Development Archives — Page 60 of 72 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

A beginner’s — and teacher’s — mind

May 7, 2008

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Ask Toshio Hirano how he discovered honky-tonk music and he replies with the question: "How much time do you have"? It’s not a simple answer and he explains his transformation from fanatic to performing artist the same way a musicologist might discuss the development of recording techniques from the Edison cylinder to digital audiotape. Hirano is part teacher, anyway — and part student — still discovering his roots at age 57.

His audiences can be divided into two camps: faithful veterans and incredulous newbies. No doubt the newbies are brought to gigs with reassurances akin to "No, really, it’s good." They enter the bar together, and Hirano is onstage doing one from the repertoire: maybe it’s Hank Thompson’s "Humpty Dumpty Heart." Hirano’s vocal twang, inflected with his Japanese accent, wraps around the hillbilly syllables of the song as if his native Tokyo were an Appalachian homestead. Meanwhile his acoustic guitar, with its jangling hammer-ons, rattles over the chord changes like a train passing over railroad ties, convincing the audience that this is no novelty, but an authentic piece of Americana. The believer looks eager: "Are you feeling this?" Hirano has already charmed the first-timer, who inevitably wonders, "This is crazy. What’s his deal?"

Japan was awash with American records during the early 1960s, and although Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley held sway in the schoolyards, it was Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, and the Kingston Trio who captured Hirano’s imagination. From there it wasn’t a far leap to his first bluegrass record — by the Country Gentlemen — which he could only acquire from a specialty shop. "It was a funny feeling [to be] listening to music that not a lot of people knew," he confessed on a recent Saturday afternoon, flanked by a wall of used books at the Mission Creek Café. "I felt cool."

The galvanizing moment in his early education came in 1972 when a friend lent him a Jimmie Rodgers record. "On the cover he was leaning over a Cadillac with a cowboy hat, looking so good," Hirano remembered. "It was recorded in 1928, before Hank Williams and before Bill Monroe." Rodgers’ reading of "Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia" was the Big Bang for Hirano, an event that still roars 35 years later. "When I play any songs the sound of Jimmie Rodgers is in there," he explained. "I would not be singing Hank Williams without Jimmie Rodgers. Every song fits on the foundation of his sound."

In 1975, on his 24th birthday, Hirano arrived in Atlanta, Ga., an employee in a Japanese mushroom enterprise. "I don’t believe in God in the religious sense but I do believe in fate," he offered as a way to sum up his American life, a pilgrimage of sorts cast with fortuitous acquaintances and serendipity. It wasn’t long before his mushroom interest went south, and facing an expiring work visa, Hirano chanced into a job as the maître d’ in Music City’s first Japanese restaurant, where he routinely catered to Nashville’s biggest country stars.

Three years later Hirano was enrolled in a guitar course in Red Wing, Minn. — a town bisected by Highway 61, he notes. At the end of the term, the class held a party where everyone had to play a song. "There was a punk rock guy from San Antonio in the class and he said, ‘Toshio, did you just play Hank Sr.? You have to come to Texas.’ "

Once installed in Austin, Hirano busked on the streets and played gigs his friend arranged. "I never thought about performing until he encouraged me," Hirano said. But an Asian man playing old-time country standards in Texas attracts a kind of attention that is not altogether genuine. "I was overly welcomed. I was only playing Jimmie Rodgers in cafes, and they treated me like a big star." He simply wanted to share the music he loved, but the novelty of his act became a burden.

San Francisco promised freedom from celebrity, and from audiences for whom country music is a birthright. "I started feeling, wow, I’m reintroducing old American music to Americans." Ultimately this role evolved into a neat byproduct of his act. "My original pleasure is still the same," he continued. "Every time I sing an old country tune, I just feel so good." Now his satisfaction is in part due to the torch he bears for America’s musical heritage, "If [the audience] likes the songs, I tell them, ‘Buy Jimmie Rodgers.’ "

The exchange goes both ways. Hirano, a self-confessed guitar amateur, learns songs based on suggestions from audience members. On any given night, he and his band — bassist Kenan O’Brien and violinist Mayumi Urgino — play 25 songs, less than half by the Blue Yodeler. Hirano has yet to perform the one original song he has written in the 40 years since he first picked up a guitar.

There’s something utterly refreshing about an artist with nothing to sell. Hirano’s only ambition is to keep his once-a-month gigs at Amnesia and the Rite Spot, where the pass-the-hat informality is infectious and the singing is as authentic as an early Victrola recording. A performer for whom authorship is foreign and attention is baneful, Hirano finds his fulfillment in participating. "I am fortunate to have run into this old music," he told me, grinning.

TOSHIO HIRANO

Second Mondays, 8:30 p.m., free

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

(415) 970-0012

www.amnesiathebar.com

Also last Saturdays, 9 p.m., free

Rite Spot

2099 Folsom, SF

(415) 552-6066

www.ritespotcafe.net

Oaklanders pissed about robberies

May 7, 2008

Just got a call from the folks over at Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles in Oakland. They’re involved with a press conference that will take place today at noon calling on the city of Oakland to deal with a spate of recent aggressive robberies on Grand Avenue. Uhuru endured a takeover robbery on Sunday that left eight customers and two employees short of $1,000 in cash. Silver Screen Video at 3850 Grand Ave. has been robbed twice recently, as has Grand-Piedmont Liquors.

The press conference will be held at Uhuru, 3742 Grand Avenue, in Oakland.

“We recognize that the robbery at Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles and the increased robberies of Oakland businesses go hand in hand with the sharp escalation of desperate poverty of Oakland’s black community,” store coordinator Joel Hamburger said in a presser. “Although we denounce this attack on our nonprofit work, we are calling on the city to respond in a way that will not exacerbate the terrible conditions in the African community but address the root causes of crime and poverty.”

Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles is a nonprofit project of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) that relies on support from community donations. Residents are mad about the robberies, but organizers of today’s press conference want the city to respond by improving economic development in the neighborhood.

The end of the line

May 6, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"The film is called RR, but I like to call it ‘Railroad,’ because RR sounds like a pirate movie."

— James Benning

TRAINS A short stretch of celluloid is a representation of a train, one image following the other in rapid succession, connected by essential blocks of black, moving forward in time and space, and, when projected, rotating on a wheel. Cinema began with a train entering a station, shot with a fixed camera, chugging toward the screen. Barring a change of mind or circumstance, the masterful RR will be the last of James Benning’s works shot on 16mm, and how fitting that this 37-year phase closes with the image of a locomotive, pointedly stopped in front of a wind farm outside of Palm Springs, scrapped tires lying in the foreground, the end in a line of 43 trains shot across the United States (and the final frame of 34 extant films).

After a prolific three-year period that has seen Benning produce five crucial works — likely exhausting his stock of 16mm film — while teaching, driving across America, and building a full-scale replica of Thoreau’s Walden Pond cabin, technology has vanquished this last of the old-time filmmakers.

Those familiar with Benning’s landscape films will be comforted by RR‘s fixed camera and continental scope, but the film marks something of a crucial advance. As opposed to the awesome 13 Lakes (2006) — 13 individual lakes, each shot lasting the full 10 minutes of the 16mm cartridge — RR finds Benning adopting another structural principle: the signified (the train) takes over from the signifier (the camera).

Every shot is mesmerizing, yet the film builds, acquiring a cumulative power, as the simplicity of structure gives way to infinite experiences. To some, trains invoke nostalgia; to younger viewers, classical antiquity. To trainspotters, well, RR is Valhalla. And just as Benning’s California Trilogy (2000–01) concerns work and water, RR becomes a film "about" American overconsumption. Benning lets what’s on screen tell the story, with the tumultuous history of railroads and western development only alluded to by songs and words on the soundtrack. Filmed and recorded, as always, by a one-man band, all of its shots captured without permissions or permits, maybe RR is a pirate movie.

SFBG How far back does RR‘s genesis go? Were you into railroads as a kid?

JAMES BENNING Yeah, I like trains a lot. When I was a kid I had a little model train, an American Flyer. When I was a teenager we used to play in the train yards in Milwaukee, and that was fun, because we weren’t supposed to go there. We’d hop on slow freight trains and ride them for like a mile, and then jump off.

SFBG When you started making RR, was there a specific plan? Did you know the exact locations where you wanted to shoot?

JB I was pretty familiar with the major US lines. When I drive from Wisconsin to California, I pass by the lines that run through the Midwest. I know the lines that go up and down the [east] coast from New York to Washington. Other lines I knew through research, by getting a good railroad atlas. I wanted to film according to landscapes, too. I knew I wanted to do a shot across Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, and a shot in Mississippi of a train going through the kudzu growth, and [a shot of] this famous park called the Rat Hole in Kentucky. I also used a Web site [www.railpictures.net] that says it has "the best railroad pictures on the Net." It has thousands of still photos by railroad fans.

SFBG Is it accurate to call RR a landscape film?

JB The initial idea was to use railroads to define landscape because they can only go up a 2 percent grade. But as it became apparent to me that the film was going to be about trains more than landscapes, I learned more about different kinds of engines. The second shot is of the only piggyback train — where you take semi trucks and load them onto cars — in the film. Later there’s a RoadRailer, the train that looks like a long white snake. I shot that in the Rat Hole, an area that used to be all tunnels. I was shooting from above, which was the best vantage point [from which] to film it.

For me, the film came to be about consumerism and overconsumption — I could feel the weight of the goods going by me. Especially the oil and automobiles, as I saw a lot of tanker cars and auto trains. They pass each other constantly.

SFBG The mathematical nature of RR is impressive. One comes to realize the number of variables at play — the size and expanse of the train, the number of cars, the colors, the speed, the landscape, the angle where the train comes into the frame and where it leaves. All of these factors pile up.

JB It’s the way I always work: I’ll set up a problem for myself. I basically collaborate with the train in that it’s going to suggest the length of the shot. I thought I could vary the distance the camera was from the train, vary the angle that the train approaches from, and change these angles from shot to shot to build rhythms. The variables make it possible to take this idea that is confining and make it grow. The same thing happens with earlier films like 13 Lakes, where I set up an idea — to shoot a lake with the same amount of sky and water — and the problem is how to show the uniqueness of the lake.

SFBG RR must have been a very different experience from shooting 13 Lakes.

JB That’s true, because in shooting 13 Lakes, I was waiting for the best moment to turn the camera on. In RR, I’m waiting for the train, and hopefully it will correspond with the best moment to turn on the camera.

SFBG One is more your choice, and the other is the train’s choice.

JB Yeah, I enter into this collaboration with the train. It’s going to choose the moment. Of course if I am on a line that has five trains an hour, then I can choose the time of the day. But if I’m at a line that has one train a week, then I’m at the mercy of the train. The one place I shot like that was at the causeway that crosses the spillway outside of Lake Pontchartrain — the Kansas Line. That train comes by once a week. I waited all day, and that train came by at 4 in the afternoon, on a day [when] it was 110 degrees with 100 percent humidity.

SFBG Is everything in RR there as you found it? That last shot with the tires strewn by the tracks seems too good to be true.

JB Yeah, it’s outside of Palm Springs. In the film that Reinhard Wulf made about me [James Benning: Circling the Image (2003)], we stop at the same wind farm. On the soundtrack I talk about going back to places I’ve filmed and seeing how the places change. That area is just littered with stuff, so it wasn’t hard to find a good frame with tires.

SFBG When I saw RR, the audience gasped at that final shot, like they do at the mirrored image of Crater Lake in Oregon in 13 Lakes. It isn’t comparable in beauty. But there is perfection to the composition: the colors of the train match up with the landscape, the blue of the sky and the white of the windmills.

JB The other thing is that as the train gets slower and eventually stops, the sound of the train gives way to the sound of the windmills. There is this slow dissolve between train noise and wind energy that somewhat suggests an alternative way of living, a cleaner energy. After [one] screening, an interviewer said that he found it to be hopeful, but I find it kind of ironic, as it seems too late. The tires lying there like the death of the automobile — the death of our culture, really — and the use of oil, all of that is in play.

SFBG The general perception of RR is that the film’s structure is precisely a function of the length of each train — the shot begins when the train enters the frame and ends when it leaves. But that’s not exactly the case.

JB Most of the time there’s an empty frame, the train enters, it leaves, and then there’s a cut. I would like to have drawn that out. For me the film is very much about time and about waiting, but I didn’t want waiting to become part of the film. I wanted you to realize through the absence of waiting that I had to wait.

SFBG Something else happens within RR. At least twice, maybe three times, there is an optical illusion. After the train leaves the frame what’s left behind seems to vibrate.

JB It happens a lot.

SFBG Were you aware that this would occur?

JB I wasn’t when I made the film, but when I started to project the work print, I was shocked. You don’t need a film to get that optical illusion — you can stand in front of a waterfall, follow the water down, then turn your head. [Likewise,] your eyes will follow the train so that when it’s gone, the effect remains and even kind of warps.

SFBG Most of the trains in the film are freight trains, there are maybe only one or two passenger trains.

JB There are two: one was a commuter train, one was a passenger train. The amount of commuter travel, at least on the West Coast, is minimal — you hardly ever see a train with people in it. Amtrak leases the right to use rails from the companies that operate the freight trains. I’ve taken most of the Amtrak train routes. They’re fun … and slow.

SFBG How long did you shoot?

JB I shot for two and a half years, probably. I had so much fun that I didn’t really want to stop. I still miss it. Sometimes I go back to those same sites and wait for trains, just to have that feeling again.

Greening away poverty

April 29, 2008

› news@sfbg.com

If the flow of venture capital is any indication, the new green economy is not just coming, it’s about to boom. There’s good reason to be excited about capitalists pouring money into saving the planet. But is it really the panacea that true believers say it is?

The idea behind "social uplift environmentalism" is that the new green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. The argument: millions of "green-collar jobs" — defined as living-wage, career-track jobs that contribute directly to improving or enhancing environmental quality — will be created as the need for green energy, transportation, and manufacturing infrastructure grows.

If green is the new black, eco-populism is the new environmentalism.

But the pesky realists out there question whether the private sector will work quickly or efficiently enough to solve crises as massive as global warming. And many Bay Area activists say they have good reason to be wary of green solutions to problems like inner-city poverty.

In early April, the San Francisco–based Center for Political Education (CPE) brought in prominent environmental and social justice activists to discuss some of these issues. One of the primary concerns about turning blue collars green has to do with doubts about job training programs, which don’t have a great track record.

"People are getting trained for nothing — for an old economy, for jobs that don’t exist," activist Oscar Grande of People Organizing for Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER) told the Guardian.

At the gathering Ian Kim, director of the Green Collar Jobs program at Oakland’s Ella Baker Center, agreed that there have been major problems in job training programs but said that this shouldn’t doom future programs to failure. "Workforce development has been on a starvation diet for the last 10 to 15 years," he said at the CPE event. "It’s easy to do job training really badly. But when done well, it can work."

In a conversation with the Guardian, Jennifer Lin, research director for the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, cited Solar Richmond as an example of a small but successful green-jobs program. Lin also acknowledged that it took a while for the first 18 trainees to find employment in solar panel installation.

Another hot topic at the CPE event concerned land use — a scorching topic in our housing-strapped city. Grande said one of the struggles PODER has taken on in the Mission District is preserving industrial lands, the breadbasket for low-income communities. San Francisco’s industrial base has eroded due to factors such as offshoring jobs and dotcom-era condo developments in areas formerly zoned for industry, he said.

One of the biggest questions raised at the CPE event concerned the limits of green capitalism: can an environmental solution be successful if it doesn’t challenge the constant-growth philosophy that created the problem?

"There is a lot of feel-good energy being put in by politicians about this really good [green jobs] program. But they’re not addressing how incredibly enormous the challenges are and the kinds of shifts — like getting all of us out of cars, providing local foods that don’t have to be shipped from thousands of miles away — that need to happen," the CPE’s Fernando Martí told the Guardian.

Kim says that while the climate crisis allows us to critique capitalism in a way that has not been possible for decades, he acknowledges that the work the Ella Baker Center is doing is within a constant-growth framework.

"While it’s important in the radical left to have conversations about capitalism and powering down, that’s not where we’re starting out with green jobs," Kim told the CPE audience.

Mateo Nube, training director for the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, suggested that both short- and long-term goals are important. "We need to build an infrastructure for the transition. We need to rebuild our food production systems in a way that actually takes care of everybody and is sustainable. From that vantage point, the idea of green jobs and a New Deal makes a lot of sense. But in that process, we have to incorporate an understanding that a constant-growth model is suicide."

Endorsements

April 29, 2008

>>Click here for the full-text version of this story

Wait, wasn’t the primary election back in February? Yes, it was — in a way. The California Legislature, in an effort to make the state more relevant (that turned out well, didn’t it?) moved the presidential primary several months earlier this year but left the rest of the primary races, and some key initiatives, for the June 3 ballot. There’s a lot at stake here: three contested Legislative races, two judicial races, a measure that could end rent control in California … vote early and often. Our endorsements follow.

National races

Congress, District 6

LYNN WOOLSEY

It’s an irony that the congressional representative from Marin and Sonoma counties is far to the left of the representative from San Francisco, but Lynn Woolsey’s politics put Nancy Pelosi to shame. Woolsey was against the Iraq war from the start and the first member of Congress to demand that the troops come home, and she continues to speak out on the issue. At the same time, she’s also a strong advocate for injured veterans.

Woolsey, who once upon a time (many years ago) was on welfare herself, hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to have trouble making ends meet. She’s a leading voice against cuts in social service spending and is now pushing a bill to increase food stamp benefits. She richly deserves reelection.

Congress, District 7

GEORGE MILLER

George Miller, who has represented this East Bay district since 1974, is an effective legislator and strong environmentalist. Sometimes he’s too willing to compromise — he worked with the George W. Bush administration on No Child Left Behind, a disaster of an education bill — but he’s a solid opponent of the war and we’ll endorse him for another term.

Congress, District 8

NO ENDORSEMENT

Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist, is moving forward with her campaign to challenge Nancy Pelosi as an independent candidate in November, and we wish her luck. For now, Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and one of the most powerful people in Washington, will easily win the Democratic primary.

But Pelosi long ago stopped representing her San Francisco district. She continues to support full funding for Bush’s war, refused to even consider impeachment (back when it might have made sense), refused to interact with war critics who camped out in front of her house … and still won’t acknowledge it was a mistake to privatize the Presidio. We can’t endorse her.

Congress, District 13

PETE STARK

You have to love Pete Stark. The older he gets, the more radical he sounds — and after 32 years representing this East Bay district, he shows no signs of slowing down. Stark is unwilling to be polite or accommodating about the Iraq war. In 2007 he announced on the floor of the House that the Republicans "don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement." He happily signed on to a measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. He is the only member of Congress who proudly admits being an atheist. It’s hard to imagine how someone like Stark could get elected today. But we’re glad he’s around.

Nonpartisan offices

Superior Court, Seat 12

GERARDO SANDOVAL

There aren’t many former public defenders on the bench in California. For years, governors — both Democratic and Republican — have leaned toward prosecutors and civil lawyers from big downtown firms when they’ve made judicial appointments. So the San Francisco judiciary isn’t, generally speaking, as progressive or diverse as the city.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who will be termed out this year, is looking to become a judge — and there’s no way this governor would ever appoint him. So he’s doing something that’s fairly rare, even in this town: he’s running for election against an incumbent.

We’re happy to see that. It’s heartening to see an actual judicial election. Judges are technically elected officials, but most incumbents retire in the middle of their terms, allowing the governor to appoint their replacements, and unless someone files to run against a sitting judge, his or her name doesn’t even appear on the ballot.

Sandoval is challenging Judge Thomas Mellon, a Republican who was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994. He’s not known as a star on the bench: according to California Courts and Judges, a legal journal that profiles judges and includes interviews with lawyers who have appeared before them, Mellon has a reputation for being unreasonable and cantankerous. In 2000, the San Francisco Public Defenders Office sought to have him removed from all criminal cases because of what the defense lawyers saw as a bias against them and their clients.

Sandoval hasn’t been a perfect supervisor, and we’ve disagreed with him on a number of key issues. But he’s promised us to work for more openness in the courts (including open meetings on court administration), and we’ll give him our endorsement.

State races and propositions

State Senate, District 3

MARK LENO

It doesn’t get any tougher than this — two strong candidates, each with tremendous appeal and a few serious weaknesses. Two San Francisco progressives with distinguished records fighting for a powerful seat that could possibly be lost to a third candidate, a moderate from Marin County who would be terrible in the job. Two people we genuinely like, for very different reasons. It’s fair to say that this is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make in the 42-year history of the Guardian.

In the end, we’ve decided — with much enthusiasm and some reservations — to endorse Assemblymember Mark Leno.

We will start with the obvious: this race is the result of term limits. Leno, who has served in the state Assembly for six years, argues, convincingly, that he is challenging incumbent state Sen. Carole Migden because he feels she hasn’t been doing the job. But Leno also loves politics, has no desire to return to life outside the spotlight, and if he could have stayed in the Assembly, the odds that he would have taken on this ugly and difficult race are slim. And if Leno hadn’t opened the door and exposed Migden’s vulnerability, there’s no way former Assemblymember Joe Nation of Marin would have thrown his hat into the ring. We’ve always opposed term limits; we still do.

That said, we’ll hold a few truths to be self-evident: In a one-party town, the only way any incumbent is ever held accountable is through a primary challenge. Those challenges can be unpleasant, and some — including Migden and many of her allies — argue that they’re a waste of precious resources. If Migden wasn’t scrambling to hold onto her seat, she’d be spending her money and political capital trying to elect more Democrats to the state Legislature. But Leno had every right to take on Migden. And win or lose, he has done a laudable public service: it’s been years since we’ve seen Migden around town, talking to constituents, returning phone calls and pushing local issues the way she has in the past few months. And while there will be some anger and bitterness when this is over — and some friends and political allies have been at each other’s throats and will have to figure out how to put that behind them — on balance this has been good for San Francisco. Migden has done much good, much to be proud of, but she had also become somewhat imperious and arrogant, a politician who hadn’t faced a serious election in more than a decade. If this election serves as a reminder to every powerful Democratic legislator that no seat is truly safe (are you listening, Nancy Pelosi?), then the result of what now seems like a political bloodbath can be only positive.

The Third Senate District, a large geographic area that stretches from San Francisco north into Sonoma County, needs an effective, progressive legislator who can promote issues and programs in a body that is not known as a bastion of liberal thought.

Both Migden and Leno can make a strong case on that front. Leno, for example, managed to get passed and signed into law a bill that amends the notorious pro-landlord Ellis Act to protect seniors and disabled people from evictions. He got both houses of the Legislature to approve a marriage-equality bill — twice. During his tenure in the unpleasant job of chairing the Public Safety Committee, he managed to kill a long list of horrible right-wing bills and was one of the few legislators to take a stand against the foolish measure that barred registered sex offenders from living near a park or school. Migden helped pass the landmark community-aggregation bill that allows cities to take a big step toward public power. She’s also passed several key bills to regulate or ban toxic substances in consumer products.

Migden’s record isn’t all positive, though. For a time, she was the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee — although she gave up that post in 2006, abandoning a job that was important to her district and constituents, to devote more time to campaigning for Steve Westly, a moderate candidate for governor. When we challenged her on that move, she showed her legendary temper, attacking at least one Guardian editor personally and refusing to address the issue at hand. Unfortunately, that isn’t unusual behavior.

Then there’s the matter of ethics and campaign finance laws. The Fair Political Practices Commission has fined Migden $350,000 — the largest penalty ever assessed against a state lawmaker — for 89 violations of campaign finance laws. We take that seriously; the Guardian has always strongly supported ethics and campaign-finance laws, and this level of disregard for the rules raises serious doubts for us about Migden’s credibility.

Sup. Chris Daly posted an open letter to us on his blog last week, and he made a strong pitch for Migden: "While there are only a few differences between Carole and Mark Leno on the issues," he wrote, "when it comes to San Francisco politics, the two are in warring political factions. Carole has used her position in Sacramento consistently to help progressive candidates and causes in San Francisco, while Leno is a kinder, gentler Gavin Newsom."

He’s absolutely right. On the local issues we care about, Migden has been with us far more than Leno. When the public power movement needed money and support in 2002, Migden was there for us. When the University of California and a private developer were trying to turn the old UC Extension campus into luxury housing, Migden was the one who helped Sup. Ross Mirkarimi demand more affordable units. Migden was the one who helped prevent a bad development plan on the Port. Migden stood with the progressives in denouncing Newsom’s budget — and Leno stood with the mayor.

The district supervisorial battles this fall will be crucial to the city’s future, and Migden has already endorsed Eric Mar, the best progressive candidate for District 1, and will almost certainly be with John Avalos, the leading progressive in District 11. Leno may well back a Newsom moderate. In fact, he’s made himself a part of what labor activist Robert Haaland aptly calls the "squishy center" in San Francisco, the realm of the weak, the fearful, and the downtown sycophants who refuse to promote progressive taxes, regulations, and budgets at City Hall. His allegiance to Newsom is truly disturbing.

There’s a war for the soul of San Francisco today, as there has been for many years, and Leno has often tried to straddle the battle lines, sometimes leaning a bit to the wrong camp — and never showing the courage to fight at home for the issues he talks about in Sacramento. We’ll stipulate to that — and the only reason we can put it aside for the purposes of this endorsement is that Leno has never really had much in the way of coattails. He supports the wrong candidates, but he doesn’t do much for them — and we sincerely hope it stays that way.

While Leno is too close to Newsom, we will note that Migden is far too close to Gap founder and Republican leader Don Fisher, one of the most evil players in local politics. She proudly pushed to put Fisher — who supports privatizing public schools — on the state Board of Education.

A prominent local progressive, who we won’t identify by name, called us several months ago to ask how were going to come down in this race, and when we confessed indecision, he said: "You know, I really want to support Carole. But she makes it so hard."

We find ourselves in a similar position. We really wanted to support Migden in this race. We’d prefer to see the state senator from San Francisco using her fundraising ability and influence to promote the candidates and causes we care about.

But Migden has serious political problems right now, baggage we can’t ignore — and it’s all of her own making. Migden says her problems with the Fair Political Practices Commission are little more than technical mistakes — but that’s nonsense. She’s played fast and loose with campaign money for years. When it comes to campaign finance laws, Migden has always acted as if she rules don’t apply to her. She’s treated FPPC fines as little more than a cost of doing business. This latest scandal isn’t an exception; it’s the rule.

Unfortunately, it’s left her in a position where she’s going to have a hard time winning. Today, the election looks like a two-person race between Leno and Nation. And the threat of Joe Nation winning this primary is too great for us to mess around.

Despite our criticism of both candidates, we would be happy with either in the state Senate. We’re taking a chance with Leno; he’s shown some movement toward the progressive camp, and he needs to continue that. If he wins, he will have a huge job to do bringing a fractured queer and progressive community back together — and the way to do that is not by simply going along with everything Newsom wants. Leno has to show some of the same courage at home he’s shown in Sacramento.

But right now, today, we’ve endorsing Mark Leno for state Senate.

State Senate, District 9

LONI HANCOCK

This is another of several tough calls, another creature of term limits that pit two accomplished and experienced termed-out progressive assembly members against each other for the senate seat of termed-out Don Perata. We’ve supported both Loni Hancock and Wilma Chan in the past, and we like both of them. In this one, on balance, we’re going with Hancock.

Hancock has a lifetime of experience in progressive politics. She was elected to the Berkeley City Council in 1971, served two terms as Berkeley mayor, worked as the US Department of Education’s western regional director under Bill Clinton, and has been in the State Assembly the past six years. On just about every progressive issue in the state, she’s been an activist and a leader. And at a time when the state is facing a devastating, crippling budget crisis that makes every other issue seem unimportant, Hancock seems to have a clear grasp of the problem and how to address it. She’s thought through the budget calculus and offers a range of new revenue measures and a program to change the rules for budget passage (two-thirds vote in the legislature is needed to pass any budget bill, which gives Republicans, all but one who has taken a Grover Norquist–inspired pledge never to raise taxes, an effective veto).

Chan, who represented Oakland in the assembly for six years, is a fighter: she’s taken on the insurance industry (by cosponsoring a major single-payer health insurance bill), the chemical industry (by pushing to ban toxic materials in furniture, toys, and plumbing fixtures), and the alcoholic-beverages lobby (by seeking taxes to pay for treatment for young alcoholics). She’s an advocate of sunshine, not just in government, where she’s calling for an earlier and more open budget process, but also in the private sector: a Chan bill sought to force health insurance companies to make public the figures on how often they decline claims.

But she seems to us to have less of a grasp of the budget crisis and the level of political organizing it will take to solve it. Right now, at a time of financial crisis, we’re going with Hancock’s experience and broader vision.

State Assembly, District 12

FIONA MA

We were dubious about Ma. She was a pretty bad supervisor, and when she first ran for Assembly two years ago, we endorsed her opponent. But Ma’s done some good things in Sacramento — she’s become one of the leading supporters of high-speed rail, and she’s working against state Sen. Leland Yee’s attempt to give away 60 acres of public land around the Cow Palace to a private developer. She has no primary opponent, and we’ll endorse her for another term.

State Assembly, District 13

TOM AMMIANO

This one’s easy. Ammiano, who has been a progressive stalwart on the Board of Supervisors for more than 15 years, is running with no opposition in the Democratic primary for state Assembly, and we’re proud to endorse his bid.

Although he’s certain to win, it’s worth taking a moment to recall the extent of Ammiano’s service to San Francisco and the progressive movement. He authored the city’s domestic partners law. He authored the living wage law. He created the universal health care program that Mayor Newsom is trying to take credit for. He sponsored the 2002 public-power measure that would have won if the election hadn’t been stolen. He created the Children’s Fund. He authored the Rainy Day Fund law that is now saving the public schools in San Francisco. And the list goes on and on.

Beyond his legislative accomplishments, Ammiano has been a leader — at times, the leader — of the city’s progressive movement and is at least in part responsible for the progressive majority now on the Board of Supervisors. In the bleak days before district elections, he was often the only supervisor who would carry progressive bills. His 1999 mayoral challenge to incumbent Willie Brown marked a tectonic shift in local politics, galvanizing the left and leading the way to the district-election victories that brought Aaron Peskin, Matt Gonzalez, Jake McGoldrick, Chris Daly, and Gerardo Sandoval to office in 2000.

It’s hard to imagine the San Francisco left without him.

Ammiano will do a fine job in Sacramento, and will continue to use his influence to push the progressive agenda back home.

State Assembly, District 14

KRISS WORTHINGTON

This is another tough one. The race to replace Loni Hancock, one of the most progressive and effective legislators in the state, has drawn two solid, experienced, and well-qualified candidates: Berkeley City Council member Kriss Worthington and former council member Nancy Skinner. We like Skinner, and she would make an excellent assemblymember. But all things considered, we’re going with Worthington.

Skinner was on the Berkeley council from 1984 to 1992 and was part of a progressive majority in the 1980s that redefined how the left could run a city. That council promoted some of the best tenant protection and rent control laws in history, created some of the best local environmental initiatives, and fought to build affordable housing and fund human services. Skinner was responsible for the first local law in the United States to ban Styrofoam containers — a measure that caused McDonald’s to change its food-packaging policies nationwide. She went on to found a nonprofit that helps cities establish sustainable environmental policies.

Skinner told us that California has "gutted our commitment to education," and she vowed to look for creative new ways to raise revenue to pay for better schools. She’s in touch with the best economic thinkers in Sacramento, has the endorsement of Hancock (and much of the rest of the East Bay Democratic Party establishment), and would hit the ground running in the legislature.

Worthington, Berkeley’s only openly gay council member, has been the voice and conscience of the city’s progressive community for the past decade. He’s also been one of the hardest-working politicians in the city — a recent study by a group of UC Berkeley students found that he had written more city council measures than anyone else currently on the council and had won approval for 98 percent of them.

Worthington has been the driving force for a more effective sunshine law in Berkeley, and has been unafraid to challenge the liberal mayor, Tom Bates, and other leading Democrats. His campaign slogan — "a Democrat with a backbone" — has infuriated some of the party hierarchy with its clear (and intended) implication that a lot of other Democrats lack a spine.

"All of the Democrats in the assembly voted for 50,000 more prison beds," he told us. "We needed a Barbara Lee [who cast Congress’ lone vote against George W. Bush’s first war resolution] to stand up and say, ‘this is wrong and I won’t go along.’"

That’s one of the things we like best about Worthington: on just about every issue and front, he’s willing to push the envelope and demand that other Democrats, even other progressive Democrats, stand up and be counted. Which is exactly what we expect from someone who represents one of the most progressive districts in the state.

It’s a close call, but on this one, we’re supporting Kriss Worthington.

State ballot measures

Proposition 98

Abolition of rent control

NO, NO, NO

Proposition 99

Eminent domain reforms

YES, YES, YES

There’s a little rhyme to help you remember which way to vote on this critical pair of ballot measures:

"We hate 98, but 99 is fine."

The issue here is eminent domain, which is making its perennial ballot appearance. Californians don’t like the idea of the government seizing their property and handing it over to private developers, and the most conservative right-wing forces in the state are trying to take advantage of that.

Think about this: if Prop. 98 passes, there will be no more rent control in California. That means thousands of San Francisco tenants will lose their homes. Many could become homeless. Others will have to leave town. All the unlawful-evictions laws will be tossed out. So will virtually any land-use regulations, which is why all the environmental groups also oppose Prop. 98.

In fact, everyone except the Howard Jarvis anti-tax group hates this measure, including seniors, farmers, water districts, unions, and — believe it or not — the California Chamber of Commerce.

Prop. 99, on the other hand, is an unapologetic poison-pill measure that’s been put on the ballot for two reasons: to fix the eminent domain law once and for all, and kill Prop. 98 if it passes. It’s simply worded and goes to the heart of the problem by preventing government agencies from seizing residential property to turn over to private developers. If it passes, the state will finally get beyond the bad guys using the cloak of eminent domain to destroy all the provisions protecting people and the environment.

If anyone has any doubts about the motivation here, take a look at the money: the $3 million to support Prop. 98 came almost entirely from landlords.

This is the single most important issue on the ballot. Remember: no on 98, yes on 99.

San Francisco measures

Proposition A

School parcel tax

YES, YES, YES

Every year, hundreds of excellent teachers leave the San Francisco Unified School District. Some retire after a career in the classroom, but too many others — young teachers with three to five years of experience — bail because they decide they can’t make enough money. San Francisco pays less than public school districts in San Mateo and Marin counties and far less than private and charter schools. And given the high cost of living in the city, a lot of qualified people never even consider teaching as a profession. That harms the public school system and the 58,000 students who rely on it.

It’s a statewide problem, even a national one — but San Francisco, with a remarkable civic unity, is moving to do something about it. Proposition A would place an annual tax on every parcel of land in the city; the typical homeowner would pay less than $200 a year. The money would go directly to increasing pay — mostly starting pay — for teachers. The proposition, which has the support of almost everyone in town except the Republican Party, is properly targeted toward the newer teachers, with the goal of keeping the best teachers on the job past that critical three to five years.

Parcel taxes aren’t perfect; they force homeowners and small businesses to pay the same rate as huge commercial property owners. The way land is divided in the city most big downtown properties sit on at least five, and sometimes as many as 10 or 20 parcels, so the bill will be larger for them. But it’s still nowhere near proportionate.

Still, Prop. 13 has made it almost impossible to raise ad valorum property taxes (based on a property’s assessed value) in the state, and communities all around the Bay are using parcel taxes as a reasonable if imperfect substitute.

There’s a strong campaign for Prop. A and not much in the way of organized opposition, but the measure still needs a two-thirds vote. So for the sake of public education in San Francisco, it’s critical to vote yes.

Proposition B

City retiree benefits change

YES

San Francisco has always offered generous health and retirement benefits to its employees. That’s a good thing. But in this unfortunate era, when federal money is getting sucked into Iraq, state money is going down the giant deficit rat hole, and nobody is willing to raise taxes, the bill for San Francisco’s expensive employee benefit programs is now looking to create a fiscal crisis at City Hall. Officials estimate the payout for current and past employees could total $4 billion over the next 30 years.

So Sup. Sean Elsbernd and his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors have engineered this smart compromise measure in a way that saves the city money over the long run and has the support of labor unions (largely because it includes an increase in the pensions for longtime employees, partially offset by a one-year wage freeze starting in 2009) while still offering reasonable retirements benefits for new employees.

Previously, city employees who worked just five years could get taxpayer-paid health benefits for life. Under this measure, it will take 20 years to get fully paid health benefits, with partially paid benefits after 10 years.

It’s rare to find an issue that has the support of virtually everyone, from the supervisors and the mayor to labor. Prop. B makes sense. Vote yes.

Proposition C

Benefit denials for convicts

NO

On the surface, it’s hard to argue against Prop. C, a measure promoted as a way to keep crooks from collecting city retirement benefits. Sup. Sean Elsbernd’s ballot measure would update an ordinance that’s been on the books in San Francisco for years, one that strips public employees found guilty of "crimes of moral turpitude" against the city of their pensions. A recent court case involving a worker who stole from the city raised doubt about whether that law also applied to disability pay, and Prop. C would clear up that possible loophole.

But there are drawbacks this measure.

For starters, the problem isn’t that big: cases of rejected retirement benefits for city workers are rare. And the law still uses that questionable phrase "moral turpitude" — poorly defined in state law, never clearly defined in this measure, and as any older gay person can tell you, in the past applied to conduct that has nothing to do with honesty. The US State Department considers "bastardy," "lewdness," "mailing an obscene letter" and "desertion from the armed forces," among other things, to be crimes of moral turpitude.

Besides, Prop. C would apply not only to felonies but to misdemeanors. Cutting off disability pay for life over a misdemeanor offense seems awfully harsh.

The law that Elsbernd wants to expand ought to be rethought and reconfigured for the modern era. So vote no on C.

Proposition D

Appointments to city commissions

YES

Prop. D is a policy statement urging the mayor and the supervisors to appoint more women, minorities, and people with disabilities to city boards and commissions. It follows a study by the Commission on the Status of Women that such individuals are underrepresented on the policy bodies that run many city operations.

Despite the overblown concerns raised by local Republicans in the ballot arguments, this advisory measure would do nothing to interfere with qualified white males — or anyone else — getting slots on commissions.

Vote yes.

Proposition E

Board approval of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission appointees

YES

"The last thing we need is more politics at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission," was the first line in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ballot argument against Prop. E. That’s ironic: it was Newsom’s recent political power play — including the unexplained ousting of SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal and the partially successful effort to reappoint his political allies to this important body — that prompted this long overdue reform.

The SFPUC is arguably the most powerful and important of the city commissions, controlling all the vital resources city residents need: water, power, and waste disposal chief among them. Yet with the mayor controlling all appointments to the commission (it takes a two-thirds vote of the Board of Supervisors to challenge an appointment), that panel has long been stacked with worthless political hacks. As a result, the panel never pursued progressive approaches to conservation, environmental justice, public power, or aggressive development of renewable power sources.

Prop. E attempts to break that political stranglehold by requiring majority confirmation by the Board of Supervisors for all SFPUC appointments. It also mandates that appointees have some experience or expertise in matters important to the SFPUC.

If anything, this reform is too mild: we would have preferred that the board have the authority to name some of the commissioners. But that seemed unlikely to pass, so the board settled for a modest attempt to bring some oversight to the powerful panel.

Vote yes on Prop. E — because the last thing we need is more politics at the SFPUC.

Proposition F

Hunters Point-Bayview redevelopment

YES

Proposition G

NO

On the face of it, Proposition G sounds like a great way to restart the long-idle economic engine of the Bayview and clean up the heavily polluted Hunters Point Shipyard.

Who could be against a plan that promises up to 10,000 new homes, 300 acres of new parks, 8,000 permanent jobs, a green tech research park, a new 49ers stadium, a permanent home for shipyard artists, and a rebuild of Alice Griffith housing project?

The problem with Prop. G is that its promises are, for the most part, just that: promises — which could well shift at any time, driven by the bottom line of Lennar Corp., a financially stressed, out-of-state developer that has already broken trust with the Bayview’s low-income and predominantly African American community.

Lennar has yet to settle with the Bay Area air quality district over failures to control asbestos dust at a 1,500-unit condo complex on the shipyard, where for months the developer kicked up clouds of unmonitored toxic asbestos dust next to a K-12 school.

So, the idea of giving this corporation more land — including control of the cleanup of a federal Superfund site — as part of a plan that also allows it to construct a bridge over a slough restoration project doesn’t sit well with community and environmental groups. And Prop. G’s promise to build "as many as 25 percent affordable" housing units doesn’t impress affordable housing activists.

What Prop. G really means is that Lennar, which has already reneged on promises to create much-needed rental units at the shipyard, now plans to build at least 75 percent of its housing on this 770-acre waterfront swathe as luxury condos.

And with the subprime mortgage crisis continuing to roil the nation, there is a real fear that Prop. G’s final "affordability" percentage will be set by Lennar’s profit margins and not the demographics of the Bayview, home to the city’s last major African American community and many low-income people of color.

There’s more: The nice green space that you see in the slick Lennar campaign fliers is toxic and may not be fully cleaned up. Under the plan, Lennar would put condo towers on what is now state parkland, and in exchange the city would get some open space with artificial turf on top that would be used for parking during football games. Assuming, that is, that a deal to build a new stadium for the 49ers — which is part of all of this — ever comes to pass.

In fact, the lion’s share of a recent $82 million federal funding allocation will be dedicated to cleaning up the 27-acre footprint proposed for a new stadium. In some places, the city is planning to cap contaminated areas, rather than excavate and remove toxins from the site.

If the environmental justice and gentrification questions swirling around Prop. G weren’t enough, there remains Prop. G’s claim that it will create 8,000 permanent jobs once the project is completed. There’s no doubt that the construction of 10,000 mostly luxury homes will create temporary construction jobs, but it’s not clear what kind of jobs the resulting gentrified neighborhood will provide and for whom.

But one thing is clear: the $1 million that Lennar has already plunked down to influence this election has overwhelmingly gone to line the pockets of the city’s already highly paid political elite, and not the people who grew up and still live in the Bayview.

But there’s an alternative.

Launched as a last-ditch effort to prevent wholesale gentrification of the Bayview, Proposition F requires that 50 percent of the housing in the BVHP/Candlestick Point project be affordable to those making less than the median area income ($68,000 for a family of four).

That’s a reasonable mandate, considering that the city’s own general plan calls for two-thirds of all new housing to be sold or rented at below-market rates.

And if the new housing is built along Lennar’s plans, it will be impossible to avoid large-scale gentrification and displacement in a neighborhood that has the highest percentage of African Americans in the city, the third highest population of children, and burgeoning Latino and Asian immigrant populations.

Lennar is balking at that level, saying a 50-percent affordability mandate would make the project financially unfeasible. But if Lennar can’t afford to develop this area at levels affordable to the community that lives in and around the area, the city should scrap this redevelopment plan, send this developer packing, and start over again.

San Francisco has an affordable housing crisis, and we continue to doubt whether the city needs any more million-dollar condos — and we certainly don’t need them in a redevelopment area in the southeast. Remember: this is 700 acres of prime waterfront property that Lennar will be getting for free. The deal on the table just isn’t good enough.

Vote yes on F and no on G.

Proposition H

Campaign committees

NO

This one sounds just fine. Promoted by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Proposition H is supposedly aimed at ensuring that elected officials don’t solicit money from city contractors for campaigns they are sponsoring. But it lacks a crucial legal definition — and that turns what ought to be a worthy measure into little more than an attack on Newsom’s foes on the Board of Supervisors.

The key element is something called a "controlled committee." It’s already illegal for city contractors to give directly to candidates who might later vote on their contracts. Prop. H would extend that ban to committees, typically run for or against ballot measures, that are under the control of an individual politician.

Take this one, for example. Since Newsom put this on the ballot, and will be campaigning for it, the Yes on H campaign is under his control — he would be barred from collecting cash from city contractors, right? Well, no.

See, the measure doesn’t define what "controlled committee" means. So a group of Newsom’s allies could set up a Yes on H fund, raise big money from city contractors, then simply say that Newsom wasn’t officially aware of it or involved in its operation.

When Newsom first ran for mayor, the committee supporting his signature initiative — Care Not Cash — raised a fortune, and the money directly helped his election. But that wasn’t legally a "controlled committee" — because Newsom never signed the documents saying he was in control.

Prop. H does nothing to change that rule, which means it would only affect campaign committees that a politician admits to controlling. And guess what? Newsom almost never admits that, while the supervisors, particularly board president Aaron Peskin, are a bit more honest.

When Newsom wants to clearly define "controlled committee" — in a way that would have brought the Care Not Cash effort under the law — we’ll go along with it. For now, though, vote no on H.

San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee

The DCCC is the policy-making and operating arm of the local Democratic Party, and it has a lot of influence: the party can endorse in nonpartisan elections — for San Francisco supervisor, for example — and its nod gives candidates credibility and money. There’s been a struggle between the progressives and the moderates for years — and this time around, there’s a serious, concerted effort for a progressive slate. The Hope Slate, which we endorse in its entirety, has the potential to turn the San Francisco Democratic Party into a leading voice for progressive values.

There are other good candidates running, but since this group will have consistent support and is running as a slate, we’re going with the full crew.

13th Assembly District

Bill Barnes, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Michael Goldstein, Robert Haaland, Joe Julian, Rafael Mandelman, Aaron Peskin, Eric Quezada, Laura Spanjian, Debra Walker

12th Assembly District

Michael Bornstein, Emily Drennen, Hene Kelly, Eric Mar, Jake McGoldrick, Trevor McNeil, Jane Morrison, Melanie Nutter, Connie O’Connor, Giselle Quezada, Arlo Hale Smith

Alameda County races

Superior Court judge, Seat 21

VICTORIA KOLAKOWSKI

There are two good candidates running for this open seat. Dennis Hayashi, a public-interest lawyer, would make a fine judge. Victoria Kolakowski would make history.

Kolakowski, who works as an administrative law judge for the California Public Utilities Commission, would be the first transgender person on the Alameda bench and, quite possibly, in the entire country. That would be a major breakthrough and important for more than just symbolic reasons: transpeople have extensive interactions with the judicial system, starting with the work to legally change their names; and, all too often, members of this marginalized community wind up in the criminal justice system. Having a sitting TG judge would go a long way toward educating the legal world about the importance of trans sensitivity.

Kolakowski is eminently qualified for the job: as a private intellectual property lawyer and later an ALJ at the CPUC, she’s handled a range of complex legal issues. She currently oversees administrative hearings that are very similar to court proceedings, and she has a calm and fair judicial temperament.

That’s not to denigrate Hayashi, who also has an impressive résumé. He’s spend much of his life in public-interest law, working for many years with the Asian Law Caucus, and he was co-counsel in the historic case that challenged Fred Korematsu’s conviction for refusing to report to a Japanese internment camp during World War II. He’s run the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing and was a civil rights lawyer in the Clinton administration.

We’d be happy to see either on the bench, but we’re going to endorse Kolakowski.

Board of Supervisors, District 5

KEITH CARSON

Keith Carson, the leading progressive on the board, has no real opposition this time around. He’s been a voice for protecting the fragile social safety net of the county, and we’re happy to endorse him for another term.

Oakland races

City Attorney

JOHN RUSSO

John Russo, who has made no secrets of his political ambition, failed in a bid to win the State Assembly seat for District 16 in 2006, and now he’s running unopposed for reelection. Russo has voiced some pretty ridiculous sentiments: he told a magazine for landlords in May 2006 that he opposed all forms of rent control and was against laws requiring just cause for evictions. That’s a horrible stand for a city attorney to take in a city with a huge population of renters. But Russo is smart and capable, and he’s one of the few city attorneys who consistently supports sunshine laws. We’ll endorse him for another term.

City Council, District 1

JANE BRUNNER

An attorney and former teacher, Jane Brunner spends a lot of time pushing for more cops; crime is the top issue in the North Oakland district she represents. And while we’d rather see anticrime approaches that go beyond hiring more officers, we appreciate that Brunner takes on the police department over its hiring failures. We also find her far more preferable on the issue than her opponent, Patrick McCullough, a longtime neighborhood activist who has become something of a celebrity since he shot a teenager who was hassling him in front of his house in 2005.

Brunner is one of the council’s strongest affordable housing advocates and has worked tirelessly for an inclusionary housing law. She deserves reelection.

City Council, District 3

NANCY NADEL

Nadel is hardworking, effective, a leader on progressive economic and planning issues, and one of the best members of the Oakland City Council. She asked the hard questions and demanded improvements in the giant Oak to Ninth project (although she wound up voting for it). She’s pushing for better community policing and promoting community-based anticrime efforts, including a teen center in a part of her district where there have been several homicides. She was a principal architect of the West Oakland industrial zoning plan, which she hopes will attract new jobs to the community (although she also pissed off a few artists who fear they’ll be evicted from living spaces that aren’t up to code, and she needs to address the problem). We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

City Council, District 5

MARIO JUAREZ

Somebody has to try to oust Ignacio De La Fuente, and this time around, Juarez is the best bet. A small-businessperson (he runs a real-estate operation with around 60 employees), he has some surprisingly progressive positions: he not only supports inclusionary housing but told us that he wanted to see the percentage of affordable units increased from 15 to 25 percent. He wants to see community policing integrated fully into Oakland law enforcement. He suggested that Oakland look into putting a modest fee on all airport users to fund local education. And he’s in favor of stronger eviction controls and tenant protections.

De La Fuente, the City Council president, has been the developers’ best friend, has run meetings with a harsh hand, often cutting off debate and silencing community activists, and needs to be defeated. We know Juarez isn’t perfect, but his progressive grassroots-based campaign was strong enough to get him the nod of both the Democratic Party and the Alameda County Greens. We’ll endorse him, too.

City Council, District 7

CLIFFORD GILMORE

Neither of the candidates in this race are terribly impressive, but incumbent Larry Reid has been so terrible on so many issues (supporting big-box development, inviting the Marines to do war games in Oakland, supporting condo conversions, etc.) that it’s hard to imagine how Clifford Gilmore, director of the Oakland Coalition of Congregations, could be worse.

City Council, at large

REBECCA KAPLAN

Rebecca Kaplan is exactly what the Oakland City Council needs: an energetic progressive with the practical skills to get things done. As an AC Transit Board member, she pushed for free bus passes for low income youths — and defying all odds, managed to get all-night transit service from San Francisco to the East Bay. She did it by refusing to accept the conventional wisdom that transit agencies on the two sides of the bay would never cooperate. She put the key players together in a meeting, convinced the San Francisco supervisors to allow AC Transit buses to pick up passengers in the city late at night, and put through an effective program to get people across the bay after BART shuts down.

Kaplan is running for City Council on a progressive platform calling for affordable housing, rational development, and community policing. Her latest idea: since Oakland has so much trouble attracting quality candidates for vacancies in its police department, she suggests the city recruit gay and lesbian military veterans who were kicked out under the Pentagon’s homophobic policies. Her proposed slogan: "Uncle Sam doesn’t want you, but Oakland does."

Vote for Rebecca Kaplan.

School Board, District 1

JODY LONDON

The Oakland schools are still stuck under a state administrator; the district, which was driven by mismanagement into a financial crisis several years ago, paid the price of a state bailout by giving up its independence. The school board has only limited authority of district operations, though that’s slowly changing. The state allowed the board to hire an interim superintendent, meaning issues like curricula and programs will be back under local control. So it’s a time of transition for a district that has had horrible problems, and the board needs experienced, level-headed leadership.

We’re impressed with Jody London, a parent with children in the public schools who runs a small environmental consulting firm. She has been active in the district, co-chairing the 2006 bond campaign that raised $435 million and serving on the bond oversight committee. She has a grasp of fiscal management, understands the challenges the district faces, and has the energy to take them on.

Her main opposition is Brian Rogers, a Republican who has the backing of outgoing state senator Don Perata and is a big fan of private charter schools. Tennessee Reed, a young writer and editor, is also in the race, and we’re glad to see her getting active. But on balance, London is the clear choice.

School Board, District 3

OLUBEMIGA OLUWOLE, SR.

Not a great choice here — we’re not thrilled with either of the two contenders. Jumoke Hinton Hodge, a nonprofit consultant, is too willing to support charter schools. Oluwole, who works with parolees, has limited experience with education. But on the basis of his community background (he’s on the board of the Oakland Community Organization) and our concern about Hodge and charter schools, we’ll go with Oluwole.

School Board, District 5

NOEL GALLO

Noel Gallo, the incumbent, is running unopposed. He’s been a competent member of the board, and we see no reason not to support his reelection.

School Board, District 7

ALICE SPEARMAN

Alice Spearman, the incumbent, isn’t the most inspiring member of the board — and she’s known for making some ill-considered and impolitic statements. But her main opponent, Doris Limbrick, is the principal of a Christian school and has no business running for the board of a public school district. So we’ll go with Spearman again.

Alameda County measures

Measure F

Utility users tax

YES

Measure F extends and slightly increases the utility tax on unincorporated areas of the county. It’s not the greatest tax, but it’s not terrible — and it provides essential revenue to pay for services like law enforcement, libraries, and code enforcement. The parts of Alameda County outside any city boundary have been dwindling as cities expand, but the county provides the only local government services in those areas. And, like every other county in California, Alameda is desperately short of cash. So Measure F is crucial. Vote yes.

Oakland Measure J

Telephone-user tax

YES

Measure J would update a 40-year-old tax on phone use that goes for local services. The tax law applies only to old-fashioned land lines, so cell phone users get away without paying. This isn’t the world’s most progressive tax, but Oakland needs the money and Measure J would more fairly share the burden. Vote yes.

The next ugly high-rise

April 29, 2008

EDITORIAL The San Francisco Planning Department is preparing for a new set of zoning rules that could allow a 1,200-foot high-rise office building — half again the height of the Transamerica Pyramid — near First and Mission Streets. It’s part of the devil’s bargain for the new Transbay Terminal, and it badly needs to be reined in.

The proposal for gigantic new towers is the city’s way to finance reconstruction of the terminal, which ought to be the central link in a regional transportation network that combines buses and high speed rail downtown. It’s a worthy project — and an expensive one. Estimates for the new terminal run around $1 billion. And neither the city nor the state have that kind of money right now.

There’s a reason for that, of course: Californians have been living for decades in a fantasy world, a place where grand public achievements — like a great park system, a great public university system, new trains and roads — can be built and maintained without anyone having to pay for them. Once upon a time, tax money built this state’s preeminent public institutions; now even the mention of higher taxes sends Democrats and Republicans alike scurrying for political cover.

So the only way San Francisco officials can see to pay for the monumental new train and bus station — a facility, we’re told, that could rival Grand Central Terminal in New York — is to sell off the skyline. Gerald Hines, a Texas developer, is prepared to pay $350 million for a single plot of land near the terminal — if he can build a massive high-rise there. The same goes for the rest of the public land around the site: the higher the buildings the city will allow, the more cash that comes in for the project. Since this is San Francisco, affordable housing will be part of the payoff.

We support the Transbay Terminal project, and we support more affordable housing — but this isn’t a good deal for the city.

For starters, we’re not at all convinced San Francisco needs another giant office tower, much less a complex of giant buildings choking a corner of South of Market. Who are we trying to attract to the city? The giant outfits that can pay the high rents to fill these buildings are not doing much for the local economy. In fact, small, locally-owned businesses create most of the new jobs in this city. And while Dean Macris, the former planning director who is still a development advisor to Mayor Gavin Newsom, loves big high spires, a lot of us find them hideous. That ugly tower on Rincon Hill, which has nothing but housing for the very rich, is a blight on the skyline. Why would we want more of the same?

This week’s presentation will be the beginning of a long process that needs to end with a rational development plan (a transit village with a heavy mix of affordable housing?) that’s driven by the city’s needs. And San Francisco officials need to take a hard look at whether auctioning off the skyline is the only way to fund the Transbay Terminal.

Peaker plan afloat

April 23, 2008

› amanda@sfbg.com

A proposal to build two natural gas–fired power plants is still floating through the city’s planning process, set for approval by the Board of Supervisors as soon as May, but no one seems truly comfortable with the deal.

"It’s not my first choice or my second choice, but it’s the choice I have," Board president Aaron Peskin told the Guardian. The choice seems to be either the city builds newer, potentially cleaner power plants — known as "peakers" because they would be used mainly during times of peak energy demand — or does nothing to shut down the super-polluting Mirant Potrero power plant.

The combination gas- and diesel-burning power plant spews a cocktail of toxins from its stack every year and draws 226 million gallons of water a day from the bay to cool its generators yet it’s mandated by the state to keep operating. The discharge flows back into the bay significantly altered, with microorganisms and fish larvae replaced by mercury, dioxins, and PCBs.

The California Independent System Operator (CAL-ISO), the state agency that oversees electricity reliability, said it would break the Mirant contract if the peakers came online. The city-owned plants would use recycled water and more up-to-date air quality controls, making for cleaner facilities at the two proposed sites — the airport and the intersection of 25th and Maryland in the Bayview.

They also would be city-operated, giving a little more leg to the local public power movement. But they still burn fossil fuel, and at a time when the climate is in crisis and natural gas prices are only rising, many say this isn’t the direction a trend-setting city like San Francisco should be heading.

"This isn’t the progressive way to go," said Sup. Chris Daly. "We need to be more forcefully installing renewables that are municipally owned."

Daly, along with supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Michela Alioto-Pier and the city’s current power provider Pacific Gas and Electric Co., have lined up against building the peakers in what Mirkarimi calls an "unholy alliance."

PG&E, lobbying under the guise of the "Close It! Coalition," states that the peakers "further San Francisco’s reliance on fossil fuels and add to global warming." The $12 billion utility company currently gets 40 percent of its power the same way and is in the process of constructing several similar plants throughout the state. Nevertheless, the company has submitted detailed proposals to the city and state outlining demand response measures and transmission upgrades that would mitigate the need for more energy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera support building the peakers in order to close the Mirant plant, and Sups. Sophie Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, and Jake McGoldrick are carrying the legislation that would seal the contract with Cleveland, Ohio-based Industrial Construction Company to start the $252 million project.

That legislation points out that Mirant’s water permit is set to expire Dec. 31, and the Regional Water Quality Board has indicated it has no plans to renew it unless Mirant upgrades to best practices. This has been suggested as an alternative way to close the plant. When asked whether Cal-ISO’s reliability demands trump the Water Board’s requirements, Cal-ISO’s Gregg Fishman wrote in an e-mail, "What happens if the Potrero unit’s water permits expire? Simply put — we’re not sure."

Beyond that, a number of questions remain: Should the requirement for a full feasibility study for city contracts more than $25 million really have been waived for this project? Is it fair to put the new power plant in the neighborhood that has always endured the lion’s share of the city’s pollution? What if they were on movable barges instead? And has the city been forceful enough with CAL-ISO when it comes to planning the city’s energy future?

Alioto-Pier has introduced two resolutions addressing a couple of these issues. One calls for a straight-up feasibility study — which supporters of the peakers have waived. "The city has a policy of conducting a full fiscal analysis of capital projects over $25 million," Alioto-Pier said in a press release. "This should be no exception." Her other resolution asks for an independent analysis of the whole thing and a revised 2008 Energy Action Plan for the city.

For several years, Cal-ISO has said Mirant could stop operating if San Francisco can provide an alternate "firm" power source in its Energy Action Plan. In 2004, San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission proffered the peakers, and that became the city’s power plan before adopting the CCA (community choice aggregation) plan for the city to develop an energy portfolio of at least 51 percent renewables.

Though the SFPUC has continuously asked Cal-ISO if the 2004 Action Plan is still the way to go now that the Trans Bay Cable and other line improvements have come into play, Josh Arce, a lawyer for Brightline Defense, which sued to stop the peaker plan, says they’ve been framing the question all wrong: "The PUC has essentially been saying, ‘Does the Action Plan include all four combustion turbines?’ And Cal-ISO has said, ‘Yes, it includes all four.’ Instead, the PUC needs to come up with a new Action Plan and give it to Cal-ISO and say we’re doing this instead."

Alioto-Pier’s resolution, if passed, could prompt a fresh response from Cal-ISO about what the city really needs — one, two, or three peakers, or maybe none at all. Maxwell’s resolution includes a caveat that the city must determine if needs could be met by building smaller plants with fewer than the four turbines currently proposed.

Peskin, who chairs the city’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee and will hear both Alioto-Pier resolutions on May 5, as well as the Maxwell plan to move to build the peakers, told us, "This is one of the toughest decisions that’s been before me in the eight years that I’ve been on the Board of Supervisors."

No one, it seems, really wants to build two fossil fuel–burning power plants on San Francisco soil. But what if they weren’t on our soil? What if they were floating on barges?

Another resolution pending in the Land Use Committee, brought by Mirkarimi, proposes putting the two power plants on barges, which could be moored alongside the city when needed and dispatched elsewhere when they’re not. What if, a few years from now, citizens are able to cut down their power needs, CCA brings more renewables online, and the city finds it no longer needs the 200 megawatts generated by natural gas power plants?

Proponents say it’s an option worth considering if the city really intends to eventually close the plants. Dismantling a facility if the city decides to sell leaches away 20 to 30 percent of its overall cost. But if it’s on a barge, the natural gas, electricity, and mooring lines are simply cast off. A barge would be steadier in an earthquake and continue to float if the sea level rises — a climate change scenario that could swamp both current bayside power plant sites. Barges also can be dispatched to emergencies, leased down the river to other cities in the Bay Area, or sold for a profit. They’ve been in use around the world since the 1940s and have been called a more regional approach to energy planning.

"It’s 145 MW of portable energy," said Rick Galbreath, Mirkarimi’s aide. "You can pull it up, plug it in, and you’re on the grid. It’s really a dynamic solution."

Paul Fenn, the brain behind the city’s CCA plan, points out that if CAL-ISO still insists the peakers are needed now but not in the future, a power barge is the kind of flexible solution that could pay off in the long run. "It’s making a temporary measure for an urgent situation," he said, adding that such a temporary solution should reflect the city’s long-term goals. "If the city is planning to replace them with renewables, it’s important to get the city to make that commitment. This is one of those strategic decisions that’s going to impact the future."

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission generally opposes building anything in the bay if it can be built on land first. "The proponents would have to do an analysis and convince our commission that this is really a good idea for the region," said Will Travis, a BCDC spokesperson.

But Dave Nickerson, owner of Houston-based Power Barge Corporation, said he’s looked at the city’s peaker plans and thinks it would cost about $100 million to build a three-CT barge. "We would probably build the plant here and ship it up," he said, pointing out that the city’s turbines are already in storage down in Texas and it’s cheaper to build it in a shipyard. To claims of environmental degradation, he says, "It would have the environmental footprint of a state of the art land-based plant."

He also pointed out that there’s a scarcity of these particular turbines now, which are worth about $1 million more every year. This year it’s around $16.5 million apiece, with $18 million as the projected 2008 price.

Emma Lierley contributed to this story.

Promises and reality

April 23, 2008

› sarah@sfbg.com

The Lennar-financed "Yes on G" fliers jammed into mailboxes all across San Francisco this month depict a dark-skinned family strolling along a shoreline trail against a backdrop of blue sky, grassy parkland, a smattering of low-rise buildings, and the vague hint of a nearly transparent high-rise condo tower in the corner.

"After 34 years of neglect, it’s time to clean up the Shipyard for tomorrow," states one flier, which promises to create up to 10,000 new homes, "with as many as 25 percent being entry-level affordable units"; 300 acres of new parks; and 8,000 permanent jobs in the city’s sun-soaked southeast sector.

Add to that the green tech research park, a new 49ers stadium, a permanent home for shipyard artists, and a total rebuild of the dilapidated Alice Griffith public housing project, and the whole project looks and sounds simply idyllic. But as with many big-money political campaigns, the reality is quite different from the sales pitch.

What Proposition G’s glossy fliers don’t tell you is that this initiative would make it possible for a controversial Florida-based megadeveloper to build luxury condos on a California state park, take over federal responsibility for the cleanup of toxic sites, construct a bridge over a slough restoration project, and build a new road so Candlestick Point residents won’t have to venture into the Bayview District.

Nor do these shiny images reveal that Prop. G is actually vaguely-worded, open-ended legislation whose final terms won’t be driven by the jobs, housing, or open-space needs of the low-income and predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point community, but by the bottom line of the financially troubled Lennar.

And nowhere does it mention that Lennar already broke trust with the BVHP, failing to control asbestos at its Parcel A shipyard development and reneging on promises to build needed rental units at its Parcel A 1,500-unit condo complex (see "Question of intent," 11/28/07).

The campaign is supported by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and District 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell, as well as the Republican and the Democratic parties of San Francisco. But it is funded almost exclusively by Lennar Homes, a statewide independent expenditure committee that typically pours cash into conservative causes like fighting tax hikes and environmental regulations.

In the past six months, Lennar Homes has thrown down more than $1 million to hire Newsom’s chief political strategist, Eric Jaye, and a full spectrum of top lawyers and consultants, from generally progressive campaign manager Jim Stearns to high-powered spinmeister Sam Singer, who recently ran the smear campaign blaming the victims of a fatal Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo.

Together, this political dream team cooked up what it hopes will be an unstoppable campaign full of catchy slogans and irresistible images, distributed by a deep-pocketed corporation that stands to make many millions of dollars off the deal.

But the question for voters is whether this project is good for San Francisco — particularly for residents of the southeast who have been subjected to generations worth of broken promises — or whether it amounts to a risky giveaway of the city’s final frontier for new development.

Standing in front of the Lennar bandwagon is a coalition of community, environmental, and housing activists who this spring launched a last minute, volunteer-based signature-gathering drive that successfully became Proposition F. It would require that 50 percent of the housing built in the BVHP/Candlestick Point project be affordable to those making less than the area median income of $68,000 for a family of four.

Critics such as Lennar executive Kofi Bonner and Michael Cohen of the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development have called Prop. F a "poison pill" that would doom the Lennar project. But its supporters say the massive scope and vague wording of Prop. G would have exacerbated the city’s affordable housing shortfalls.

Prop. F is endorsed by the Sierra Club, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, the League of Conservation Voters, the Chinese Progressive Association, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, the Grace Tabernacle Community Church, Green Action, Nation of Islam Bay Area, the African Orthodox Church, Jim Queen, and Supervisor Chris Daly.

Cohen criticized the coalition for failing to study whether the 50 percent affordability threshold is feasible. But the fact is that neither measure has been exposed to the same rigors that a measure going through the normal city approval process would undergo. Nonetheless, the Guardian unearthed an evaluation on the impact of Prop. F that Lennar consultant CB Richard Ellis prepared for the mayor’s office.

The document, which contains data not included in the Prop. G ballot initiative, helps illuminate the financial assumptions that underpin the public-private partnership the city is contemputf8g with Lennar, ostensibly in an effort to win community benefits for the BVHP.

CBRE’s analysis states that Lennar’s Prop. G calls for "slightly over 9,500 units," with nearly 2,400 affordable units (12 percent at 80 percent of area median income and 8 percent at 50 percent AMI), and with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency "utilizing additional funding to drive these affordability levels even lower."

Noting that Prop. G. yields a "minimally acceptable return" of 17 to 18 percent in profit, CBRE estimates that Prop. F would means "a loss of $500 million in land sales revenue" thanks to the loss of 2,400 market-rate units from the equation. With subsidies of $125,000 allegedly needed to complete each affordable unit, CBRE predicts there would be a further cost of "$300 million to $400 million" to develop the 2,400 additional units of affordable housing prescribed under Prop. F.

Factoring in an additional $500 million loss in tax increments and Mello-Roos bond financing money, CBRE concludes, "the overall impact from [the Prop. F initiative] is a $1.1 to $1.2 billion loss of project revenues … the very same revenues necessary to fund infrastructure and community improvements."

Yet critics of the Lennar project say that just because it pencils out for the developer doesn’t mean it’s good for the community, which would be fundamentally and permanently changed by a project of this magnitude. Coleman’s Advocates’ organizing director Tom Jackson told us his group decided to oppose Prop. G "because we looked at who is living in Bayview-Hunters Point and their income levels.

"Our primary concern isn’t Lennar’s bottom line," Jackson continued. "Could Prop. F cut into Lennar’s profit margin? Yes, absolutely. But our primary concern is the people who already live in the Bayview."

Data from the 2000 US census shows that BVHP has the highest percentage of African Americans compared to the rest of the city — and that African Americans are three times more likely to leave San Francisco than other ethnic groups, a displacement that critics of the Lennar project say it would exacerbate.

The Bayview also has the third-highest population of children, at a time when San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major US city and is struggling to both maintain enrollment and keep its schools open. Add to that the emergence of Latino and Chinese immigrant populations in the Bayview, and Jackson says its clear that it’s the city’s last affordable frontier for low-income folks.

The problem gets even more pronounced when one delves into the definition of the word "affordable" and applies it to the socioeconomic status of southeast San Francisco.

In white households, the annual median income was $65,000 in 2000, compared to $29,000 in black households — with black per capita income at $15,000 and with 14 percent of BVHP residents earning even less than $15,000.

The average two-bedroom apartment rents in San Francisco for $1,821, meaning households need an annual AMI of $74,000 to stay in the game. The average condo sells for $700,000, which means that households need $143,000 per year to even enter the market.

In other words, there’s a strong case for building higher percentages of affordable housing in BVHP (where 94 percent of residents are minorities and 21 percent experience significant poverty) than in most other parts of San Francisco. Yet the needs of southeastern residents appear to be clashing with the area’s potential to become the city’s epicenter for new construction.

San Francisco Republican Party chair Howard Epstein told the Guardian that his group opposed Prop. F, believing it will kill all BVHP redevelopment, and supported Prop. G, believing that it has been in the making for a decade and to have been "vetted up and down."

While a BVHP redevelopment plan has been in the works for a decade, the vaguely defined conceptual framework that helped give birth to Prop. G this year was first discussed in public only last year. In reality, it was hastily cobbled together in the wake of the 49ers surprise November 2006 news that it was rejecting Lennar’s plan to build a new stadium at Monster Park and considering moving to Santa Clara.

As the door slammed shut on one opportunity, Lennar tried to swing open another. As an embarrassed Newsom joined forces with Feinstein to find a last-ditch solution to keep the 49ers in town, Lennar suggested a new stadium on the Hunters Point Shipyard, surrounded by a dual use parking lot perfect for tailgating and lots of new housing on Candlestick Point to pay for it all.

There was just one problem: part of the land around the stadium at Candlestick is a state park. Hence the need for Prop. G, which seeks to authorize this land swap along with a repeal of bonds authorized in 1997 for a stadium rebuild. As Cohen told the Guardian, "The only legal reason we are going to the voters is Monster Park."

As it happens, voters still won’t know whether the 49ers are staying or leaving when they vote on Props. F and G this June, since the team is waiting until November to find out if Santa Clara County voters will support the financing of a new 49er stadium near Great America.

Either way, Patrick Rump of Literacy for Environmental Justice has serious environmental concerns about Prop. G’s proposed land swap.

"Lennar’s schematic, which builds a bridge over the Yosemite Slough, would destroy a major restoration effort we’re in the process of embarking on with the state Parks [and Recreation Department]," Rump said. "The integrity of the state park would easily be compromised, because of extra people and roads. And a lot of the proposed replacement parks, the pocket parks … don’t provide adequate habitat."

Rump also expressed doubts about the wisdom of trading parcels of state park for land on the shipyard, especially Parcel E-2, which contains the landfill. Overall, Rump said, "We think Lennar and the city need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more environmentally sound."

John Rizzo of the Sierra Club believes Prop. G does nothing to clean up the shipyard — which city officials are seeking to take over before the federal government finishes its cleanup work — and notes that the initiative is full of vague and noncommittal words like "encourages" that make it unclear what benefits city residents will actually receive.

"Prop. G’s supporters are pushing the misleading notion that if we don’t give away all this land — including a state park — to Lennar, then we won’t get any money for the cleanup," Rizzo said. "But you don’t build first and then get federal dollars for clean up! That’s a really backwards statement."

The "Yes on G" campaign claims its initiative will create "thousands of construction jobs," "offer a new economic engine for the Bayview," and "provide new momentum to win additional federal help to clean up the toxins on the shipyard."

Michael Theriault, head of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades, said his union endorsed the measure and has an agreement with Lennar to have "hire goals," with priority given to union contracts in three local zip codes: 94107, 94124, and 94134.

"There will be a great many construction jobs," Theriault said, though he was less sure about Prop. G’s promise of "8,000 permanent jobs following the completion of the project."

"We endorsed primarily from the jobs aspect," Theriault said. The question of whether the project helps the cleanup effort or turns it into a rush job is also an open question. Even the San Francisco Chronicle, in a January editorial, criticized Newsom, Feinstein, and Pelosi for neglecting the cleanup until "when it seemed likely that the city was about to lose the 49ers."

All three denounced the Chronicle‘s claims, but the truth is that the lion’s share of the $82 million federal allocation would be dedicated to cleaning the 27-acre footprint proposed for the stadium. Meanwhile, the US Navy says it needs at least $500 million to clean the entire shipyard.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said the city should wait for a full cleanup and criticized the Prop. G plan to simply cap contaminated areas on the shipyard, rather than excavate and remove the toxins from the site.

"That’s like putting a sarcophagus over a toxic wasteland," Mirkarimi told us. "It would be San Francisco’s version of a concrete bunker around Chernobyl."

Cohen of the Mayor’s Office downplays the contamination at the site, telling us that on a scale of one to 10 among the nation’s contaminated Superfund sites, the shipyard "is a three." He said, "the city would assume responsibility for completing the remaining environmental remediation, which would be financed through the Navy."

But those who have watched the city and Lennar bungle development of the asbestos-laden Parcel A (see The corporation that ate San Francisco, 3/14/07) don’t have much confidence in their ability to safely manage a much larger project.

"Who is going to take the liability for any shoddy work and negligence once the project is completed?" Mirkarimi asked.

Lennar has yet to settle with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District over asbestos dust violations at Parcel A, which could add up to $28 million in fines, and investors have been asking questions about the corporation’s mortgage lending operations as the company’s stock value and bond rating have plummeted.

To secure its numerous San Francisco investments, including projects at Hunters and Candlestick points and Treasure Island, Lennar recently got letters of intent from Scala Real Estate Partners, an Irvine-based investment and development group.

Founded by former executives of the Perot Group’s real estate division, Scala plans to invest up to $200 million — and have equal ownership interests — in the projects, which could total at least 17,000 housing units, 700,000 square feet of retail and entertainment, 350 acres of open space, and a new football stadium if the 49ers decide to stay.

Bonner said that, if completed, the agreement satisfies a city requirement that Lennar secure a partner with the financial wherewithal to ensure the estimated $1.4 billion Candlestick Point project moves forward even if the company’s current problems worsen.

Meanwhile, Cohen has cast the vagaries of Prop. G as a positive, referring to its spreadsheet as "a living document, a moving target." Cohen pointed out that if Lennar had to buy the BVHP land, they’d get it with only a 15 percent affordable housing requirement.

"Our objective is to drive the land value to zero by imposing upon the developer as great a burden as possible," Cohen said. "This developer had to invest $500 million of cash, plus financing, and is required to pay for affordable housing, parks, jobs, etc. — the core benefits — without any risk to the city."

But Cohen said the Prop. F alternative means "nothing will be built — until F is repealed." He also refutes claims that without the 49ers stadium, 50 percent affordability is doable.

"Prop G makes it easier to make public funds available by repealing the Prop D bond measure," Cohen explained. "But Prop. G also provides that there will be no general fund financial backing for the stadium, and that the tax increments generated by the development will be used for affordable housing, jobs, and parks."

But for Lennar critics like the Rev. Christopher Mohammad, who has battled the company since the Islamic school he runs was subjected to toxic dust, even the most ambitious promises won’t overcome his distrust for the entity at the center of Prop. G: Lennar.

In a fiery recent sermon at the Grace Tabernacle Community Church, Mohammad recalled the political will that enabled the building of BART in the 1970s. "But when it comes to poor people, you can’t build 50 percent affordable. That will kill the deal," Mohammad observed.

"Lennar is getting 700 prime waterfront acres for free, and then there’ll be tax increment dollars they’ll tap into for the rebuild," he continued. "But you mean you can’t take some of those millions, after all the damages you’ve done? It would be a way to correct the wrong."

The floating peakers

April 23, 2008

EDITORIAL The political fight over siting four city-owned power plants is heating up, and creating strange alliances. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to put three of the plants — which are small natural-gas-fired turbines — in the southeast part of the city, adjacent to the pollution-belching Mirant power plant at the foot of Potrero Hill. The commission argues that the city-owned plants would run only at peak hours (thus the term "peaker plants") and would generate lower carbon emissions and noxious fumes than Mirant does. Supporters of the plants argue that the state’s Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), which controls the electricity grid, won’t allow Mirant to shut down unless the peakers are in place.

Sup. Aaron Peskin says the peakers will not only reduce emissions, but will give public power a kickstart. But Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who normally supports Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plans, opposes the plants on environmental grounds, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, who say the southeast has been a toxic dumping ground for years, appear to be siding with her. Add to this the cost of building a structure to house the turbines, which has varied from as high as $500 million to as low as about $250 million, and you have a confusing mess.

But as Amanda Witherell reports in this issue, there’s another solution, one Mirkarimi floated several months ago: why not put the peakers on barges and site them offshore?

It’s a fascinating idea. Floating power plants are common all over the world; Manhattan alone has more than 30. Putting the plants on a barge would, by some estimates, cost half as much as building a home for them on land — and they could be moved around so no one neighborhood has to suffer all the impacts. (The plants, for example, could spend some time in the Marina, maybe upwind of Mayor Newsom’s house, so the southeast doesn’t have to take all the emissions.) If the city follows its own plans and builds enough renewable energy to obviate the peakers in a few years, they could easily be shipped off and sold elsewhere. Or the city could lease them to other communities (bringing in some nice cash) when they aren’t needed here. And floating plants won’t face the serious seismic issues that plants on the unstable southern San Francisco shoreline do.

There are, of course, other issues with this, including the obvious problem of putting barges in the bay, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission would probably object to. And where, exactly, would they go? This might not be the best idea in the end.

But given the lack of good options here, this is at least worth a second look. Mirkarimi needs to push his resolution calling on the city to review that option. It’s well worth a full study. In fact, the board ought to put all final consideration of the combustion turbines on hold until the SFPUC looks at the barge proposal.

More green reasons, post-Earth Day

April 22, 2008

Michael Kang photo.jpg
Michael Kang of the String Cheese Incident is in at the Digital Be-In.

The sun may have set on Earth Day, but that doesn’t mean the musically oriented eco-celebrations can’t continue. Here are a few more events:

DIGITAL BE-IN 16: ECOCITY
An Ecocity theme and speakers, exhbiits, installations, an eco-fashion show – and live music by Michael Kang (String Cheese Incident), Waterjuice (Vaporvent), Lumin with Irina Mikhailova, Yossi Fine (Ex-centric Sound System), Diana Rosa, and MC Yogi, and DJs Rhythmystic (Rhythm Society), Alex Theory (Mystic Vibration), Irina Mikhailova (Cyberset), Neptune (Beat Church), Dov (Cyberset, Muti Music), Goz (Cyberset), Omer (Harbin), Timonkey (Muti Music), and David Shamanik (Rhythm Society). Fri/25, 7 p.m.- 4 a.m., $20-$25. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. (415) 750-0971.

CARNAVAL SAN FRANCISCO’S ECO-GREEN FESTIVAL
Zona Verde is the theme of this green fete – which organizers are claiming as the largest outdoor green event in the city. Tribal DJs will be force along with sacred healing ceremonies, art installations, and natural home and alternative energy vendors. May 24-25. time to be announced. Harrison and Treat at 17th St., SF.

HARMONY FESTIVAL
Alongside eco-awareness booths and holistic health product peddlers are performances by Angelique Kidjo, Paula Cole, Mickey Hart Band with Steve Kimock and George Porter, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Arrested Development, Jackie Greene, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Stern Band with Victor Wooten and Friends, the Devil Makes Three, and the Amazing Techno-Tribal Community Dance. June 6, 2-10 p.m.; June 7, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; June 8, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. with after-hours shows from 10 p.m.-2 a.m.; $25-$139. Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa.

Putting power into perspective

April 15, 2008

Amount the US Department of Energy granted SF San Francisco in 2007 to help encourage the deployment of solar energy: $200,000

Amount the DOE says it has spent nationwide over the last year making solar power more accessible on the energy market and underwriting new research and development: $288 million

Amount San Ramon–based Chevron Corp. made in net income (profit) during 2007: $18.7 billion

Amount David J. O’Reilly earned in total compensation per business day during 2007 as the San Ramon–based Chevron Corp.’s chairman and CEO: $121,153

Amount O’Reilly earned in total compensation during 2007: $31.5 million

Amount Chevron spent during 2006 defeating Proposition 87, a California ballot measure that would have funded renewable energy research through a drilling fee imposed on oil producers: $38 million

Amount oil and gas industries spent attempting to influence Sacramento during 2006: $97.8 million

Amount the oil and gas industries spent contributing to federal political candidates and parties and for lobbying expenses in 2006: $94.9 million

These figures came from the California Secretary of State’s Office, the Center for Responsive Politics, Followthemoney.org, and financial documents publicly traded companies are required to maintain by the Securities and Exchange Commission.<

China’s internet censorship: what to do?

April 11, 2008

For those of us in the free speech and free press line of work, China’s censorship of the internet is a major practical and theoretical issue. Here is a reasoned approach by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC). B3

Make no mistake, China’s censorship of the internet is a crime against liberty on a mass scale. Still, American firms can’t just steer clear of the world’s biggest market. What to do?

By Peter Scheer

A milestone of sorts was passed in the first quarter of this year when China blew past the United States to become the biggest internet market in the world. At 225 million users, and still growing at double-digit rates, China’s internet is a business opportunity so grand and irresistible that it can blind normally circumspect people to the moral compromises that cooperation with Chinese government authorities inevitably entails.

I experienced this first-hand when, about a year ago, I made inquiries at the China offices of a number of American law firms to ask for help in comparing internet search results for searches performed inside China–within the “Great Firewall” of government censorship, as it is called–with the same searches performed from locations outside China (and therefore outside the firewall). The law firms demurred, explaining, with commendable candor at least, that they could not risk being observed submitting to Google and Yahoo search terms like “Tiananmen Square” or “Falun Gong”.

Mind you, these were American-trained litigators, the kind of lawyers who barely flinch in the face of a grand jury subpoena, and who spend their careers pushing back against the demands of government authorities. While usually immune to intimidation, they nonetheless feared the repercussions to themselves, their firms, and their clients from the mere act of typing a few search terms into an internet-connected computer. So seductive are the business opportunities in China that the risk of losing them transforms even hardened litigators into wimps.

In conversations with internet entrepreneurs and investors active in China, one often hears arguments that are more rationalization than logic. An internet CEO recently told me that freedom of speech is a “relative” value that, despite its appeal in western democracies, is not appropriate to China. Popular variations on this theme are that freedom of speech is an unaffordable luxury in a country that must be single-minded in its pursuit of economic development; that the people of China are more interested in consumer goods than personal and political freedom; and that westerners’ pressure on China to be more tolerant of dissent is a form of cultural imperialism.

Let’s be clear: Freedom of speech, freedom of political choice, and the rule of law are not relative values; they are absolutes. China’s regime of internet censorship is, without question, a crime against individual liberty on a truly mass scale. That it coexists with a fast-modernizing economy offering its people considerable choice in the economic sphere only makes the curtailment of personal freedom more offensive because less excusable. China does not need to suppress speech to achieve its economic goals. China’s leaders are more cynical than that. They maintain censorship solely to preempt challenges to their monopoly on political power.

This can be seen in the government’s censorship policies. Websites based inside China are subject to content restrictions that are, by design, so uncertain and unpredictable that they force internet companies to censor themselves. Standards that are unknown and unknowable, backed by the threat of license-revocation for companies and jail for individuals, create a pervasive fear that is far more effective than direct regulation at muting opposition to the government and its policies.

Websites based outside China, meanwhile, are subject to blocking by the Great Firewall based not on their content, but on their capacity to create, inside China, large, voluntary online communities that are independent of the government. These include nearly all blogging services, wikipedia and wiki platforms generally (wikileaks included), social networking websites and peer-to-peer technologies of all kinds, including photo-sharing and video-sharing businesses. In other words, the full panoply of internet 2.0 technologies.

Websites commanding vast audiences for user-generated content are seen by authorities as a grave threat. The Chinese government’s worst nightmare, after all, is a lone and anonymous Tibetan uploading to YouTube grainy cellphone videos of rioting police.

What should American internet companies do? To point out that doing business in China is morally compromising is not to say that companies must forswear the world’s biggest market–hardly a realistic option, in any event, for premier internet firms like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Amazon. And while these companies might prefer to compete in China remotely–basing their servers outside the Great Firewall–government policies force them to set up shop inside China.

Those policies manipulate the firewall to degrade the performance of websites based outside China. Because all data from foreign websites pass through bottlenecks connecting China’s internet with the outside world, and because sensors at those bottlenecks further degrade transmissions across the firewall, non-Chinese websites are experienced from inside China as performing v-e-r-y
s-l-o-w-l-y.

This performance deficit is so substantial–and puts non-Chinese websites at such a huge disadvantage relative to their competitors inside China–that foreign websites must establish a presence inside the firewall. Indeed, Google, despite misgivings, established Google.cn within China in 2007 mainly for this reason, while Yahoo and Amazon crossed the firewall by investing in their Chinese domestic rivals.

American internet companies doing business in China should, for starters, acknowledge the extent of their self-censorship, not hide it or rationalize it or pretend that it is something other than the intensely unpleasant compromise that it is. Spare us the tortured and hypocritical justifications. It helps for companies to admit their complicity; to clarify that all is not as it should be or appears to be; to openly assert their disagreement with Chinese government policies (if they do, indeed, disagree); and to disclose specifics about how their content has been altered to avoid displeasing authorities.

U.S. firms also should do everything they reasonably can to protect their Chinese customers from the surveillance–and worse–of Chinese government authorities. If customer data and identifying information can be stored outside the firewall, beyond the reach of Chinese regulators and courts, they should be, even though that may involve greater costs. While this step does not assure protection of anonymous users (since control of a company’s license to operate in China gives the government considerable de facto leverage, quite apart from territorial limits on subpoenas and other legal processes), it is still meaningful.

If off-shoring of confidential user information is not feasible, companies must take steps to warn their customers about the risks of using their service. And finally, where warnings are not possible or go unheeded, companies should force customers to give their real names when using their websites–which will, in turn, force users to think carefully about what they say or do online. Ironically, the barring of anonymity is the surest means of getting users to appreciate the risks of saying what the government doesn’t want to hear.

Doing business on China’s internet is a messy, though potentially very lucrative, activity. Some companies may be so put off by the messiness that they stay away. For most, however, that is not a viable option. They must learn to be both honest with themselves and honest with their customers.
—-
Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, is CFAC’s executive director. CFAC is involved in a legal initiative to use the World Trade Organization to force China to suspend its censorship of the internet on grounds it violates international treaties on free trade.

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A big step for public services

April 8, 2008

EDITORIAL The battle against privatization of public resources took a big step forward this week when Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced a measure to create a Public Services Advisory Board to monitor what he calls the creeping takeover of city government by private outfits.

The new agency would monitor outsourcing of public services and advise the supervisors on whether it makes fiscal and policy sense to turn city programs over to businesses and nonprofits.

It’s also a chance to push forward on public power, the disaster at the zoo, the move to privatize the golf courses and some parks, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to hand the city’s information technology infrastructure over to private companies, and the Presidio sellout.

The legislation is the first public effort of a new coalition called San Francisco Commons. The group includes labor, public power, neighborhood groups, and environmental activists and was formed to address the growing problem of the loss of public sector services. It’s a crucial new addition to the city’s political scene: the first organization specifically established to protect public services and public property.

The case against privatization is clear. Private entities aren’t required to make their finances public (even if they’re doing public service work with public money). And companies doing work on city contracts are motivated by profits, sometimes at the expense of the public interest. Typically, when private operators take over public services, the prices go up, worker pay goes down, and the quality of the delivery tanks. Just look at the Presidio, a national park that’s been turned into a private real estate development, or the zoo, where privatization has led to misspent funds, poor conditions for animals, and a tragic tiger escape. Or look at Edison School, the failed experiment in education privatization in San Francisco.

San Francisco ought to be in the forefront of the antiprivatization battle nationwide, and this new group and legislation is a good first step. The agenda for the new advisory board is extensive: the panel needs to look at every large and small privatization move at City Hall. It needs to evaluate and report to the supervisors on the flaws in the mayor’s schemes. It also needs to look forward actively at ways the city can bring more essential services under public control. That includes moving forward on community choice aggregation and then developing a plan to create a full-scale, citywide public power system. Public broadband service ought to be on the agenda, too.

The supervisors should approve Mirkarimi’s bill, and the sooner the better, before Newsom finds some more of San Francisco to put on the block.

After Home Depot

April 8, 2008

EDITORIAL The proposal to build a Home Depot store on Bayshore Boulevard was a textbook example of terrible city planning. The community never asked for a big-box chain store; no city plans ever discussed how big-box retail would help the local economy. Instead, about eight years ago the giant Atlanta-based corporation decided it wanted a store in San Francisco, hired Jack Davis, a political consultant close to then-Mayor Willie Brown, and, after a brutal and unpleasant battle, got permission to build a giant suburban-style outlet of more than 100,000 square feet with a massive parking garage in a city where transit and pedestrian access are considered primary land-use values.

And now that Home Depot has decided, based on its business projections, that the whole thing was a bad idea and is backing out, San Francisco has a chance to turn the big empty lot on Bayshore into something that serves the community. There’s a chance to make this a model for city planning, an example of how to do economic development right for a change. The mayor, city planners, and the supervisors need to insist on a credible process.

From the start, the fight over Home Depot was toxic, pitting small business owners, who feared that the discount chain would destroy local merchants, and Bernal Heights residents, who feared the traffic, noise, and pollution a car-dependent outlet would bring to the area, against Bayview-Hunters Point residents who desperately needed jobs. Home Depot lobbyists did their best to push the divide, arguing that employment opportunities at the store would help spur economic development in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Lost in the rhetoric was the fact that the chain promised only about 200 new jobs, and would offer only a "good-faith effort" to hire half of those people from the neighborhood. In other words, at best, an eight-acre project — one of the biggest retail developments in the city — would lead to 100 new jobs for Bayview residents. That was, to put it mildly, an abysmal deal.

An environmental impact report on the project essentially dismissed all of the neighborhood concerns, even arguing that air-quality impacts from increased car exhaust wouldn’t count as an impact. The report tossed aside the fate of small businesses, particularly hardware stores, by saying that the store owners could simply start selling something else. Still, the supervisors voted to approve the project.

But now, after all that bitterness and expense, Home Depot is walking away, citing a sluggish market for home-improvement products. Mayor Gavin Newsom is begging the company not to abandon the plans altogether; he’s urging Home Depot executives to put the project on hold until the economy improves. That’s tantamount to saying that the Bayshore site should stay vacant for a few more years — which does no good for anybody. Instead of whining and begging a big corporation to bestow its blessings on poor San Francisco, Newsom ought to look at this as an opportunity.

Sup. Tom Ammiano, whose district borders on the site and who led the opposition to Home Depot, is calling for a community planning process that would bring the key stakeholders to the table to talk about how that land should be used. Sup. Sophie Maxwell, a Home Depot supporter whose district includes the site, ought to join with him. The goal ought to be a planning process that starts with the right questions: What sort of development does the community want? What use would create the most jobs that best fit the local labor pool and the employment needs of the area? What would benefit the city’s economy without damaging small business? Should part of the site be used for affordable housing?

There are all sorts of possibilities, but given Newsom’s pledge to be a "green mayor" and the value of new green-collar jobs, one obvious idea might be turning the place into a solar-energy center. Proper zoning, incentives, and public encouragement might attract solar manufacturing, solar installation services, and a solar hardware store with do-it-yourself kits for homeowners.

The city obviously can’t dictate what sorts of businesses would want to move to Bayshore, but planners can set criteria to steer development. That process ought to begin now, openly, with every interested party involved — and it should have a bottom line: no more suburban chain stores in San Francisco.

Superlist: Youth record labels

March 26, 2008

› superlists@sfbg.com

Youth record labels are fast becoming one of the most innovative and effective ways to combine job development, skills training, and music production for many working-class youth of color. At these programs, there are no holier-than-thou "back when I was a kid" lectures from out-of-touch old fogies. Instead, kids study DJ’ing under DJ Quest and get stage-presence tips from Zion I. Teens also take an active role in the creation, production, and management of their projects and think about their work as something larger than simply entertainment. From beat-making classes to benefit concerts for immigrant rights, young folks are helping lead the cry for transformation at every level of society — all to an intricately produced soundtrack. What follows are the heavy-hitting youth record labels in the Bay.

The DJ Project (440 Potrero, SF; 415-487-6700, info@thedjproject.com) is a youth entrepreneurship program built on the foundations of hip-hop and community empowerment. As part of Horizons Unlimited, the DJ Project offers classes in DJ’ing, music production, and promotions taught by some of the Bay’s finest independent hip-hop artists. Aside from simply making hip-hop, young artists discuss how such forces as racism, love, homophobia, and anger inform their lyrics. After they record their first CD, the students learn graphic design skills in order to create their own cover art. Recently, the project produced the film Grind & Glory (2007), which showcased local young hip-hop artists competing for a chance to play at the annual hip-hop festival Rock the Bells.

Youth Movement Records (368 24th St., Oakl.; 510-832-4212, contact@youthmovementrecords.org) is one of the more popular youth record labels around. Their program offers classes such as music production and entertainment law and boasts a stellar success rate, with over 90 percent of its graduates earning their high school diplomas. Already, YMR acts have toured the country in support of Amnesty International. The program features tutelage from folks such as Zion I and Brotha Los of Company of Prophets.

Bay Unity Music Project (BUMP) Records (1611 Telegraph, Oakl.; 510-836-1056, bump@bavc.org), a Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) program, is a youth-run record label that gives its participants hands-on experience with music making. BUMP Beats is an introductory music production and composition program geared toward youth with little or no previous experience. Students get the opportunity to perform and distribute their work with local Bay Area promoters.

Cov Records (220 Harrison, Oakl.; 510-625-7800, www.myspace.com/covrecords) is a community-based music and production center serving young adults in Oakland between the ages of 13 and 25. As a project of the Covenant House community center and homeless shelter, Cov Records has produced documentaries, offered classes in video and music production, and teamed up with the Stop the Violence campaign to organize Turf Unity shows, which get young folks from rival neighborhoods to create art together.

“Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization”

March 26, 2008

REVIEW In an age of inexpensive fashion knockoffs proliferated by stores like H&M and Forever 21, it’s become almost effortless to access catwalk trends. But while it’s a fashionista’s wet dream to possess such designer approximations, one wonders whether we’re forgetting our clothing’s origins, born from the creative genius of haute couture, which in turn found its inspiration in many of the world’s traditional garments. The Museum of Craft and Folk Art’s "Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization" assuages some of my qualms by giving viewers not only an education on the development of textiles like block printing and lace or openwork, but also an opportunity to peruse traditional and high-fashion pieces as well as some of the classic ensembles that still inspire designers today. The brilliant gold threading of a deep purple sari from India calls to mind a lamé dress in the Marc by Marc Jacobs spring line, and a Mexican women’s cream-colored coat with broad sleeves, pleated breast, and colorful embroidery reminds me of my slammin’ new outerwear from H&M. The 30-piece exhibition is divided into five themes: weaving, surface design, embellishment, and openwork/pleating, and boasts creations by the likes of Emilio Pucci and Mary McFadden. While "Fabric of Cultures" is not the largest or best-organized show one will encounter, it will help cultivate your knowledge of textiles, and there’s a sweet video presentation on pleating done at a factory in Japan. As viewer who loves clothes but can’t design them, I’d say the exhibit was better than an episode of Project Runway. Sorry, Heidi, et al.

FABRIC OF CULTURES: FASHION, IDENTITY, GLOBALIZATION Through April 27. Tues.–Fri., 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Museum of Craft and Folk Art, 51 Yerba Buena Lane, SF. $5. (415) 227-4888, www.mocfa.org

Teacher’s bet

March 25, 2008

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a bit of a moral dilemma. I am a submissive. Sometimes I correspond with, or even meet up with, people I find on the Internet for no-strings-attached fun. I always feel like I’m in control of my life, even when I’m chained up and blindfolded, and I think that it’s a healthy (enough) expression of my sexuality. However, I am also about to start training to be a teacher of kids under age 10.

Obviously, the two parts of my life have no relation to each other. But is it possible to pursue interests that could varyingly be described as "niche" or "perverted," and at the same time be a responsible caregiver to children? Do you think it is possible for my private life not to get in the way of my professional development?

Love,

Tied up in Knots

Dear Knots:

Of course I do. I’d better. I’m a retired pervert (I have no time!), and still writing this column and consorting with every stripe of (harmless) freak you can or can’t imagine. If I thought that knowing the people I know or admitting in public to having belonged to clubs which would now no longer have me as a member posed any sort of threat to my children — ever! — you better believe I’d be out of Pervertville and living in the suburbs wearing those weird sneaker-loafers (snoafers) that normal moms wear before you could say "I shop at Talbots." Happily, I don’t have to. There’s nothing about your hobby which should impede your ability to be the bestest teacher of little kids you can be. There’s nothing wrong with your hobby! Your question does set off some alarm bells, but I have no question that you can be not only a good person, but a self-directed one, fully in control — of your life, if not your limbs — while still enjoying being caught in any number of compromising positions.

What does worry me is the online hooking-up for activities that leave you helpless to defend yourself. I understand that some might find the very phrase "helpless to defend yourself" kind of hot (hell, I find the phrase kind of hot), and I’m also aware that real life is not an episode of Law and Order: Sleazy Exploitative Plotlines Unit. But seriously, I would not let strangers tie me up, and I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t, either. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can join a club or take classes or otherwise meet people who would love to tie you up, and, even more important, meet other people who know those people. The chance that any of these Internet strangers might wish you harm is admittedly slight, but there are bad people in this world. Please try not to meet any.

The other thing about strangers, of course, is that you don’t know very much about them, including where they work and whom they know, which brings us to our next area of worry: how to keep your two worlds from ever, ever meeting. I’m imagining the principal at your new school arriving, toy bag in hand, to administer a good caning to that girl he met on the Internet (Or are you a guy? It doesn’t matter either way.) That scenario is far-fetched, granted, but you’ll be wanting — needing, actually — to keep your two lives rigorously separate from now on, if you aren’t already. I said your personal proclivities should not affect your ability to be a great teacher, and indeed they should not (if you find yourself so drawn to the alleged Dark Side that you can’t get it together to sleep or do lesson plans or get up for work in the morning, we’ll have another talk), but that depends utterly upon your ability to keep your secret self secret.

I am not a huge fan of the deep dark secret any more that I am big on urging people to blab to Aunt Babs at Sunday supper about their previous night’s exploration of scrotal inflation and anal electrodes: to everything its proper time and place, I say. You, though, are going to have to learn to be spectacularly discreet. Perverts are not a protected class, and people with little exposure to these things haven’t the faintest idea how to separate the lurid and usually deadly "whips and chains" depicted on Law and Order from the usual run of kink-sex reality, which is slightly less dangerous than golf thanks to fewer lightning strikes. Should they discover that one of those whips-and-chains people is — gasp — teaching the children, I can assure you that they will not be interested in becoming educated about it. They will be interested in having you drawn and quartered, and not in a fun way. Go ahead with your plans, but do shut up about it.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Closing time

March 25, 2008

› amanda@sfbg.com

The sign on the door speaks the truth to the 200 people who pass through it everyday: "Buster’s Place/13th Street Drop-In will be permanently closing Monday March 31 at 5 p.m."

Will, a trim, soft-spoken man seated inside Buster’s on a Monday afternoon, reading a paper and waiting for his laundry to finish spinning, says that starting April 1, "The street is going to be where I go. The Safeway sink is going to be my shower."

Buster’s Place, a homeless services facility run by Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, is on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s midyear budget chopping block. But recently passed legislation says the city must provide a 24-hour drop-in center accessible to anyone. On March 18, the Board of Supervisors, by a vote of 9-2, passed "standards of care" mandating that all city-funded homeless shelters meet a basic level of sanitation and service, stocking facilities with toilet paper, soap, and nutritious food, as well as keeping at least one open 24 hours a day for anyone to walk in the door. (See "Setting Standards," 1/30/08 and "Shelter Shuffle," 2/13/08.)

Newsom tacitly supported the new law, but took issue with the $160,000 price tag — which does not include the $1 million it takes to run Buster’s for a year.

The Human Services Agency plans to temporarily fill Buster’s void with 150 Otis, a city-owned building across the street where storage and shelter reservations are provided for homeless people. In the past, it’s been an emergency shelter for men, but it is only permitted to operate nine months out of the year. On April 1 it will reopen with about 30 beds and 30 to 40 chairs — all for men — and will only be open until June 30, the end of the fiscal year. HSA did not respond before press time to multiple requests for more details on the plan.

Beyond trying to fix a permanent problem with a temporary solution, 150 Otis will be a shadow of Buster’s.

"Buster’s definitely handles more than 30 to 40 people a night," said the Department of Public Health’s David Nakanishi. On March 20, for example, Buster’s staff reported to Nakanishi that 98 people were on-site at 3 a.m. — 90 males and eight females. They also reported 30 people at 3 p.m. and 80 at 8 p.m.; 90 was the average between midnight and 7 a.m. Overall, the staff sees 150-200 people a day.

The drop-in center is often the first place a newly homeless person goes for help. But now those people — especially women — will have one less option.

Buster’s manager, Carolyn Akbar, has been telling clients to go to the Free Clinics’ Oshun Center, which has 24-hour drop-in services for women. But, she said, "A lot of women don’t like to go there because it’s right in the heart of the Tenderloin."

Funding for 150 Otis is coming from an HSA budget surplus. "They’re not saving any money. They said as much at the budget hearing," said Sup. Chris Daly.

Already, other city-funded facilities are feeling the strain of one less helping hand. The Mission Neighborhood Resource Center has many of the same services as Buster’s, but is only open weekdays and already operating at capacity. Still, "I’m seeing my numbers spike up," said director Laura Guzman. Contracted to serve 100 people a day, her staff tries to keep the number under 200, but lately it’s been closer to 250. "We had an incidence of violence last week as a result of more people in the facility," Guzman said. Guzman called drop-in facilities "critical players in our system of care. "When everything else fails, the drop-in is there."

Necessities like showers, laundry, restrooms, telephones, and access to medical and dental services can be found at Buster’s. Also, unlike any of the 15 other city-funded places for homeless people, it’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is "low threshold," meaning there are no basic requirements to come in.

Nakanishi listed several reasons why a drop-in center aids in overall public health, from preventing deaths on the street to providing a place to take a shower and use the bathroom. A Request for Proposals put out by DPH to continue the 24-hour drop-in services next year is also on hold, shaving a slim million from the city’s budget.

Tenderloin Health, which operates a drop-in center on Golden Gate Avenue, was one of the respondents to DPH’s RFP for a 24-hour center and said it was more than willing to extend operating hours past the current 11:30 p.m. closing time.

"The funding was pulled the same day we submitted the proposal," said Colm Hegarty, director of development for the nonprofit. "We would do it. Our proposal was very specific."

Drop-in centers have been criticized as places where people hang out and avoid the shelter systems and services they provide, but that was never the intention for Buster’s, which has only been open for 13 months. "The program was designed to really have around the clock case management," said Nakanishi, who wrote the RFP.

Akbar said Homeless Outreach Team officers were supposed to be working with center staff to move people deeper into the care system, but she’s been told they’re too busy working with people on the streets.

Which is what Buster’s is all about. Most of the people still on the streets aren’t interested in doing something to change their situations, points out Keith Bussey, deputy director of integrated health services for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics. "But people who come into a drop-in are in that pre-contemplative stage of change. They’re venturing inside for maybe the first time."

Will is unequivocal about Buster’s proposed replacement: "Not 150 Otis. I don’t want anything to do with 150 Otis because of the people who work there." Claiming he’s received rude treatment there too many times, Will even stopped using the storage facility there. Middle-aged and homeless in San Francisco for the past couple of months, he sleeps outside and after two stays in the city’s shelters said, "Never again."

"Ultimately it’s going to hurt the city," said Hegarty of the closing. "You’ll see more of a presence on the streets. People will want to see something done about it, so there will be more police responding. The criminal justice system is going to become burdened. The emergency room at San Francisco General is going to become burdened. People will go anywhere they can just to get off the streets."

My grandson looks like Barack Obama

March 25, 2008

OPINION He really does. I was sitting and reading (that’s what I do most of the time) and I came across a picture supplied by Obama’s half-sister (who is half-Indonesian) of their mom and Barack at around two years of age. I was struck by the similarities between young Barack (taken some 44 years ago) and my grandson, Wesley, who is two and multi-racial — the new zeitgeist.

Kamala Harris is multiracial. Elaine Santore is multiracial. So is my granddaughter, Tandiwe. And Tiger Woods. And Derek Jeter. It shouldn’t be a big deal anymore.

But it is.

I want my multiracial grandkids to spend the next eight years of their development thinking that having a black President of the United States is the most natural thing in the world. I want my white grandson to think the same thing. I want America to think it too.

Obama’s mom reminds me so much of my own daughter. Barack’s mom joined United Nations efforts. My daughter joined the Peace Corps. Neither ever worked anything but a life of service to America and the needy people of the world (my daughter went from Peace Corps to America Corps and then back to Peace Corps.

I thought these things as I hung out on my balcony (OK, it’s a Tenderloin fire escape) and watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade go under my perch. The first ranks had the cops and an Asian woman at the head. The black cops walking with her seemed normal now, because my grandkids are black and Irish. I read a book once that said that 25 percent of American black folks have American Indian blood in them.

In other words, we’re a multiracial society and should stop listening to the reactionary voices like Hillary Clinton and her supporters who think that any person of color who has a top job or candidacy is there due to some racial quota.

"I’ve been to the jungles and the lowlands beneath / where tigers question jaguars about their teeth. / Never forget the moral that I trace. / This world is a dangerous place."

Bertolt Brecht

One thing that most of the people of the third world agree upon is that you can’t trust white men. That can be something of a hindrance when you’re trying to negotiate something. That’s why Colin Powell and Kofi Annan get much better receptions in the world’s capitals. Imagine going from sending the likes of Dick Cheney to talk to the Iraqis to having Barack Obama represent you.

I’m not trying to be trite here, but let’s face it — most of the world is a lot more likely to have someone in their family who looks like Barack Obama than are most Americans. That counts for a lot.

So let’s be sensible and elect a president who looks like my grandson. It works for me.

h. Brown

h. Brown is a 62 year-old keeper of sfbulldog.com, an eclectic site featuring a half-dozen City Hall denizens. h is a former sailor, firefighter, teacher, nightclub owner, and a hard-living satirical muckraker. He also writes the Court Jester column for fogcityjournal.com, where an earlier version of this column appeared.

Stop the Cow Palace land grab

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March 25, 2008
0

EDITORIAL Technically, the Cow Palace isn’t in San Francisco, but it’s part of the larger city’s history. It was the site of two historic political conventions, a string of historic concerts, and lots of less memorable smaller events. It’s home to the Grand National Rodeo. For a lot of people who care about links to the city’s past, it’s a treasure. For the half-million or so folks who pass through the doors every year, and the dozens of promoters who use the cavernous hall for expositions, shows, and performances that don’t fit anywhere else, it’s an invaluable part of the local cultural scene.

For people who worry about earthquakes and catastrophes, it has immense appeal — the place could serve as a gigantic shelter, with beds, showers, a huge parking lot for staging, and room to land helicopters in the event of a disaster.

To real estate developers, it’s a potential gold mine. And to Daly City, where the Cow Palace sits, it’s an opportunity to create a huge new complex of condos and retail stores that would bring in millions in new taxes.

So when state Sen. Leland Yee introduced a bill that would force the state to declare the Cow Palace surplus property and sell it to Daly City, the battle lines were drawn. A front-page story in the San Francisco Chronicle suggested that the venerable place could be razed for redevelopment. Supporters have come forward to talk about its role in the community and its value as a venue. The Daly City manager, Pat Martel, argued that the place gives her city nothing whatsoever in terms of taxes and hosts some events — like a gun show and the Exotic Erotic Ball — that her constituents find offensive.

What’s missing from most of this debate is the fact that this is 68 acres of prime real estate that’s still publicly owned. Declaring it surplus would almost certainly lead to the privatization of an immense block of potentially priceless urban land.

Yee’s bill, SB 1527, is just the latest chapter in a battle over the Cow Palace that goes back several years. The board that oversees the facility, which reports to the state Department of Agriculture, has been negotiating with Daly City to lease 13 acres of parking lot and underused land for development. That would allow the city to build some new housing, seek a supermarket that the neighborhood badly needs, and add to the local tax base. But the talks have stalled — and after Daly City hired powerhouse lobbyist and former assemblymember Bill Duplissea to take the case to the Legislature, and Daly City’s council asked for help, Yee stepped up.

SB 1527 mandates that the state sell the property to Daly City, with the proceeds going to pay off some of the debt the state incurred through the governor’s misguided deficit-recovery bonds. Yee argues that the state needs the money in this brutal year to save public education, and we understand how powerful that message can be — but selling off public land to cover budget shortfalls is almost always a terrible idea.

There’s little doubt what the endgame is here: Daly City doesn’t have the cash to buy 68 acres that will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars at fair market value. All the small municipality will be is a conduit — the land will be quickly flipped and sold (or leased for very long terms) to private developers.

The Yee bill is designated an "urgency measure," which means it could be approved as early as April. That’s ridiculous; there is no urgency here. This is a huge decision, and needs a lot more public discussion and debate.

We suspect that there’s a way to meet Daly City’s needs for development without turning over the entire 68 acres. There’s almost certainly a way for the Cow Palace to remain and for some of its land to be used for housing and retail.

But we haven’t even seen a template for what sort of project would go on the site. How much of the housing would be affordable? How much of the retail would serve the community? Would this become another chain-store-and-luxury-condo site with gated homes in an economically depressed area? What will the San Francisco neighborhoods that border on the site get out of it? Will there be any new parkland or open space? How will a large commercial complex there affect traffic, noise, pollution, displacement, and other environmental factors in the surrounding areas?

How on earth can you talk about selling off such a huge chunk of public land without even talking about how it will be used?

This is nuts. Yee’s bill needs to be defeated, and all the parties (including the San Francisco city planners and supervisors) need to start cautious, long-term discussions about the Cow Palace, its land, and the needs of the public. Otherwise this will appear — with justification — to be nothing but a sellout of gargantuan proportions.

Peek-A-Pooh!

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March 21, 2008
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By Ailene Sankur

Just in time for Easter…

I used to hate Pooh, Tigger, Roo, Eeyore and the rest of the Hundred Acre wood crew. Well, I don’t necessarily hate those characters. It’s more like those bumper stickers that say, “God, Save Me From Your Followers.” I hate the people who love Pooh: basically, people with severe arrested development issues, the kind of people who also like stuff from Disney. Not ironically. (My ex-boyfriend loves Tigger stuff — keychain, a full PJ set — and those things just reminded me of the indulgent females in his life who gave him the Tigger shit and who tended to encourage his Tigger-like behavior, i.e. Teenage guy hyperactive irresponsibility. I also had a high school friend who loved Eeyore, talking in baby voices, and sleeping with your boyfriend. Neither did much to change my original perspective on Pooh-lovers.)

So I didn’t have much room in my life for cartoon animals of the Pooh variety until a precocious eight-year-old (something else I normally hate…I’m growing soft in my advanced age) introduced me to the Peek-a-Pooh, a rubber keychain-like toy in which a hard plastic Pooh hides within various rubber costumes.

Under Da Sea: Peek-a-Pooh Aquatic Collection

Progressive power play for the DCCC

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March 7, 2008
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The word from the San Francisco Elections Office is that all hell has broken loose as the city’s top progressive political leaders file to run for the Democratic County Central Committee in a bold and surprising move to seize control of the political body from moderates like Mayor Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. And the word is that Team Newsom was caught flat-footed, able to get only a couple administration loyalists — Mike Farrah and Catherine Dodd — to file before today’s 5 p.m. deadline.

But the lineup on the left is a who’s who list of top progressives: supervisors Chris Daly, Jake McGoldrick and Aaron Peskin, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, school board members Eric Mar and Kim-Shree Maufis, likely supervisorial candidates Debra Walker and Eric Quesada, mayoral runner-up Quintin Mecke, and McGoldrick’s son Jamie. If elected, they would join incumbent progressives such as Robert Haaland, Michael Goldstein, and Rafael Mandelman.

“I think what you’ll see is a more progressive central committee,” said Bill Barnes, chief of staff for Assembly member Fiona Ma and a progressive member of the DCCC who is also running for reelection.
Control of the DCCC would allow local progressives, most of whom have endorsed Barack Obama for president, to take advantage of the opportunity to push a more innovative political agenda and try to pressure the party to move to the left.

They are also likely to use a coordinated campaign this year to present progressive policy options to San Franciscans just as Newsom is working to sell a Lennar-sponsored development proposal on the June ballot and using a power grab on city committees to try to take control of the public agenda.

Affordable Housing Initiative on June ballot

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March 6, 2008
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It’s official. The Affordable Housing requirement for the Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard Mixed Use Development Project Initiative, has qualified for the June 3 ballot.

This means that voters will decide on two BVHP-related measures this summer: the Lennar-led Mixed Use Project for Candlestick Point and the Shipyard, and the community-led Affordable Housing requirement, which demands that 50 percent of housing to be built as part of the Lennar led project, be affordable

Michael Cohen of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development complained, at a SF4Democracy presentation last night. that the community initiative has been drawn up without an economic feasibility report. Cohen also told the Guardian, when I asked about Lennar’s troubled financial picture, that it’s not written in stone that Lennar would be the Candlestick/Shipyard project developer.

Either way, it looks like issues around Lennar’s less than perfect environmental monitoring performance at the Shipyard won’t be going away any time soon.

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