Development

Striking Out

Michael Redmond
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21
Striking Out

news@sfbg.com

Today marks 1,575 days since concession workers at AT&T Park have had a raise, during which time the San Francisco Giants have been fabulously successful, both on and off the playing field.

The 750 workers represented by UNITE-HERE Local 2 are currently involved in frustrating and fruitless negotiations with their employer, Centerplate, a South Carolina-based food service company contracted by the Giants to sell beer, garlic fries, and other overpriced consumables at games.

The Giants and its front office seem fairly unconcerned about the plight of workers who proudly don the team’s logo and pad its revenues. Not a single concession worker that we interviewed for this article said that they work for Centerplate — each of them said that they work for the Giants.

Since the last contract expired in March 2010, the Giants have won two World Series championships, raised the average ticket price by 20 percent, and have seen the value of the team shoot up by $223 million. The only thing that hasn’t improved are the wages of the concession workers.

Cashiers currently make $16.40 per hour, in-seat runners make $13.40, and some entry-level workers make just $10.45, which is actually less the city’s minimum wage. That’s only legal because those workers were under contract for $10.45 per hour when the wage increased to $10.55 at the beginning of this year. And Centerplate won’t even let Giants workers have a tip jar to augment their substandard wages.

Local 2 reports that revenue from concessions is divided up in a 55-45 split between the team and Centerplate (the Giants PR office disputes this number, but it won’t divulge the actual split). So when a fan spends $17 for a hot dog and 16oz beer, Centerplate and its workers get $7.65 and the Giants get $9.35, all of it pure profit. And the Giants executives even set the concession prices, not Centerplate.

But the team says the plight of these workers isn’t its problem. “We continue to urge both parties to get back to the bargaining table and to have productive discussions so the matter can be resolved as quickly as possible. This dispute is between Centerplate and Local 2, not the Giants,” is the team’s public position on the issue.

The Giants communications office responded with this stance to every question the Guardian asked about the issues involved: What have you done to “urge” Centerplate to settle the contract? Couldn’t the Giants force a settlement if it really wanted to? Why haven’t concessions workers shared in the team’s success and rising revenues? How can you claim to support the community if you can’t even ensure the people who work in your stadium are paid minimum wage?

The Giants had nothing to say about a petition signed by 600 of the workers urging the team and Centerplate to agree to a deal, instituting a company-wide no-comment policy on the standoff with concession workers.

“It would be nice if they would come in and talk—not be a mediator, but to know what we’re asking for and say why they’re not providing it or why they feel they shouldn’t provide certain information,” Billie Feliciano, who has worked as a Giants cashier for more than 30 years, told us. “They could talk to the president of the union on that if they wanted to. You know, we’re not asking you to tell us how you spend your money. We just want to know how much control you have of this situation.”

Feliciano and her fellow workers just want the Giants to be team players.

 

 

WHO’S IN CONTROL?

Contrary to what the Giants may say, there is one pressing issue—job security for the workers—that is nearly impossible for the workers and Centerplate to resolve. Every worker interviewed for this story has explicitly said that job security is their most important goal.

Even Centerplate says only the Giants can offer job security to concession workers. If Centerplate goes out of business or loses its contract, the concession workers will likely lose their jobs, which is why they’re advocating for a succesorship clause that would guarantee their employment in that scenario.

When The Guardian inquired with the Giants office about the issue, its spokesperson once again responded, “This is an issue between the workers and Centerplate, not the Giants.”

But with the Giants controlling who runs its concession and how much they charge the fans, is Centerplate just an easy scapegoat for squeezing more profits from workers? Because on the subject of health benefits and wages, the two camps are separated by a wide chasm.

In order to qualify for healthcare, the workers need to work at least 10 games in a month (they’re eligible for health insurance only from June 1 through December 1) to have coverage a month later, which means that the health and well-being of the 750 workers hinges on Major League Baseball’s scheduler.

Workers almost got denied coverage for August because June only had nine games, but they ended up qualifying because they worked a private event at AT&T Park for the biotechnology firm Genentech.

Yet Centerplate wants to raise the number of qualifying games to 12, while Local 2 wants to keep it at 10 and grant healthcare coverage to workers who work every game in months with less than 10 games.

On wages, Centerplate has offered 25-cent increase in hourly pay, no retro raises for the years worked under the expired contract, and a $500 bonus. Though Local 2 has not put out an exact number on their wage demands, its spokesperson says Centerplate’s wage offers are beyond unacceptable; they’re insulting.

Centerplate’s main message in this quarrel is its insistence that the concessions workers are among the highest paid in the nation and that they accrue more benefits than most part-time workers. But the workers say that claim is misleading given the high cost of living in the Bay Area.

“If we were living in Dallas, Texas, I’d say yeah, we’re probably overpaid. But we’re not,” Anthony Wendelburger, who has been a cook for three years, told us.

The Bay Area is among the most expensive metropolitan areas in the nation. Last month, the business consultant Kiplinger published a list of the top 10 most expensive cities in the U.S. San Francisco was third behind Honolulu and New York, with nearby San Jose in fourth and Oakland eighth.

The average concessions worker makes around $11,000 in a year while some make upwards of $13,000 during the regular season. Based on differences in the cost of living, we calculate (using www.bankrate.com) that $11,000 translates to $7,760 if they served food and drinks for the Seattle Mariners, $7,880 for the Chicago Cubs or White Sox, and $6,530 for the Atlanta Braves.

 

 

THE OLD BALLGAME

At the Giants-Padres game on June 18, a Tuesday, several hundred protesters gathered at a rally to show support for the Giants concession workers. Most were affiliated with Local 2, but a few off-duty concession workers came to join the demonstration.

They implored the fans—most whom seemed to be just learning about the dispute—to abstain from purchasing any concession stand products. The rally started an hour before game time engulfed fans waiting in line with chants of “No justice, no garlic fries!” and “Ain’t no protest like an union protest because an union protest don’t stop!”

Inside the stadium, 44 protesters (all of whom had purchased tickets) staged a sit-in in front the garlic fries stand situated behind sections 122 and 123. Their numbers withered as the game progressed and by the fourth inning, the area in front of the stand was cleared and business resumed, with 10 protesters arrested for refusing to disperse.

That protest followed a more significant action on May 25, when all of the 750 workers staged an one day strike, authorized by a 500-16 vote by workers. For that game, Centerplate employed volunteer workers who only got paid in tips. Yes, the scabs got the tips that the regular workers are being denied.

Food and drink service during that game was significantly slower than normal, as even the Giants acknowledged. There were reports of fans standing up to 40 minutes in line for a beer, which is usually more than two innings, an amount of playing time that few true baseball fan would ever give up for a beer run.

Critics—including several passerby fans who were loudly expressing their disdain for the demonstrators at the Giants-Padres game—say the workers should be content with what they have, perhaps assuming the workers were getting more from that $10 beer than they really are.

When Pearlie Jones started working concessions at Giants games 22 years ago, hot dogs were $3. Today they sell for twice that amount at the stand that Jones now manages.

We met Jones at the Local 2 building in the Tenderloin. She lives in Daly City, survives on unemployment during the off-season, and has no other source for health insurance. With nervous laughter, Jones told us she “prays to God during [the off season] that I don’t get sick.”

Wendelburger, who has to commute almost two hours each way to the ball park, works as a bartender during the off-season, although he can only get three days a week. When asked about health insurance during the off-season, this husband and father of two says, “Unless I’m going to die, I’m not going to see a doctor.”

But Jones says that as important as improved wages and healthcare benefits are to her and other employees, they really fear losing their jobs: “Our job security is the main issue that we’re pushing for right now.”

One issue that seems telling of the way Centerplate and the Giants are treating concession workers is on the issue of tips. The workers are currently not allowed a tip jar or a tip line on credit card receipts, a standard feature of food service, particularly here in the Bay Area, where even butchers and bakers have tip jars.

Ramirez says she’s utterly baffled by Centerplate’s stubbornness on the issue. “A tip line is something that doesn’t cost management anything and requires a small change in the computer system and is something the customers are actually demanding. We have a great experience with our fans and customers and they want to share their gratitude and they can’t,” she told us.

Another seemingly minor yet deadlocked issue is the request for benches for in-seat food runners. These workers currently have nowhere to sit for breaks or in between food runs, yet Centerplate has refused to budge on that issue.

When asked about these minor demands, a Centerplate spokesperson said that they have not seen any list of demands from Local 2, a statement disputed by workers and Local 2.

Centerplate has cast workers as greedy, even filing a lawsuit against Local 2 claiming that the union and the workers are trying to exploit the Giants’ World Series championships, an action that the union and its workers heard about from reporters, adding to the aura of mistrust hanging over these negotiations.

 

 

LONG STANDOFF

Both sides have accused the other of not operating in good faith, something they both hope will change when negotiations resume on July 29.

Centerplate says it wants to give the workers a contract, but blames the deadlocked negotiations on Local 2 head Mike Casey, who also serves as the elected president of the San Francisco Labor Council.

“Unfortunately, Local 2 and its leader Mike Casey have not responded to our economic proposal. Our employees, and Local 2 members, remain without a contract, raise, bonus, and health security all because of Casey’s failures,” Centerplate spokesperson Gina Antonini told us.

But the concession workers seem to strongly support Casey, who was on vacation and unavailable for comment. “I have tremendous faith in our Local 2 union leadership. Mike Casey is brilliant,” Patricia Ramirez, a line cook of 14 years, told us. “I think Casey and [Local 2 organizer] Alphonso Pines are leading us in the right way and I think we’re going to win because of their guidance.”

Centerplate seemed unaware of Casey’s local reputation and community support. “The entire labor community is supporting Local 2 and our message is clear: If you have to go to the games, don’t buy the food” San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson told us.

Local 2’s tough, deliberate, long-term strategy is one that has paid big dividends numerous times in its history, even if it has resulted in long standoffs with management, as was been the case with hotel workers in San Francisco.

“We have seen plenty of times that they have deadlocked for a period of time, they hold out, they tend to fight as long as it takes, and they tend to win” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

For their part, concession workers involved in the negotiations blame Centerplate lawyer and lead negotiator George Aude and his abrasive style for the impasse and the tense relations. Several workers we talked to cited Aude’s disrespectful demeanor, with one worker calling him a “giant hothead”.

In one of the negotiations, Aude made several irate comments, which Local 2 took as a threat. They say Aude demanded of the Local 2, “If you don’t stop all these actions you’ve been doing, we’ll offer you less money.”

We reached Aude to comment on the contract talks, he said simply “unsatisfied,” and when we asked for further details, Aude hung up and refused to answer our calls.

 

 

SUPPORTING THE TEAM

Mayor Ed Lee says he’s urging the two sides to settle the standoff and that he has offered to help, although he’s leaving it to the mediators involved. So for those keeping score, City Hall has offered help but the Giants organization has not.

Yet Lee’s half-hearted offer to help Giants workers belies his zealous efforts to promote the Giants and its brand. In February, Lee and the Giants launched a citywide anti-litter program called “The Giant Sweep,” named in honor of the Giants’ sweep of the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 World Series.

“Last year the Giants showed us that winning the World Series took a team effort that went far beyond individual heroics. It required the effort of every player, coach, manager, and support staff — not to mention the fans — to build a championship team. The same approach is needed to attack San Francisco’s litter problem. The Giant Sweep will help San Francisco remain a place where people want to live, work and visit,” the Mayor’s Office said in announcing the program.

Mayor Lee and Gavin Newsom awarded the Giants a “Key to the City” for their World Series wins. Pitcher Matt Cain was awarded a “Key” last year for his perfect game against the Houston Astros. Even disgraced slugger Barry Bonds was given a “Key” after passing Hank Aaron on the all time home run list in August 2007.

“You know, we usually give keys to individual dignitaries who have accomplished great things, whether it was the president of Ireland, or Tony Bennett, or even a Matt Cain on his wonderful perfect game in San Francisco,” Lee said during last year’s celebration. “We normally celebrate those individual accomplishments, but today, we’re gonna break with that tradition and present this key to the entire team and coaching staff, everybody involved in the Giants, the investors, their front office. Congratulations to a team that doesn’t know how to quit, never gives up, and defied the odds at every opportunity.”

Then the city spent nearly a reported quarter-million-dollars to throw its team a massive victory parade and San Franciscans went wild in celebrating the Giants, once again, as the concession workers waited to feel like part of the team.

Could Lee or other City Hall figures help solve the standoff? Other mayors have successfully intervened in situations like this before. In 2004, then-Mayor Newsom sided with the 4,300 picketing hotel workers after the hotels refused his request to end a lockout.

Less than a year before that, Newsom ran for mayor as a “business friendly centrist” who raised millions of dollars from the hotel industry and other downtown business interests. But when he saw that hotel management wasn’t being reasonable, he used the power of his office to help broker an agreement.

It would seem Lee could do the same thing if he wanted, particularly given that the Giants are currently asking the city for land and support to help grow its business.

STADIUM SPRAWL

The Giants organization is currently working on a $1.6 billion, 27-acre development project at Pier 48, located on the opposite side of Mission Creek from AT&T Park. The gargantuan project will include 1,000 housing units, 125,000 square feet of retail, 1.7 million square feet of office space, 2,690 garage parking spaces, and more than eight acres of public space. The project is on public land and will be subject to numerous approval processes, by both the city and the Port of San Francisco. Pier 48 and Seawall Lot 337 are some of the last valuable, easily developable sections of waterfront in San Francisco, so one might say the team is asking a lot from the community. And of course, Mayor Lee offered unqualified, enthusiastic support for the project, telling the Chronicle, “Among my highest priorities is to make sure our homegrown companies can stay, grow, and hire right here in San Francisco, driving job growth, improving our neighborhoods, and in this case our world-class waterfront.” But Lee, Centerplate, and the Giants seem to think that just creating jobs is enough, regardless of pay, benefits, and job security. “The success of a Major League Baseball club is measured by more than game-winning rallies and pennant drives. Beyond the box scores, a ballclub has a unique opportunity to create partnerships to improve the quality of life in its community,” the Giants proclaim on its community page. But for Giants workers, such sentiments have done little to improve their quality of life.

Privatizing the Botanical Gardens

Michael Redmond
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48
Privatizing the Botanical Gardens

news@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors last week voted to continue the collection of “non-resident fees” at the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park for a minimum 10-year period. Then it approved a companion measure to allow construction of a new, privately run nursery that will be the home of corporate parties and members-only activities, giving a private group unusual control over a public space.

The proposed plan will replace the existing nursery with a new Center For Sustainable Growth, funded as a “gift-in place” from the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, a nonprofit that has supported the gardens since 1955, when it was known as Strybing Arboretum.

“This vote means we are basically privatizing 55 acres of Golden Gate Park and handing it over to a nonprofit with no public accountability,” Harry Pariser, a longtime resident of the Inner Sunset, activist, and author told the Bay Guardian. “Essentially we’re allowing the government to make us show an ID to come onto public land. It’s also going to be a space where there’s going to be a lot more commercial activity. I think inevitably there is going to be fees for everyone.”

The new agreement consists of demolishing an existing 4,600 square foot greenhouse, which will be replaced by a new 9,800 square foot nursery. A real estate evaluation report on the nursery project performed by Clifford Advisory, a limited liability corporation, compares the project to allegedly positive public-private development efforts such as the Hunter’s Point Shipyard project.

The lease agreement between the Botanical Garden Society and the City of San Francisco allows the society to use the premises for “special events,” designate members-only hours for the facility, and waive the non-resident fee for those events. According to the lease, the city shall avoid interfering with the Society’s “quiet use and enjoyment of the premises,” namely by allowing them to throw private parties.

“The Botanical Gardens is an incredible asset to the city, it’s a great place for families and kids, and now they’re no longer treating it as a public asset,” Sup. John Avalos, who recently voted against the non-resident fees and the lease agreement, told the Guardian. “They’re making it more exclusive.”

 

LAND GRAB

The SFBGS has a history of campaigning for private exclusivity on public land as well as generating new revenue sources. In 2010, Avalos pushed a plan to replace the revenue brought in by non-resident fees with $250,000 pulled from the city’s real estate transfer tax.

SFBGS, backed by London Breed before she was elected the supervisor of District 5, which includes the Botanical Gardens, opposed Avalos’ effort and helped shoot down the proposed plans, continuing the fee collections.

A large part of the board’s approval is derived from the lobbying efforts of Sam Lauter, a lobbyist hired by SFBGS who has continually pushed for permanent fees and the new conservatory. Lauter also helped support and fund Breed’s supervisorial campaign last year.

While the lease and management agreement purports that the SFBGS’s management shall be subject to the city’s definition of the gardens as a public space, it offers an exception in cases of SFBGS-sponsored special events, circumventing its status as a public space. The lease also allows the Society to use other buildings on the premises, such as the County Fair Building, for special events, free of charge.

Although the SFBGS is essentially taking over operation of the gardens, the city will continue to pay for utilities and offer a “rent credit” that requires the Society to pay just $100 in rent annually. Additionally, SFBGS will be reimbursed for non-resident fee collection expenses.

“We understand the logic of providing benefits for people who donate to the facility,” Breed legislative aide Conor Johnston told us. “It’s very important to remember all San Francisco residents have free access and [organized groups of] youth from outside the city have free access. This structure allows the arboretum to stay open.”

While San Francisco residents still have free access, the agreements with the SFBGS strongly limit this access by instituting members-only hours, forcing residents to show identification at security gates, and renting out buildings for exclusive corporate parties.

Another part of the Botanical Garden’s master plan consists of providing food services in a new visitors center. Consequently, the “public” gardens will enforce a rule barring visitors from bringing in outside food. The plan also details the SFBGS’s plan to bring in new revenue streams through corporate events.

“This is about weeding people out, controlling people and deciding who has access to this place,” said Pariser. “They put up a wall that must cost thousands of dollars and they destroyed this meadow that even London Breed was appalled by. They control this place like it’s a domain and you’re not allowed to say anything.”

 

QUIET TRANSFER

The lack of public outreach and input on the SFBGS’s buyout has left residents like Pariser feeling robbed of public land that their taxes pay to support. Nancy McNally, founder of the San Francisco AIDS Grove, voiced similar concerns regarding the misplaced priorities of both SFBGS and the Recreation and Parks Department, which in recent years has been under growing criticism for monetizing public spaces (see “Parks Inc.,” 7/12/11).

“For me, I can’t even be in the same room as Recreation and Park Director Phil Ginsburg. I think he has done so much harm to the parks,” McNally told us. “He’s created a ton of positions in the marketing and PR department. What do they need four people for to run public marketing for a public space?”

Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Central Park, is said to have influenced the style of Golden Gate Park. Olmsted’s theory was to bring wilderness into the city. For McNally, this non-manicured, rustic aspect of Golden Gate Park is what makes it so appealing.

“They’re taking away the basic foundation of the park, which is wildness,” said McNally. “The new building is so big, obtrusive, and unnecessary. It’s only about income for the Botanical Society’s select group.”

McNally views the RPD and SFBGS as predatory entities who target residents attempting to use the land by charging egregious fees for weddings, memorials, and other events.

McNally recalled a friend who wanted to have a memorial for another gardening enthusiast in the Arboretum. For 10 people, the RPD wanted $1,000 and to hire a security guard for a group of elderly gardening enthusiasts.

SFRPD did not return the Guardian’s phone calls regarding the management under the SFBGS, which also did not return our call.

Jane Glasby, an ex-librarian for the SFBGS, whose job was terminated in 2010 due to widespread cuts to the garden’s education program, expressed her inside views on the changing tides of park’s atmosphere in a letter written to “friends and garden lovers” as her tenure came to an end.

“Over the last few years, the library budget has been slashed, the children’s program cut back, and the adult education program all but eliminated,” Glasby wrote at the time. ‘With money available to pay a firm to lobby for an entrance fee $10,000 every month for at least the last seven months, it looks very odd to close the library [that was at the Arboretum] with the excuse of saving just $10,000 a year. Charging admissions would put the garden in danger of becoming an exclusive but shallow and flashy entertainment (I am thinking of the Tea Garden and the Academy [of Science]), rather than the living museum that we all love and respect.”

While Glasby’s comments refer to cutbacks dating back to 2010, her experience denotes what is seemingly becoming the protocol of SFBGS. Three years later, the Society has succeeded in charging non-residents indefinitely and turning what was once a public place of solitude for residents and non-residents alike into an increasingly privatized hub for members willing to pay extra for exclusivity of an allegedly public space.

McNally, who is now retired, has taken it upon herself to document the decreasing local attendance of the arboretum, which was once a frequent lunch spot for residents and nearby UCSF students. “On a sunny day at noon it used to be to be carpeted with people having lunch. It’s not anymore,” said McNally. “I have four years of documentation of that empty lawn at high noon, showing it completely empty, with just geese shitting everywhere.”

 

Corrections: The permit fee for the gardening club was corrected. We also added the parenthetical to Johnston’s quote to clarify visitor fees.

 

 

 

Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Sasha Cuttler
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20
Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Last week’s adoption of Plan Bay Area by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission was a watershed moment in regional planning. The plan links regional planning to state policies mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and aims to limit future sprawl by accommodating 2.1 million people, 1 million jobs, and 660,000 housing units largely within the existing built-up areas of the nine-county region.

Newly designated priority development areas (PDAs) will enable modest-density, walkable development in city and suburb alike, while preserving both existing single-family neighborhoods and open space. In a time of urgent need to address global warming, the Bay Area has once again proved a leader by enabling compact housing around transit, and its supporting studies expect the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from driving to decline by 15 percent in 2040.

This will not save the world and it’s not without some challenging byproducts — such as preventing displacement of low-income residents from San Francisco and other urban centers — but it is a start. And in a nation hell-bent on denying the urgency of global warming, it is refreshing and inspiring that someone, somewhere, is trying to do something.   

Yet the transportation component – the lynchpin and impetus of Plan Bay Area, according to many local leaders –is mediocre, uninspiring, and inadequate.  Despite land use policies enabling compact development, 80 percent of all travel in the Bay Area will still be in cars in 2040, not much different from today, and far short of the real change that is needed in this time of urgency. With 2 million more people, this is a recipe for gridlock, inequity, and ecological disaster – not sound public policy. 

 It should be no surprise that a big part of the problem is funding. The MTC, charged with assessing future regional transit potential, identifies just $289 billion between now and 2040 for roads, bridges, and transit — far short of what’s needed.  At $10.3 billion a year that may seem like a lot, but upwards of 87 percent of this is already committed to maintenance of existing roads and transit– not transit capacity expansion.  New homes and jobs might be focused around BART and Caltrain stations, but because there’s no real capacity expansion, the current iteration of Plan Bay Area can’t even reach its own modest goal of 74 percent of trips by car in 2040. 

With 2 million more people, cumulative emissions from driving will actually increase by 18 percent because so few new residents will be able to squeeze onto our already crowded transit systems.  Today BART is breaking ridership records but it is crowded. Extensions to far flung suburbs might be worthwhile but they don’t expand capacity in the system’s core. What we need is a second BART line and/or Amtrak service between San Francisco and Oakland, but this is absent from the plan. Meanwhile, most mainline Muni buses and railcars are currently jam-packed, yet San Francisco is somehow expected to absorb 92,000 housing units in Plan Bay Area.

Supervisors David Campos and Scott Weiner, representing San Francisco in the Plan Bay Area process, are to be commended for drawing attention to the transit problem and for asking MTC staff to show how to meet future funding gaps. By broaching the subject, they show that San Francisco might be poised to lead on this critical issue. But Campos and Weiner, working within the “fiscally constrained envelope” as framed by MTC planners, were only seeking to cover deficits for existing service – not visionary expanded service.  In the end, there was no real vision for adequate transit capacity expansion.

This foretells a troubling transit future – and one that will likely be more and more private. While many San Franciscans decry the proliferation of Google buses and other private corporate shuttles hogging Muni stops, these buses do lay bare the transit conundrum in the Bay Area. Without well-funded, visionary capacity expansion of public transit, those with the means (and high wage jobs) will shift to private buses while everyone else is left to duke it out on crowded highways, buses, and trains.

This conundrum demands that progressives in the Bay Area ramp up their transit politics to lead locally and nationally. The debate about transit finance needs to be redirected – away from regressive local sales tax measures (which often include more roads) back towards more progressive measures, such as transit assessment districts – which could require developers who profit from Plan Bay Area’s growth incentives to adequately finance transit expansion.

The debate needs to move away from demonizing public transit employees to a discussion of the role and responsibility of corporate health care, banks, and the real estate industry in causing economic instability (which has harmed public transit finance more in the last decade than a bus driver expecting a living wage and healthcare). The debate needs to move away from creating new roadway capacity, such as exclusive toll lanes, and focus on how to convert existing highway lanes into transit-only lanes with fast, frequent, reliable regional bus service open to all.

Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. Within the next four-five years it will need to be revised and can be improved.  The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been dominated by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. They were successful in diluting Plan Bay Area. While a smattering of progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape the plan, next time the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a truly visionary transportation plan.

 

Jason Henderson is a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. We’ll be sharing his perspective regularly in the Bay Guardian.

Silent films, racing snails, haunted houses, and more in weekend movies!

Sue Vaughan
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2
Silent films, racing snails, haunted houses, and more in weekend movies!

Those long, well-dressed lines wrapping around the Castro Theatre signal the advent of the annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, now in its 18th year and popular as ever. Though the fest opened last night, programming continues through the weekend; check out my take on some of the films (including one of tonight’s selections, 1928 rom-com The Patsy) here.

Elsewhere, in first-run and rep theaters, it’s a robust week for openings. There’s something for nearly every age and appetite (plus a few recommendations on what to avoid) in the short reviews below.

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me The ultimate pop-rock cult band’s history is chronicled in Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori’s documentary. Alex Chilton sold four million copies of 1967 Box Tops single “The Letter,” recorded when he was 15 years old. After years of relentless touring, he quit that unit and returned home just as fellow Memphis native and teenage musical prodigy Chris Bell was looking to accentuate his own as-yet-unnamed band. Big Star’s 1973 debut LP #1 Record, like subsequent years’ follow-ups Radio City and Third/Sister Lovers, got great reviews — but won no commercial success whatsoever, in part due to distribution woes, record-company politics, and so forth. The troubled Bell struggled to get a toehold on a solo career, while barely-more-together Chilton changed his style drastically once invigorated by the punk invasion. At the least the latter lived long enough to see Big Star get salvaged by an ever-growing worshipful cult that includes many musicians heard from here, including Robyn Hitchcock, Matthew Sweet, and Tav Falco, plus members of the Posies, Flaming Lips, Teenage Fanclub, Yo La Tengo, R.E.M., Mitch Easter, the dB’s, and Meat Puppets. Unfortunately the spoken input from Chilton and Bell is mostly limited to audio (didn’t anyone actually film interviews back then?) Still, this semi-tragic story of musical brilliance, commercial failure, and belated “legendary” beknighting is compelling — not to mention a must for anyone interested in the annals of power pop. Now, would somebody please make documentaries about Emitt Rhodes, Game Theory, and SF’s own Oranger? (1:53) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjk2So3KvSQ

The Conjuring Irony can be so overrated. Paying tribute to those dead-serious ‘70s-era accounts of demonic possession — like 1973’s The Exorcist, which seemed all the scarier because it were based on supposedly real-life events — the sober Conjuring runs the risk of coming off as just more Catholic propaganda, as so many exorcism-is-the-cure creepers can be. But from the sound of the long-coming development of this project — producer Tony DeRosa-Grund had apparently been wanting to make the movie for more than a dozen years — 2004’s Saw and 2010’s Insidious director James Wan was merely applying the same careful dedication to this story’s unfolding as those that came before him, down to setting it in those groovy VW van-borne ‘70s that saw more families torn apart by politics and cultural change than those ever-symbolic demonic forces. This time, the narrative framework is built around the paranormal investigators, clairvoyant Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) and demonologist Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), rather than the victims: the sprawling Perron family, which includes five daughters all ripe for possession or haunting, it seems. The tale of two families opens with the Warrens hard at work on looking into creepy dolls and violent possessions, as Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) move into a freezing old Victorian farmhouse. A very eerie basement is revealed, and hide-and-seek games become increasingly creepy, as Carolyn finds unexplained bruises on her body, one girl is tugged by the foot in the night, and another takes on a new invisible pal. The slow, scary build is the achievement here, with Wan admirably handling the flow of the scares, which go from no-budg effects and implied presences that rely on the viewer’s imagination, to turns of the screws that will have audiences jumping in their seats. Even better are the performances by The Conjuring’s dueling mothers, in the trenches of a genre that so often flirts with misogyny: each battling the specter of maternal filicide, Farmiga and Taylor infuse their parts with an empathetic warmth and wrenching intensity, turning this bewitched horror throwback into a kind of women’s story. (1:52) (Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=expPMt-TX_k

Crystal Fairy Mysteriously given a tepid reception at Sundance this year, Chilean writer-director Sebastián Silva’s new film is — like his 2009 breakout The Maid — a wickedly funny portrait of repellent behavior that turns unexpectedly transcendent and emotionally generous in its last laps. Michael Cera plays a Yank youth living in Santiago for unspecified reasons, tolerated by flatmate Champa (José Miguel Silva) and his brothers even less explicably — as he’s selfish, neurotic, judgmental, hyper, hyper-annoying, and borderline-desperately in endless pursuit of mind-altering substances. At a party he meets a spacey New Age chick who calls herself Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffman). The next morning he’s horrified to discover he’d invited her on a road trip whose goal is to do drugs at an isolated ocean beach, but despite their own discomfort, Champa and company insist he honor his obligation. What ensues is near-plotless, yet always lively and eventually rather wonderful. If you have an allergy to Cera, beware — he plays a shallow (if possibly redeemable) American brat all too well here. But it would be a shame to miss a movie as spontaneous and surprising as this primarily English-language one, which underlines Silva’s stature as a talent likely well worth following for the long haul. (1:40) (Dennis Harvey)

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

Girl Most Likely Even an above-average cast (Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon) can’t elevate this indie entry from Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini (2003’s American Splendor) above so many life-crisis comedies that have come before. Blame the script by Michelle Morgan (who also cameos), which never veers from the familiar, except when it dips into cliché. After she’s dumped by her suit-wearing boyfriend, failed playwright Imogene (Wiig) realizes her life is superficial and meaningless. Oopsies! A faux suicide attempt forces her to leave the cold sparkle of NYC for the neon glimmer of the Jersey shore, where her batty mother (Bening, in “tacky broad” mode) lives with her says-he’s-a-CIA-agent boyfriend (Dillon) and Imogene’s older brother (Christopher Fitzgerald), an Asperger’s-y sort obsessed with hermit crabs. Also in the mix — because in a movie like this, the adorably depressed lead can only heal with the help of a new romance — is Glee‘s Darren Criss; by the time you realize his character is a Backstreet Boys impersonator who also happens to be a fluent-in-French Yale grad with the patience and kindness to help a bitchy stranger work through her personal drama, you’re either gonna be OK with Girl Most Likely‘s embrace of the contrived, or you’ll have given up on it already. The takeaway is a fervent hope that the talented Wiig will write more of her own scripts in the future. (1:43) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtdYdT17Vuk

The Look of Love Though his name means little in the US, in the UK Paul Raymond was as famous as Hugh Hefner. Realizing early on that sex does indeed sell, he (played by Steve Coogan) began sticking half-naked girls in 1950s club revues, then once the Sexual Revolution arrived, helped pull down a prudish country’s censorship barriers with a variety of cheesy, nudie stage comedies, “members-only” clubs, and girly mags. En route he abandoned a first wife (Anna Friel) for a bombshell actress-model (Tamsin Egerton), all the while continuing to play the field mightily. Nothing — lawsuits, police raids, public denunciations of his smutmongering — seemed to give him pause, save the eventually tragic flailing about of a daughter (Imogen Poots) who was perhaps the only person he ever loved in more than a physical sense. This fourth collaboration between director Michael Winterbottom and actor Coogan is one of those biopics about a driven cipher; if we never quite learn what made Raymond tick, that may be because he was simply an unreflective man satisfied with a rich (he was for a time Britain’s wealthiest citizen), shallow, hedonistic life. But all that surface excess is very entertainingly brought to life in a movie that’s largely an ode to the tackiest decor, fashions, and music of a heady three-decade period. (1:41) Smith Rafael. (Dennis Harvey)

Only God Forgives Julian (Ryan Gosling) and Billy (Tom Burke) are American brothers who run a Bangkok boxing club as a front for their real business of drug dealing. When the latter kills a young prostitute for kicks, then is killed himself, this instigates a chain reaction bloodbath of retribution slayings. Their primary orchestrators: police chief Chang (Vithaya Pansingarm), who always has a samurai-type sword beneath his shirt, pressed against his spine, and incongruously sings the most saccharine songs to his cop subordinates at karaoke; and Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas, doing a sort of Kabuki Cruella de Vil), who flies in to avenge her son’s death. (When told he’d raped and slaughtered a 16-year-old girl, she shrugs “I’m sure he had his reasons.”) Notoriously loathed at Cannes, this second collaboration between director-scenarist Nicolas Winding Refn and star-producer Gosling certainly isn’t for those who found their 2011 Drive insufferably pretentious and mannered. But that movie was downright gritty realism compared to this insanely stylized action abstraction, which blares its influences from Walter Hill and Michael Mann to Suzuki and Argento. The last-named particularly resonates in Suspira-level useage of garishly extreme lighting effects, much crazy wallpaper, and a great score by Cliff Martinez that duly references Goblin (among others). The performances push iconic-toughguy (and toughmutha) minimalism toward a breaking point; the ultraviolence renders a term like “gratuitous” superfluous. But there’s a macabre wit to all this shameless cineaste self-indulgence, and even haters won’t be able to deny that virtually every shot is knockout gorgeous. Haters gonna hate in the short term, but God is guaranteed a future of fervent cult adoration. (1:30) (Dennis Harvey)

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

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty Terence Nance’s original, imaginative feature is a freeform cinematic essay slash unrequited-love letter. He and Namik Minter play fictionalized versions of themselves — two young, African American aspiring filmmakers in Manhattan, their relationship hovering uneasily between “just friends” and something more. To woo her toward the latter, he makes an hour-long film called How Would You Feel?, and the movie incorporates that as well as following what happens after he’s shown it to Minter. En route, there’s a great deal of animation (in many different styles), endless ruminative narration, and … not much plot. The ephemeral structure and general naval-gazing can get tiresome, but Beauty‘s risk-taking plusses outweigh its uneven qualities. (1:24) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

Red 2 Sequel to the 2010 action hit starring Bruce Willis about a squad of “retired, extremely dangerous” secret agents. (1:56)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X07xNrVd7DU

R.I.P.D. Expect to see many reviews of R.I.P.D. calling the film “D.O.A.” — with good reason. This flatly unfunny buddy-cop movie hijacks elements from Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1984), and the Men in Black series, but even 2012’s lackluster third entry in the MIB franchise had more zest and originality than this sad piece of work. Ryan Reynolds plays Boston police officer Nick, recruited into the afterlife’s “Rest In Peace Department” after he’s gunned down by his crooked partner (Kevin Bacon). His new partner is Wild West casualty Roy, embodied by a scenery-chomping Jeff Bridges in an apparent parody of both his own turn in 2010’s True Grit and Sam Elliott’s in 1998’s The Big Lebowski. Tasked with preventing ghosts who appear to be human (known as “deados”) from assembling an ancient artifact that’ll empower a deado takeover, Nick and Roy zoom around town cloaked by new physical identities that only living humans can see. In a joke that gets old fast, Roy’s earthly form resembles a Victoria’s Secret supermodel, while Nick is stuck with “Chinese grandpa.” That the latter’s avatar is portrayed by James Hong — deliciously villainous as Lo Pan in 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China, a vastly superior supernatural action comedy — is one bright spot in what’s otherwise the cinematic equivalent of a shoulder shrug. (1:36) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv_Rl0CBPNs

Still Mine Canadian production Still Mine is based on the true story of Craig Morrison (James Cromwell), an elderly man whose decision to build a new house on his own land — using materials he’d harvested himself, and techniques taught to him by his shipwright father — doesn’t go over well with local bureaucrats, who point out he’s violating nearly every building code on the books. But Craig has a higher purpose than just challenging the system; he’s crafting the home for the comfort of his physically and mentally ailing wife of 61 years (Geneviève Bujold). It’s pretty clear from the opening courtroom scene how Still Mine will end; though it’s well-crafted — and boasts moving turns by Cromwell and Bujold — it ultimately can’t overcome its sentimental, TV-movie vibe. A heartfelt tale, nonetheless. (1:43) (Cheryl Eddy)

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

Turbo It’s unclear whether the irony of coupling racing — long the purview of white southern NASCAR lovers — with an animated leap into “urban” South Central LA is lost on the makers of Turbo, but even if it is, they’re probably too busy dreaming of getting caught in the drift of Fast and Furious box office success to care much. After all, director David Soren, who came up with the original idea, digs into the main challenge — how does one make a snail’s life, before and after a certain magical makeover, at all visually compelling? — with a gusto that presumes that he’s fully aware of the delicious conundrums he’s set up for himself. Here, Theo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) is your ordinary garden snail with big, big dreams — he wants to be a race car driver like ace Guy Gagne (Bill Hader). Those reveries threaten to distract him dangerously from his work at the plant, otherwise known as the tomato plant, in the garden where he and brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) live and toil. One day, however, Theo makes his way out of the garden and falls into the guts of a souped-up vehicle in the midst of a street race, gobbles a dose of nitrous oxide, and becomes a miraculous mini version of a high-powered race car. It takes a meeting with another dreamer, taco truck driver Tito (Michael Pena), for Theo, a.k.a. Turbo, to meet up with a crew of streetwise racing snails who overcome their physical limitations to get where they want to go (Samuel L. Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Michael Bell). One viral video, several Snoop tracks, and one “Eye of the Tiger” remix later, the Indianapolis 500 is, amazingly, in Turbo’s headlights — though will Chet ever overcome his doubts and fears to get behind his bro? The hip-hop soundtrack, scrappy strip-mall setting, and voice cast go a long way to revving up and selling this Cinderella tall/small tale about the bottommost feeder in the food chain who dared to go big, and fast; chances are Turbo will cross over in more ways than one. (1:36) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2i6gJjzX2Y

V/H/S/2 This surprisingly terrific sequel to last year’s just-OK indie horror omnibus rachets up the tension and energy in each of its four segments, again connected by a thread involving creepy “home videos” found in a seemingly abandoned house. Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s Phase 1 Clinical Trials is a straightforwardly scary tale in which the former stars as a wealthy slacker who finds himself victim to predatory ghosts after surgery changes his physiological makeup. Reunited Blair Witch Project (1999) alumni Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale’s A Ride in the Park reinvigorates zombie clichés with gleefully funny bad taste. The most ambitious narrative, Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw’s Safe Haven, wades into a Jonestown type cult and takes it a few steps beyond mere mass suicide. Finally, Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) auteur Jason Eisener’s Slumber Party Alien Abduction delivers on that title and then some, as hearty-partying teens and their spying little brothers face something a whole lot more malevolent than each others’ payback pranks. The found-footage conceit never gets old in this diverse and imaginative feature. Plus, kudos to any horror sequel that actually improves upon the original. V/H/S/3? Bring it on. (1:36) Clay. (Dennis Harvey)

The Performant: Parts is Parts

Sue Vaughan
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1

FoolsFURY’s Factory Parts Builds a Future for Ensemble Works

Ever ambitious, the process-oriented foolsFURY theater ensemble has added yet another performance series to its production calendar: “Factory Parts,” focusing on works-in-development from fellow ensemble companies from both coasts.

Structured like a lower-key version of its biennial festival of ensemble theater, “The FURY Factory,” “Factory Parts” brings together ten companies to present segments of unfinished works before an audience (and each other) to gain perspective on how to shape them for the future. Broken up into three separate programs each showing three times over the course of ten days, Factory Parts offers artists and audiences alike to get in on the ground floor of a production’s existence and offer insight and feedback to the companies involved, turning what would normally be behind-the-scenes workshopping into a form of participatory theatergoing.

I caught up with foolsFURY’s associate artistic director Debórah Eliezer to get the inside scoop on the series, which opens tonight.

SF Bay Guardian So how does the focus of “Factory Parts” differ from that of “The FURY Factory”?

Debórah Eliezer What we’ve been doing with “FURY Factory” is creating mainstage performances during the weekends; in the middle of the week, we’ve been doing works-in-progress. So what would happen is, we’d do multiple types of shows, and you’d get this cross-hybrid of audience, who were all there to see a different thing. And the secondfold here is to be able to offer a venue for creators who are working together over a long period of time. You need to have these stops on your journey where you go “Ok, this is what I’ve got, I’m going to bare my soul in front of you and show you this, bearing in mind that it’s a work in a larger development process.”

What we’ve found is that there are a lot of venues showcasing this kind of work if you call it dance. It’s very typical for dancers to have five minutes of their work in a choreographic showcase, and then to keep working on the piece. So what we want to do is [similarly] educate the theater audience member. We really want to bring people into process.

SFBG When we talk about works that are in progress in the context of this festival, was there a minimum threshold of completeness required for participation? What was the selection process like?

DE The selection process was in large part determined by time. My thing was, “Just give me ten good minutes. I would rather see that, than half an hour that contains ten good minutes.” I think the majority of the pieces, about 80 percent, are ten-minute pieces, including foolsFURY’s. It allows artists to take responsibility for what they are capable of producing in a time period that is feasible. 

SFBG And how did you wrangle the artists that you did?

DE We did send out a publicity letter, but more specifically, we reached out to people that we thought would really benefit from the experience. And I think we’re building on the strength of “The FURY Factory,” that this is really a way for some of the companies to start ramping up for next year. There’s no guarantee of acceptance but the idea is we’re providing this venue as a stair step for how to develop your piece. ”Ok I’m in ‘Factory Parts’ and maybe I can work toward ‘FURY Factory.’”

SFBG So the main thing you expect audiences to get out of this program is the opportunity to be integrated into the process of creating theater? Or what do you think the main draw will be?

DE [To] invite the audience into process development with the idea that they can then take responsibility for what they see and their own enjoyment, their participation is a vital aspect of the development process. On the third night of every program there’s going to be an audience feedback session, moderated by a dramaturg, a talkback of sorts, so there’ll be the feedback between the artist and the audience. And then there’ll be peer review feedback, between the companies, who are all required to see the other two programs, and they’ll have a feedback forum … and then the third part of this whole response ecosystem will be a roundtable discussion (on the morning of Sun/28). It’ll be a moderated discussion among peers, a community gathering of sorts, to culminate the process as a whole.

“Factory Parts”

Wed/17-Sun/21 and July 25-28, 8pm, $15 ($40 pass)

NOH Space

2840 Mariposa, SF

www.foolsfury.org

 

Beginning on broke

Michael Redmond
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1
Beginning on broke

news@sfbg.com

Despite signs of economic recovery, many young people still face hard times due to high unemployment, low wages, and a lack of job opportunities. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee recently sought to tackle this issue locally with the rollout of Summer Jobs + 2013, a public-private partnership with an ambitious goal of providing 6,000 jobs and paid internships for San Francisco’s young adults. It was the most ambitious goal ever pursued in a city jobs initiative, with particular emphasis on low-income youth.

“I’m calling on all San Francisco companies to take on this challenge to support the youth of San Francisco,” Mayor Lee said at a press conference in April, when he joined House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in unveiling the program, the local manifestation of an Obama Administration jobs initiative. “Creating meaningful employment opportunities for our young people today will set them up for success now and in the future.”

But Summer Jobs + is falling far short of its goal, resulting in the creation of only 3,200 summer jobs. The Mayor’s Office is still holding out for a possible influx of hires next month that could bring it closer to the goal before summer’s end, Gloria Chan with the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development told us.

Last summer, the Mayor’s Office launched a similar initiative aimed at providing 5,000 youth jobs and internships, and ultimately exceeded the goal by 200 positions. Roughly 32 percent of those jobs were in the private sector, predominantly tech. At the end of the day, only about 14 percent of the program’s participants locked down private-sector jobs, with employers ranging from Starbucks to Bank of America to Twilio.

Despite some success in helping young San Franciscans find work, the efforts so far amount to a kind of Band-Aid solution to a problem that goes much deeper and cannot be solved by simply teaching young people to draft polished resumes. Youth unemployment, particularly among low-income and marginalized groups, has worsened over time and is linked to a broader trend of economic inequality.

The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, recently turned an eye toward economic pressures facing young people with the release of a study titled, “Lost Generations? Wealth Building among Young Americans.” (see “Wealth vs. work,” May 1).

The institute found that among young people, “Average wealth in 2010 was 7 percent below that of those in their 20s and 30s in 1983. Even before the Great Recession, young Americans were on a strikingly different trajectory. Now, stagnant wages, diminishing job opportunities, and lost home values may be merging to paint a vastly different future for Gen X and Gen Y. Despite their relative youth, they may not be able to make up the lost ground.”

In the aftermath of the Great Recession triggered by the economic crash of 2009, millennials ages 16 to 24 have faced dramatically lower employment and income rates in comparison with their elders, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

In California, where unemployment stands at 10.5 percent, the millennial unemployment rate is 20.2 percent. Additionally, the median income of employed young adults in California fell from about $35,000 to $32,000 from 2005 to 2011, while other age groups recovered on average. In San Francisco, the unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24 was just shy of 14 percent in 2011, double that of individuals spanning ages 18 to 34.

“We know that there’s been a lot of reporting out there that the recession was particularly hard for young adults, but it’s also important to note that they are in a much bigger hole than everyone else,” Rory O’Sullivan, a policy director for Young Invincibles, told the Guardian.

Young Invincibles is a national organization that works to expand opportunities for young adults in education and employment, and to bring attention to the oft-ignored economic plight of young adults seeking a foothold in the job market.

Young Invincibles found the Great Recession hit young adults harder than any previous recession in recent history. A quarter of job loss experienced by millennials occurred after the recession ended, while the unemployment rate for 18 to 34 year olds has consistently been double that of those 35 and up.

“Young people usually take a big hit in a recession,” said O’Sullivan. “Since they’re often the first fired, last hired in a seniority system. You’re going to let go of recent hires and not the more experienced folks.”

It’s a problem that can potentially have broader effects in the long run. “There are huge consequences for the economy down the road if we have a whole generation out of work,” explained O’Sullivan. “Lack of internships and first jobs can really hurt a young person’s wages. If a young person graduates in a recession, their wages will take a hit for decades afterwards — and that could have huge consequences. We’re still a long way behind.”

There’s no easy fix for the myriad economic pressures surrounding young adults, but O’Sullivan points to public-private partnerships as a way to get young people back in the market, even though that doesn’t seem to be working in San Francisco. O’Sullivan said Young Invincibles would like to see more public service jobs created for young people. “There’s a huge demand,” O’Sullivan said. “Rebuilding after national disasters, building houses, tutoring. We have to do a better job of connecting young people to this workforce.”

CEQA reform battle sparks welcome changes even before final compromise

Sasha Cuttler
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32

UPDATED When Sup. Scott Wiener last year introduced legislation that would limit people’s ability to appeal development projects by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act’s local procedures, progressives and neighborhood activists rose up in strong opposition. But now, with that measure and a competing alternative up for approval by the Board of Supervisors tomorrow (Tues/16), there is a compromise in the offing that all sides may see as an improvement on the status quo, particularly given administrative changes that the Planning Department has made along the way.

“We made a series of amendments in April that addressed almost all the concerns raised by the neighborhood activists,” said Judson True, the top aide to Board President David Chiu, who has once again taken the lead role in crafting a compromise on controversial legislation. 

Final details of the deal are still being worked out, but sources on both sides say there is an agreement on the broad outlines of a true compromise. It would accomplish Wiener’s main goal of limiting the current ability of project opponents to file a CEQA appeal at any time while also improving the public notification process.

“It’s still pretty fluid now, but we’re working to get to a consensus measure, we hope,” True told us.

Wiener has always emphasized that his legislation applies only to relatively small projects, those that are “categorically exempt” under CEQA from having to do detailed environmental studies. And he said the compromises now being developed appear to meet his initial goals.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be approved,” Wiener told us, adding that, “If this turns out to be a kumbaya moment, that will show the legislative process works.” [UPDATE: The compromise legislation was unanimously approved by the board.]

One byproduct of that process was recent changes on the Planning Department’s website that make it much easier for activists to track the status of projects — with a new map showing projects that have been granted CEQA exemptions that would move forward unless challenged — which activists requested during the Land Use Committee hearings on this legislation.

“We heard from members of the public that our existing posting process was cumbersome. It was also time-consuming for staff. We decided to revamp the system, using technology we’ve developed in recent years. By converting the checklist into electronic format and having it searchable by location, it’ll be easier for the public to search for a particular project and more efficient for staff to process,” Planning Department spokesperson Joanna Linsangan told us.

True said the hearings on the legislation have helped to illuminate problems that could be addressed administratively: “There’s been a real push from supervisors and the Planning Department itself to improve noticing.”

Eric Brooks, who has been working with the 42 groups that coalesced to oppose Wiener’s legislation — including environmentalists, neighborhood groups, labor, and historic preservationists — said ensuring proper noticing was half the battle. He gave credit to Sup. Jane Kim for resisting the Wiener legislation and working with activists to put forward a competing measure, sowing the seeds for the Chiu compromise.

“This was  a real community process and Jane Kim needs to be lauded for taking part in this,” Brooks said, although he later added, “Whatever happens with this, David Chiu owns it because he’s put himself in the middle of this.”

One key piece of the puzzle that might not be resolved tomorrow is with what has always been the biggest concern for activists, which is how the legislation limits appeals to a project’s initial approval. “We knew that it would be way too early and it cuts off our ability to negotiate with developers,” Brooks said.

For complicated legal reasons, it was difficult to build into this legislation a process for activists to challenge a project that changes after its initial approval, so Kim has introduced trailing legislation that would do so (which is set to be heard Wednesday by the Historic Preservation Commission and Thursday by the Planning Commission).

It would allow activists to appeal changes to a project that they find environmentally significant, even if city staff doesn’t (or, in planning parlance, to appeal the environmental review officer’s categorical exemption determination — to that same officer).

“If the environmental review officer has to suffer the hearing if she makes a bad call, she will make fewer bad calls,” Brooks said. “And if we don’t change the environmental review officers’ mind, we’ll be able to take it to court.”

In tech-dominated Mid-Market, arts center beats the odds

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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5
In tech-dominated Mid-Market, arts center beats the odds

Is there a place for community theaters and nonprofit arts and education programs in pricey San Francisco? The 950 Center for Art and Education, a project that will be housed on the corner of Market and Turk streets in San Francisco, has gained a foothold against the odds.

Two years in the making, the center will provide permanently affordable performance facilities for the Lorraine Hansberry and Magic theaters, and create affordable space for art education organizations including Youth Speaks, the American Conservatory Theater and All Stars Project. Other groups, such as Lines Ballet, the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club and others previously unsure whether they could continue to rent in the Tenderloin/SoMa area will get the chance to expand their performance and programming capabilities at the center.

Because the neighborhood is in such high demand in the wake of recent tax breaks and incentives designed to bring tech businesses to SF, it took the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, a part of the North of Market Neighborhood Improvement Corporation, at least two years to secure the property for the arts and education complex. Until very recently, the project’s fate was hanging in the balance, with many groups uncertain whether they would be able to remain in the city.

Three-quarters of the project space that TEDP had long set its sites on is located at 970 Market, and was initially owned by Lone Star, a Texas-based hedge fund. The remaining project space, at 950 Market, was under the ownership of the Thatcher family, known for philanthropy.

Initially, TEDP “had a deal with the hedge fund,” says TEDP director Elvin Padilla, but after property values rose, “they basically walked away from the negotiating table. The crisis moment was, who’s going to control the land – and will they collaborate with us?”

Padilla credits Gladys Thatcher, founder of the San Francisco Education Fund, as “the reason we decided to make the attempt [to acquire these spaces for the 950 Center] in the first place.” 

When TEDP first pitched the idea to her several years ago, “she gave us her blessing we decided to make a go of it,” he explained.

Thatcher is trustee and former board member of the San Francisco Foundation, which worked alongside TEDP and the Rainin Foundation to secure the lion’s share of the land needed for the 950 Center, by facilitating a purchase of the 970 Market Parcel from Lone Star.

On June 7, the property was transferred from Lone Star to Group I, a San Francisco-based real estate development firm that Thatcher is friendly with. Now that the sale has gone through, the space will be devoted to the arts and education programming that TEDP had long envisioned. The San Francisco Foundation plans to facilitate development of the center through the creation of a new sponsoring organization that will be housed at Community Initiatives, a nonprofit. 

While he is grateful for the community support, Padilla likened their quest to gain 970 Market to a climb up Mt. Everest.

A 2011 payroll tax exclusion zone introduced by Mayor Ed Lee vastly increased the property value in the mid-Market area. Although Lee had a soft spot for the 950 Arts and Education Center and even organized events to support bringing that use to mid-Market, his new policy left the project facing an uncertain future in a suddenly pricey strip along Market Street. “He doesn’t have any real authority over private sector transactions,” Padilla says, so all the Mayor could do was stipulate the city’s interest in using this land for “arts and education.”

The city doesn’t offer public funding for projects like 950 Center for Arts and Education. To “subsidize on the front end,” as Padilla puts it, the center will have to rely on the backing of individual investors, philanthropic groups and new market tax credits to reduce and eliminate the debt entirely, so the organizations that will be housed at the center don’t have to carry a mortgage.

In the end, it was only through the efforts of wealthy and connected individuals that plans for the center were nailed down rather than extinguished. “Mid-Market is going through a very rapid transformation,” says Dr. Sandra R. Hernández, Chief Executive Officer of the San Francisco Foundation. “We’re just lucky that Group I, the developer, shares this vision with us for an arts center.”

Looking back on the years of effort it took to piece the plan together, Padilla noted, “When we started this, it was before the tech boom. Now, the pressure on the real estate is many times what it was when we conceptualized the 950 project.” 

That uncertainty finally came to an end for Padilla’s organization when Group I closed the deal with Lone Star on June 7. “That really [did] start the project officially,” Hernández says. “We’re now working with a number of the organizations that have expressed interest in having permanent space or accessible space for their programming or rehearsals for their theater production.”

Celebrating independence, embracing wage slavery

Sasha Cuttler
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50
Celebrating independence, embracing wage slavery

On the eve of Independence Day, too many San Franciscans seem eager to give up on the very idea of independence, instead willingly buying into the divide and conquer strategies of those who seek to control and exploit us. Just consider the big news of the day.

On Day Three of the BART strike, mainstream and social media are once again awash with angry anti-union diatribes by people who are resentful of the fact that some workers in this society still manage to earn the pensions and decent salaries that most of us wage slaves are being denied.

Pensions are the one thing that allows the working class some degree of independence during its twilight years. And the average BART salary of $72,000 annually shouldn’t be considered excessive in an expensive city that will chew up at least a third of that in housing costs.

But they are each more than most of us are getting, so it’s easy to turn many people against their fellow workers, even though the real targets of our ire should be the bosses and economic system that are denying us our independence and the means to pursue our happiness.

It’s a similar story with the breaking news of the day: City College of San Francisco losing its accreditation and being turned over to state control. While there are some reasons to criticize how this important institution has been managed over the years, it was still being managed by locally elected trustees who made the best decisions they could under bad circumstances.

They made decisions to maintain a broad-based curriculum that this community wanted and needed, and to avoid exploiting the faculty like so many other educational institutions are doing, in the process taking a gamble with lower reserves than may be needed. And the voters of San Francisco stepped up to support CCSF with a parcel tax that was helping to ease it away from the brink, acting as a proud and independent community does during troubled times.

But a commission of unelected bureaucrats on a ideological mission to transform educational institutions into something less than the broad-based community resources that CCSF has strived to be decided to make an example of San Francisco. And they did so with the full support of Mayor Ed Lee, who issued a statement today criticizing local officials for not embracing even harsher austerity measures than they did, and saying “I fully support” the state takeover.

Lee’s hand-picked panel recommending reforms of the Housing Authority is also proposing to sacrifice the independence of poor San Franciscans in favor of ever-more subsidies to real estate developers, according to a story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Among the “reforms” is a proposal to divert federal money from the Section 8 program that offers rent-subsidies to the poor, as Chron reporter John Cote described like this: “A terribly run program that provides low-income residents with vouchers for private housing would be administered by the city, rather than the federally funded public housing agency. The vouchers would be prioritized for certain affordable housing projects, creating dedicated revenue to help secure loans to build them.”

So the vouchers that allow low-income people some independence — rather than living in squalid, chronically mismanaged public housing projects in San Francisco — will instead subsidize development projects. Yes, we do need to subsidize affordable housing development, which this city is underfunding, but we shouldn’t be taking the meager resources of society’s least fortunate families to do so.  

I have no doubts that Lee will jump at this suggestion (although its unlikely to be so eagerly embraced by federal regulators at HUD) given his penchant for shady real estate schemes that line the pockets of the powerful, like the one that the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered this week.

CIR reported that the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Center — a for-profit company connected to Willie Brown that is arranging immigration visas for Chinese nationals who invest in Lennar’s Hunters Point housing development — is getting key help from Lee and members of his staff.

This project was already looking like a bait-and-switch scam, as we also reported this week, with Lennar being guaranteed profits without even putting up its own money, thanks to Lee’s willingness to use the power of his office to solicit funds on behalf of the country’s biggest residential developer.

If Lennar wasn’t going to build the affordable housing we need on the front end, or put up the money itself, why didn’t the city just administer this project and give the work to local contractors? What exactly is this Florida-based corporation doing in exchange for being handed some of the most valuable real estate in the city, except for helping its powerful local friends who pulled strings on its behalf?

What’s motivating Lee these days? Well, considering that Brown and other power brokers placed him in the Mayor’s Office after a career at City Hall doing their bidding — a role he seems to be still playing today in his powerful new role — I’d say it was a lack of independence.

It’s all pretty depressing, but at least we have a holiday tomorrow to celebrate our independence. Happy Fourth of July, comrades.  

8 Washington opponents try to torpedo counter-initiative

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Opponents of 8 Washington, a hotly contested development project that would erect 134 new condos priced at $5 million apiece and up along the San Francisco waterfront, are seeking to thwart a counter-initiative developers have launched to solicit voter approval for the project on the November ballot.

In a July 1 letter from The Sutton Law Firm to Hanson Bridgett LLP, a firm representing the project proponents, political lawyer and fixer Jim Sutton highlights “fatal legal flaws” he claims would invalidate each and every signature collected in support of the 8 Washington initiative. It’s likely a precursor to a lawsuit. Apparently, Sutton got involved through his connection with former City Attorney Louise Renne, who opposes the 8 Washington plan.

Organized under No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront, opponents circulated petitions of their own earlier this year to challenge San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ approval of 8 Washington, asking voters to weigh in on the Board’s waiver of building height limit restrictions. Polling has indicated they’ll succeed (a win in their case is a majority of “no” votes), effectively sinking the project. That prompted 8 Washington proponents to generate their own counter-initiative.

Sutton’s letter demands that 8 Washington proponents not submit the initiative to the Department of Elections for signature verification, unless they first re-circulate the petitions. Of course, that would torpedo the whole endeavor, since there’s no way proponents could gather enough signatures in time for the imminent filing deadline.

The aforementioned “fatal legal flaws,” meanwhile, seem to illustrate why high-powered attorneys like Sutton rake in the big bucks. Apparently, the initiative proponents neglected to attach a few maps detailing the height limit increases, in violation of a requirement that proponents present the “full text” of a proposal to voters. And then there’s this:

Whether it’s a photocopying error or an attempt at obfuscation, the map on the left (circulated by the pro-development camp) makes it impossible to read the height limit increase. (The map on the right was circulated by opponents.) This seemingly minute detail matters, according to No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront spokesperson Jon Golinger, because “the whole point of this is the height increase.”

David Beltran, a spokesperson for the pro- 8 Washington folks, responded to a Guardian request for comment by saying, “Our opponents are offering up yet another baseless claim.” He called it a distraction “from having to justify why they are asking our City to give up new parks, jobs, and housing and millions of dollars in city benefits that includes $11 million for new affordable housing—to protect an asphalt parking lot and private club,” referencing a recreational center that’s served a predominantly middle class clientele for years that would be razed to make way for 8 Washington.

Beltran also attached a complaint Hanson Bridgett had filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission, charging that No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront had failed to meet campaign filing deadlines, and urging city officials to “immediately investigate the delay” and impose fines of $5,000 per violation.

Parents, behind bars

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By Ross Mirkarimi

OPINION Nearly 50 percent of the 2.7 million people incarcerated in US prisons and jails are mothers and fathers. In San Francisco, about 40 percent of the prisoners are parents. For their children, the punishment does not fit the crime.

Federal and state recidivism registers at 78 percent; locally the rate is 65 percent and dropping. If we’re serious about breaking the cycle of incarceration, we must get serious about restoring the family ties of the incarcerated.

Studies support what common sense suggests — strengthening the parent-child bond reduces recidivism. It also reduces the prospect that children of the incarcerated are more likely to violate the law. While maintaining appropriate safety and legal protocols, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is reexamining policies that invariably damage or strain relationships between an inmate parent and child, starting with birth. In honor of Mother’s Day, on May 9, the Community Works Jail Arts Program, with our department, converted the lobby of the SF women’s jail into a temporary gallery of art created by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated mothers.

That provided a warm environment to announce a policy first in California: The Birth Justice Project, designed to affirm the reproductive rights of all incarcerated women and provide prenatal and postpartum care during the transformative experience of pregnancy, birth and parenthood. With the stewardship of Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an OB/GYN from UCSF, along with the Department of Public Health, Zellerbach Foundation, and our volunteer doulas (professional birth assistants), we’re radically distancing ourselves from the barbaric attitude of 33 states that still shackle women during labor. Rather, we seek to nurture the inimitable bond between mother and child.

While most jails and prisons shun a lactation policy, we’ve unveiled our pro-lactation program. Breast pumps, refrigeration, and delivery are provided around the clock, facilitated by our jail health professionals. While the arcane national practice is to separate baby and mother after the third day of birth, we’re working to maintain the connection. If we can’t do it through diversion (alternatives to incarceration), then we’ll continue to assess our facility in allowing mother and baby to stay together. I look forward to promoting breast feeding in San Francisco’s jails.

For children of incarcerated parents, the absence of a mother is the loss of a primary caregiver. Ninety percent of incarcerated fathers in the US report that while away, their children live with the child’s mother. In contrast, only 28 percent of incarcerated mothers report that their children live with their father. Routinely, her children are cared for by a grandparent or relative — and about 11 percent are placed in foster care. Many children are bounced from caregiver to caregiver during their parent’s incarceration.

These disruptions to a child’s life negatively affect their social and mental development. Acknowledging the sense of disconnection experienced by children whose parents are incarcerated also means we must grapple with the emotional poverty that increases the likelihood of criminal behavior. In San Francisco, we’re taking steps to bridge this disconnection by reforming visitation policies to facilitating regular contact between children and incarcerated parents.

The people in our jails will eventually be released and will return to communities that historically have been underserved. We’re trying to intensify resources toward exit planning for newly incarcerated parents and guardians. Depending on individuals cases, that could include a regiment of parenting classes, substance abuse and mental health treatment, domestic violence counseling, reunification counseling for parent and child, reading and writing comprehension, high school completion, life skills such as financial literacy, and vocational training.

Many people don’t know what the Sheriff’s Department does or the difference between us and the SFPD; we’ve launched a monthly e-newsletter to keep the public informed. To sign up or contact us at: Ross.Mirkarimi@SFgov.org

Ross Mirkarimi is sheriff of San Francisco

New Zealand’s Cup

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New Zealand’s Cup

news@sfbg.com

A few weeks ago I was walking down the dock in the marina where I live, in Wellington, New Zealand, when I passed a woman and a young boy. I’d never seen them before, which is uncommon here in this municipal marina — about 100 boats — in a small suburb of the country’s capital.

The boy was walking from berth to berth pointing out certain rig and hull features and expounding on them as only a future aficionado can. “Lots of different boats, huh?” I asked as I passed.

“Different than America,” he confirmed in an accent the same as mine.

The kid is sharp, I thought, or maybe it’s just obvious, even to an eight-year-old from Chicago. The New Zealand sailing scene is vastly different than its American counterpart, which is not to say there’s no comparing — they’re not exactly navigating carved logs with gunnysack sails down here.

But the boats in my marina are, in fact, mostly homebuilt from steel, cement, aluminum, and wood. They appear a motley crew compared to the cookie-cutter production fiberglass Beneteaus, Catalinas, and Hunters, with their identical pacific blue sail covers lined up in San Francisco’s South Beach Marina.

In New Zealand, a boat is rarely a status symbol — it’s part of the middle-class way of life, the home base for holidays and weekend fishing trips and lots and lots of competitive racing. If I’ve noticed one thing since I arrived in this country (aboard a sailboat, after leaving San Francisco and my job as a Bay Guardian staff writer), it’s that every little harbor town has a yacht club and an awful lot of Kiwis own boats — and they sail the shit out of them.

Which is part of the reason why the New Zealand government is willing to invest NZ$36 million (US$27 million) to compete in the 34th America’s Cup against some of the richest men in the world in a race that has become so elite there’s barely any competition.

Small as the field is, Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) is quickly shaping up to be the team to beat if you’re on a high-speed, air-catching AC72 catamaran. If they succeed, it will show that developing an America’s Cup team doesn’t have to come from having deep pockets in your Nantucket Red pants — it comes from having the sport ingrained in your culture, filtered through affordable local boat clubs, city-run facilities, volunteer programs, publicly accessible shorefronts, and an innovative marine industry.

In fact, without New Zealand’s maritime way of life, Larry Ellison wouldn’t have much of a team: of the 27 sailors and management crew aboard Oracle, a third are Kiwis. Another third are Australians. If you count Ellison, there are only three Americans aboard. Just one of them — tactician and grinder John Kostecki — grew up sailing on San Francisco Bay.

Ellison’s boat is mostly a Kiwi production, too — the fixed-wing sails and structural components for Oracle’s two AC72s were made in New Zealand, as were the boats, sails, and rigs for ETNZ and Luna Rossa. The only other syndicate competing, Sweden’s Artemis, in the wind since the death of crewmember Andrew Simpson, is the outlier, but they still have eight New Zealanders on board.

America’s Cup is looking more and more like it owes a lot to New Zealand. Is the Cup doing as much for San Francisco as it is for this little island nation, with a population just a tenth of California’s?

“If it wasn’t called Team New Zealand, we wouldn’t get a lot out of it,” says Sven Pannell, a competitive dinghy racer and employee of the economic development agency Grow Wellington. “The numbers of boat builders, carbon fabricators, sail makers, yacht designers coming out of New Zealand are the reason we’re still at the top of the global game. If we can bring the Cup home that means a lot for our country.”

It may also save America’s Cup from becoming even more out of touch with reality.

 

IT’S THE CULTURE, STUPID

It’s June 8, summer in San Francisco but winter in Wellington. The first race of the 2013 Winter Series at Evans Bay Boat Club hits hypothermic seas beneath steely overcast skies and 20-30 knots of wind — “perfect conditions,” one sailor enthuses. Tame, actually, for Wellington. A week ago, wind blew out the fifth story windows of a building downtown.

Sven Pannell has just finished racing a 12-foot skiff, a super lightweight, often homebuilt boat that probably originated in Australia and is almost exclusively raced in the Southern Hemisphere, though an 18-foot version will be showcased in San Francisco this September alongside the America’s Cup finals. Weighing about 100 pounds, with no class restrictions on sail area, they rooster-tail around Wellington harbor, bow high, barely in the water. They seem to require a similar caliber of nerve as the AC72s.

Which Pannell, who won today, evidently has. He grew up sailing as a kid, as did his crew, Craig Anderson. Neither of them can think of anyone who didn’t get into sailing as a child.

“A lot of people around the world think yachting is a well-heeled sport, but not in New Zealand,” he says. “There’s a reason that half those [America’s Cup] boats are full of Kiwis and Aussies. Go out and see the number of eight-year-olds in Optis in all kinds of weather here. A high number of people sailing at that age creates a deep pool of sailors in demand.”

“America’s Cup is about stretching the limits, but it starts here, when you’re eight years old,” he adds.

Eager to get out of the icy Antarctic wind, I enter the boat club where about 35 people are gathered at the bar, buzzing from adrenalin, barefoot and wet from spray or capsizes, gripping ginger beers and green bottles of Steinlager, the Budweiser of New Zealand. It’s a humble looking crowd — no flash gear or cashmere.

I’m introduced to Mike Rhodes, 26, wearing a blue sweatshirt and camo pants. He’d love to race an America’s Cup boat, but he also satisfies himself with a 12-foot skiff, which he stripped and rebuilt, fashioning the stainless steel fittings himself — he’s a sheet metal worker.

“New Zealand sailing is all about learning and moving forward,” he says. “The boats we’re sailing are always changing. We have set rules for weight, width, and length. After that it’s wide open. You can put up as much rig as you can handle. We went out in 50 knots last weekend. It was insane. We probably had boat speeds of 30 knots.”

The speed and innovations are what appeal to Rhodes and also connect to the America’s Cup, which has been an historic proving ground for leaps forward in boat design. “Who thought New Zealand could make the boat fly first?” he says of ETNZ’s proficiency at foiling the AC72 — going so fast the hull actually lifts off the water.

We’re soon joined by Laura Hutton, a 30-year-old from Cape Cod. She’s raced dinghies, coached and taught sailing for years. Now a speech therapist, she moved to New Zealand three months ago and immediately hooked into the local yachting scene. It’s palpably different than what she’s used to in the States. Here, she says, “It’s a lot more laid back. It’s more inclusive than exclusive. I used to go to events at New York Yacht Club in Newport and I felt so uncomfortable there. It’s the most elite, snobby place.”

“You can’t get coaching in the US unless you’re part of a yacht club or go to a school with a racing team,” she adds, and there’s often a huge cost to enter the sport. “Here, I can join the local yacht club for $35 a month,” she deadpans.

I spend more money riding the bus, I tell her, but I wouldn’t in San Francisco, where it’s cheap to catch a bus but where most people rarely board boats.

The American yacht club tradition has a certain “if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it” attitude. Ellison is one of 300 members of Golden Gate Yacht Club, official host for the Cup. Its neighbor, St. Francis Yacht Club, 2,300 strong, also has a role in the festivities. Both are exclusive, members-only clubs and neither would tell me what their members pay for the club’s privileges.

However, they’re officially nonprofit organizations and filings with the IRS show St. Francis made nearly $13 million in 2011. Golden Gate Yacht Club took home $660,000 the same year. Ironically, both clubs are on public lands, leased from San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department for $231,125 and $64,000 annually respectively.

Both clubs run learn-to-sail programs for kids — $350 for St. Francis and $200 for GGYC — which seem affordable, but what’s the next step? Joining the club, but apparently it’s too rude to query the price.

By contrast, Wellington’s Evans Bay Boat Club charges NZ$281 (US$210) to join and Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, which is a sister club to St. Francis, costs NZ$160 (US $120). The Bay Area is lucky — Berkeley and Treasure Island both have affordable clubs, however one could argue that if St. Francis and GGYC are on public lands, they should be paying more in dues to the city.

If there’s a posh club in Auckland, it’s ETNZ’s home — the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. “But it’s a Kiwi version of posh, nothing like some of the yacht clubs I have been to in places like England, where women aren’t allowed to order drinks at the bar,” says Ben Gladwell, a journalist for Boating New Zealand who will be racing an 18 foot skiff in San Francisco in a regatta concurrent with the Cup finals. “At the Squaddy, there are obviously rules, like no cell phones, and dress codes and such like, but the fees are still only a few hundred dollars per year and it is much more inclusive than other yacht clubs around the world.”

Gladwell explored the health of New Zealand’s sailing culture in a story called “State of the Racing Nation” for Boating New Zealand. He found that although there is a drop-off in interest during university years, many yacht clubs have created partnerships to keep kids in the sport, there are mobile learn-to-sail units roaming the country, and lots of accessible city-run programs for kids. Couple that with low lifetime fees to stay in the sport and you see healthy clubs like Evans Bay, where people of all ages are out racing every weekend, all year round.

“Having so many people involved in sailing is a major reason we are successful,” he says. “Children are introduced to it at such a young age…by the time they come to competing at youth international regattas, they are hugely experienced and winning becomes a habit.”

 

“AMERICA’S CUP IS NOW NEW ZEALAND’S CUP”

In 1995, when Black Magic smoked Dennis Connor’s Stars and Stripes in a five-race shut-out, commentator Peter Montgomery famously quipped “America’s Cup is now New Zealand’s cup,” a line that’s gone down in Kiwi history like the “I have a dream” speech.

For the first time, the Auld Mug would be defended in New Zealand. Back then, Auckland’s Viaduct Harbor probably looked a lot like parts of San Francisco’s waterfront does today — dilapidated piers and old industrial buildings crumbling on their pilings. It would cost of NZ$58 million (US$29 million at the time) to dredge the harbor and spruce up the waterfront for the Cup.

The city made its money back. Hosting for two years, in 2000 and 2003, brought NZ$1 billion (US$500 million, at the time) in economic benefits to the country, about 85 percent of that going to Auckland’s local businesses, mostly from visiting megayachts and the services required for the nine syndicates that competed — twice as many as are in San Francisco today.

And Auckland made a lot less than the US$900 million predicted for San Francisco, already trimmed from the US$1.4 billion initially estimated. What the city actually gains from the $22.5 million investment they’ve been forced to make remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Auckland continues to benefit from the race.

It’s been estimated that the four Cup contenders have collectively spent half a billion on their campaigns and a decent chunk of that has been in Auckland, particularly during the AC72 design, build, and testing phases. Already, taxes paid by ETNZ employees amount to NZ$22.4 million (US$16.5 million). That doesn’t include the employee payroll taxes of all the businesses doing Cup-related activity, like the boat builders, riggers, and sailmakers.

ETNZ CEO Grant Dalton has netted sponsorships from more than 100 companies and argues that the Cup efforts have kept many marine businesses afloat that would have otherwise shuttered. Kiwis have not been immune to the world financial situation: the high New Zealand dollar hurting exports and the NZ$30 billion (US$22.5 billion) price tag for the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake have stressed the country’s coffers.

Because of that, funding ETNZ has been as contentious here as hosting Ellison’s party has been to San Franciscans. The agreement was signed in 2007 by a Labour Party-led government and when National Party’s John Key won the Prime Minister’s seat in 2008, he looked into breaking the contract, a move supported by other parties. “Funding the America’s Cup is surely a ‘nice to have’, rather than essential spending, in the current economic climate,” said Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei at the time.

The government was advised they’d still be legally on the hook for the money if they broke the contract, so ETNZ proceeded, but proof of economic return was a contingency and Dalton has taken pains to keep the public good in the conversation, a sharp contrast to Ellison’s attitude toward San Francisco. Dalton has said if New Zealand wins, the world should expect a sharp scaling back of costs. “We stand for nationality rule and we stand for real budget numbers that real people can raise,” he has said.

There’s definitely a sense that this could be New Zealand’s last chance to bring the Auld Mug home. If they don’t, the America’s Cup also loses. Who else will save it from American-style exclusiveness?

Community awaits benefits as Lennar finally breaks ground in Hunters Point

Sasha Cuttler
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More than five years after San Francisco voters approved a massive redevelopment plan for the Hunters Point Shipyard and much the southeast part of the city — giving Lennar Corp., the country’s biggest home builder, the largest tracts of open land in the city — that project is now finally, slowly, getting underway.

But activists who have been following the project say the city is getting played by Lennar because of an agreement that lacks performance standards and has allowed the company to drag its feet to maximize its profits despite an affordable housing crisis in the city. And some community members say Lennar hasn’t lived up to promises of jobs and other benefits.

“The modus operandi of Lennar is bait and switch and delay,” Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology, who consulted on this development deal for the Redevelopment Agency before his contract was dropped in 2010 after publicly raising concerns, told us. Bloom and his firm have decades of experience analyzing complex development deals, and he has been tracking Lennar’s pattern of behavior around the country. 

Bloom said that when Lennar cut its initial deals with then-Mayor Willie Brown and other local officials in 1997, the company said it needed no external financing and that it would build housing affordable to Hunters Point residents, including rentals. Since then, the deal has gotten steadily better for the company and worse for San Francisco, and the groundbreaking date has been repeatedly pushed back.

“The city was not smart enough to build in liquidated damage and a performance schedule and that kind of thing,” Bloom said. “Lennar tells them what they want and the city tends to roll over, and there’s been no pushback.”

When Lennar ended up needing financing after all, the project stood by while a $1.7 billion deal with the China Development Bank Corp. was structured in 2012. Despite Mayor Lee personally participating in the quest for capital in China alongside the developer, the deal quickly collapsed. It is yet to be seen how Lennar will satisfy its commitments in the Bayview and at its separate Treasure Island site since the plug was pulled on the loan deal.

Lennar Urban Director of Community Affairs Cheryl Smith referred our questions to communications consultant David Satterfield of G.F. Bunting, who said that he passed them on to Lennar officials and, “They don’t have anything to say.” The Mayor’s Office also has not responded to our request for comment on the issues that Bloom is raising.

With a weak agreement and a lack of political will to push the company to expedite construction of affordable housing, Bloom said Lennar has simply waited for housing prices to increase and for other developers to lead the way in gentrifying Bayview Hunters Point before moving forward on the nearly 1,400 acres of land it controls in San Francisco — an area equivalent in size to the Presidio.

“Their incentive is to wait for the property values to rise…Lennar understands how much this land is worth,” Bloom said. “What Lennar has done is crafted a strategically smart box that the city is in.”

Yet after years of delays, the project did officially get underway last week (Wed/27), with a well-attended hilltop ceremony.  Mayor Ed Lee, former Mayor Willie Brown, District 10 Sup. Malia Cohen, and Cohen’s predecessor, Sophie Maxwell, joined Lennar Urban President Kofi Bonner to speak at the long-anticipated event.

Lennar’s local subsidiary, Lennar Urban, unveiled a master plan to convert the land to a brand new mixed-use community. At the ceremony, Brown remarked that “there is no other piece of soil that is as lucrative” as the Bayview Hunters Point peninsula and that it promises to be the “ideal place to live.”

The Hunters Point Shipyard, occupies roughly 500 acres of southeastern San Francisco and when taken together with neighboring Candlestick Point and parts of Bayview, it is the largest single tract of land in San Francisco designated for redevelopment. The other big redevelopment site in the city, Treasure Island, is also controlled by Lennar and its partners.

A former naval base, the shipyard was transferred to the city in 2004. Most naval operations there had ceased in 1974 and commercial uses declined in the 20 years that followed, steadily displacing black workers employed on the premises.

Affordable housing and job creation for neighborhood locals were two major stipulations in the ballot measure San Francisco voters approved in 2008. The “Bayview Jobs, Parks, and Housing Initiative,” however, entrusted that goal fulfillment almost wholly to Lennar and Bloom now questions whether that trust was well placed.

Phase 1 of the project will consist of construction of 1,400 new residential units in the shipyard, approximately 30 percent of which will one day be affordable housing. But Bloom said that Lennar has delayed construction of the affordable units until after much of the more lucrative market rate housing is done.

At the event, Bonner enthusiastically outlined the goal of having 800 of 1,100 market rate homes in this first phase constructed and occupied within 36 months time and Mayor Lee opened his remarks with the celebratory chant “Welcome to The Bayview! We need housing for everybody!”

But Bloom said that the city is rapidly gentrifying as Lennar waits to meet its affordable housing obligations, noting that the city was 11 percent African-American when Lennar cuts its first deal to develop Hunters Point in 1997, and that population is now 4 percent and falling.

Reconstruction of the Alice Griffith Public Housing Project will help Lennar to satisfy its affordable housing quota. Announcements of these plans garnered large applause from community activists in attendance, though they are slated for the project’s second phase, which likely won’t begin for years.

“They could build all of Alice Griffith on Parcel A, but they’re not going to do it,” Bloom said. “When is this community going to get what was promised to them?”

A group of picketers from Aboriginal Blackman United (ABU) was contained by SFPD at the bottom of the hill during the afternoon’s proceedings. As black town cars chauffeured officials to the event site, the protesters’ cries were drowned out by the music of Miles Davis playing from stage speakers.

ABU was protesting non-inclusive hiring practices at the shipyard site. Members, who were outnumbered by police 2-to-1, argued that they were being wrongfully barred access to the ceremony above and by the event’s conclusion, they had been relocated from the main intersection at Innes Avenue and Donahue Street to a side access road.

Job creation was trumpeted generally in the afternoon’s speeches, with Sup. Cohen applauding the public-private partnership between Lennar and Bayview organizations and Mayor Lee praising the project for “honoring labor and honoring local residents.” However, ABU’s founder and president, James Richards, said “we’re not getting the jobs or the contracts that the community people are supposed to get and that’s why we’re out here.”

Though ABU wants to see local residents of color placed in many of the new positions opening up, workers in the community have only been promised good faith consideration rather than actual job guarantees by the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, which is in charge of staffing the project. Attempts to reach Michael Theriault, Secretary-General of the Council, were unsuccessful.

Bloom said Lennar has insulated itself from community criticism with an agreement that promises money to community groups that refrain from publicly criticizing Lennar or the project. He said Lennar has followed a similar pattern here as it has elsewhere, using its clout and political contacts to get lucrative redevelopment deals, then using delay and bait-and-switch tactics to make those projects more lucrative. He cited Lennar’s Mare Island project, which is now in bankruptcy, and its massive Newhall Ranch project north of Los Angeles.

In that latter deal, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System lost the $970 million it paid Lennar in 2007 for part of its stake in Newhall Land Development Co., which went bankrupt when the housing market crashed the next year. But Lennar built in an option to reclaim the shares, which a bankruptcy judge allowed Lennar to do in 2009 for just $138 million.

Bloom said that deal is typical behavior for a manipulative company that has a history of acting contrary to the public interest, but in which local political officials have given tremendous control over the city’s future.

“We remain skeptical about their commitment to getting it done,” Bloom said of the affordable housing that Lennar has promised. “What we’d like to see is some real action on the promises that were made to the public.”

Buddy cops, a one-man army, a boozy doc, and more: new movies!

Sue Vaughan
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Buddy cops, a one-man army, a boozy doc, and more: new movies!

This week: two music docs, a buddy-cop movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, and America’s Sweetmeat Channing Tatum saves the White House and, ergo, the world. Plus, more! Read on for takes from our critics.

The Heat First things first: I hated Bridesmaids (2011). Even the BFF love fest between Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig couldn’t wash away the bad taste of another wolf pack in girl’s clothing. Dragging and dropping women into dude-ly storylines is at best wonky and at worst degrading, but The Heat finds an alternate route. Its women are unlikable; you don’t root for them, and you’re not hoping they become princesses because such horrifying awkwardness can only be redeemed by a prince. In Bridesmaids and Heat director Paul Feig’s universe, friendship saves the day. Sandra Bullock is Murtaugh to Melissa McCarthy’s Riggs, with tidy Bullock angling for a promotion and McCarthy driving a busted hoopty through Boston like she’s in Grand Theft Auto. Circumstances conspire to bring them together on a case, in one of many elements lifted from traditional buddy-cop storylines. But! The jokes are constant, pelting, and whiz by like so much gunfire. In one running gag, a low-rung villain’s worst insult is telling the women they look old — but neither character is bothered by it. It’s refreshing to see embarrassment humor, so beloved by chick flicks, get taken down a peg by female leads who don’t particularly care what anyone thinks of them. (1:57) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HUwmDqi2kA

Hey Bartender Hey, have you heard of this trendy thing called craft cocktails? Be warned, sophisticated San Francisco drinkers: Douglas Tirola’s upbeat documentary mentions our fair city in passing only a handful of times; instead, it concentrates on New York City’s relatively recent “cocktail revolution,” interviewing movers and (literal) shakers on the scene while giving a brief history of cocktails in America (again, with an emphasis on NYC). Hey Bartender‘s focal points are well-chosen studies in contrast: ex-Marine Scott — tattooed and scrupulously mustached — who’s working his way up the ranks at hipster lounge Employees Only; and middle-aged Steve, who runs a struggling blue-collar bar just outside the city and is slowly coming around to the idea of adding fancier drinks to his menu. Though dive-bar denizens may roll their eyes at some of Hey Bartender‘s more pretentious trappings (the movie doesn’t mention it, but drinks at Employees Only are in the $15-16 range), it does make the case that today’s superstar “mixologists” deserve just as much recognition as superstar restaurateurs. And the film has a point: can a Top Chef spinoff for bartenders be that far off? (1:32) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)

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

Laurence Anyways Xavier Dolan’s latest is yet another gorgeously-designed love story; it fits perfectly alongside his extremely personal I Killed My Mother (2009) and the devastating Heartbeats (2010). Although some critics have suggested that this young director needs to hire an editor (Laurence Anyways clocks in at two hours and 48 minutes), I would argue that this epic, gender-bending love story needed to take its stylized time to achieve what most films never do: humanize a transgendered lead character. Melvil Poupaud (Raúl Ruiz’s favorite ingénue) is stunning as Laurence; as his longtime lover, Fred, Suzanne Clément performs with a guttural passion that should keep audiences glued to the screen. For those willing to accept a decade’s worth of hypnotic set and costume designs (the film spans 1989-1999); cryptic character development; a crew of campy castaways; and an electric, eclectic soundtrack (Depeche Mode, Celine Dion), Laurence Anyways is well worthy of its epic running time. Could this be the film that elevates Canada’s best-kept secret to being the leader of a post-gender film movement that’s just about to explode? (2:48) Metreon. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

The Secret Disco Revolution Jamie Kaster’s Canadian documentary chronicles the rise and fall of the 70s booty shaking phenomenon — though what with the subsequent developments of house music, rave culture, et al., you might say disco never really went away. It’s got a goldmine of kitschy vintage clips, and plenty of enjoyable interviews with the scene’s erstwhile stars (Thelma Houston, “KC” Casey, etc.), producers, and observers. (The weirdest are scenes with the Village People, who today are staples on the corporate-party circuit and seem bizarrely eager to deny they were ever a subversively gay act.) Unfortunately, Kaster also burdens the film with sometimes overreaching arguments for disco’s sociopolitical radicalism, as mostly articulated by academic Alice Echols. And there’s a labored staged thread in which an arch narrator informs of us the behind-the-scenes mechanizations of three fictive “masterminds” (played by actors) who propagated disco to liberate gays, women and ethnic minorities. It’s a whimsical conceit that falls completely flat. As a result, there’s plenty of fun to be had here, but the conceptual missteps make this less than the definite disco doc it aims to be. (1:25) (Dennis Harvey)

20 Feet From Stardom Singing the praises of those otherwise neglected backup vocalists who put the soul into that Wall of Sound, brought heft to “Young Americans,” and lent real fury to “Gimme Shelter,” 20 Feet From Stardom is doing the rock ‘n’ roll true believer’s good work. Director Morgan Neville follows a handful of mainly female, mostly African American backing vocal legends, charts their skewed career trajectories as they rake in major credits and keep working long after one-hit wonders are forgotten (the Waters family) but fail to make their name known to the public (Merry Clayton), grasp Grammy approval yet somehow fail to follow through (Lisa Fischer), and keep narrowly missing the prize (Judith Hill) as label recording budgets shrivel and the tastes, technology, and the industry shift. Neville gives these industry pros and soulful survivors in a rocked-out, sample-heavy, DIY world their due on many levels, covering the low-coverage minis, Concert for Bangladesh high points, gossipy rumors, and sheer love for the blend that those intertwined voices achieve. One wishes the director had done more than simply touch in the backup successes out there, like Luther Vandross, and dug deeper to break down the reasons Fischer succumbed to the sophomore slump. But one can’t deny the passion in the voices he’s chosen to follow — and the righteous belief the Neville clearly has in his subjects, especially when, like Hill, they are ready to pick themselves up and carry on after being told they’re not “the Voice.” (1:30) (Kimberly Chun)

Unfinished Song A grumpy widower (Terrence Stamp) learns to enjoy life again by joining an unconventional choir group. Vanessa Redgrave, Gemma Arterton, and Christopher Eccleston round out the cast. (1:36)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa5aasz5VXg

White House Down Ah, the mid-1990s: a time when two big-budget movies on the same subject were regularly released within months of each other (1997’s Volcano and Dante’s Peak; 1998’s Armageddon and Deep Impact). When a director named Roland Emmerich ascended into the blockbuster pantheon with Independence Day (1996), a film that’s best-remembered for that iconic shot of the White House exploding under alien death rays. The intervening years have seen Emmerich plunge ever-deeper into various flavors of disaster, and White House Down — which reignites that ’90s copycat-rivalry thing by riding the fumes of March’s Olympus Has Fallen — finds its boogeyman in domestic terrorism. It beings on a triumphant day for President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx), who has just ordered all US troops removed from the Middle East — angering some high-up men in his administration, as well as some ex-military goons with axes of their own to grind. When the White House is compromised, a wannabe Secret Service agent (Channing Tatum), at the Prez’s house for a tour with his precocious daughter, shoulders one-man-army duties. Rockets are launched; there’s a high-speed limo chase across the White House lawn; we learn the truth about Marilyn and JFK; and thanks to evil genius Skip Tyler (Jimmi Simpson), “the greatest hack the world has ever seen” is about to unleash World War III. Yep, that’s right: 17 years after ID4‘s Jeff Goldblum broke into the alien mainframe, thereby saving the White House-less planet, Emmerich has decided that hackers are actually bad guys. It goes with White House Down‘s warning that the enemy is no longer an external threat, but something lurking right under your nose. Better start working out, America — and working on your one-liners. (2:17) (Cheryl Eddy)

What’s hot in Siberia

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What’s hot in Siberia

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Emerald green rooftops and gold domes enliven the skyline of Omsk, a provincial city and former Soviet industrial hub of roughly one million people, located at the intersection of two Siberian rivers: the wide, island-populated Irtysh and the smaller, swifter Om. The latter gave its name to the town, which grew from a fort established at the meeting point of the rivers in 1716, back when this was the disputed frontier of the expanding Russian empire.

But now it’s the last week of May 2013. The fort is long gone. In its place stands the Lighthouse, a large white hotel-cum–shopping mall festively crowned with neon Cyrillic lettering. Rounded at one end and peaked with towers, it drolly resembles a cruise ship in port. The sun is still out at 10 p.m., and a gusty wind rolling off the plains churns the warm air pleasantly.

Sleepy though this town seems by comparison with St. Petersburg, Moscow, or even Yekaterinburg — the three other stops on a four-city tour I joined last month, in conjunction with a US-Russia theater dialogue developed by the Center for International Theatre Development — Omsk turns out to be not so remote in many ways. For one thing, it’s a hotbed of theatrical activity at the moment, with the biennial Young Theaters of Russia Festival in full swing. Nor is the Russian empire entirely a thing of the past, as tonight’s provocation by a troupe from the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia makes plain enough.

Damned be the Traitor of His Homeland! — a production of Ljubljana’s internationally renowned experimental company, Mladinsko Theatre — is a no-holds-barred attack on jingoism, xenophobia, and the false allegiances they promote, as well as on complacency in the face of recent history, government corruption, and social decay. Taking its title from the last verse of the former Yugoslav national anthem, it gleefully lobs profanity, insult, accusation, nudity, a flurry of gunshots, and lots of local dirt (dug up for the occasion) at its unsuspecting audience — who frequently find themselves unnaturally exposed and singled out under merciless house lights.

It begins quietly enough: its ten cast members onstage, reclining on the floor and clutching musical instruments, looking like a freshly slaughtered marching band — until the sound of breathing through a tuba begins a general stirring that quickly escalates into an instrumental movement titled, “Won’t Go Against My Brother.” Next, the cast introduces itself with ribald, pointed, self-effacing humor through their own imagined obituaries — each of which makes explicit reference to an imaginary production of “Hey, Slavs!” (in fact, the title of the Yugoslav anthem) directed by acclaimed Bosnian Croatian bad-boy director Oliver Frljic (in fact, the production’s own director).

Cycling through various loosely related scenes, all built from improvisations, Damned delivers its pleas and gibes with a potent combination of muscular staging, lively wit, intrepid honesty, and moments of wrenching beauty. It produced some walkouts the night we saw it — many more the night before, reportedly — but its themes were undeniably urgent and its manner both raw and sure. This was all before Edward Snowden went public with details of the NSA’s PRISM program or had arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong en route to some hoped-for political asylum abroad. But there was no denying the implications for any Americans in the audience as well.

Omsk has nine large municipally funded or federally funded theaters, leaving far behind most American cities of a comparable or even much larger size. And in short it, and the Festival, had much more to offer beyond this one highlight, even if not as explicitly provocative or political in nature. (Those curious to learn more should know that Chris White, artistic director of Mugwumpin and the other San Franciscan on the tour, has written a series of reports on HowlRound with many further details).

Highlights in Moscow included an exquisite production from leading director Dimitry Kymov (whose collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov, In Paris, came to Berkeley Rep last year). Based (like In Paris) on the work of famed Russian short story writer Ivan Bunin, Katya, Sonya, Polya, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya … is an original production crafting a series of oddball, sometimes grim love stories into a kind of high art twist on Grand Guignol.

Also utterly memorable was the best production of Hamlet I’d ever seen —staged in a ramshackle venue whose lobby was stuffed with a vaguely foul-smelling array of garage sale toys, Soviet kitsch, and other odds and ends, and whose stage was a small, low-ceilinged black box packed into the aisles with what appeared to be mainly teens. The theater and the production belong to famed Russian director and playwright Nikolay Kolyada. Somewhat infamous after his endorsement of Putin in the last elections (which points to one way in which Russian theater, offstage, can be nothing if not political), Kolyada delivers a decisive reading of Shakespeare’s play as a bald, barbaric parable of power — in an incredibly meticulous, distinct, and forceful style whose macabre wit brought to mind some weird admixture of Richard Foreman, Tim Burton, and Terry Gilliam. Whatever else it demonstrated, it showed the Bard’s play as utterly, repulsively, and compellingly contemporary — something too rarely accomplished in any language. *

Sadik-Khan and her groupies urge bold action on the streets of San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler
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San Francisco and our timid Mayor Ed Lee could learn a few things from New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan — who became a national hero to urban cycling advocates while being villified by some in NYC — have quickly created hundreds of miles of new bike lanes and the nation’s biggest bike sharing program.

That was the enthusiastic (if more diplomatically worded) message delivered on June 20 during the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual Golden Wheel Awards, where Sadik-Khan gave the keynote speech to a large, rapt crowd. She was introduced by SFBC Director Leah Shahum and Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin, who almost upstaged Sadik-Khan and one another in their calls for San Francisco to take more aggressive action.    

“Cities need to try new things on their streets and public spaces,” Shahum said, echoing the message Sadik-Khan regularly delivers. “We need to try new things and we need to do it now.”

It was a message that became a mantra, as she repeated it again and again, urging the city to do more experimentation on the streets and less long analysis. Part of that is slowing down cars to “actually prioritize the safety and health of our citizens on every street in the city.”

Shahum and Reiskin both admitted being star-struck by Sadik-Khan, with Reiskin saying his intro was “like my teenaged daughter introducing Brittany Spears.” Shahum said she’s often guided by the acronym WWJSKD: What Would Janette Sadik-Khan Do?

Reiskin, a regular cyclist, told the story of moving to New York City in 1991, selling the last car he owned (cue the applause by the large crowd of cyclists), but that he didn’t bring a bike because at that time, the common thinking was, “Who’d be crazy enough to ride a bike in Manhattan?”

But in just the last few years, Sadik-Khan has led the transformation of New York City into one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country. “If she can do that there, why can’t we do that here?” Reiskin asked, later adding, “It’s phenomenal what’s happened there.”

He called Sadik-Khan a cross between famed urbanist Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, who was responsible for more public development projects than any New Yorker. “She’s got the Jane Jacobs sensibility, but getting shit done like Robert Moses,” Reiskin said.

When Sadik-Khan took the stage, humbled by an introduction that she said could only be followed by turning water into wine, she gave credit for her accomplishments to the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg and the “unbelievable political courage” it took to build 350 miles of bike lanes in six years despite sometimes strong opposition.

In the process, Bloomberg and Sadik-Khan started an alternative transportation arms races of sorts, prodding Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, and other cities to also beef up their bike infrastructure. “I think it’s great that there’s this national competition on who can be the greenest,” she said, later adding, “The future of cities is the key to our planet.”

She showed slides of various streetscape improvements that she led, often replacing lanes of parked cars with protected cycle tracks, including along tony Prospect Park, which she called, “the most controversial piece of land outside the Gaza Strip” for the backlash and lawsuits it sparked.

“When you push the status quo, the status quo often pushes back on you,” she said.

What has given Sadik-Khan such rock star status in the urban cycling world is her willingness to tough out the criticisms and let the results speak for themselves, noting that if some idea doesn’t work, it’s usually fairly easy to undo. Yet she arrived armed with stats showing her approach works, for both bicyclists and the business community.

She fought through arguments that cycle tracks along 8th and 9th avenues would hurt business, and she said those same businesses report a 50 percent increase in revenue since they went in three years ago. Same thing on 1st Avenue, where commercial vacancies dropped 47 percent. Citywide, 70 new bike shops opened during the recession to serve a burgeoning population of cyclists in the city.

She also talked about her latest and greatest innovation, the CitiBike sharing program that offers more than 6,000 bikes at locations densely spread along the bike network throughout the city, all with no public funds involved. “We think density is destiny in this instance,” she said. By contrast, San Francisco has taken years to launch its anemic bike-sharing program with just 350 bikes.  

Sadik-Khan called bike sharing “a gateway drug” that encourages more urban cycling in cities around the country, with all the environmental benefits that creates. Her studies have shown the new bike network and sharing program have added an average of 15,000 new cyclists to the city each day, and that it’s become a major tourist draw.   

Some of her slides also showed how elegant some of the improvements have been, from the cycle tracks to the bike racks that have sprouted up all over the city. “We brought good design into the public realm,” she said, encouraging San Francisco, with his reputation for innovation and good design, to do the same thing. “You have such design talent in San Francisco and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

But as Sadik-Khan and Shahum both repeatedly emphasized, it takes bold political leadership that is also pushed by civic groups like SFBC and the public in general, prodding on timid elected officials. As Sadik-Khan said, “People are way far ahead of public officials in understanding what works.”

Indeed, two days later on the streets of San Francisco, bike activists demonstrated that reality, staging an amazing Bicycle Music Festival that drew thousands of people to Golden Gate Park for a day of music from its pedal-powered stages.

Then, from 5-6pm, a colorful crowd of more than 1,000 people mounted their bikes and followed lounge singer Jason Brock on a bike-pulled stage that wound through the city to the next stop for the festival in the Mission District, a sort of musical, organized Critical Mass that produced big grins on everyone involved.

Led by key festival organizer Fossil Fool and his Rock the Bike comrades, and taking a cue from Sadik-Khan and fervent supporters that she’s developed here and across the country, perhaps it’s still possible to create a parade that our leaders can be persuaded to step in front of.

WWJSKD?

Did the Hayes Valley Farm occupation help or hurt the cause of liberating urban space?

Sasha Cuttler
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Did the Hayes Valley Farm occupation help or hurt the cause of liberating urban space?

Did the recent activist occupation of a temporary urban farming plot help “liberate the land,” as they claimed, or might it actually make property owners less likely to allow community-based temporary uses on land awaiting development? And did the farmers of this once-fallow land inadvertently provide a new toehold to challenge a proposed housing project?

Promptly after Hayes Valley Farm ended its three-year stint to make way for long-planned housing that would be built on the lot, a group of activists (many from Occupy San Francisco) calling itself Liberate the Land took residency for nearly two weeks, renaming it Gezi Gardens in solidarity with protesters at Gezi Square in Turkey. At 2am on June 13, Gezi Gardens was raided by police and the activists ejected.

The rise and fall of Gezi Gardens has had some people within the San Francisco urban agriculture community questioning whether or not the occupation was helpful in promoting the cause for more green space in the city. For some involved in the urban agriculture community, the end of Hayes Valley Farm reflects a not-so-distant future for other green spaces in the community.

Pastor Megan Rohrer is executive director of Welcome: A Communal Response to Poverty and project coordinator for The Free Farm, a community garden on St. Paulus Lutheran Church’s land on Gough and Eddy Street. That plot, temporarily turned into green space with permission from the landlord, St. Paulus Lutheran Church, is scheduled to end its three-year stint in December to make way for housing construction, much like Hayes Valley Farm.

The Free Farm’s land will sprout a housing project with all low-income housing units, whereas the project being built on the Hayes Valley Farm site will have 40 low-income units out of 180 total condos. Regardless, the possibility of a similar situation to what happened with Hayes Valley Farm has Rhorer on edge.

“I have a nervous feeling that what happened with Hayes Valley Farm may happen with my garden. I just want everything to end smoothly and peacefully,” Rohrer said. “I respect what the Occupy folks are doing in bringing awareness, but feel that what they did was a little disingenuous. Since the start of Hayes Valley Farm, there was an understanding that condos would be built over it. It was going to happen eventually.”

Longtime San Francisco activist Diamond Dave Whitaker was one of the people that occupied Gezi Gardens. He’s not sure if the occupation will be prove helpful to the urban agriculture movement in San Francisco.

“I’m not sure. What I do know is that Gezi Gardens was one of the few wild spaces left here,” Whitaker said. “Not everything has to be done within the law. Time will tell if what happened there helped urban agriculture here.”

Katy Broker-Bullick, a site steward at the 18th and Rhode Island community garden, told us the occupation of Gezi Gardens served to spark a dialogue about green spaces in San Francisco.

“I appreciate what the Occupiers are doing at Hayes Valley Farm in so much as it draws attention to innovative, community-based green spaces in San Francisco, and serves to foster a balanced, open discussion of the function and importance of such sites for community connection and innovation in urban spaces,” Broker-Bullick said.

Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-SF) is also weighing in on the discussion of urban green spaces in the city. Although he does not have a stance on the occupation of Gezi Gardens, he has made strides in trying to make urban agriculture more accessible with San Francisco’s Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act, Assembly Bill 551. It calls for property owners to sign a contract that would zone their land strictly for agriculture for 10 years in exchange for decreased property taxes.

Ting doesn’t necessarily support those who occupied Gezi Gardens, but said this: “What I do believe is that we should be doing what we can to keep green spaces in San Francisco.”

Some groups in the city may respect what the Liberate the Lands attempts at occupying Gezi Gardens, but the politically active Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association wasn’t one of them.

On June 7, nearly a week before the raid of Gezi Gardens, HVNA President William Bulkley penned a letter to Mayor Ed Lee, pleading to end the occupation of that land: “The HVNA board of directors feels that the current situation on Parcels O and P places a health and safety risk to both the participants and our neighbors. We respectfully request that, as mayor, you direct your staff to take appropriate action in a swift and timely fashion.”

Yet Rohrer also said Occupy activists are a much-needed part of San Francisco’s urban agriculture community. “It’s because of the hard work from people who have been connected to Occupy that spaces, like the Free Farm, are running,”  Rohrer said. “We have a lot of Occupy folk who volunteer that put their hearts and souls into the soil.”

There are efforts to halt building on Gezi Gardens, though many of the people who had occupied the lot have “scattered to the wind,” Whitaker said.

Mona Lisa Wallace, an attorney working with Liberate the Land, is attempting to halt construction based on the grounds that an accurate environmental impact report was not done because the land was found to be exempt from a more current report. Wallace said the last report was done five years ago when Parcels O and P were classified as “disturbed land.” Since then, plants and wildlife have flourished on Hayes Valley Farm.

She said an appeal to the exemption from a current environmental impact report will be filed at the the Board of Supervisor’s office on Friday. “Over the years a habitat has been created for hummingbirds, bees, crows, and quail,” Wallace said. “The exemption from the environmental impact report does not free them from being in compliance with federal and state law.”

 

 

 

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