Development Archives — Page 55 of 72 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Station leaves the train

March 18, 2009

› steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The Transbay Terminal rebuild is moving forward, but this multi-modal downtown transportation station seems to be pulling away from what was supposed to be its showcase centerpiece — the California High-Speed Rail Project — before it can satisfy the design and capacity needs rail officials require.

San Francisco officials from Mayor Gavin Newsom to Sup. Chris Daly, who sits on the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) Board of Directors, all say high-speed rail must be a component of the Transbay Terminal. Yet they were caught off-guard when the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) recently made clear that the station would need to handle up to 12 trains per hour, more than double what current station designs can accommodate.

Even as phase one of the station got underway in December (see "Breaking ground," 12/10/2008), it lacked the more than $300 million needed for a so-called train box that would make it easier and cheaper to later bring high-speed rail and Caltrain into what would otherwise be a $4.3 billion bus station and commercial complex.

TJPA officials were struggling with how to secure that money, ideally through federal stimulus funds, when officials from CHSRA and Caltrain told a Feb. 25 Metropolitan Transportation Commission meeting that current designs were inadequate for their needs (see "Stimuutf8g transit, 3/4/09).

While the demand for straight platforms, rather than the curved ones TJPA designed, can be fairly easily addressed, the volume issue is far more significant and costly. During a March 12 TJPA meeting on the issue, engineers said that adding the third floor of trains that would be needed to handle 12 trains per hour would add $1 billion to the cost. Even if no train box is built, TJPA officials say that just the foundation work and deeper dig needed for the higher capacity would add $500–$700 million to the cost of the project’s first phase.

The good news is the federal stimulus package sets aside $8 billion for high-speed rail development, and Transbay Terminal is one of the few shovel-ready projects out there that would qualify for immediate assistance. The bad news is the criteria for attaining those funds won’t be ready by the time TJPA plans to sign its construction contracts in late May.

Delaying the project would not only increase costs and forestall the immediate economic stimulus impacts of the construction, it would also anger bus transit agencies such as AC Transit, which kicked in $57 million to the project. "AC Transit expects the TJPA to meet its commitment to AC Transit and its passengers, as well as keep the construction of phase one on schedule," AC Transit attorney Kenneth C. Scheidig wrote to TJPA March 11.

At the March 12 meeting, TJPA members uniformly reacted with dismay to their dilemma, criticizing CHSRA for its unrealistic demands. Program manager Emilio Cruz said the agency had designed to high-speed rail specifications and only learned in January of the desire for trains to run up to every five minutes during peak hours.

"They were presented without adequate justification for why they need increased frequency," Cruz told the TJPA board as he offered his analysis for why that frequency isn’t needed to handle the 12 million annual riders the system predicts for 2030 and noting that Tokyo — which has far greater volume and density — is the only high-speed rail station in the world to run 12 trains per hour.

CHRSA executive director Mehdi Morshed said Cruz isn’t a rail expert and disputed his analysis, noting that Tokyo and Paris each have multiple stations that together run far more than 12 trains per hour. He also noted that the BART system is at capacity after just 30 years.

"We are building a train that has the capacity to hold not just the riders in 2030, but beyond that," he said. "They are trying to fit the high-speed trains of the future in a very limited space, and we’re telling them that’s not adequate."

Morshed said his agency is still years away from getting into station design, but has been as accommodating as possible with TJPA’s desire to move forward now. Daly and others have pointedly criticized CHSRA and its chair, Quentin Kopp, to which Morshed said, "Sure, we can take all the blame, but how is that going to help San Francisco get its station?"

BVHP realtors to discuss black crisis

March 5, 2009

Diane Wesley Smith, owner/broker of DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, says that a newly formed group, the Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals, will meet at 1 PM, Friday, March 6 to discuss the current real estate situation in Bayview Hunters Point and how folks can help protect the BVHP community.

Afraid that the current redevelopment plans for the BVHP won’t help folks who grew up and live in the community to get jobs or stay in the BVHP, including those who hope to live in public housing, but have felonies on their record, Wesley Smith believes the time is right for concerned citizens to come together and brainstorm about this ongoing crisis.

Part of this crisis has been documented by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s African American Outmigration task force, which showed that African Americans are leaving San Francisco at a higher rate than any other U.S. city. But a visit to the taskforce’s website suggests that the taskforce has not met since December 2007. Equally disturbing is the fact that the task force did not present its findings to elected officials until August 2008. In other words, voters were not able to access relevant data about the plight of their city’s African American community, until six weeks after they had voted on–and endorsed–a conceptual framework that is now being used to drive an urban design plan that has environmental and social justice groups raising their eyebrows.

Fast forward to March 2009 and Diane Wesley-Smith is hoping that folks can come together and reach out to the Obama administration to make sure that the federal government realizes that the city is moving forward with plans to simply cap a radioactively contaminated landfill in the BVHP, even though the mess was created by the federal government, lies next to the San Francisco Bay and will be capped adjacent to a massive condo development.

“At the very least, Lennar should have online disclosures about the condition of the land they plan to develop,” says Wesley Smith, noting that she is concerned about all the people living in the BVHP.

The Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals will meet at DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, 4636 Third Street at Newcomb Avenue.

Warmest Regards,

Diane

Diane Wesley Smith, Owner/Broker
DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services
4636 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94124
415 821-2847 Office
415 342-5970 Cellular

Fisher’s Folly threatens the Presidio

March 3, 2009

EDITORIAL The latest proposal for developing the Main Post at the Presidio national park shows exactly what’s wrong with the privatized, developer-driven planning that has plagued the 1,400-acre site since Rep. Nancy Pelosi took control of it away from the National Park System.

The centerpiece of the new plan, released last week, is the same old monument to the greed and ego of Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher. The octogenarian billionaire still gets his art museum, a three-building, 200,000-square-foot development that has no place at the Presidio. Oh, it’s not quite as ugly and intrusive the original design: most of the main gallery will be underground, and the roof will be green. How lovely.

The essential problem with the museum remains, and will continue to plague this development plan. The park is making room for a museum, which was never part of anyone’s vision for the new national park when the Army abandoned the post, purely and simply because a billionaire with powerful political connections wants a place to show off his personal art collection. Fisher’s desires are driving the shape of what ought to be a crown jewel of an urban park. The folks who once upon a time thought the Presidio could be a center for sustainable ecology never had a chance.

And a museum of contemporary art is a total mismatch for the Presidio’s main post. A museum is, by its nature, designed to attract large number of visitors — and since there’s only limited transit capacity in the Presidio, most of them will come by car. The center of the park will be overwhelmed with traffic — and so will the surrounding neighborhoods and the streets that serve as the chokepoints for the Presidio’s limited number of entrances and exits. Those cars will compete for space with the growing number of hikers and bicyclists trying to carve out a space in what is, by definition, a park.

The Main Post proposal also includes a large hotel (described as a "lodge," to conjure up images of rustic accommodations) that will feature a high-end restaurant and bar.

This commercialization of the Presidio stands as the legacy of the speaker of the house, who back in 1994 bowed to Republican demands and decided to take the new park away from the people who run every other national park in America and turn it over to a developer-run Presidio Trust. The trust was saddled with a mandate something no other park has ever faced — it has to develop enough real estate to become self-sufficient. And with Fisher as one of the early trust members, the Presidio has become part office park (with a big George Lucas complex that won the moviemaker a $60 million tax break), part shopping center — and now part museum and hotel complex.

This plan — and the overall dreadful direction the park is taking — can still be changed. The seven-member trust board is appointed by the president, and the Obama administration will soon have a chance to fill three of the slots. By tradition the local Congress member (Pelosi) would have a major say in those appointments — but Pelosi is close to Fisher and has set the Presidio on the wrong course. Obama ought to appoint credible environmentalists and preservationists who are wiling to question and oppose Fisher’s grand scheme.

Some well-meaning local museum foes think the best answer is to encourage Fisher to build his personal edifice somewhere else — say, in downtown San Francisco, where other museums are and where there’s adequate transit infrastructure. The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 to encourage Fisher to follow that path.

We wish he was willing to donate his contemporary art to SFMOMA which is perfectly suited to handle and display it. But Fisher wants total control, and no professional curator would ever accept that. So we’re willing to consider a new Fisher museum downtown. But the city shouldn’t roll out the red carpet for it. If the Republican who made a fortune selling clothes sewn by children in third world sweat shops wants to buy some land and apply for a building permit, the city should treat him like any other developer. But Don Fisher, who has done almost nothing but damage to this city, deserves no special favors.

Editorial: Fisher’s Folly threatens the Presidio

March 3, 2009

The commercialization of the Presidio stands as a legacy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Back in 1994 Pelosi bowed to Republican demands and decided to take the new park away from the people who run every other national park in America and turn it over to a developer-run Presidio Trust. The result: the wildy inappropriate Fisher Museum.

EDITORIAL

The latest proposal for developing the Main Post at the Presidio national park shows exactly what’s wrong with the privatized, developer-driven planning that has plagued the 1,400-acre jewel since Rep. Nancy Pelosi took control of it away from the National Park System.

The centerpiece of the new plan, released last week, is the same old monument to the greed and ego of Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher still gets his art museum, a three-building, 200,000-square-foot development that has no place at the Presidio. Oh, it’s not quite as ugly and intrusive the original design: most of the main gallery will be underground, and the roof will be green. How lovely.

No service area

February 24, 2009

› Rebeccab@sfbg.com

A little less than an hour before the Tenderloin Health Resource Community Center is scheduled to open for the afternoon, a line forms outside and stretches down Leavenworth Street. If they arrive early enough at this drop-in center for the chronically homeless, people can get health services or be put on a list for a bed in a homeless shelter. For many, the drop-in center is simply a place to use the bathroom, have a snack, or take refuge from the street.

Once the doors have been unlocked, every seat inside the center is filled. Most clients are African American men. A few are in wheelchairs. One has a hacking cough. The atmosphere feels like a rundown waiting room at a doctor’s office, filled with dispirited patients. Standing quietly near the entrance is a security guard, dressed all in black with a pink mask covering her nose and mouth.

Tenderloin Health is contracted to provide services for 6,000 individual clients per year, according to Colm Hegarty, the organization’s director of resource development. In reality, it serves twice as many.

But it appears that the center’s days are numbered. Its initial city funding of $1 million a year was halved in 2008, Hegarty explained. In the latest round of deep budget cuts — dealt to address next year’s gaping budget deficit — the rest of its funded was eliminated.

While the decision hasn’t been finalized, Hegarty says, the center will likely have to close its doors for good June 30. It’s just one of many San Francisco health and human services programs that will be affected by looming budget cuts, which were mandated by Mayor Gavin Newsom to balance an unprecedented shortfall, projected at more than $500 million for the coming fiscal year, that was triggered by the economic downturn. Newsom, meanwhile, has twice vetoed legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors calling for a special election to ask voters to raise taxes to save programs such as this one.

For the clients of Tenderloin Health, just a stone’s throw from City Hall, the deep cuts have real-life consequences. "The question is going to become where will these people go?" Hegarty wonders.

Brendan Bailey, an occasional client at the drop-in center who says he’s currently staying in a shelter, echoed Hegarty’s concern. "I’d think that they would rather have them here than wandering the street," he said, gesturing toward the center’s crowded waiting room.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, sounded a similar note at a recent Human Services Agency budget hearing, where it was announced that homeless shelters might also be shut during the day in an effort to save money.

"We were basically putting forth this idea that if they’re both going to close the Tenderloin Health and close the shelters during the day, it really ends up being a recipe for disaster in terms of people’s ability to get off the streets," Friedenbach said. "It just would be incredibly problematic … They need to be somewhere."

Another blow to homeless services are cuts to the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, which operates a program that caters to homeless women. All told, Newsom wants 25 percent slashed from the Department of Human Services budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. According to a list of proposed reductions presented to the San Francisco Human Services Commission Feb. 12, at least 62 staff positions will be eliminated. That figure doesn’t include layoffs that are taking effect in the next couple months as a response to the current year’s midyear budget adjustments.

Another eliminated component of human services is the agency’s Civil Rights Office, which consisted of two full-time staffers who were responsible for investigating complaints from clients who felt they had experienced some form of discrimination. When the Guardian contacted one of those staff members, she declined to comment but did acknowledge that her position had been written out of the budget.

Steve Bingham, an attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid, notes that state law actually requires the city to have a civil-rights mechanism in place. "The law doesn’t require that there be specific full-time people to do it. The law requires that somebody be designated and that certain work be done," he explained, adding that he’d been told the civil-rights responsibilities would now be shared among several staffers.

"I’m very disturbed that they’re basically going to divvy up responsibilities," he said. "We are constantly bringing to the attention of management in the department deficiencies that are essentially civil rights deficiencies. For example, somebody who just can’t process written information misses a meeting with a worker that he was informed about with a notice. Accommodation means that you figure out that that person needs a telephone call. If you miss a meeting with a worker, you get a notice that you’ve been terminated from benefits."

Human Services Agency executive director Trent Rohrer did not return repeated calls requesting comment about budget cuts.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Public Health, the consequences of deep budget cuts are already taking a heavy toll. Over Valentine’s Day weekend, 93 certified nursing assistants employed at Laguna Honda and SF General hospitals received pink slips, a blow that represents just one of several rounds of layoffs being administered in the wake of midyear budget cuts. (An earlier round, which included 19 CNAs, took effect Feb. 20.) The fallout from budget reductions for the 2009-10 fiscal year won’t take effect until May 1, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda. Everyone the Guardian spoke with expects that round to be worse because there’s a much larger projected deficit.

Ed Kinchley, healthcare industry chair and executive board member of SEIU Local 1021, is employed as a social worker in SF General’s emergency room. He says the cuts have diminished the quality of service the hospital can provide. "Part of my job is trying to hook up the patients who are coming into the emergency room with services, and almost every week when I come into work, there’s some service we have had in the past that isn’t there anymore," he says.

"The biggest thing they’re doing is what we call ‘de-skilling,’" Kinchley continues. "For example, in the first round, they took 45 unit clerks — the clerical people who sit at the centralized desk and make sure the right labs get done and sent to the right place — and replaced them with clerks who don’t have any medical knowledge. That’s at the clinic where all the people go who are supposed to be getting quality care under Healthy San Francisco."

Reassignments are another issue, he says. When an African American nurse was reassigned, she was made to leave her post at a program that offered therapy for youth and adolescents that had suffered sexual abuse. Since many of those clients are African American, Kinchley points out, her removal diminishes the culturally competent service that was previously in place for these youth. Sometimes the new assignments shake up people’s lives: staffers in the process of completing nursing programs who were recently reassigned to completely different work hours, for instance, have had to abandon their studies because of the scheduling conflict.

The end result, in his opinion, is a decline in both the quantity and quality of service at SF General, even in the wake of voters approving a bond measure in the November election to borrow some $887 million to rebuild the facility.

"I have worked there since 1984," Kinchley says. "Right now, morale is lower than I’ve ever seen it."

As the cuts create ripple effects in the lives of health and human services staffers and the clients they serve, a City Hall fight over raising city revenue continues between the Board of Supervisors and the mayor. In the face of opposition from Newsom and the business community, the special election proposed for June 2 has been pushed back to late summer at the earliest.

"I firmly believe that moving forward precipitously with a special election not only puts the success of needed revenue measures at risk, but bypasses our responsibility for finding long-term and enduring budget solutions," Newsom wrote in a Feb. 13 veto letter to the Board of Supervisors.

Labor, meanwhile, continues to advocate for raising city revenues, saying it’s the only way to stave off cuts to the most critical services. A group called the Coalition to Save Public Health, comprised in part of SEIU members, will host a forum called State of the City: Budget Crisis Town Hall to discuss across-the-board cuts (See Alerts for details).

"If the voters of San Francisco are willing to vote for a tax increase — or even if they’re not — if they’re given the opportunity to vote for it, then they’re not going to hold that against [Newsom]," Kinchley says. "The initiative is coming from the Board of Supervisors anyway. All he needs to do is get out of the way."

Money talks

February 17, 2009

› news@sfbg.com

The economy’s a mess, and the housing crisis, financial meltdown, and skyrocketing unemployment rates have left a lot of San Franciscans short of cash. But the flow of big downtown money into political campaigns hasn’t slowed a bit.

In fact, a tally of all 2008 monetary and in-kind political contributions logged in the SF Ethics Commission Campaign Finance Database shows that even in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, money spent on local political campaigns in the city swelled to a whopping $20.6 million. That grand total, which does not include loans or so-called "soft money" like independent expenditures, is higher than that of any previous year recorded in the Ethics database, which tracks campaign spending back to 1998.

A review of the entire database paints of picture of how influence money flows in San Francisco: Six of the top 10 donors over the past 10 years are big businesses and downtown organizations that promote the same conservative political agenda. The campaign cash often wound up in the same few political pots — a handful of supervisorial campaigns and some coordinated political action committees.

And despite spending ungodly sums of money, downtown lost more races than it won.

More than half the total money spent in 2008 came from one source: Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which plunked down $10.2 million last fall for the No on Proposition H campaign against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. That November ballot measure, which lost under PG&E’s barrage, would have paved the way for public power, initiating a process to make the city the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco with a goal of 50 percent clean-energy generation by 2017.

The powerful utility wasn’t only the biggest spender last year — it claims the No. 1 slot on a list of all campaign contributions spanning from 1998 to 2008, which the Guardian compiled using Ethics data. PG&E dropped a juicy $14.7 million into local political campaigns over that period, beating out runner-up Clint Reilly by more than $10 million.

Below are brief introductions to the 10 biggest spenders, 1998-2008.

They’ve got the power. The colossal sums PG&E has forked over to influence ballot measures over the years puts the utility in a category all its own. SF isn’t the only municipality where the company has poured millions into defeating a public power proposal. In 2006, when Yolo County put measures on the ballot to expand the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which would have edged PG&E out of the service area, the utility spent $11.3 million to try and keep it from happening.

Pay to the order of Clint Reilly. Reilly, the former political consultant, now runs a successful real estate company. While his name routinely comes up on the roster of campaign contributors, he owes his status as No. 2 to his 1999 campaign for SF mayor, into which he poured some $3.5 million of his own money. "Most of the money we give is for Democratic candidates or progressive politicians, or neighborhood-oriented issues," said Reilly, who also served as president of the board of Catholic Charities.

Committee on really high-paying jobs? Third in line is the Committee on Jobs, a political action committee that aims to influence local legislation affecting business interests. The PAC is bankrolled in part by the Charles Schwab Corporation, Gap, Inc., and Gap founder Don Fisher — all of whom surface on their own in our Top 30 list. With a grand total just shy of $3 million, the committee coughed up about $100,000 in campaign-related spending in 2008. Much of that funding went to similar political entities, including the SF Coalition for Responsible Growth, the SF Chamber of Commerce 21st Century Committee, and the SF Taxpayers Union PAC (see "Downtown’s Slate," 10/15/2008). This past November, the COJ also backed the Community Justice Court Coalition, formed to pass Proposition L, which would have guaranteed first-year funding for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s small-crimes court in the Tenderloin. Prop. L failed by 57 percent.

Bluegrass billionaire. San Francisco investment banker and billionaire Warren Hellman has dropped nearly $1.2 million over the years into local political campaigns, our results show. Dubbed "the Warren Buffet of the West Coast" by Business Week for his sharp financial prowess, Hellman co-founded Hellman and Friedman, an investment firm, in 1984. Hellman is known for putting on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, an annual SF music festival. While he tends to contribute to downtown business entities such as the Committee on Jobs and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in 2008 he devoted $100,000 to supporting a June ballot measure, Proposition A, that increased teacher salaries and classroom support by instating a parcel tax to amp up funding for public schools.

Fisher king. Don Fisher, founder and former CEO of Gap, Inc., is another one of SF’s resident billionaires. While Gap, Inc. turns up in 17th place in our results, Fisher himself has poured more than $1.1 million into entities such as the Committee on Jobs, SFSOS, the San Franciscans for Sensible Government Political Action Committee, and other conservative business groups. Fisher’s total includes money from the "DDF Y2K family trust," a Fisher family fund that shows up in Ethics records in 2000. In that year, $100,000 from that trust went to support the Committee on Jobs’ candidate advocacy fund, and another $40,000 went to a pro-development group called San Franciscans for Responsible Planning.

Not a very affordable campaign, either. Sixth up is Lennar Homes, the developer behind the massive home-building project at Hunters Point Shipyard, which the Guardian has covered extensively. The vast majority of its $1 million reported spending was directed to No on Prop. F, a campaign sponsored by Lennar to defeat a June ballot measure that would have created a 50 percent affordable-housing requirement for the Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard development project. The measure failed, with 63 percent voting it down.

Chuck’s bucks. Charles Schwab Corp., which set up shop in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, is an investment banking firm that reports having $1.1 trillion in total client assets. The corporation ranks seventh in our Top 30 list, with some $973,000 in donations. In 27th place is Charles R. Schwab himself, the company’s founder and chairman of the board (and the guy they’re referring to in those "Talk to Chuck" billboards posted all over SF). If Schwab’s individual and corporate donations were combined, the total would be enough to bump Warren Hellman out of fourth place. Schwab’s dollars are infused into the Committee on Jobs, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, SF SOS, and other downtown-business interest organizations. "We’re a major company here in the Bay Area and a major employer," company spokesperson Greg Gable told the Guardian. "We’re interested in political matters across the board — it’s not limited to any one party." But it’s limited to one pro-downtown point of view.

The brass. The San Francisco Police Officer’s Association is another major player, spending some $913,000 since 1998 on political campaigns. The organization backed candidates Carmen Chu, Myrna Lim, Joseph Alioto, Denise McCarthy, and Sue Lee for supervisors in 2008, contributions show. All but Chu lost.

At your service. SEIU Local 1021 and SEIU 790 crop up frequently in Ethics data, with a grand total of about $860,000 in spending over the years. SEIU representatives recently turned out en masse at a Board of Supervisors meeting to urge the supervisors to support a June 2 special election to raise taxes in order to boost city revenues and save critical services from the hefty budget cuts that are coming down the pipe.

Friends in high places. No real surprises here: the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library contributed its money to, well, ballot measures that would have affected the library. In 2000, for example, the F and F plunked $265 thousand into an effort called the "Committee to Save Branch Libraries — Yes on Prop. A."

Top 30 San Francisco campaign donors, 1998-2008

1. Pacific Gas & Electric $14,831,486
2. Clint Reilly $4,138,089
3. Committee on Jobs $2,970,857
4. Warren F. Hellman $1,191,970
5. Don Fisher (incl. Don & Doris Fisher Y2K trust) $1,164,286
6. Lennar Homes $1,002,861
7. Charles Schwab Corporation $973,176
8. S.F. Police Officers Association $913,834
9. SEIU Local 1021 & SEIU Local 790 $860,979
10. Friends & Foundation of the S.F. Public Library $858,082
11. California Academy of Sciences $818,154
12. Residential Builders Association of S.F. $753,857
13. Steven Castleman $665,254
14. S.F. Association of Realtors $647,299
15. S.F. Chamber of Commerce $614,824
16. SEIU United Health Care Workers West & Local 250 $585,937
17. Gap, Inc. $573,959
18. California Issues PAC $556,238
19. Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums $541,474
20. Wells Fargo $464,899
21. Building Owners & Managers Association of S.F. $464,027
22. Bank of America $429,316
23. Golden Gate Restaurant Association $422,685
24. SF SOS $407,491
25. AT&T Inc. and affiliates $404,704
26. Clear Channel $391,783
27. Charles R. Schwab (individual) $362,250
28. Yellow Cab Cooperative $344,907
29. S.F. Apartment Association $280,376
30. San Franciscans for Sensible Government PAC $279,009

To a pulp

February 11, 2009

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the death of author Cornell Woolrich, darkest of the noir genre’s lost souls. Like so many of the milquetoast protagonists who populated his novels, Woolrich died an anonymous and ignoble death in a New York City hotel room. Years of alcohol abuse and a gangrenous leg amputation had left him an amorphous wad of a man. Though often credited with establishing the American roman noir ("black book") and indirectly developing its cinematic correlate, film noir, his literary legacy has largely been siphoned by hard-boiled mavericks like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Inspired by Dostoyevsky and Victorian poets like F.W. Bourdillon, whose 1878 ode "Light" provided the title to one of Woolrich’s most popular novels (The night has a thousand eyes, / And the day but one). Woolrich’s occasionally hackneyed poetics of the dark became his literary obsession. Besides 1945’s The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, there was 1959’s Death Is My Dancing Partner, 1948’s I Married a Dead Man, and a 1939 short story, "Through a Dead Man’s Eye." Few American writers so accurately portrayed the crushing boredom and fantasies of violence that existed in the postwar American metropole during the very years when suburbanization and media-driven consumption lavished the middle-class with giddy excesses. Biographer Francis Nevins perspicaciously sums up Woolrich’s life and career with one of the late author’s most nihilistic offerings: "First you dream, then you die."

The Pacific Film Archive’s "One-Two Punch: Pulp Writers on Film" retrospective celebrates the onscreen contributions made by Woolrich and his brethren in pulp — Fredric Brown, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford — from the halcyon mysteries of the ’40s to the bloody climaxes of the ’80s and ’90s. While many noir authors established reputations primarily on the page and others failed to make the transition to Hollywood, these four writers have had a particularly enduring relationship with cinema, as their stylized and iconic prose lent itself to arch visual expression.

Along with the über-popular James M. Cain, Woolrich and Thompson were responsible for much of the genre’s early vogue and were able to cash in on the development of the mass paperback (the primary medium for roman noir) precisely because their onscreen popularity had made the format financially viable. Woolrich’s publications-turned-films like The Phantom Lady (1944) and The Black Angel (1946), along with Thompson’s The Kill-Off (1989), signified the breadth of noir’s settings and styles by effectively trading the former’s claustrophobic Gothams for the latter’s dusty, open roads and seaside towns.

Discovered in Europe in the ’60s and ’70s, Woolrich and Thompson were critically acclaimed by French nouvelle vague writers and directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Alain Corneau’s Série noire (1979), written by Oulipo poet Georges Perec and based on the 1954 Thompson novel A Hell of a Woman, is a conscientiously Francophone retelling of a most American narrative.

Fredric Brown, an eccentric innovator of the noir/sci-fi short story, had as much influence on the works of Philip K. Dick as those of Elmore Leonard. His 1949 novel, Screaming Mimi (Gerd Oswald’s film version, 1958), remains his most infamous contribution to the screen. Starring newcomer Anita Ekberg — later of La Dolce Vita (1960) fame — Mimi‘s lewd, serial killer-meets-stripper plot is a thinly veiled exercise in dime novel titillation.

Willeford, the most contemporary of the quartet, comes closest to representing the silver age of the genre, often referred to as neo-noir. Similar in style to Thompson, Willeford forgoes the moribund poetics of Woolrich and the whimsical perversities of Brown for more straightforward prose replete with crisp plotlines, raunchy interludes, and sociopathic villains. Willeford’s most popular novel turned film, 1984’s Miami Blues (George Armitage’s film version, 1990), demonstrated the crossover potential of crime fiction onto the screen at the beginning of the ’90s, anticipating the mega-popularity of Leonard and Quentin Tarantino.

"ONE-TWO PUNCH: PULP WRITERS ON FILM"

Feb. 13–28, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2757 Bancroft, Berk.

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Concrete plans

February 4, 2009

› sarah@sfbg.com

In the fractious atmosphere that dominates meetings concerned with Lennar’s plan to redevelop the economically depressed southeast sector of San Francisco, reality is relative to one’s perspective on this ambitious project.

At these meetings, competing factions within the Bayview’s predominantly African American community typically accuse each other — as well as the mostly white engineers, planners, and scientists that Lennar and the city hired to flesh out the details of their vaguely worded but voter-approved conceptual framework — of being sellouts and traitors.

The Jan. 28 meeting, where two local advisory committees endorsed Lennar’s draft urban design plan for a 770-acre Candlestick Point/Hunters Point Shipyard development, was typical. It was held at the Southeast Community Facility, within sniffing distance of a seismically suspect sewage treatment plant.

The committee’s endorsement came at the end of a meeting that was full of what critics labeled "disingenuous claims" by representatives from Lennar, the Mayor’s Office, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and the city’s Planning Department; recriminatory accusations by community members; and disruptive chants of "A-B-Uuuu!" by a female member of Aboriginal Blackmen United, who claimed that ABU members have been starved for work at Lennar’s development. Records show Lennar paid ABU trainees $11,300 in fiscal year 2005–06 for work at the Shipyard’s Parcel A.

Fanning the flames was a report that local environmental nonprofit Arc Ecology released last month. Arc’s report faults Lennar’s urban design plan for not including comparisons with realistic alternatives and for failing to study the cumulative impact of the 15 developments, covering 1,500-2,000 acres, currently underway on the eastern waterfront.

"The practice of ‘island’ development prevents the city from conceiving a cohesive vision for the east waterfront," Arc Ecology’s January 15 report states. "Moreover, the piecemeal approach cannot adequately address the practical consequences of the addition of 50,000 new residences to the area."

Noting that Lennar’s proposal calls for a 60 percent increase in the neighborhood’s population as more than 20,000 new residents join the 33,000 people who already live in the neighborhood, Arc’s report lists alternatives that "would strengthen the economic, social and environmental benefits, while avoiding and reducing some significant impacts."

Financed by a California Wellness Foundation grant, Arc’s report stressed that it does not disagree with the stated objectives of Lennar’s development plan as laid out in Proposition G, which voters approved in June. In fact, the organization did little to voice its concerns before the election.

But the report has ruffled the feathers of city leaders, who seem hell-bent on moving the project forward and applying for funding from the federal economic stimulus package. The report calls for a focus on doing "bottom-up" ecological planning, creating real economic opportunities for the Bayview community, relocating the proposed football stadium, and removing the shipyard’s highly contaminated Parcel E2 from the project.

Noting that Lennar’s environmental impact report has yet to be completed, and that there has been no time to study Arc’s report, Citizens Advisory Committee member Scott Madison argued that delaying the endorsement would have no impact on Lennar’s home building or job creation schedule. "It’s not going to slow down anyone getting a job by even one day if we take a few days," Madison said. "But once we approve this — even a draft, even if folks are amenable to some changes — it has a certain kind of semi-concrete to it that’s difficult to chip away."

CAC member Diana Oertel voiced her objections to Lennar’s plan to divide the 170-acre Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, the Bayview’s only large open space that provides a place for recreation and an escape from urban living. "It’s not acceptable to me to see that area cut in half, gentrified, prettified, with housing going to edge of the park," Oertel said.

Project Area Committee member Leon Muhammad said there was no way the urban design plan should be endorsed "until we have addressed all the issues, until they come up with a complete plan that makes sense, not a half-baked plan."

But then PAC member Cedric Jackson asked to hear from folks in the audience who were hungry for jobs — at which point ABU folks yelled and raised hands. "I saw 80 percent of the community stand up and say, move this process forward," Jackson then asserted. "In 2000, we were 70 percent of the community, now we’re less than 50 percent. There is an out-migration and it’s not because we don’t like San Francisco, but we’re being forced out economically. So the longer you delay, the less of us will be there, especially with the economic conditions we’re facing."

Seconded by PAC member Gary Banks, Jackson moved to endorse Lennar’s draft design plan as-is, with only PAC members Muhammad and Kristine Enea, and CAC members Oertel, Madison, and Carmen Kelley dissenting.

Reached after the meeting, ARC Ecology’s Saul Bloom acknowledged that many of the problems people face in the Bayview are related to "tension over jobs." Yet he was surprised by the strong-arm tactics by proponents of a project that won’t generate jobs for at least another year.

"There’s this blind panic, this belief that if you hold up anything, you are going to stop the whole plan," Bloom told the Guardian. He hopes that now that the vote has passed, the city and Lennar will make good on verbal promises, made before and during the Jan. 28 meeting, to review Arc Ecology’s report.

"As Scott Madison pointed out, if we’d listened to these same we-have-to-vote-yes-now voices the last time around, when we were asked to endorse Phase A, we’d never have gotten the community-benefits program," Bloom said, adding that many of the current committee members are new and inexperienced. "So it’s hard for them to see through the rhetoric and pain."

"None of us want to derail the plan," continued Bloom, whose group also receives funding from the SFRA, which is overseeing the project. "What incentive do we have? Do we want to piss off the developers, contractors, and commissioners when our contract is up?"

"The city is under the impression that there is a broad base of support for this project, by virtue of Prop. G," Bloom said. "But they are unaware of the depth of dissatisfaction citywide with this project. People are saying, ‘this is insane.’<0x2009>"

Bloom believes ARC’s report raised the ire of city leaders because they feared it would fall into the wrong hands and be used in a political campaign. "But I believe the city has let the community down by not facilitating a dialogue," Bloom observed.

In addition to questions about location of the stadium, the design of the park, the bridge over Yosemite Slough, and plans to cap a radiologically impacted landfill on Parcel E2, Bloom says the hidden story in all of this is the "unstudied cumulative impacts of the all the city’s development projects on the eastern waterfront."

Together, these projects will create 30,000 new units and attract 50,000 new residents, with Lennar’s CP/HPS development creating 10,500 units, 75 percent of which are slated to sell at market-rate prices, with condos beginning at the $500,000 mark.

"Lennar can’t possibly think they can build this number of houses and sell them at these prices, at least not for the next four years," Bloom said. "The city should have had a public dialogue about the stadium options instead of pulling a plan directly off the shelf that a reliable stadium development firm did. They say they’ve studied all these other options, but where are the studies?"

Bloom notes that Prop. G was not a mandate to build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, and that the city is currently miscounting the parks and open space acreage.

"You wonder why people have no faith," Bloom said. "To whom did the city make the overwhelming case about the park, or about putting a bridge over the slough? It seems their attitude was, ‘Bayview is a crummy neighborhood, so let’s bulldoze and rebuild it,’ whereas we look at the park and say it’s a promise unfulfilled."

He believes that Arc’s recommendation to remove Parcel E2 is a no-brainer: "You are protecting public health and the environment, creating jobs that help people pay their mortgages, and you are making the property more marketable, so value increases."

With the city having publicly committed to reviewing Arc’s material, Bloom is hopeful that the city will put the results of that study into the EIR. "We are not promoting any particular outcome," Bloom said, observing that if Lennar builds 10,000 units, BVHP will no longer be a predominantly African American neighborhood. "We are trying to be the entity that raises the difficult questions that people in city have felt, but [have] been afraid to voice, because they fear those questions will be used to stop the project in its entirety."

Reached by phone, Michael Cohen of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development noted that Lennar’s draft urban-design plan was completed five months ago, has been vetted extensively, and now includes 32 specific modifications based on those hearings.

"These are issues that will be addressed further," Cohen said of Arc’s report. "Some are infeasible, based on extensive technical studies. But we believe that if there is a stadium, it’s in absolutely the right position and that ARC doesn’t have an alternative plan. They haven’t done the necessary studies and they haven’t presented alternative plans that actually work."

As for Arc’s contention that Parcel E2 could be dug up and hauled out, Cohen notes that the city is in a legally binding agreement with the United States Navy, which is obligated to clean up the shipyard to a standard consistent with the city’s intended use. "We don’t control what the remedy is…. [If state and federal environment regulators] say the Navy has got to dig and haul so we can safely use it as a waterfront park, then that’s what they’ll do."

Cohen insisted that the Alice Griffith public housing project will be rebuilt, whether the 49ers stay or not, and that Lennar’s project will invest $10 million to turn "a grossly underused state park into a site comparable to Crissy Field."

Without a net

February 4, 2009

› news@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors heard more than four hours of public comment at its Jan. 27 meeting, as hundreds of labor representatives, public-health workers, homeless advocates, hospital staffers, and others crowded into the board chambers to sound off on the deep budget cuts that many charged would leave they city’s critical-services safety net in shreds.

The message was chilling.

On the ground, the budget cuts Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing translate into staggering losses in services that segments of the city’s most disadvantaged populations rely on. Among those who will lose their jobs: some San Francisco General Hospital staffers who are trained to watch the cardiac monitors. "They are the first responders when someone goes into cardiac arrest," nurse Leslie Harrison told the board during public comment. "This is a life and death job — literally."

The Huckleberry House, which was established in 1967 and provides assistance to more than 7,000 homeless youth each year, may face closure.

Homeless shelters are already being forced to turn away two out of three clients seeking a bed due to lack of space, according to Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach.

Demand for hot meals from the St. James Infirmary, a clinic for uninsured sex workers, has tripled since the onset of the recession, Executive Director Naomi Akres told the Guardian. As a result of the cuts, the clinic will lose its ability to continue either the food program or an outreach program that aims to get people off the streets.

Other areas that face funding reductions, according to a tally of midyear reductions issued by the mayor’s office, include some programs that administer STD testing and HIV prevention services, the Adult Day Health programs at Laguna Honda Hospital, aid for foster care, and the Single Room Occupancy Collaborative (which assists low-income tenants living in dilapidated hotel rooms across the city). San Francisco’s Human Services Agency will lay off 67 staffers.

Of the $118 million in midyear cuts rolled out by the mayor’s office last December, some $46 million will be shed from health, human welfare, and neighborhood-development services.

The midyear reductions, which will begin to take effect Feb. 20, are aimed at addressing a steep drop-off in revenue for the 2008–09 fiscal year. Now, health and human services providers and others across the board are anxiously looking ahead to the next round of blows, which will be dealt to address a projected $576 million deficit for the 2009–10 fiscal year, which begins in July. That figure could be reduced to $461 million after budget cuts, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda.

Newsom has known about the gravity of the current budget problem since late October, when City Controller Ben Rosenfield issued a memo projecting fiscal disaster. "Since the adoption of the budget in July, the City’s economic outlook has significantly worsened, particularly since the onset of the global financial market upheavals that began in September," the memo states. It goes on to predict a worst-case scenario of $125 million in tax-revenue shortfalls for the 2008–09 fiscal year.

Cuts in frontline services don’t have to be the only answer. Supervisor Chris Daly has introduced an alternative budget proposal, which includes reductions in funding for management positions, cuts in the city’s subsidy to the symphony, and a reduction in the size of the mayor’s press office in an effort to free up funds that could then be diverted back to critical services. "I don’t think any of the choices are good. There’s really only the lesser of the evil," Daly noted at the meeting.

The choices the city faces were described in clear terms. "I’m sorry to say it, but you have some tough decisions in front of you," Friedenbach told supervisors when it was her turn at the podium during public comment. "You have to choose between abused children, or the symphony. You have to choose whether you want to decimate the mental-health treatment system — or do you want to get rid of the newly hired managers since the hiring freeze? You have to decide whether you want to cut half of the substance-abuse treatment system — or do you want to create a new community justice center that will have nowhere to refer its defendants?" Rather than choose, however, supervisors voted 6–5 to send Daly’s alternative package back to the Budget and Finance Committee for further consideration. The swing vote was Board President David Chiu, who was elected president with the support of the progressive bloc.

Had Chiu voted for Daly’s alternative, it wouldn’t have mattered much — the mayor would almost certainly have vetoed it.

Eight supervisors — enough to override a veto — did demonstrate a willingness to move forward with a June special election. With Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Carmen Chu dissenting, the board voted to waive deadlines that would have prevented new tax measures from being placed on a June 2 ballot.

Several different tax ideas are under discussion. According to a list of preliminary estimates calculated by the Office of the Controller, slight increases over the current rates of taxes levied on business registration, payroll, sales, hotel-room stays, commercial utility users, parking, property transfers, and Access Line fees together could bring the city an estimated $121.6 million per year.

Other proposals include creating parcel taxes for both residential and industrial property, gross-receipts taxes on rental income for commercial and residential properties, a local vehicle license fee, and a residential utility users tax. If all of those proposed new taxes were voted into effect, the city would have the potential to raise an additional $112.9 million.

The problem: under state law, unless the mayor and supervisors unanimously declare an emergency, any tax increase would require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Supervisor John Avalos voiced strong support for the special election. "I think that the people of this city are still grappling with the meaning of the crisis that we’re in," Avalos told his colleagues.

Avalos amended out the possible new parcel tax, increased parking tax, and utility-users taxes, and instead proposed two new revenue measures that could be added to the ballot: a vehicle-impact fee, and "a possible new tax to discourage the consumption of energy that produces a large carbon footprint."

It won’t be easy to pass any of these proposals. Business interests are mobilizing against the very idea of a special election. In an e-mail newsletter distributed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a "call to action" urged supporters to contact Supervisors and voice opposition to the emergency election.

The language in the Chamber of Commerce message closely resembled that of Small Business California, which put out a message to the small-business community warning that higher taxes "would be the straw that breaks the already strained back of our local businesses, resulting in more layoffs and acceleration of our downward spiral."

Labor organizer Robert Haaland asked supervisors why they would be afraid of allowing voters to decide on the tax-revenue measures. A poll commissioned by his union, SEIU Local 1021, demonstrated that a significant portion of voters would rather raise revenues than allow vital services to disintegrate.

Even if new revenue is raised, Haaland told us, no one is under the illusion that there won’t be painful cuts. "Everyone’s going to feel some pain," he said. "It’s a question of how much pain."

Bad budget ideas

February 3, 2009

EDITORIAL There’s nothing easy about solving a half-billion-dollar budget shortfall, and most of the people involved in the grisly process of making the numbers add up at San Francisco City Hall know there will be blood on the floor. Labor unions representing city workers know there will be layoffs, salary concessions, or both. Community-based organizations handling critical front-line services know they’ll have to reduce staff and curtail their mission-driven operations. The supervisors know that a lot of good projects and great ideas won’t get funded this year.

The mayor, unfortunately, isn’t acting as if this were a crisis at all — he’s been out of town more than he’s been around the past few weeks. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and, sadly, some small business leaders, are refusing to accept the idea that taxes — some taxes, not enough to stave off deep cuts, but enough to prevent disaster — ought to be part of any budget package.

And along with the cuts — which, as Rebecca Bowe reports on page 11, will have far-reaching implications for San Franciscans — a number of really bad ideas have been floated, most of them quick fixes that would generate cash for now, but lead to serious problems later.

Among the worst ideas the mayor has put forward — in fact, it’s one of the worst budget ideas we’ve ever heard — is the notion of increasing the number of condominium conversion permits from 200 per year to 1,500 per year, and possibly allowing every property owner waiting for a conversion permit to get one, now, for a price.

It’s true that selling off condo conversion permits would bring in revenue. Raffling off building permits and planning code variances would bring in money, and so would selling development rights in city parks, and so would auctioning off appointments to boards and commissions. There are lots of stupid ways to generate cash, and the fact that a proposal would be lucrative is not by itself an argument in favor of it — even in times like these.

There’s a good reason the city limits condo conversions. Nearly every piece of property that becomes a condominium was once a rental unit, and the speculative pressure to take rent-controlled apartments and turn them into market-rate condos is immense. It’s bad enough that tenants — particularly those with relatively low rent — face eviction every day because of the state’s Ellis Act and the push by real-estate interests to create tenancies in common. Without conversion limits, the number of those evictions would soar; rent control would be eviscerated, the cost of housing would rise, and the economic cleansing of San Francisco would roll forward another few giant steps.

Newsom and his real-estate industry allies like to say that this sort of proposal is painless, since nobody has to pay higher taxes. Only people who want to convert their units, and are willing to pay a high fee for the right, would wind up paying. But that’s silly — the tenants of San Francisco would pay the cost — an immense cost — while the wealthier property owners made profits.

Selling off the taxi medallions (see "Don’t privatize the cab medallions, 1/21/09), another Newsom idea, fits in the same category. In the short term, it could bring millions into the city coffers. Long term, it would turn control of the taxi industry back to speculators and big companies, hurting the drivers and the public.

The mayor (and Sup. Sean Elsbernd) also like to talk about eliminating set-asides — those parts of the budget that voters have earmarked for particular purposes. But most of that money (the Children’s Fund, for example) goes to worthy programs: eliminating the "set-aside" protecting doesn’t save any money unless you cut those programs.

There are plenty of good budget ideas out there (see "Beyond the bloody cuts, 12/17/08). But the supervisors ought to make it clear that the bad ones are off the table.

PS: Where were all these anti-tax folks in the Chamber and the small business community, and supervisors like Elsbernd, when the city had a chance to bring in millions without any new taxes — by creating a public power system or raising utility franchise fees? They were siding with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. That’s part of the reason we’re in this fix.

Editor’s Notes

February 3, 2009

› Tredmond@sfbg.com

This is what happened in the office of the mayor of San Francisco last week:

1. One of the most highly respected members of the Newsom administration — quite possibly the only department head the mayor ever hired who has the unquestioned respect of every sector of the community she works with — was forced to resign, for reasons the mayor won’t explain. In fact, in a lame attempt at spin, the mayor’s press office put out a statement suggesting that Margaret Brodkin, who ran the Department of Children, Youth and Families, was leaving to take a new position.

Wrong, as Brodkin quickly (and predictably) pointed out in her own release, which hit my inbox at almost exactly the same time. Brodkin told the truth: the mayor, who has had nothing but praise for her in public, fired her, summarily.

2. Just a few weeks after vowing to begin a new era of mutual respect and a desire to work with the new Board of Supervisors, the mayor tried to override the board, quietly, and place his own unqualified ally on a key state commission.

The supervisors had voted 8-0 to nominate Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for a slot on the state Coastal Commission. That’s an important job: the commission regulates development all along the state’s coast, and the person who represents San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma counties needs to be a strong and reliable environmentalist. Mirkarimi, a Green Party member, has devoted much of his life to environmental causes; his colleagues on the board agreed he was the best candidate to forward to the state Senate Rules Committee, which has the final say on appointments.

Without informing Mirkarimi or Board President David Chiu, Newsom tried to pull a fast move: he forwarded the name of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to Senate Rules, hoping, perhaps, that as a Democrat, Alioto-Pier might get the nod. There’s a good reason the supervisors didn’t nominate her — her record on environmental issues is awful, she’s way too friendly to developers, and the last time she had an outside job, as a delegate to the Golden Gate Bridge board, she missed half the meetings. But Newsom wouldn’t trust the board, and wanted his own candidate.

Which was not only wrong, but stupid: turns out state law gives the supervisors, not the mayor, the exclusive right to nominate Coastal Commission candidates. Newsom’s office didn’t even check the regulations, and by the end of the week, his spinmeisters were pretending that they’d never really forwarded her name in the first place.

3. The mayor came out strongly against a June special election to raise taxes to cover some of the half-billion-dollar deficit — but offered absolutely no alternative. That left the supervisors, city employees, the press, and the public wondering what exactly the mayor has in mind — 1,000 layoffs? 2,000? Major service cuts? — and when he’s going to tell us about it.

Oh, and while all of this was happening, Himself was out of town, hobnobbing with the hip swells at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s asking — what the fuck is going on in Newsom-land, anyway? *

Isn’t it ironic?

February 3, 2009

› culture@sfbg.com

Under harsh, clinical lighting, with a background cloaked in darkness, a zaftig, heavily tattooed woman fellates an enormous and alarmingly hairless penis. The hairless penis ejaculates, and a ominous computer voice intones that dribbling cum stains resemble "writing in Arabic, or sometimes Sanskrit." As the woman stares at the cum, the voice dramatically pronounces that "if she could learn to read that writing, she would know her … entire … future." The penis writes a tiny bit more Sanskrit, and the scene fades to black.

What is this? It’s not Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1963). It’s the opening blow-job scene from a movie called Hospital, produced by Vivid Alt, an imprint of the mainstream porn production studio Vivid. Vivid Alt produces alternative pornography, or "subcultural erotica." Altporn is, on a basic level, porn that features models who are representatives of real-life subcultures like goth, punk, rave, emo, rockabilly, and hipster. Instead of buxom blondes who appear to have traipsed out of the Playboy Mansion on a cloud of pink boas, altporn features models who are often tattooed, pierced, and generous with the DIY Manic Panic hair dye. In a weird porn-imitating-life-imitating-porn switch, two big stars of altporn, Sasha Grey and Charlotte Stokely, currently star in campaigns for American Apparel.

Alternative porn is nothing new, at least not since the advent of the Internet. While magazines like Hustler and Playboy have formulated the aesthetic of mainstream print pornography, the Internet created a democratic space inside which divergent interpretations of sexuality could be easily presented. Blue Blood is generally credited as launching counterculture erotica in 1992 with the glossy, erotic zine that featured punks, goths, and erotic fiction. But Altporn did not take hold on a large scale until the late 1990s with Web sites like GothicSluts and EroticBPM. By the time alt-erotica site SuicideGirls appeared in 2001 (not quite full-blown porn, but a contributor to the altporn genre just the same), altporn was a full-fledged subset of porn. Today there are hundreds of altporn Web sites, with names like Crazybabes, Burning Angel, Broken Dollz, Razor Dolls, Supercult, and DeviantNation.

For Eon McKai, founder of Vivid Alt, porn is an intensely personal form of expression. "I’d say at no time — especially at Vivid Alt — no one is told to make a certain type of movie that isn’t coming from some place inside of them." McKai states that he and other altporn directors are merely "expressing the aesthetic that they find in their life, that they live in their life." In fact, many people involved in the altporn industry believe that what they are creating is a meaningful form of personal expression. Most people involved in altporn view their work as fundamentally different than mainstream pornography. Cutter, of AltPorn.net, explains, "AltPorn makes the trends and porn-porn tends to follow them. Traditional porn is conservative in a weird insular way. It tends to copy outside things." Cutter doesn’t think that altporn appropriates or copies from existing subcultures. He and others view altporn as being organic, DIY, independent, and fundamentally authentic.

All alternative subcultures are inherently interested in the notion of authenticity, and particularly in determining that which constitutes genuine membership into the group. Maintaining authenticity is a crucial part of how subcultures survive. Because subcultures are groups that are in part defined by their opposition to the mainstream, they are innately concerned with the "authentic" or original moment of resistance. Members of the altporn community are just as interested in the notion of genuine membership as the subcultures they depict. Eon McKai vehemently appeals, "We are a part of the subcultures that we represent, so if you look at the people who are behind it, I think you’ll find that they are pure to the street, and everything is authentic and this is who we are. We are just making porn about it, and this happens to be who we are. It’s really artist and filmmakers who make porn who are really expressing the aesthetic that they find in their life, that they live in their life." But what, really, is authentic porn? Isn’t a bona fide cumshot enough to prove authenticity? Eon McKai’s own name is a point toward the absurd, as his moniker is a play on the name Ian McKaye, the Fugazi and Minor Threat frontman who was a leader of the straight-edge movement that rejects alcohol, drugs, and casual sex.

From what I gathered from those in the altporn community, authenticity necessitates that creators of altporn be actual members of the subcultures they represent on camera. Smith elaborates, "All the originators in this genre were driven to create sexual media that appealed to their own community and their own communities’ aesthetics. So, the goths created goth erotica and the punks created punk erotica and the ravers created raver erotica. So, on an aesthetic level, altporn offers an alternative look, as well as the community interactivity, to prove it’s authenticity." Whether they are "true" punks, goths, or hipsters, shouldn’t really matter if the work speaks for itself, right?

It wasn’t until after I watched hipster porn videos like Sugar Town and Honey Bunny that I realized why altporn needs to paint itself as authentic. Smith puts it best when he says, "Without genuine subcultural attributes, it quickly becomes self parody." For porn that banks on its subcultural attributes, being perceived as inauthentic means dismissed as a joke. Of all forms of cinema, porn — with its skeletally thin plots, poverty of character development, and cheap production values — is most vulnerable to lampoon. For those who have ever watched porn, I am sure you know that embarrassed, cringey, oh-my-god-ew feeling of watching a particularly ludicrous moment in any scene. That feeling is magnified tenfold when watching a hipster porno that features stars discussing Sartre while wearing nothing but tube socks, such as in Honey Bunny.

While altporn might have originated under the auspice of DIY amateurism, it has proven to be lucrative and, as a result, has carved a niche for itself in the porn market. Because of the push to earn money, altporn has become less concerned with representing certain aesthetics than it is with latching on to new trends and then marketing them to get more customers. Annaliese of Gods Girls reflects, "I think that altporn will always be a representation of what is in-the-now for the customer that it is appealing to, the models that it features and the culture that it represents. The Y generation are furious followers of now trends in fashion, art, music, film, etc., and our site is a reflective of those nuances. Altporn will go where ever the models go and will evolve as the culture evolves. I personally see fewer and fewer applications from stereotypically ‘goth’ models, so perhaps that look has become less trendy." What’s the next big thing in altporn? Hipsters.

It seems like everything is getting hipstered out these days. From clothing to music to even the rebranding of the Pepsi logo, everything is getting a hipster makeover. Porn is no exception. If you look at the logo for Vivid Alt, you’ll notice that it’s tricked out to resemble an Urban Outfitters catalog. In the videos, the actresses are decked out in American Apparel. Hipster culture subsumes and dismantles the aesthetics of popular culture, appropriates its sincerity, and transforms it into a pastiche of irony. Likewise, hipster porn subsumes and dismantles the aesthetics of hipster culture, appropriates its irony, and transforms it into something utterly sincere: porn. For what can be more sincere than a cumshot? Is it possible to get ironic oral? Hipsters belong to a subculture that is incredibly concerned with image — and with defining, controlling, and protecting that image. They can now watch as their vaingloriously crafted personae are subsumed by the porn industry and transformed into fetish. How ironic.

Photos, video, and a full interview with altporn director Eon McKai on our new SEX SF blog

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

The District Six dance begins

-

January 29, 2009
10

Walker, Kim

By Tim Redmond

Chris Daly will be the district six supervisor for the next two years (minus a couple of weeks), but already the dance to replace him is underway — with some surprising names floating around.

It’s no secret that Debra Walker is running, and with her long record on land-use and planning issues and her LGBT community leadership, she starts out as the leading progressive in the race. SOMA activist Jim Meko has joined the fray, too.

And the rumor mill is abuzzin with talk that School Board member Jane Kim, who by all accounts has a bright political future, is considering the race. Kim recently moved to D6, and we’ve heard from a number of people who’ve been contacted by Kim supporters about a possible supervisorial bid. Kim herself is a bit more coy: “I’m not announcing a campaign,” she told me. But she didn’t entirely rule it out: “Right now, I’m not a candidate. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do in 2010; everything’s on the table.”

And then there’s Michael Yarne, who last year left Martin Builders to take a job with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. Mayor Newsom doesn’t have a clear horse in that race yet (Rob Black, who works for the Chamber of Commerce, may run again, but he lost last time and is clearly a Chamber toadie, so his hopes in the liberal district aren’t that good). Yarne told us that he’s been contacted by people who think he’d be a good candidate, and he hasn’t entirely ruled it out, but “there’s no way I could run right now because I don’t live in the district.” Yarne rents in D9.

For my money, Kim is one of the brighest young stars in local politics, and she ought to stay on the school board, where she’s doing a great job, for another term, then start looking at other offices.

How Margaret Brodkin was fired

-

January 28, 2009
1

By Tim Redmond

Interesting how the mayor tries to spin away his dismissal of Margaret Brodkin, the feisty and highly respected director of the Department of Children, Youth and their Families. Here’s the mayor’s press release:

Margaret Brodkin to take new position as Director of New Day for Learning

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Today Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that he has asked
Maria Su, current Deputy Director of the Department of Children, Youth and
their Families (DCYF), to become the Acting Director of DCYF.

“During Maria’s tenure, DCYF has become one of San Francisco’s most
respected and influential organizations, making children one of the city’s
highest public policy priorities,” said Mayor Newsom. “She has overseen the
department’s core service areas, including early care and education, family
support, health and nutrition, out-of-school programs, violent response and
youth workforce development, as well as the Wellness Centers, Beacons and
Transitional Age Youth initiatives.”

After over four years of service as Director of DCYF, Margaret Brodkin is
leaving her position in order to become Director of the New Day for
Learning Initiative. The Initiative is a collaboration among city, school
and community partners, and is being funded, in part, by the Mott
Foundation.

“New Day for Learning is an important initiative, and one that will put San
Francisco in the national spotlight of education reform and city and school
partnerships,” said Mayor Newsom. “As the Director of New Day for Learning,
Margaret will continue her pioneering work in local child advocacy, and on
improving the lives of every child and youth in San Francisco.”

Sounds like Brodkin just decided it was time to take another job.

But wait: Here’s what Brodkin told her supporters today:

Dearest Colleagues,

Although he has praised my service and called me a “superstar,” Mayor Newsom has asked me to leave DCYF. Today will be my last day as Director. I am disappointed to be unable to complete the work that I have begun, but I leave behind a talented and dedicated DCYF staff, a broad network of wonderful partners, and many exciting projects in the works. I hope DCYF will continue to thrive

In other words, Newsom fired her. Why? Well, I haven’t been able to reach Brodkin to see if she wants to tell her side of the story. But let me speculate for a moment.

I think it’s fair to say the Mayor Newsom will be taking aim in the next few months at all of the set-asides in the city budget. I think he is looking toward a November ballot measure that will include “budget reform” — which means no more special earmarked programs.

One of the major earmarks he’ll try to eliminate: The Children’s Fund. That was Brodkin’s pet project and she was instrumental in getting it passed. I suspect the mayor, who hates dissent in the ranks, didn’t want to go forward seeking a “reform” in funding for kids programs that his own DCYF chief would loudly and visibly opppose.

Just my suspicion.

I have had a few minor clashes with Brodkin since she went to City Hall, but I have to say that she has been one of the single most tireless and dedicated champions of children and families in San Francisco, has devoted her life to the cause and was one of the few members of the Newsom administration who cared more about the cause than about political ambition. I suspect this new gig is just temporary, and she’ll soon be back raising hell on the streets, where we need her.

PG&E/BofA take over the Small Business Commission

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January 28, 2009
1

Mom and Pop lose their voice as the recession-racked small business community is feeling City Hall neglect and used by PG&E and big downtown business

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for a list of the Small Business Commissioners)

Here’s a snapshot of how the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and its downtown allies operate to keep City Hall safe for the illegal private power monopoly. Rebecca Bowe’s story in the current Guardian shows how a PG&E spokesperson, Darlene Chiu, and a Bank of America ally, retired Bank of America executive Irene Yee Riley, have taken control of the Small Business Commission through key commission appointments by Mayor Gavin Newsom, a PG&E ally.

PG&E’s interest is clear: to grab as many City Hall appointments as possible to protect and enhance the position of this corrupt and corrupting private utility. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) And, at the Small Business Commission, to help insure that the commission does nothing to injure PG&E’s position, such as raising questions about the many terrible problems small business has with PG&E’s high rates, unreliable service, onerous collection policies, and unaccountability. How, many small business people ask, does a small business complain about any of these problems with PG&E?

Timely example of PG&E unaccountability: Chiu, since Newsom appointed her last March, has missed four commission meetings, more than any other commissioner. Bowe called Chiu at PG&E to ask why she had missed so many meetings, but Chiu did not return her calls by press time. I will try myself tomorrow. However, I am not optimistic. PG&E has long maintained a corporate policy of not returning Guardian phone calls or providing information even when its representatives are sitting on public commissions purportedly doing public work representing small business.

Mom and pop lose their voice

By Rebecca Bowe

Bank of America and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are quite the opposite of mom-and-pop operations, yet two of the seven members appointed to San Francisco’s Small Business Commission hail from these corporations, much to the chagrin of true small business leaders.

In a heated e-mail fired off to an assortment of City Hall staffers Jan. 13, Small Business Commissioner Michael O’Connor criticized the Mayor’s Office for diluting the commission — which was set up to go to bat for the little guy — with big business appointees.

Meanwhile, funding for the Small Business Assistance Center was almost eliminated last month by the Board of Supervisors.

Click here to continue reading.

Previous Guardian coverage:

>>Volume 20.02 (PDF) An exclusive Bay Guardian study in 1985 challenges the convention wisdom that downtown development creates jobs. Instead, our study by an MIT economist shows that small business have created virtually all the new jobs in San Francisco since l980.

>>Volume 21.02 (PDF) Our updated study in l986 shows that as highrises have gone up, downtown San Francisco has lost jobs. In fact, all the net new jobs in the city have come from new and small businesses in light industrial areas and the neighborhoods

>>October 1, 2003 (PDF) The Guardian’s small business agenda for San Francisco

Union showdown

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January 28, 2009
0

› steve@sfbg.com

The Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers is bracing for an imminent takeover by its parent, Service Employees International Union, after defying an SEIU ultimatum to support the transfer of 65,000 UHW nursing home and homecare workers to a new local — without a member vote and with leadership appointed by SEIU.

The power struggle between SEIU President Andy Stern and UHW head Sal Rosselli and their respective boards, which has been escautf8g for the last year (see "A less perfect union," 4/9/08), came to a head Jan. 22 when SEIU’s International Executive Board approved findings of fiscal shenanigans and insubordination by UHW leaders and threatened to oust them and institute a trusteeship if six conditions were not met within five days.

To determine its response over the weekend, UHW organized meetings with about 5,000 of its members in San Francisco and four other cities, announcing the response during a raucous press conference at the Oakland headquarters the morning of Jan. 26, a day before the SEIU deadline.

"You ready everybody?" began Rosselli, flanked by a rainbow of 30 members and signs like "Hands off our UHW" and "Don’t Silence our Voices." The energized crowd of about 100 supporters answered with an enthusiastic, "Yeah!"

At that 11 a.m. rally, and in a teleconference an hour later with reporters from across the country, including from the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, Rosselli began by describing the UHW (which began with San Francisco General Hospital workers about 75 years ago) as perhaps the most effective, democratic, politicized, and oldest health care union in the country.

"We have an ideology that there’s no limit to empowering workers," Rosselli told reporters, announcing that UHW has unanimously approved a response letter to Stern that he characterized as "a compromise to avoid a civil war and get to the path of reconciliation."

But SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette, while noting that her union’s leadership had not yet decided how to respond by Guardian press time, said the findings and conditions by special hearing officer Ray Marshall (who was the labor secretary under President Jimmy Carter) "was not a negotiation."

Marshall’s 105-page report concluded that "Leaders of the UHW did engage in financial malpractice and undermined democratic procedures when they transferred UHW funds to a nonprofit organization to be used in contests with the International Union." It set out conditions to avoid trusteeship that included supporting the transfer of long-term care workers, greater fiscal oversight by SEIU, purging the UHW database of names pilfered from SEIU, and publicizing the Marshall report to its members.

"Given that Sal Rosselli and his leadership team were just found guilty by Secretary Marshall of financial wrongdoing and trying to subvert the democratic processes of this union, there’s nothing surprising about this letter," Ringuette told the Guardian.

Yet an insistence on democratic processes was at the heart of the UHW stance against SEIU, which UHW leaders accuse of sacrificing the autonomy of locals in its drive for more national power, appointing leadership based on loyalty to Stern, colluding with large corporate employers, and turning a blind eye to corruption by Stern loyalists that was far more serious than any accusations against UHW.

UHW agreed to some of SEIU’s conditions, but insisted that its members be allowed to vote on the merger and elect their own leaders, and that SEIU work with UHW to craft a union that best represents member interests. In addition, it called for a mediated reconciliation process with SEIU that could culminate in a vote to create a single union representing all health care workers in California.

UHW members are fiercely loyal to that organization. To illustrate UHW’s effectiveness, Rosselli noted that SEIU locals representing nursing home workers recently negotiated contracts with wages $4 per hour less than UHW contracts and without UHW’s strong patient advocacy provisions. He also said that while UHW represents about 20 percent of statewide SEIU workers, the union filled 55 percent of the volunteer shifts in state and local elections.

"We’re a very democratic organization, and that’s what we believe is the key to our success," Rosselli said. "Workers want a strong voice in dealing with their employers, not just another boss in Washington, D.C."

All sides of the conflict express a desire to move forward. As Marshall wrote, "The UHW-SEIU conflict is hurting both organizations at a critical time in the development of the labor movement and progressive policies in the country." But it could be that the two sides have staked out intractable positions.

Rosselli was realistic about whether SEIU will accept the UHW counteroffer, telling reporters, "I don’t think it’s likely, but we hope that they will."

And what if they don’t?

Rosselli was careful to avoid threatening to lead an effort to disaffiliate UHW from SEIU if the trusteeship happens, noting that such advocacy is against SEIU rules and refusing to answer questions from reporters pushing the issue. But he made that possibility clear with statements such as "Our members have instructed us to resist this undemocratic transfer."

As to how UHW leaders will respond if and when SEIU takes over UHW and ousts them, Rosselli read from a prepared statement that said, "We would convene a meeting of our currently elected leaders and decide what to do next."

During the Oakland rally, Rosselli went a little further, reminding UHW members that they always retain the right to form a new union. The crowd applauded for 40 seconds and chanted, "Can we? Yes we can! Will we? Yes we will!"

As the conference concluded and attendees trickled away, homecare worker Tena Robinson grabbed a Guardian reporter and said she had a message to convey: "Andy Stern, we will never surrender!"

As she said it, Rosselli came over to hug her, as if embracing a family member. And then she told Rosselli that if he goes, "I’m going with you!"

Joe Sciarrillo contributed to this report.

Mom and pop lose their voice

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January 28, 2009
0

› rebeccab@sfbg.com

Bank of America and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are quite the opposite of mom-and-pop operations, yet two of the seven members appointed to San Francisco’s Small Business Commission hail from these corporations, much to the chagrin of true small business leaders.

In a heated e-mail fired off to an assortment of City Hall staffers Jan. 13, Small Business Commissioner Michael O’Connor criticized the Mayor’s Office for diluting the commission — which was set up to go to bat for the little guy — with big business appointees.

Meanwhile, funding for the Small Business Assistance Center was almost eliminated last month by the Board of Supervisors. And a report that was supposed to streamline the unwieldy permitting process for small businesses, which the administration was required to complete under the 2007 measure Proposition I, never materialized.

At a time when small businesses are struggling in the face of a dour economic landscape, strong advocacy on their behalf is needed now more than ever. But even as former Small Business Commissioner David Chiu ascends to the presidency of the Board of Supervisors, small business leaders are decrying their lack of support in City Hall.

The Small Business Commission is a seven-member body composed of three members appointed by the Board of Supervisors and four appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Set up to serve as an advocate for the small business community, the commission was also chartered to oversee the Office of Small Business, a branch of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Last May, the office opened its Small Business Assistance Center, created to lend startups a helping hand with navigating the bureaucratic maze of permits, fees, licenses, and other hoops to be jumped through to legitimately set up shop in the city.

Regina Dick-Endrezzi, acting director of the Office of Small Business and one of four people staffing the center, says there’s a real need for the service. She said that about 99 percent of all San Francisco businesses fall into the category of "small," which she defines as having fewer than 100 employees, making it one of the most important sectors of the city’s economy.

Since the center opened, more than 1,300 small business clients have received assistance there, according to Dick-Endrezzi. Many lack the resources and capital that larger enterprises might have at their disposal, so SBAC case managers act as counselors for people who are trying to get a new business off the ground.

Entrepreneurs have sought help with things like obtaining a permit to open a vegan taco truck, acquiring a license to start a cleaning business, or filing for tax credits for an organic baby food business, to name a few examples. "This is something we really need," Dick-Endrezzi told the Guardian, "and this is something politics shouldn’t get in the way of."

Nonetheless, the center and the commission haven’t been spared from controversy. In December, the Board of Supervisors considered slashing SBAC funding. The $800,000 annual budget was ultimately granted, but it weathered midyear budget cuts of around 10 percent.

Now a new issue of contention has emerged: O’Connor has sounded the alarm that the SBC is becoming weakened by mayoral appointees who represent the large corporate interests that are often quite different from those of small businesses.

The conflict went public at the Jan. 12 SBC meeting when it came time to elect a new vice president. Richard Ventura, who heads a consulting firm and serves as executive director of the downtown-based Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, had just won commissioners’ approval to serve as president. Before a second round of votes were cast, O’Connor — who served as president for two years but declined to try for the post again — voiced his fervent opinion that "an actual small business owner" should be chosen for the other leadership slot.

"I think we need the balance of a small business owner in either the presidency or the vice-presidency position," said O’Connor, who owns the Independent music venue in the Western Addition. "If we have a president and a vice president that both come from downtown, and if three out of the four mayoral appointees on this commission are from downtown, I will be incredibly embarrassed to be on this commission. And I’m sorry, this is nothing personal — I like everybody on this commission — but small business is in a fight for its life, in this building and in City Hall."

Despite his plea, Commissioner Irene Yee Riley — a retired Bank of America executive — was elected. Although not a small business owner, Yee Riley told commissioners that she was qualified to serve as vice president thanks to her "many years of experience working with small business owners as a banker."

"I’m retired, and I have time, so I want to use this opportunity to give back to the community," she added.

Yee Riley won after receiving one vote more than Commissioner Janet Clyde, a bartender and general managing partner of Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach. "I live in the Mission District in a solid working-class neighborhood that is rapidly changing," Clyde told the other commission members during her pitch. "I know the challenges of small businesses operating far from the power and economic center of San Francisco, and I intend to work to recommend their interests … even in this difficult budgetary time."

The following morning, a dismayed O’Connor vented his frustration in an e-mail to mayoral staffers, typing "Small Business Commission … or … Big Business Commission" into the subject line. Installing commissioners with ties to large corporations rather than direct small business experience constitutes "a neutralization of the only real voice small businesses have in San Francisco," he charged.

The most recent mayoral appointee to the SBC was Darlene Chiu (no relation to David Chiu), a spokesperson for PG&E who formerly served as deputy director of communications for the Mayor’s Office. When the Guardian queried the Mayor’s Office last March on what qualifications a PG&E spokesperson brought to the Small Business Commission, Press Secretary Nathan Ballard responded with this statement: "Darlene has first hand knowledge of the challenges facing small businesses in San Francisco. She grew up working in her family’s … retail businesses in Chinatown, managing nine to l5 employees. She will also bring her knowledge of city government and communications to the commission, which will be important to the successful operations and promotion of the assistance center." (See "Newsom to small business: drop dead!" March 18, 2008 Bruce Blog.)

But since her appointment last March, public records show that Chiu has missed four of the monthly meetings. Excessive absenteeism at city commission meetings briefly emerged as an issue in September 2006, prompting Newsom to introduce a new standard with a working goal of 100 percent attendance for commissioners.

Meanwhile, not everyone agrees with O’Connor’s assertion that "San Francisco’s Office of Economic Development seems to believe small business is just an annoying little rock in its shoe."

"The Office of Economic Development is incredibly committed to keeping this commission strong," counters Jennifer Matz, managing deputy director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, who played a role in starting the Small Business Assistance Center. "Michael is very disappointed about what happened, but I don’t think it reflects a lack of commitment to small business on the part of the city or the Mayor’s Office."

Matz said the challenge to the SBAC came from the Board of Supervisors — not the Mayor’s Office — when they considered revoking the center’s funding. She also contends that the Small Business Commission’s voting record doesn’t demonstrate a downtown vs. small business split.

From January 2008 to this January, commissioners voted unanimously 34 out of 38 times, the record shows. But it’s on the divisive issues where small and big businesses differ that can have the most impact.

Sup. Chiu served on the Small Business Commission before being elected to the Board of Supervisors. He said commission members usually saw eye-to-eye on most items that came before the commission regardless of whether they were board or mayoral appointees. But for him, the frustration was that "it didn’t feel that either the mayor or the Board of Supervisors were focused on small business."

In his new capacity as board president, he said measures that aid small businesses will be moving up on the list of priorities. For example, he has asked for a hearing on why the report on streamlining small business regulations, which Prop. I required the Office of Small Business to complete by 2007, was never done.

Although doubts about the commitment to small business seemed to be cast on all sides, everyone we spoke with seemed to agree on one point: in these stormy economic times, San Francisco’s small businesses need all the help they can get.

Two reports released in December by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Automatic Data Processing (ADP) provide some insight into the challenges facing small businesses nationally. BLS reported that 524,000 jobs were lost during December, bringing the 2008 total to 2.6 million lost jobs — the highest since 1993.

The ADP report showed that 281,000 jobs had been shed from companies with fewer than 50 employees. This signifies a drastic increase in job losses from this sector: between October and November, small businesses cut just 79,000 employees, according to ADP, and between September and October, they let go of 25,000 employees.

"That was the first time since 2002 that small businesses had net job losses," says Scott Hauge, president of Small Business California. What’s frightening, he says, is that the small business sector traditionally acts as an economic stabilizer.

During the battles it the mid-1980s over accelerating downtown office building construction, the Guardian commissioned a study from noted MIT economist David Birch that found that small business accounted for most net job creation in San Francisco, and that catering to corporate demands downtown actually cost the city jobs.

Yet now, with the small business community sometimes serving as a political football tossed between downtown and City Hall, the city’s economic base is in trouble and hoping for help from political leaders who are now contemputf8g deep budget cuts.

————

Here’s a list of all the small business commissioners:

Commissioner Darlene Chiu
Occupation: Communications, PG&E
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Janet Clyde
Occupation: General managing partner / bartender, Vesuvio Cafe
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Kathleen Dooley
Occupation: Florist / owner, Columbine Design
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Gus Murad
Occupation: Owner, Medjool (restaurant) and Elements (hotel)
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Michael O’Connor
Occupation: Co-owner, The Independent (music venue)
Appointed by: Board of Supervisors

Commissioner Irene Yee Riley
Occupation: Retired senior vice president and market executive, Bank of America
Appointed by: mayor

Commissioner Richard Ventura
Occumpation: Executive director, San Francisco Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Appointed by: mayor

————-

Previous Guardian coverage:

>>Volume 20.02 (PDF) An exclusive Bay Guardian study in 1985 challenges the convention wisdom that downtown development creates jobs. Instead, our study by an MIT economist shows that small business have created virtually all the new jobs in San Francisco since l980.

>>Volume 21.02 (PDF) Our updated study in l986 shows that as highrises have gone up, downtown San Francisco has lost jobs. In fact, all the net new jobs in the city have come from new and small businesses in light industrial areas and the neighborhoods

>>October 1, 2003 (PDF) The Guardian’s small business agenda for San Francisco

Where federal banking money should go

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January 27, 2009
0

OPINION The federal government is shelling out hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up failing financial institutions, with no end in sight. Taxpayer money is going to commercial banks and insurance companies that took outsized risks and participated in extraordinarily complex financial transactions, motivated by no purpose beyond the hunger for profits. They were allowed to engage in this destructive behavior despite being among the most heavily regulated companies on earth. This is a terrible mess, and we’re all paying for it.

Yet there is one type of financial institution that remains unsullied by the current crisis – community development financial institutions, or CDFIs. CDFI is an official federal designation given to community loan funds, credit unions, and community development banks that have a mission first and foremost to address the financial needs of working people and low-income communities.

To be designated a CDFI, a financial institution must go through a rigorous screening process administered by the Treasury Department and prove that its core mission is to bring about economic benefits for the underserved and that it’s accountable to the communities it serves. In the Bay Area, active CDFIs include the Northern California Community Loan Fund, One California Bank in Oakland, and my own organization, Opportunity Fund.

CDFIs make microloans to new and emerging small businesses. They offer fair and non-predatory mortgage loans to first-time homebuyers, often combining their loans with homebuyer counseling. And they finance the construction of new affordable rental housing, health clinics, and social service facilities. Opportunity Fund, for instance, has invested more than $120 million into some of the most troubled neighborhoods in the Bay Area, with a loan loss rate of less than 1 percent. And we have somehow managed to do this without the use of complex derivatives, credit default swaps, or exotic mortgage products. We have done it by taking prudent risks on hardworking people who deserve a chance.

Unlike lenders motivated by greed and empowered by questionable financial "innovations," CDFIs are generally in much healthier financial condition than their mainstream counterparts. Despite being regulated by nothing more than our mission to make our communities better, we are not in need of a bailout.

We are, however, forcefully and unapologetically asking for a major share of any economic stimulus that Congress approves.

If the treasury can pour $700 billion (and counting) into corporations that pushed the envelope way too far in pursuit of profits, surely it can and should inject $5 billion or $10 billion into CDFIs, which will invest that money in our neighborhoods and into a better life for those who are struggling most right now.

The Treasury Department invests in CDFIs through its CDFI Fund, so this stimulus can be administered with no new bureaucracy. Furthermore, we are ready to put the money to work right away instead of salting it away like many banks did with the first round of bailout money. Opportunity Fund has identified $50 million in shovel-ready affordable housing developments that we could finance immediately if we had the capital, and our sister organizations also have real deals in their pipelines.

Let’s work together to make sure that this time around some of the money in Bedford Falls goes to Jimmy Stewart, and not all to Mr. Potter.

Eric Weaver is CEO of Opportunity Fund (www.opportunityfund.org).

BOS committee assignments

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January 21, 2009
0

By Tim Redmond

Board President David Chiu has released the list of committee assignments, which look good — there are three solid progressive votes on the Budget Committee. The winners: David Campos and Ross Mirkarimi both have three good committee assigments. The losers: Sean Elsbernd, who gets only one job. Not sure I would have put him in charge of the school district committee (I’d have put him on budget instead of Carmen Chu), but overall, I don’t think the progressives will have a lot to complain about.

(UPDATE: Elsbernd just called me to say that he had requested not to be on budget because his first child is due in June and he wants to have enough time to spend with his family. “And the biggest issue I hear about these days is education,” he said. He is thrilled with the assignment he got.)

Here’s the rundown:

Budget & Finance
John Avalos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Carmen Chu, Member
David Campos, Temporary Member
Bevan Dufty, Temporary Member

City Operations & Neighborhood Services
Bevan Dufty, Chair
Chris Daly, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

City & School District
Sean Elsbernd, Chair
Bevan Dufty, Vice Chair
John Avalos, Member

Government Audits & Oversight
Ross Mirkarimi, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
Sophie Maxwell, Member

Land Use & Economic Development
Sophie Maxwell, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
David Chiu, Member

Public Safety
David Campos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

Rules Committee
Chris Daly, Chair
Carmen Chu, Vice Chair
David Campos, Member

Housing is economic stimulus

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January 20, 2009
0

By Paul Boden

EDITORIAL Change is certainly in the air these days. A president who understands that the phrase "economic recovery" is more then just a buzzword for tax cuts and bailouts for corporations and wealthy people represents perhaps the biggest, and some would argue the most important change — and it offers an opportunity for struggling communities.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised to create the largest public works construction project since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. He has talked about funding work on everything from schools to sewer systems, from green jobs to ensuring that every American has access to a college education. All this is incredibly good news for the country as a whole.

My concern is that homelessness has received very little mention, although more than 3 million people experience homelessness every year. Family homelessness, in particular, is on the rise, with 16 cities (out of 25 surveyed in a recent report) reporting an increase in the number of families forced out of their homes. And yet there seems no clear plan for using economic recovery programs to restore the draconian cuts in federal affordable housing funding. Since 1983, those programs have been reduced by $54 billion a year. And there’s no plan to show how addressing homelessness can and should be part of the economic revitalization of local communities.

Many of us watched in despair as our issues were ignored during the campaign debates and in the party platforms. Homelessness is the No. 1 issue locally, yet it was all but ignored nationally.

But the country has now elected a president who understands what it means to respect the work of true community organizations and allow for local voices to be at the table when decisions are made that have an impact on our lives.

Local Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Housing Development Corporations (HDCs) already exist in many communities. The credible ones will work in partnership with community members and organizations to combine a federal reinvestment in affordable housing with economic stimulus activities that benefit everyone — street-level space for creating new local businesses, job training connected to positions created in the development and management of the new business and housing units, the use of (and training in) smart green technology in all development.

Tax dollars invested in affordable housing stay in the local economy. Many of the jobs created remain long after the construction phase is completed.

Economic recovery plans are being made now, as federal departments are hiring staff and priorities are being set. Congress, despite the lessons learned from the banking bailout, is in a rush to release funds without much detail. We need direct petitioning from local communities. We need calls demanding that a share of economic recovery funding be given directly to local organizations to develop desperately needed housing and community spaces, using accountable local hiring requirements and safe green building practices.

It’s on all of us locally to come together and make the call.

Paul Boden is director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a coalition of West Coast social justice-based homeless organizations.

Change you can live in?

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January 20, 2009
0

If you ask San Franciscans about the most pressing issues facing the city, homelessness and affordable housing are always near the top of the list. While this city’s housing problems are particularly dramatic, homelessness is on the rise across urban America. And in nearly every big city, public housing projects are crumbling, suffering from years of federal neglect.

But you wouldn’t know that to look at the latest stimulus package coming out of Washington, DC.

The proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, introduced Jan. 15, contains only $16 billion for affordable housing. That’s about half what advocates had sought — and a tiny fraction of what’s really needed.

The bill has the affordable housing community shaking its collective head. "Unfortunately, the news right now is not good. This first pass at the stimulus bill is not encouraging," Matt Schwarz, president of the California Housing Partnership, a San Francisco–based nonprofit working to expand affordable housing stock throughout California, told us.

Will President Obama, who barely mentioned homelessness during the campaign, look at affordable housing as a priority? Most housing activists say they’re cautiously optimistic. But some are starting to sound the alarm.

"I think, when it comes to political clout in DC, poor people and their allies are still in trouble," said Paul Boden, director of the San Francisco–based Western Regional Advocacy Project, a group that focuses primarily on homelessness issues. "It was disheartening to go to the Obama [transition team] Web site and find … a very miniscule mention of homelessness — and it’s under ‘veterans.’<0x2009>"

City officials are looking at the bright side. "Most people would agree that there’s been very little new money available at the federal level for affordable housing [in the past eight years]," Doug Shoemaker, director of the Mayor’s Office on Housing, told us. Shoemaker expects that to change under the Obama administration, especially with the pick of New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Shaun Donovan as US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, whom he characterized as "an incredible leader who really understands homelessness and affordable housing."

Olson Lee, deputy director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, sounded a similar note. "We’re looking forward to an administration that cares about affordable housing," he said. Projects like the Hunters View reconstruction project, which would restore a dilapidated public-housing complex in the Bayview–Hunters Point neighborhood, tops the list of projects that would shift into gear again if new federal dollars are made available, Lee noted.

But while city agencies seem to have high hopes for federal dollars that could be headed to San Francisco under the new administration, many grassroots-level affordable housing advocates are more cautious.

Longtime affordable housing activist Calvin Welch pointed out that there is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the allocation of federal funding under the economic recovery package. "The first test is, does the Obama administration view affordable housing — especially affordable rental housing in cities — as a priority?"

From Welch’s perspective, the answer appears to be yes. But he added that no affordable housing practitioners were named to Obama’s transition team. And in San Francisco, a pending blow to health and human services due to local and state budget cuts will bring about more distress linked to housing issues.

"When those health and human services are reduced, the effect is an increase in the homeless population, or at least the temporarily unhoused population — a population with very challenging housing needs, which is at extreme risk," Welch told us. "I haven’t seen any response to that consequence. I have not read that any portion of the Obama stimulus package is focused on health and human services." Until the details are hammered out, he said, "We’re holding our breath."

A recent report issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — a DC-based research and analysis organization focusing on issues affecting low-income families — underscores Welch’s concerns. The recession has prompted a rise in homelessness nationwide, the report notes, and an unusually large number of people are still likely to fall into severe poverty, putting them at risk of being turned out onto the streets.

"It is important that the package include funding for effective homelessness prevention strategies," CBPP notes.

Specifically, the report recommends that funding be made available for 200,000 additional Section 8 housing vouchers, which allow very low-income residents to rent privately-owned units of their choice. That number would only begin to address the need. In San Francisco, the waiting list for Section 8 has been closed since 2001, and some 13,000 people have languished on the list, according to Sara Shortt, director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. Despite the urging of organizations like CBPP, the first draft of the bill included no new additional funding for Section 8 vouchers.

The Obama administration has made it clear that new funding will become available for "shovel-ready" projects — those that are ready to move forward in a matter of months. According to the results of a survey conducted by the California Housing Partnership, San Francisco has 24 such affordable housing development projects waiting in the wings, which could provide an estimated 3,915 affordable homes and could potentially generate 4,500 construction-related jobs.

But Schwarz, president of CHP, says he’s less optimistic that those projects will move forward after seeing the proposed legislation. Schwarz says the $16 billion included for affordable housing measures in the proposed legislation was disheartening. With that figure, "We’re not expecting a significant portion of those stuck developments to get unstuck," he said. "There seems to have been some major backtracking, and we’re not quite sure where this is coming from."

While the bill falls short of what many of San Francisco’s affordable housing advocates had hoped for, it does include funding for public housing repair. "This economic recovery bill includes $5 billion to allow public housing authorities to complete repair and construction projects, including critical safety repairs," Drew Hammill, press secretary to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian. "This is more than double the amount that was included for this account in the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill and double the amount that is pending in fiscal year 2009."

But Hammill acknowledged that the need for such repairs is great in San Francisco: "The existing backlog in San Francisco is over $250 million" he wrote, "with approximately $26 million of additional physical deterioration occurring each year."

Shortt, who heads the Housing Rights Committee, looks back on the past six years as "a disaster" for public housing. "It is very likely that we’ll see an infusion in public housing and affordable housing in this recovery package," she said. But she regards the expected $5 billion for public housing capital funds as "a drop in the bucket. It’s estimated that the overall need is $33 billion nationally." .

Shortt did have praise for Donovan, Obama’s HUD secretary pick. Even so, she says, "Whether Obama himself feels strongly about housing or not, politically it’s going to take a while before it’s high on the priority of the Beltway. It’s been relegated to the bottom of the heap for so long."

Ending war

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January 20, 2009
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› sarah@sfbg.com

As Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama takes the reins of power, the peace movement is watching to see if he will follow through on foreign policy campaign promises — and preparing to apply pressure if he doesn’t.

CodePink has compiled a list, "President Obama’s Promises to Keep," taken from his campaign statements on which activists intend to hold him accountable. These promises include a pledge to end the war on Iraq, close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, reject the Military Commissions Act (which critics say violates the civil rights of people deemed enemy combatants), adhere to the Geneva Convention, work to eliminate nuclear weapons, support direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions, and abide by international treaties.

But as CodePink’s Media Benjamin noted in an article that was published in the Huffing ton Post last summer, the peace movement helped Obama beat Sen. Hillary Clinton, who supported the invasion of Iraq, in the primaries — only to see Obama begin talking tough on Afghanistan and pledging to essentially escalate the war there.

"This has come back to hit us in the face during Barack Obama’s Middle East trip, where he called for sending 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan," Benjamin observed, noting the high death tolls of both US soldiers and innocent Afghans almost eight years after the US invasion.

"The Taliban has gained new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found," Benjamin wrote. "And amid it all, Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, its women continue to be oppressed and the US has not succeeded in rebuilding Afghanistan."

But Benjamin acknowledged that it’s not enough to simply say "troops out now."

"We, the peace movement, need to come together and develop a strategy before our troops are sent from the ‘bad war’ in Iraq to the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan," Benjamin warned.

Given Obama’s naming of Clinton as his Secretary of State and his pledge to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Benjamin reiterated her belief that increasing troop levels is not going to help subdue a country that has resisted invasions from the likes of Genghis Khan and the Soviet Union.

"Yes, it’s a complex region, but what has history taught us about it?" Benjamin told the Guardian last week. "That foreigners get defeated. Yes, maybe by increasing troops they’ll get to stay for a few more years, but in the end, they leave with their tail between their legs, having suffered more deaths and without imposing their will."

"Theirs is a very tribal culture, so it’s not easy to get a centralized government," added Benjamin, who first visited Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, at the height of the US-led invasion. "And the oppression of women, unfortunately, preceded the Taliban."

Observing that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has admitted to engaging in low-level talks with the Taliban, which the Saudis helped broker, Benjamin claimed that "plenty of US military reps know that a negotiated settlement is the way forward."

"Our concern is that women will be at the table when that happens and that women’s issues and rights are at the front," Benjamin stressed. "So, we want a negotiated settlement with a more moderate faction of the Taliban. And troops going into Pakistan isn’t the solution, either."

Benjamin, who attended Clinton’s Jan. 13 Secretary of State confirmation hearings, says she got the sense that Obama’s administration wants a policy overhaul.

"So, yes, we are sending 30,000 more troops, but we are not pretending it is a surge, à la Iraq. It’s more of a holding pattern," Benjamin said. "We are hoping this is going to be an administration that disengages. Maybe the focus in the US on the economy will help."

A press release sent out on the eve of Obama’s inauguration by Courage to Resist and Direct Action to Stop the War, a San Francisco–based organization that coordinated nonviolent opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, stated that both groups are urging the new President not to escalate the war in Afghanistan, to stop attacks inside Pakistan, and to cut military aid to governments that violate human rights or international law, "such as Israel, in what Amnesty International calls an ‘unlawful attack’ on Gaza."

The release came just days after Clinton said, during her confirmation hearing, that she and Obama "understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel’s desire to defend itself under the current conditions, and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets. However, we have also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians."

"This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel; normal and positive relations with its neighbors; and independence, economic progress, and security to the Palestinians in their own state," Clinton elaborated, adding that Obama is committed to "responsibly ending the war in Iraq and employing a broad strategy in Afghanistan that reduces threats to our safety and enhances the prospect of stability and peace."

In the November 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs, Barnett Rubin, director of Studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, outlined the steps that they believe are critical for those serious about ending the ongoing chaos in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond.

Stating that sending more troops to Afghanistan "would be insufficient to reverse the collapse of security there," the authors opined that "A major diplomatic initiative involving all the regional stakeholders in problem-solving talks and setting out road maps for local stabilization efforts is more important."

Arguing that such an initiative would reaffirm that the West as a whole is committed to the long-term rehabilitation of Afghanistan and the region, they recommended that the West — with support from if not led by the US — back that commitment with measures to address economic development, job creation, the drug trade, and border disputes.

"The goal of the next US president must be to put aside the past, Washington’s keenness for "victory" as the solution to all problems, and the United States’ reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy," Rubin and Rashid wrote. "

But the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition is reemphasizing the importance of building an independent people’s movement and ending imperialist occupations, wherever and whenever they occur. "We are for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan," San Francisco–based A.N.S.W.E.R. organizer Saul Kanowitz told us. "There are those in the Obama administration who say that Iraq is the wrong war, in the wrong place, but we are against all US imperial conquests abroad."

Noting that he doesn’t believe there is a fundamental difference between Bush’s and Obama’s policies on Afghanistan, Kanowitz says, "It’s just a tactical difference … withdrawing US troops from direct engagement with Iraq, because they don’t believe US can’t win there, and redeploying them to Afghanistan, where they believe they can — it’s the same strategy. It’s about maintaining dominance.

It’s hard to be a man

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January 16, 2009
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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

Midnites for Maniacs programmer Ficks is in Utah checking out the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Here’s what’s gotten his attention so far…

“We Live in Public” trailer

Paper Heart, directed by Nicholas Jasenovec
Early on in this semi-mock doc, the actor Michael Cera, who plays himself, responds to the overview of Paper Heart by saying, “Just what America needs, another quirky comedy.” Cera, who has reinstated the term “perfect comic timing” since he appeared as George Michael in Arrested Development , is yet again awkward and hilarious in this sweet but fairly clunky trek across America, which asks real couples how they met, reinacts them with paper cutouts a la Science of Sleep (2006), and if ponders the question if love truly exists. The film’s lead actress — Charlyne Yi, the stoner girl who hangs with all the dudes in Knocked Up (2007) — also co-scripted this sure-to-be crowd pleaser. If only certain scenes hadn’t felt so forced.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, directed by John Krasinski
Director Krasinski — better known as Jim on The Office — also adapted the screenplay from David Foster Wallace’s story. The tale follows Sara (Julianne Nicholson), a woman who’s been recently cheated on, as she interviews multiple subjects of the male gender about their honest fears, fantasies, and frustrations. Krasinski’s film pushes through its similarities to Paper Heart (getting to the bottom of love) by taking its “personal interviews” to impressive depths about the male psyche. It delivers some pretty powerful moments.

We Live in Public, directed by Ondi Timoner
Fascinatingly addictive, this follow up to Timoner’s cult classic Dig! (which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2004) follows the bi-polar exploits of Internet pioneer Josh Harris. This man predicted every single step of the internet and the jaw dropping footage of his “experiments” are here to prove it. In 1999 he created a quasi-cult community in the basement of New York, in which people were given pods to sleep in, free food, drugs, and all night raves while every move was being recorded and shared. Even now, the uncompromising footage has the power to warp the viewer into his Orwellian vision of the future. But wait — that’s not all: Harris then goes on to rig 32 motion-sensor cameras in his house, creating the first website to stream his and girlfriend’s every life moment. I can’t express enough how awesome this film is, or how horrifyingly revealing of where our own society has headed. You wanna talk about the film of Sundance ’09? Look no further.

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