.

That also translates into more extreme conditions, from more flooding in the winter and spring to more dangerous heat waves and wildfires in the summer and fall — and more frequent and severe droughts.

“People should reflect on how dependent we are on rain, nature, and other another,” Brown said at the end of his news conference. “This is Mother Nature. At some point we have to decide to live with nature and get on nature’s side and not abuse the resources we have.”

That theme of interdependence was one he returned to several times during that 14-minute event. Brown was governor during that last big drought in ’76-’77, and when a reporter asked what lessons he took from that experience, he said, “We’re dependent on rain, we’re dependent on one another.”

He expressed confidence that Californians will find their way through even the most severe drought, although he acknowledged it will exacerbate existing conflicts between cities and rural areas, farmers and environmentalists, and Northern and Southern California as each fights for its interests.

“This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature,” Brown said. “This is going to take a lot of support and a lot of collaboration on the part of everybody.”

 

STATE OF DENIAL

California is on a collision course with reality. Whether or not it’s this drought that wakes us up, at some point we’ll awaken to the fact that a growing population can’t survive on dwindling water resources without a major shift in how we operate.

“California does not today live within its means. We want more water than nature is naturally providing, even in normal years,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute and a world-renowned expert on water issues whose research has fueled United Nations studies as well as his own books. “Some of the most serious impacts of climate change are going to be on water.”

That’s particularly true for California, whose large population and huge agricultural and other water-dependent industries belie a Mediterranean climate that is actually quite fragile and susceptible to droughts and the impacts of climate change.

“You’ve got 30 million people perched on the edge of a physical impossibility, unless we act with huge speed,” said Bill McKibben, an author and researcher who founded 350.org, one of the leading advocacy organizations for addressing climate change.

Gleick and McKibben are leading voices on the related issues of water policy and climate change, respectively, and they both told the Guardian that this drought should finally get people serious about conservation, efficiency, reducing our carbon output, and generally living in greater harmony with the natural world.

“The current drought ought to be a wake-up call to tell us we have to start thinking about our water resources differently,” Gleick told us, calling for far greater efficiency in how we use water, particularly in cities and the agriculture industry. “California has made great progress over the last several decades, but we’re nowhere near where we could be or should be.”

From low-flow toilets and shower heads to smarter irrigation techniques and recycled wastewater, California has made tremendous advances in its water efficiency since the last big drought. But Gleick and McKibben both say California needs a seismic shift in its thinking to grapple how a growing population can function within a changing climate.

“The assumption has always been that as we get larger populations, we’ll figure out their resource needs,” Gleick said, pointing out that climate change challenges that assumption and calls for more proactive thinking. “We need to do a better job at planning for future resource needs.”

Times of crisis can trigger that kind of shift in thinking. Gleick said Australia’s “Millennium drought” from 1995 to 2009 began with basic conservation measures and eventually led to a complete overhaul of water rights, “policies that we haven’t even contemplated” in California.

But Californians may soon be forced into such contemplations.

“It’s physics in action. This is what happens when you start to change the way the world has worked throughout human history,” McKibben told us. “Some people will be empowered to act, and some will have to go into denial. A truly interesting test will be Jerry Brown — he ‘gets it’ on climate, but he’d love to frack as well apparently. He’s like a Rorschach for the state.”

Brown’s call to work with nature and one another is encouraging, but neither Gleick nor McKibben were willing to wager that Brown is ready to lead the big discussion Californians need to have about our long-term needs.

Yet Gleick says something will have to start that conversation before too long: “It’s either going to take a more severe drought or better political leadership.”

 

FIRES IN JANUARY

California is a tinderbox right now, with a high risk of wildfires that could get unimaginably worse by this summer.

“We’re experiencing conditions in California that we typically see in August,” CalFire spokesperson Daniel Berlant told us. “We never really moved out of fire season in Southern California.”

And that will only get worse as global warming changes California’s climate.

“As summers get longer, it extends the window for fires,” Berlant said. “It’s a clear sign that this generation is seeing more and bigger fires.”

Farmers are also worried, facing the prospect of fields going fallow.

“There is considerable anxiety on farms and ranches throughout California,” Dave Kranz, spokesperson for the California Farm Bureau, told the Guardian. “We know it’s going to be bad, we just don’t know how bad.”

He described ranchers selling their animals before they reach market weight and farmers considering whether to plant field crops and how to keep trees and vines alive if things get bad.

“You have people irrigating crops in January, which is a very unusual occurrence,” Kranz said. And if the rains don’t come this winter, “hundreds of thousands of acres of land would be left unplanted.”

Kranz said that “farmers have become significantly more efficient in their water use,” citing stats that crop production doubled in California between 1967 and 2005 while the water used by the industry dropped 13 percent. “We talk about more crop per drop.”

But Gleick also said the fact that agriculture accounts for 80 percent of water use in California must be addressed, something that Kranz acknowledges. For example, he said Central Valley fields that once grew cotton, which takes a lot of water, have mostly switched to almonds. Pistachios are also big now, partially because they can be grown with saltier water.

“Farmers adapt, that’s what they’ve done historically in response to weather trends and market demands,” he said.

“There’s only so much water and much of it is spoken for for the environment,” Kranz said, acknowledging species needs but also complaining about much of the last big rains, in November and December of 2012, were released to protect the Delta smelt. “We should have saved some of that water.”

While the 1927-28 winter was the driest on record in the state, dropping just 17.1 inches of rain, this winter already looks worse, with just 3.5 inches falling so far as of Jan. 27. That could change quickly — indeed, a chance of rain was finally in the forecast for Jan. 30 and Feb. 2 — but it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll get enough to end this drought.

“Right now, we are saying the odds do not indicate a Miracle March, which is not good,” a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center told the San Jose Mercury News on Jan. 16 following release of its three-month forecast.

The worse it gets, the more heated the political battles will become over how to address it.

“You’re going to hear a lot of talk about additional water storage,” Kranz said. “We’re paying now for not creating more storage 10-15 years ago. Droughts happen in California.”

But even Kranz and his generally conservative constituency is talking about tweaks to existing reservoirs — such as increasing Shasta Lake’s capacity and expanding the Sykes Reservoir in Colusa County — rather than big new dam projects.

Gleick agrees that the era of building big dams in California is over. “You can’t build a new dam in California, with their enormous political, economic, and environmental costs.”

And that makes the challenges this state faces all the more vexing.

 

PAST AND FUTURE

California has dealt with drought many times before, including several that lasted for a few years. The last sustained drought was in 1987-1992, but it wasn’t nearly as dry as earlier droughts, such the 1928-1934 drought, the worst one on record.

Officials try to learn from each drought, studying what happened and trying to develop long-term solutions, such as the water banking and distribution systems established during the 1976-77 drought. Yet a study by the Department of Water Resources in 1978 also concluded that we’re essentially at the mercy of nature.

“The 1976-77 drought has again shown that finite nature of our resources and our limited ability to control nature,” read the introduction to the report “The 1976-77 California Drought: A Review.”

DWR’s then-Director Ronald Robie warned at the time that there was no way to predict when or how severe the next drought might be. “We can be assured, however, that drought will return,” he wrote, “and, considering the greater needs of that future time, its impact, unless prepared for, will be much greater.”

Those words could carry a special resonance now, but it’s even scarier given long-range climate change forecasts that Robie wasn’t taking into account when he wrote those words. California estimates it will add more than 15 million people between 2010 and 2060, crossing the 50 million people mark in 2049.

“California could lead the nation into renewable energy. You’ve got the sun. But it would take a 21st century statesman. I guess we’ll find out whether Brown’s that guy — he could be, freed from the need for political popularity after this next election,” McKibben said, calling Brown “a true visionary in many ways, but also a politician. What a fascinating gut check!”

Gleick said that he sometimes gets asked whether climate change is causing the current California drought or other specific weather incidents, and he said that question misses the crucial point: “All of our weather today is influenced by climate change.”

As the climate changes and the world warms, that becomes the new normal for California and other regions, affecting all of its weather patterns. “As goes our climate,” Gleick said, “so goes our water, and we’re not ready.”

Locals Only: The American Professionals

Steven T. Jones
-
0

Locals Only is our shout-out to the musicians who call the Bay Area home — a chance to spotlight an artist/band/music-maker with an upcoming show, album release, or general good news to share.To be considered, email esilvers@sfbg.com.

With all the CDs that come across my desk, the American Professionals‘ latest, We Make It Our Business, caught my attention for a rather weird reason — it looked incredibly boring. At first glance, it seemed like a software or PR company had accidentally sent me some sort of business portfolio in disc form. Upon further review (i.e., actually reading the accompanying materials and listening to the music…this is why they pay me the big bucks) I realized it was anything but. The SF-based trio makes danceable, upbeat but never overly slick power pop with a little gravel in it; the new record should please anyone who can’t afford to see the Replacements at Coachella this year (or even those who can). The band also licenses its music to a couple of shows on Nickelodeon, via a process lead singer Chuck Lindo (also of Noise Pop veterans Action Slacks) still finds mysterious. Ahead of the American Professionals’ record release this Wednesday, we checked in with Lindo to hear about his influences, the music biz, and how he gets his seafood fix.

SF Bay Guardian: How long have you been in San Francisco? How did the band form?

Chuck Lindo: Cheryl [Hendrickson, the bass player/vocalist and also Lindo’s wife] and I moved here from St. Louis in 1991 with my old band, The Nukes. We left behind the humidity, crappy wintertime produce, and a pretty impressive fan base for the possibilities and romance of this freakshow of a place. Still here, but for a brief four year stint in Los Angeles 2003-2007. We got a chance to dry our bones out and re-learn how to drive cars. We met Adam White through another band I play bass and sing with, The Real Numbers. He had just moved out here from Indianapolis and we hit it off like crazy. There’s something about those midwesterners that just feels right. I think there’s some kind of code or dog whistle in there. It’s hard to describe.

SFBG: How would you describe your sound? There are obviously a lot of power-pop influences, some post-punk stuff going on. 

CL: There is a lot of power pop in there, but we do come from the “power” side of that spectrum. I’ve always had a deep desire to hear Black Sabbath playing Squeeze songs. Somebody said we sounded like Cheap Trick on the Foo Fighters’ instruments playing Smithereens’ songs. I’ll take that. My first “real” band, The Nukes, was pretty damn close to being punk really, but not quite. I could never wear the attitude comfortably, but I do like it loud, fast,  and crunchy. Cheryl and I have a funny mixture of influences. We both love heavy rock stuff, but she’s an Elton John freak and grew up on the Monkees and all those musicals like “Oliver!” and “Bugsy Malone.” I got into things like The Descendents and Dead Kennedys and The Clash in my teens and early twenties , but I have a gooey soft spot for early ’70s singer-songwriter stuff, and I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs about Stevie Wonder.

SFBG: How did the “business” aesthetic come about? Where does the band name come from?

CL: There’s an endless  trough of funny stuff in the the faceless corporate ogre world. A lot of the aesthetic comes from observing my sister Nancy’s work. She’s a good old-fashioned family doctor in Wisconsin, and I’ve witnessed the evolution of how big pharma reaches physicians and now the general public itself. At first, I think they couldn’t say exactly what some of these drugs were intended to do, so they used all sorts of evocative imagery to produce the warm-fuzzy take-away. So much of that stuff was just pure creative genius, it’s impossible to not be impressed, even if it is sort of insidious. I just think it’s funny to overlay that ethos on a little three-piece rock band.

The name “The American Professionals” was coined by our friend David Reidy. He was a charter member of the band when I first started writing songs back in the late 1990s. He’s Irish and was working on getting his US citizenship at the time, and he was thoroughly enamored with the gumption, optimism, and resilience of the American people. We were backing an amazing singer-songwriter, Pamela Martin, and at a live show, right before soundcheck, he pointed back at his guitar rig and said something like “Chuck, you see that? That’s the American professional setup right there.” He had his spare guitar, rack tuner, slide, combo amp with road case, pedal board, extra strings, a white towel, the whole deal. It became this sort of rallying ethic: “How do we do it? Think ‘what would The American Professional do?’, and that’s what you do.” So, of course it became the name of the band. That’s what “The American Professional” would do. David’s a partner at Reed Smith now. Not even the least bit surprising.

SFBG: How did you start licensing your music to TV shows? Does it change your writing to be thinking about the possibility of a show wanting to use a song? Are there bands whose model you’re following here? I’m thinking about They Might Be Giants, who’ve done stuff for The Daily Show and Malcolm in the Middle but not, say, beer commercials.

CL: I get to approach that from two angles. We’ve licensed our existing music to several indie films and network TV shows, but I also founded a boutique music house (we call it a “music cottage” sometimes) Jingle This! with my longtime friend John Schulte. We make bespoke music for all sorts of stuff. I love hearing a well-thought out placement, especially when it’s a semi-obscure song or a deep album track, but I do tire of people attaching really famous, popular songs to products. I totally understand the power of it, but it makes me sad to hear people relying on the spectrum of emotions that accompanies a particular song and then sort of jump its train. I think it’s much more challenging, and if it works, rewarding, to make an original piece.

They Might Be Giants are a perfect example of doing it right, yes. They’re so insanely creative and versatile, but there’s always a thread of their sound in there, however intangible that may be. I like the way The 88’s music gets used. They do the theme for Community and they’ve had a ton of stuff licensed, all to great effect, I think.I still don’t know how we initially got approached by Nickelodeon to use our stuff in Zoey:101 and Drake and Josh. It was kind of like manna. Very mysterious. Very, very nice, but still mysterious. So that said, I don’t feel like it serves anybody to go chasing after licensing opportunities by attempting to make music that you think will be in demand. I feel like if you keep your head down, dig in, and make something that truly is a reflection of your own take on things, even if it’s done in character sometimes, it’s going to resonate with somebody, somewhere, and that will make it attractive for total, mind numbing, wealth-creating exploitation.

SFBG: Do you think there’s such a thing as “selling out” anymore, as a musician?

CL: I can’t conjure up what would constitute “selling out” these days, especially for somebody just hitting the scene now. I guess if a band got sponsored by Eli Lily and started writing songs cryptically about the benefits of Cymbalta and passing it off as a real band, that might be a little screwed up. Actually, that kind of sounds like fun to me. Don’t steal that idea.

I do, however, get a little sick of hearing The Who’s songs in every version of CSI, but hey, that’s their business.

SFBG: What’s next for the American Professionals? Touring?

CL: Yes. We like to take little quick and dirty regional excursions. We’re hitting the midwest in the spring, and then up and down our lovely coast after that.

SFBG: What other SF/Bay Area bands do you admire?

CL: There’s an insane amount of world class music here right now. Even just in the circle we run in we have The Real Numbers, The Corner Laughers, The Bye Bye Blackbirds, Agony Aunts, and my band crush, Trevor Childs and the Beholders. Those fuckwads are so ridiculously good, and they keep getting together, breaking up, blah blah blah. It’s maddening. It’s hard not to get puffed up with pride that we have Chuck Prophet walking among us here. I got all fanboy on him and clammed up when I was standing next to him at the Great American a few months ago. I had just been on a Temple Beautiful jag and was in awe.

SFBG: What’s the #1 San Francisco meal you couldn’t live without?

CL: Oh, that’s a toughie. I used to be in food and bev so we ate out a lot. I have so many food memories seared into my brain, it’s hard to pick even ten of those. We live right up the street from Swan Oyster Depot. If I had to nail it down to one experience, it’d have to be just plopping down at that little corner of heaven and strapping on the feed bag. Cheryl doesn’t like any seafood at all (nothing! zip!) so any time we have out of town guests and she’s at work, I grab them by the collar and drag them down there.
The American Professionals
With Felsen and the Tender Few
Wed/29, 8:30pm, $10
Bottom of the Hill
www.bottomofthehill.com


Nickels and dimes… or transit for our times?

Michael Redmond
-
14

STREET FIGHT Much has been written about the so-called “Google buses” and San Francisco’s latest round of gentrification. It’s a horrible mess and the city’s trifling $1 charge per bus stop will do little to address the broader structural problem that these buses lay bare.

Ordinary people cannot ride them, nor do the people who clean and cook for the tech world. Like tour buses, they are clunky and inappropriate for many neighborhood streets. While they do substitute for some car trips, an ad hoc private transit system does not reflect the kind of thoughtful regional planning needed to truly reduce car use in the Bay Area.

But the controversy over the private commuter buses does show that there is great potential for a public regional express bus system. Consider that in 1980, 9 percent of commuters in San Francisco left the city every day to go to work. In 2010, outbound commuters approached 25 percent. Owing to regional political fragmentation, Muni cannot provide intercounty service and thus is not the travel mode of choice for many of these commuters. And although Caltrain and BART offer some regional service, the sprawling locations of suburban firms often make regional rail impractical or at the very least time-consuming owing to unavoidable multiple transfers to local buses.

So in noteworthy ways, the rise of private transit is an immediate reaction to poor regional transit connections. Yet rather than sidestepping failed regional planning by encouraging an inequitable, two-tiered, private system, we need to expand and regionalize the existing public bus systems. San Francisco’s mayor and Board of Supervisors have seats at the table of regional planning and ought to use the controversy over private buses as an opportunity to kickstart the implementation of a regional public bus system accessible to all.

For example, something like AC Transit’s Transbay routes should be extended through San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, perhaps operated by BART or Caltrain as part of the next iteration of Plan Bay Area. This network would use reallocated express lanes on 101 and I-280 and use transit priority lanes on arterials like 19th Avenue in San Francisco and El Camino Real in San Mateo. Regional property assessments on the corporations and developers, in part already possible within the existing BART district (one should be created for Caltrain), could be used to fund such a system. Congestion charging on 101 and I-280 should also be deployed and those funds used for electrifying Caltrain and developing the parallel and complementary regional bus system.

Of course there will be opposition to a regional public bus system as there already is to progressive regional planning. Transit-connected, walkable communities in the South Bay, for example, have been made all but illegal by decades of conservative middle and upper class, anti-density, anti-tax homeowners in suburban localities. As recently as last year, this Tea Party-style conservative politics dampened Plan Bay Area, resulting in a weak regional housing plan with an underfunded and lackluster transit vision. This conservative approach stifles our collective sense of what is possible and the fear-mongering has rendered regional planners virtually impotent. Yet it can and must be overcome.

Some progressives may find it convenient (and in some cases justifiable) to target tech workers right now, but they could also direct energy into shaping the next round of Plan Bay Area. Remember that Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been subdued by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. Plan Bay Area is also stifled by a regional business class that wants to keep the status quo and that is comfortable with the neoliberal model of private transit.

So while a smattering of dedicated and hard-working progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape Plan Bay Area last year, in the coming years the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including transit, housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a more visionary regional transportation plan that connects all of the Bay Area. I am hopeful that this would not only steer regional planning in a progressive direction, but many of the tech workers who are now on the private buses would gladly join in the cause.

 

THE POLITICS OF SUNDAY PARKING

Speaking of hopeful, last month the SFMTA reported that Sunday metering, implemented last January, is a resounding success. Switching-on the meters doubled parking availability on Sundays, which is invariably what small businesses, most of which are open on Sunday, want to see.

Sunday meters increased the number of cars using city-owned garages and decreased the time cars circled in search of parking from an average of four minutes to two — de-cluttering streets in commercial districts. While this might seem like a boon to drivers, it also means less pollution, safer conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, less delay for Muni, and a much needed enhancement of revenue for operating public transit.

So it is mystifying that such success would be ignored by Mayor Ed Lee, who instead has proposed to discontinue Sunday metering. This is doubly confusing because, based on existing travel behavior to many commercial districts, 25 percent of people arrived by driving, while 31 percent took transit and 25 percent walked. So what the mayor is effectively saying to the pedestrian and transit-using majority is you matter little. What does matter is the few whining motorists who called him to complain about being “nickel and dimed.”

The mayor talks a good game when saying he is truly concerned about pedestrian and cyclist safety, and insisting that he wants to fix Muni. But gutting a reliable source of operating funds and pandering to car drivers who will dangerously circle for parking is inconsistent.

Lee says money isn’t an issue because his proposed General Obligation bond (which must be approved by voters) will patch the lost revenue from Sunday metering. But the GO bond will incur further debt and only fund existing capital needs, while parking meters provide a debt-free steady revenue stream for Muni. It’s also slightly misleading because the bond would not cover Muni operations, while revenue from Sunday metering does pay for operations.

The mayor’s pandering also put the SFMTA Board of Directors, which has been working out parking management and Muni finance, on the spot. Ultimately, it has to vote to preserve or scrap Sunday metering in the coming months. Now the directors have to decide if they support transit-first or the mayor’s pandering.

Unfortunately, when it comes to parking policy, the way that the Board of Supervisors has behaved lately suggests it will either jump on the mayor’s bandwagon and pander to motorists or cower in silence as good public policy is trashed. Not a good situation at City Hall, where transit riders seem to be routinely thrown under the bus by the political establishment.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, an urban geography professor at San Francisco State University.

Talking points for Google busers

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
68
Talking points for Google busers

TechCrunch is reporting that a Google employee leaked an internal memo the Silicon Valley tech firm circulated to its employees, urging them to provide public comment on the controversial proposal to sanction its private shuttles’ use of city bus stops.

Here are the talking points Googlers were supposedly told to highlight in comments to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency at tomorrow’s (Tue/21) meeting, when the transit board will vote on the proposal.

  • I am so proud to live in San Francisco and be a part of this community
  • I support local and small businesses in my neighborhood on a regular basis
  • My shuttle empowers my colleagues and I to reduce our carbon emissions by removing cars from the road
  • If the shuttle program didn’t exist, I would continue to live in San Francisco and drive to work on the peninsula*
  • I am a shuttle rider, SF resident, and I volunteer at…..
  • Because of the above, I urge the Board to adopt this pilot as a reasonable step in the right direction

The leaked memo, according to TechCrunch, also noted that “While you are not required to state where you work, you may confirm that Google is your employer if you are so inclined. If you do choose to speak in favor of the proposal we thought you might appreciate some guidance on what to say. Feel free to add your own style and opinion.”

According to the article, the memo was leaked to the activists who have been organizing tech bus blockades by an employee who found it “a bit high handed.” In turn, the activists sent it to TechCrunch.

*Not according to the study that was mentioned by the SFMTA at the SF Environment Commission last week.

Of course Beyoncé is a feminist: On gender equality and women in entertainment

Steven T. Jones
-
6
Of course Beyoncé is a feminist: On gender equality and women in entertainment

A specific corner of the Internet was abuzz this week with the news that Beyoncé, fresh off inciting think-piece warfare about whether or not her new visual album amounted to a feminist manifesto of sorts (“The record both drips with sexuality and samples the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk about women’s rights — are you allowed to do that?!”) had penned an essay for Maria Shriver’s nonprofit media initiative, the Shriver Report, titled “Gender Equality Is a Myth!” See here:

We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.

Among the generally positive reactions to the essay, there was an unmistakable ripple of surprise — a silent agreement that this was somehow starkly out of character — that caught my attention. What are we surprised about, exactly? That a mainstream star who plays so squarely into our notions of traditional femininity would align herself with the hairy-legged caricatures of politicized feminists we see in pop culture? That a woman who named her most recent international tour after her husband would speak out against gender inequality? Or that one of the richest artists in the world would give two shits about the Equal Pay Act?

For what it’s worth, I’ve been a Beyoncé fan since the halcyon days of the late ’90s, when she was posing on furniture with three (then two) other ladies who made a point of color-coordinating their outfits with their interior design while singing about how dudes who borrowed their cars needed to man up and pay some automobills. It has at times been a guilty and/or critical fandom — has anyone written their Master’s thesis yet on themes of independence vs. marriage as property ownership in “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)“? I would like to read, please — but it’s been consistent nonetheless. I will venture that said loyalty is beside the point, however. No, I wasn’t surprised about Beyonce’s awareness of gender inequality — but not because I’ve been following her career closely. I wasn’t surprised because she’s a woman working in an industry that’s historically steeped in gender inequality.

I’m behind the times on this one, but I just started reading Out of the Vinyl Deeps, a collection of excellent rock music criticism by the late, great Ellen Willis. In particular, I keep coming back to Willis’ essay on Janis Joplin in the ’60s, with passages like:

[Janis] once crowed, “They’re paying me $50,000 a year to be like me.” But the truth was that they were paying her to be a personality, and the relation of public personality to private self — something every popular artist has to work out — is especially problematic for a woman. Men are used to playing roles and projecting images in order to compete and succeed. Male celebrities tend to identify with their mask making, to see it as creative and — more or less — to control it. In contrast, women need images simply to survive. A woman is usually aware, on some level, that men do not allow her to be her “real self,” and worse, that the acceptable masks represent men’s fantasies, not her own. She can choose the most interesting image available, present it dramatically, individualize it with small elaborations, undercut it with irony. But ultimately she must serve some male fantasy to be loved — and then it will be only the fantasy that is loved anyway.

Willis wrote that in 1980, about the 1960s. But it could have been written last week, about, um, any female pop star who did anything last week. Pick your packaging! Miley, Rihanna, Katy, Ke$ha, Taylor. Did you want good girl gone bad? Edgy and “exotic” gone S&M-lite? This has nothing to do with talented or not talented. A staggering majority of high-ranking music executives are men. Do we think any of these pop stars doesn’t know she’s a product, doesn’t understand exactly what game she’s a part of? None of them would be where they are right now if they hadn’t been playing it correctly, painstakingly, in some cases, from the day they were born. Whether or not they’re writing essays for Maria Shriver about it, I have a feeling most women in entertainment understand something about living in a patriarchal society.

As for Bey: Her new album, which I unabashedly love, is nothing if not a study in “acceptable masks.” In one video she’s the hot, pissed-off wife; another, the hot older girl at the roller rink; by the record’s end she’s found redemption as a (hot) mother, deriving her most genuine-sounding joy from an ode to her cooing baby daughter. Of course, she also pulls the classic, socially responsible, conventionally-beautiful-sex-symbol-decrying-sexist-beauty-standards thing. She does it all. She is every single thing a woman is supposed to be and more, and she looks fucking fabulous while doing it. She’s on top of the world right now for a reason, and — delightful feminist speech samples aside — I don’t think it’s as a reward for being her “real self.”

So yeah, go ahead and celebrate the pop star who suddenly cares about equal pay in the workplace. But give her a little credit. And maybe try to tamp down your surprise that a lady who’s been competing in pageants of some kind since she was old enough to walk might know a thing or two about sexism, inequality, where women have power, and where it stops.

Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

Sasha Cuttler
-
36
Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

First Mayor Ed Lee ignores the rising cost of living in San Francisco (fueled partly by his own corporate welfare for the tech industry and commercial landlords), and now he’s using his sudden concern about gentrification as an excuse to make parking meters free again on Sundays, a blatant bit of political pandering that blows a $6 million annual hole in Muni’s budget.

Maybe it’s understandable that a politician worried about his reelection prospects with restive voters would take a page from the playbook of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who slashed the state’s vehicle license fee to win that office. But what makes this move stink even more is it’s being supported by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a supposedly independent (yet mayoral appointed) body whose top officials methodically and courageously have made a strong case for Sunday metering.

“We’re just willing to partner with the mayor to address affordability,” SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us, admitting the agency hasn’t yet identified a funding source to fill that gap if Sunday metering is repealed on July 1 as proposed. Sunday meters were budgeted for $1 million in revenue, but they actually brought in $6 million in the last year because of more tickets than expected, feeding the outrage of motorists who feel entitled to use public roads for free. 

We’re waiting for calls back from SFMTA Executive Director Ed Reiskin and Chairman Tom Nolan to find out whether they no longer stand by the arguments they’ve been making for Sunday metering, claiming it helps the local economy by making parking spaces available in neighborhood commercial districts and that it’s consistent with the city’s official transit-first policy.

“What does this say about the city’s commitment to the policy of promoting transit first?” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said, saying she was shocked by the announcement given how underfunded the SFMTA’s transit, bicycle, and pedestrian improvement programs all are. “Why in the world are we even talking about this?”

Lee claims this is about affordability, telling the Chronicle “it was just nickel-and-diming people to death,” yet his own plans call for asking voters to approve more than $6.3 billion in taxes to fund Muni’s needs over the next 15 years, including a proposal to increase the sales tax in 2016, a regressive tax that will hit those already struggling harder than Sunday metering does to the 70 percent of San Francisco households that have an automobile.

Lee has also proposed ballot measures for this November that would increase the vehicle license fee and issue a $500 million general obligation bond, paid for on the property taxes of all city households. His own polls show the measures could be difficult sells to voters, and it’s not clear why he won’t wait for those results before ending Sunday metering.

When we asked mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey about all this, she selectively answered our questions with the following response: “The mayor believes a comprehensive funding strategy to not just maintain, but improve Muni performance, pedestrian and bike safety and the condition of our roads is what will finally turn the corner on improving San Francisco’s Transportation System. That’s why he has spent the better part of a year with the Transportation 2030 Taskforce, that recommended several ways to support these goals, including a $500 million general obligation bond, which the mayor supports. Because of a strong economy, the mayor believes it’s time to eliminate parking fees for six hours on Sundays and permanently fund Free Muni for low income youth to help working families in San Francisco and ease the affordability issues he hears about from families across the City.”

But at this point, that’s just political rhetoric, and Lee’s “comprehensive funding strategy” remains a vague and distant dream — one that will soon be $6 million a year tougher to make a reality. 

Soft eyes

Michael Redmond
-
2
Soft eyes

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM Chip Lord first came to public attention as a founding member of art collective Ant Farm (1968-78), which allowed him to explore his interest in alternative architecture via projects like the Cadillac Ranch installation in Amarillo, Texas. He later segued into teaching (at UC Santa Cruz) and video art, with works that include a long-running series examining city spaces. A San Francisco resident, he’ll be at the Exploratorium this week screening a trio of urban-themed works.

SF Bay Guardian Before we get into your Exploratorium screening, I wanted to ask about 2010’s Abscam (Framed), a re-creation of the 1981 FBI surveillance operation that exposed a government bribery scandal. Have you seen American Hustle, which dramatizes the same events?

Chip Lord I did! I enjoyed it. Obviously, it takes liberties with the truth of the Abscam events — but it was done in a very clever way.

SFBG Do you think it got the hotel-room surveillance scene right?

CL No, because when I did my re-enactment I went to the actual room where one of the FBI operations took place, at the Travelodge at [New York’s] Kennedy Airport. What was rather ironic was that the art on the wall was the US Capitol building — I think it had to have been added after the fact by an ironic hotel decorator.

SFBG As a nod to the Congressman who was busted there?

CL Yeah. [Laughs.] But I will say, in terms of the way [American Hustle depicted] the appearance of the video surveillance — that scene was very accurate.

SFBG You have three films screening at the Exploratorium, one of which, Venice Underwater, is making its local debut. You’ve been making city-centric films for over 20 years. What drew you to Venice, Italy, as your latest subject?

CL I had a residency in Venice at the Emily Harvey Foundation in 2008. I’d never been there before, and I was attracted to it as a city where there are no cars — and, of course, knowing that it’s a prime tourist destination. At the time, I didn’t have a high definition camera. I shot a lot of footage in standard definition video, and then I realized that I had to go back and reshoot some of it in HD.

It’s largely an observed film. It has some voice-over, but it’s very minimal. I wanted it to be in the style of Frederick Wiseman, which gives the viewer more responsibility in arriving at its meaning. Not being specifically guided as much.

SFBG When the voice-over happens, it’s like the viewer becomes a tourist for a few minutes. But most of the time, the viewer is observing the tourists. And there are so many of them!

CL The title refers metaphorically to the flood of tourists, which has gone up every year over the past 10 or 15 years. Meanwhile, the residential population is diminishing. Most of the people who work in the tourist industry don’t live in the city; they’re commuting in every day. And the city has been cooperative in allowing more and more buildings to be converted into hotels. It reaches a point at which you wonder: Is it becoming a Disneyland version of itself?

SFBG Did the sheer number of tourists allow you to blend in and film discreetly?

CL That was an advantage, especially on the Rialto Bridge, where everybody has a camera. You can be filming a subject, and they’re not aware of it because it’s just another camera. There’s one sequence with a Japanese couple, and I was kind of stalking them for awhile — intentionally trying to construct a sequence where you would see them wandering and taking pictures and interacting. I think that was a more substantive portrait of the tourist experience in a way.

They did become aware, but they didn’t say anything; a couple of shots, I couldn’t use because the young woman was looking at the camera and sort of giving me a dirty look. At that point, I stopped [filming them].

This type of shooting is a form of people-watching. If you introduce a camera into that equation, it’s very challenging. You want to get close to people, but without changing their normative behavior, and you don’t want to be invading somebody’s privacy. It’s a kind of complicated ethical situation.

SFBG Another film in the program is Une Ville de l’Avenir (2011), which uses clips from Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965). This recontextualizing technique is one you’ve used previously. What do you think it helps achieve?

CL What’s wonderful about Godard’s film is that it’s set in the future and has a very archetypical sci-fi plot, with a Big Brother character. But he shot it in present-day Paris, which was a brilliant idea. He found very good locations. I love that film, but I thought, “Now we’re in the future that was imagined in that film, in a way. It would be interesting to go back and re-imagine some of the locations.” That’s the basic idea. I also book ended it as an airplane movie. So what you’re seeing of Alphaville, you’re seeing on an airplane.

I’m more interested in defining these kinds of public spaces than sticking to the narrative plot of his original film, although I did use music from Alphaville as well — such an evocative score.

SFBG Air travel is a recurring theme in your films, including the final Exploratorium film, In Transit (2011). Have you encountered any post-9/11 artistic challenges?

CL I’ve been told to stop filming many times. [Laughs.] I happened to make the unfortunate choice of spending some time at Kennedy Airport right after the “shoe bomber” had been apprehended. At that point, anybody who took out a camera in an airport was kind of suspect.

But from a larger perspective, air travel is an activity that has become so boring and routine — but it’s still kind of miraculous. I always try to get a window seat, because it can be just amazing to look out the window for an extended period of time. For In Transit, I wanted to capture both of those elements. *

“OFF THE SCREEN: CHIP LORD CITY FILMS”

Thu/16, 7pm, free with museum admission ($19-$25)

Exploratorium

Pier 15, SF

www.exploratorium.edu

 

Safety Scramble

Michael Redmond
-
1
Safety Scramble

joe@sfbg.com

On New Year’s Eve, six-year-old Sofia Liu was struck and killed when a driver using the Uber rideshare app allegedly failed to yield to her and her family as they progressed through a crosswalk. The girl’s mother and brother survived, but their tear-stained faces were soon all over news networks in heartbreaking reports of their loss. No less sad, 86-year-old Zhen Guang Ng was struck and killed that same night by a driver who allegedly failed to stop at a stop sign in the Crocker-Amazon district. These incidents aren’t isolated.

In 2012, 16 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions in San Francisco. That number jumped to 21 in 2013, according to the SFPD, and the new year has brought new collisions and more pedestrian deaths.

Already, the SFPD and other city agencies are scrambling for political cover, and advocacy groups are rushing in to call for changes they say will save lives. On Jan. 16, myriad groups will try to sell their version of safer city streets at a joint meeting between the Board of Supervisors’ Neighborhood Services & Safety Committee and the city’s Police Commission.

As the debate continues to unfold, the road to pedestrian safety looks to be bumpy, and the first pitfall may be the Police Department itself.

Enforcement

At the Jan. 8 Police Commission hearing, the SFPD played defense.

A host of groups were calling out the cops: Cabbies wanted more enforcement against rideshare drivers, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition wanted more incident tracking. Nobody seemed happy with the current state of affairs around pedestrian safety.

Cmdr. Mikail Ali, tall and broad shouldered, approached the podium to give what amounted to the SFPD’s rebuttal. His presentation boiled down to this: Fewer cops equals fewer traffic citations, and fewer citations are dangerous.

“We did see a decrease in traffic citations issued last year,” Ali said. On the screens around the room, he displayed a chart showing two sloping red lines, one representing police staffing levels and another representing total citations. The charts showed a drop of 127 officers, and 20,000 fewer traffic citations, 2012-2013.

All told, the SFPD had 1,644 officers and issued 87,629 traffic citations last year.

But the idea that bringing on more cops is the only effective strategy for pedestrian safety seemed out of sync with a different aspect of Ali’s presentation, in which he conveyed a plan to “Focus on Five.”

Under that plan, police station captains are urged to boost traffic enforcement around the five intersections in their districts that have been identified as most dangerous. Though Ali said the approach was showing progress, the SFPD has yet to release data on how this enforcement approach has played out.

“Right now we don’t have full transparency into their reporting,” said Natalie Burdick of Walk SF, a pedestrian advocacy nonprofit. “We do have data showing they are issuing citations. What we don’t know yet … is has there been an increase in citations from Focus on Five?”

To be fair, it’s a new program, but data is key to many efforts geared toward improving pedestrian safety. The SFPD’s data shows that Focus on Five represents 22 percent of their citations, but it’s still unknown where they occurred and what incidents spurred the citations.

The Bike Coalition also wants more enforcement data from the SFPD.

“We’re hearing a lot of incidents go unreported,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition. Incidents that normally don’t get written up, like an accident that only results in a bruise or a scrape, are just as important to record, she said, because thorough reports can help identify problem intersections. “Without solid, good accounting to show where things are happening, we’re not going to necessarily see change,” she said.

But that would require a cultural shift in the SFPD, Shahum said. For now, the police seem as interested in blaming the pedestrians as they do the drivers.

Victim blaming

The first shots fired by the SFPD on pedestrian safety amounted to a public relations gaffe.

“YOU’VE BEEN HIT BY A CAR! … It’s little comfort to know you had the right of way, while you recover from serious injury in the hospital,” reads an SFPD flyer, the message typed next to a picture of a chalk outline on pavement. “Distracted walking is one BIG reason pedestrians get hit by vehicles,” it continues. To emphasize the point, the chalk outline is wearing headphones connected to an iPhone.

Streetsblog San Francisco reporter Aaron Bialick, in his article about the flyers, responded to them thusly: “The SFPD has gone off the deep end with this one, folks.”

His response is understandable. With a choice of two perpetrators, one walking across the street, and another behind the wheel of a two-ton steel killing machine, one would think the latter would be the obvious target. Shahum thinks the problem goes deeper than bad messaging, saying the SFPD’s enforcement is skewed.

“We’ve seen some officers not knowing people’s rights when walking or biking. We’ve seen ‘blame the pedestrians’ from police, in the media,” she said. “We’re hearing things like ‘you should’ve been riding on the sidewalk,’ [showing] a really basic lack of understanding” about regulations cyclists must adhere to.

This issue came to a head when Sgt. Richard Ernst pulled up to a streetside memorial for cyclist Amelie Le Moullac, who died in a fatal collision last August, to lecture those gathered on bicycle safety.

As Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones noted in his article at the time, “apparently Ernst didn’t stop at denouncing Le Moullac for causing her own death, in front of people who are still mourning that death. Shahum said Ernst also blamed the other two bicyclist deaths in SF this year on the cyclists, and on ‘you people’ in the SFBC for not teaching cyclists how to avoid cars.”

Still, Shahum sees potential for change. “This is the area where I think we’re seeing the most promises from them,” she said.

At the Police Commission meeting, Ali noted the challenges police face when assessing traffic collisions. Training officers in the methods to deduce how a collision occurred is no easy task.

“It requires a high degree of science,” Ali said. “Geometry, physics, basic mathematics. Its not just about getting facts from people, but making conclusions from physical evidence.”

Chief Greg Suhr expressed confidence that the new recruits to come out of the academy were abreast of the latest techniques, and commissioners said they may use the need for traffic enforcement as a call to the mayor to help bring more officers into the SFPD’s ranks.

Enforcement and police culture are just some ways pedestrian safety needs to be addressed. Walk SF, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the SFPD all will present their cases at the joint meeting on Thu/16. But as many of them would note, many of these promises have been made before.

Slow momentum

“We’re going to re-engineer streets around at least five schools and two areas that have the highest levels of concentration of senior injuries every year,” Mayor Ed Lee said at a press conference, responding to pedestrian deaths that rocked San Francisco.

No, this wasn’t after the New Year’s Eve fatalities. It was last April, when the mayor trumpeted an ambitious program to make the strets of San Francisco safer.

The San Francisco Pedestrian Strategy identifies 44 miles of the city’s most dangerous streets and intersections in need of upgrades. The goal was to improve five miles of city streets a year, with bulb outs (for better pedestrian visibility), raised crosswalks, new crossing signals, new traffic lights, and narrowing lanes.

One of the high priority intersections identified for improvements was Polk and Ellis — where Sofia Liu was killed on New Year’s Eve.

safetymap

A map of high priority corridors — the most dangerous streets for pedestrians in San Francisco.

That intersection hasn’t yet seen upgrades under the Pedestrian Strategy, Burdick of Walk SF told us.

“Any one or combination of the safety benefits of bulb-outs (or other improvements) could definitely have been the difference between life and death for Sofia,” she said. Walk SF works with city agencies to try to make sure these changes are happening, but she says the city hasn’t been transparent about the effort.

“We know there’s been some progress, but we don’t yet know if we’re doing enough each year to account for getting something done,” she said.

To get a sense of the city’s progress on this front, the Guardian contacted the Planning Department, which referred us to the Municipal Transportation Agency. The MTA did not respond before press time.

“That’s another thing at the hearing with the board (and Police Commission) we’ll be pushing,” Burdick said. “For engineering enforcement work to happen, it’s got to be paid for.”

According to public records outlining the city’s Pedestrian Strategy, the plan needs $65 million a year to hit proposed targets. The lion’s share, more than half, would go toward infrastructure improvements.

Burdick called that amount into question, saying the city had only allocated $17 million. A Pedestrian Strategy report confirmed that the program faces a $5-18 million a year funding gap.

Enforcement, a culture of victim blaming and inadequate funding all pose major challenges to pedestrian safety in San Francisco. Hopefully the joint Board of Supervisors and Police Commission meeting will finally result in some answers.

The joint Board of Supervisors’ Neighborhood Services & Safety Committee and Police Commission meeting will be held Thursday, Jan. 16, at 5pm, Room 250.

 

Stealing secret records about government spying used to be way more complicated

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
9
Stealing secret records about government spying used to be way more complicated

In 1971, a group of radicals broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole a bunch of documents about J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance program targeting dissidents and antiwar activists.

Thanks to their criminal act, which they followed up by anonymously sending copies of the files to major media outlets, awareness of FBI spying under Cointelpro penetrated mainstream consciousness.

More than 40 years later, the people behind that theft have unmasked themselves in a new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, authored by Betty Medsger. The former Washington Post reporter convinced some of the burglars to come forward and tell their tale. Medsger previously served as chair of the journalism department at San Francisco State University.

A New York Times piece spotlighting the book describes the historic event and draws a comparison with modern day whistleblower Edward Snowden, who used access granted to him as a National Security Agency contractor to shed light on secret documents detailing NSA surveillance programs.

“Unlike Mr. Snowden, who downloaded hundreds of thousands of digital N.S.A. files onto computer hard drives, the Media burglars did their work the 20th-century way: they cased the F.B.I. office for months, wore gloves as they packed the papers into suitcases, and loaded the suitcases into getaway cars. When the operation was over, they dispersed.”

The burglary also entailed lock picking, opening a window with a crowbar, and memorization of FBI staff’s comings and goings; also, they never again met as a group after making off with the files.

Even as technology has given intelligence agencies the ability to build a once unfathomable surveillance system that regularly sweeps in the communications of millions of law-abiding Americans, it’s also made it easier for information about such activities to be brought into the light of day – with just a few simple keystrokes.

1...345...44Page 4 of 44

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org