Election

Citizen Agnos comes on strong for Proposition B in support of his Athenian oath

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By Bruce B. Brugmann  (with the complete  text of Art Agnos speech  to the  May 21 dinner of San Francisco Tomorrow)

When Art Agnos was sworn in as mayor in 1988, he used the Athenian Oath that was taken by young men reaching the age of majority in Athens 2000 years ago.  He shortened the oath (as many did) to say: “I promise…upon my honor…to leave my city better than I found it.”

For Agnos, a Greek steeped in Greek traditions, the oath was a serious matter. “At the heart of our vision,” Agnos said in his inaugural address, “ is a refusal to let San Francisco become an expensive enclave  that locks out the middle class, working families and the poor. At the center of our strategy is a belief in the basic right of people to decent jobs and housing.”  

Twenty-six years later, Citizen Agnos was working hard  in private life to leave his city better than he had found it. He led a citizens’ movement that stopped the monstrous 8 Washington project, knocked the Warriors off the piers, forced the Giants to lower their  highrise expectations,  and promoted Proposition  B that would stop  the Wall on the Waterfront and require a public vote on any increases  to current height limits on port property.

 And Agnos is having the time of his life doing all this, as he made clear in his remarks to San Francisco Tomorrow, the one organization in town that has been manning the barricades in every major Manhattanization battle all these years  on the waterfront and everywhere else.  He enjoys taking on Mayor Lee and “the high tech billionaire political network that wants to control city hall and fulfill their vision of who can live here and where.” And he must relish  the Chronicle’s C.W.Nevius and the paper’s editors and their self-immolating bouts of hysteria.  

Agnos gave a splendid speech and confirms that he really is our best ex-mayor. I particularly liked his point about the “power to decide” on development. “Today that power to decide is in a room In City Hall. I know that room. I have been in that room. 

“You know who is in there? It is the lobbyists,..the land use lawyers…the construction union representatives..the department directors..and other politicians. You know who is not in that room. You.Prop B changes that dynamic and puts you in the room that matters. No more ‘advisory committees’ that get  indulged and brushed off. No more ‘community outreach’ that is ignored. It will all matter.”

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes, on B and stopping the Manhattanization of the waterfront. b3

Agnos remarks to San Francisco Tomorrow 

I am delighted to speak to the members and friends of SFT about the waterfront tonight…and a special shout out to Jane Morrison as one of the pioneer professional  women in the media… and one of the  finest Social Service Commissioners in our City’s history. I also welcome the opportunity to join you in honoring tonight’s unsung heroes…Becky Evans with whom I have worked closely over the past year and half …Tim Redmond  the conscience of the progressive community for the past 35 years…Sarah Short and Tommi Avicolli Mecca from the Housing Rights Committee who stand up every day for poor and working people who need a voice in our city.

Twenty-four years ago in 1990, I made one of the best decisions of my mayoralty when I listened to the progressive environmental voice of San Francisco and ordered the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. That freeway was not only a hideous blight but also a wall that separated the city from its waterfront. Hard to believe today…but it was a very controversial decision back then… just 3 years before…in 1987 the voters had defeated a proposal by Mayor Feinstein to demolish it. The Loma Prieta Earthquake gave us a chance to reconsider that idea in 1990. Despite opposition of 22,000 signatures on a petition to retrofit the damaged freeway… combined with intense lobbying from the downtown business community led by the Chamber of Commerce, North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf and especially Chinatown…we convinced the Board of Supervisors to adopt our plan to demolish the freeway… by one vote.

And the rest is history…until today. 

After a period of superb improvements that include a restored Ferry Building…the Ball park… new public piers where one can walk further out into the bay than ever before in the history of this city… the 
Exploratorium…the soon to be opened Jim Herman Cruise Ship terminal…Brannan Wharf Park…there is a new threat. Private development plans that threaten to change the environment of what Herb Caen first called “our newest precious place” …not with an ugly concrete freeway wall…but with steel and glass hi-rises that are twice as tall.

Today…the availability of huge amounts of developer financing …combined with unprecedented influence in city hall and the oversight bodies of this city…the Waterfront has become the new gold coast of San Francisco. Politically connected developers seek to exploit magnificent public space with hi-rise, high profit developments that shut out the ordinary San Franciscan from our newest precious place. We love this city because it is a place where all of us have a claim to the best of it…no matter what our income…no matter that we are renter or homeowner…no matter what part of the city we come from.

And connected to that is the belief that waterfront public land is for all of us…not just those with the biggest bank account or most political influence. 

That was driven home in a recent call I had from a San Franciscan who complained about the high cost of housing for home ownership or rent…the high cost of Muni…museum admissions…even Golden Gate Bridge tours and on and on. When he finished with his list, I reminded him I was mayor 23 years ago and that there had been 4 mayors since me,  so why was he complaining to me?
“Because you are the only one I can reach!” he said.

Over the past few weeks…that message has stuck with me.  And I finally realized why. This is what many people in our city have been seeking… someone who will listen and understand. Someone who will listen…understands… and acts to protect our newest precious place…our restored waterfront. You see…it was not just about luxury high-rise condos at 8 Washington last year…It was not just a monstrous 
basketball arena on pier 30-32 with luxury high-rise condos and a hotel across the street on public land. It’s about the whole waterfront that belongs to the people of San Francisco…all 7 and half miles of it… from the Hyde Street Piers to India Basin. And it must be protected from the land use mistakes that can become irrevocable. 

This is not new to our time…8 Washington and the Warriors arena were not the first horrendous proposals…they were only the latest. Huge… out of scale… enormously profitable projects… fueled by exuberant boosterism from the Chamber of Commerce… have always surfaced on our waterfront. 50 years ago…my mentor in politics…then Supervisor Leo McCarthy said, “We must prevent a wall of high rise apartments along the waterfront…and we must stop the filling in of the SF bay as a part of a program to retain the things that have made this city attractive.” That was 1964…

In 2014…Former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said it best this way…”It seems like every 10 years…every generation has to stand up to some huge development that promises untold riches
  as it seeks to exploit the waterfront and our public access to it.” Public awareness first started with the construction of the 18 stories of Fontana towers east and west in 1963. That motivated then Assemblyman Casper Weinberger to lead public opposition and demand the first height limits… as well as put a stop to 5 more Fontana style buildings on the next block at Ghirardelli Square. This was the same Casper Weinberger who went on to become Secretary of HEW and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan.

In 1970 the Port Commission proposed to rip out the then “rotting piers” of piers 1 – 7 just north of the Ferry Building. They were to be replaced with 40 acres of fill (3 X Union Square) upon which a 1200-room hotel and a 2400 car garage would be built. It passed easily through Planning and the Board of Supervisors. When the proposal was rejected on 22 to 1 vote by BCDC, Mayor Alioto complained, “We just embalmed the rotting piers.” No… we didn’t …we saved them for the right project…and if one goes there today… they see it…the largest surviving renovated piers complex with restaurants, walk in cafes, port offices, free public docking space, water taxis and complete public access front and back. 

In 2002… that entire project was placed on the U.S. National Historic Register. But my favorite outrageous proposal from that time was the plan to demolish another set of “rotting piers” from the Ferry Building south to the Bay Bridge. And in place of those rotting piers… the plans called for more landfill to create a Ford dealership car lot with 5000 cars as well as a new Shopping center. That too…was stopped.

So now it’s our turn to make sure that we stop these all too frequent threats to the access and viability of our waterfront.

In the past 2 weeks…we have seen momentum grow to support locating the George Lucas Museum on piers 30-32 or the sea wall across the Embarcadero.I love the idea…but where would we be with that one be if a small band of waterfront neighbors and the Sierra Club had not had the courage to stand up to the Warriors and City Hall 2 years ago. Once again they used the all too familiar refrain of “rotting piers” as an impending catastrophe at piers 30-32.

Proposition B will help prevent mistakes before they happen. Most of all… Prop B will ensure protection of the port on more permanent basis by requiring a public vote on any increases to current height limits on Port property.All of the current planning approval processes will stay in place…Port Commission…Planning commission…Board of Permit Appeals…Board of Supervisors…will continue to do what they have always done. But if a waiver of current height limits along the waterfront is granted by any of those political bodies…it must be affirmed by a vote of the people. Prop B does not say Yes or No…it says Choice. It is that simple. The people of SF will make the final choice on height limit increases on port property. 

The idea of putting voters in charge of final approval is not new. In the past the people of San Francisco have voted for initiatives to approve a Children’s budget…a Library budget…retaining neighborhood fire stations… minimum police staffing… as well as require public authorization for new runway bay fill at our airport. And at the port itself… there have been approximately 18 ballot measures to make land use and policy decisions.

So…we are not talking about ballot box planning…we are talking about ballot box approval for waivers of existing height limits on public property. Opponents like Building Trades Council, Board of Realtors, 
and Chamber of Commerce are raising alarms that we will lose environment protections like CEQA by creating loopholes for developers. 
Astonishing! 

Prop B is sponsored by the Sierra Club…Tonight we honor Becky Evans of the Sierra Club who sponsored Proposition B. That same set of opponents are joined by city bureaucrats issuing “doomsday” reports stating that we will lose thousands of units of middle class housing… billions of dollars in port revenues…elimination of parks and open space on the waterfront. Astonishing!

These are the same bureaucrats who issued glowing reports a couple of years ago that the America’s Cup would mean billions in revenue for the port and the city. And they wanted to give Oracle’s Larry Ellison 66-year leases to develop on 5 of our port piers for that benefit! Now…how did THAT work out? So far…city hall will admit to $11 million dollars in known losses for the taxpayers.

Another opponent… SPUR says any kind of housing will make a difference and there are thousands in the pipe line… so don’t worry.
Astonishing!

We have not seen one stick of low income or affordable housing proposed on the waterfront since the 80s and 90s when Mayor Feinstein and I used waterfront land for that very purpose. Hundreds of low-income housing dwellings like Delancey Street and Steamboat Point Apartments…affordable and middle class housing like South Beach Marina apartments and Bayside village comprise an oasis of diversity and affordable housing in the midst of ultra expensive condos. For me…that was part of an inaugural promise made in January 1988…I said, “At the heart of our vision is a refusal to let San Francisco become an expensive enclave that locks out the middle class, working families and the poor. At the center of our strategy is a belief in the basic right of people to decent jobs and housing. 

Yes…that was the commitment on public land on the waterfront by 2 mayors of a recent era… but not today. Indeed…San Francisco has been rated the #1 least affordable city in America…including NY Manhattan. That is one of the many reasons we see middle class  people…as well as working poor…being forced to leave San Francisco for Oakland and elsewhere in the bay area. That reality was reinforced in the February 10, 2014 issue of Time Magazine…Mayor Lee said, “I don’t think we paid any attention to the middle class. I think everybody assumed the middle class was moving out.”

Today…An individual or family earning up to $120,000 per year …150 per cent of the median in this city… do not qualify for a mortgage and can’t afford the rent in one of the thousands of new housing units opening in the city. The Chronicle reported a couple of weeks ago that a working family of  3 who have lived in a rent-controlled studio apartment in the Mission is offered $50 K to leave. That is what the purely developer driven housing market offers. And that philosophy is reinforced by a planning commission whose chair was quoted in December 2013 issue of SF Magazine saying, “Mansions are as just as important as housing.”

Prop B changes that dynamic by putting the Citizen in the room with the “pay to play” power brokers. That is what it is all about my friends. Power.

Former SF city planning director and UC School of City Planning Professor…Alan Jacobs recently related what he called the Jacobs Truism of land economics: “Where political discretion is involved in land use decisions…the side that wins is the side with the most power. And that side is the side with the most money.” Prop B will ensure that if developers are going to spend a lot of money to get a height waiver on port property …the best place to spend it will be to involve, inform, and engage the citizen as to the merit of their request…not on the politicians.

Today that power to decide is in a room in City Hall. I know that room…I have been in that room. You know who is there? It is the lobbyists…the land use lawyers…the construction union representatives…the departmental directors… and other politicians. You know who is not in the room? YOU. The hope is that someone in that room remembers you. But if you really want your voice to be heard…you have to go to some departmental hearing or the Board of Supervisors…wait for 3 or 4 hours for your turn… and then get 2 minutes to make your case. Prop B changes that dynamic and puts you in the room that matters. No more “advisory committees” that get indulged and brushed off. No more “community outreach” that is ignored. 

It will all matter. That is why today there is no opposition from any waterfront developer…They get it. We are going to win. It is easy to see how the prospect of Prop B on the ballot this June has changed the dynamics of high-rise development along the waterfront. The Warriors have left and purchased a better location on private land in Mission Bay. The Giants have publicly announced that they will revise their plans with an eye to more appropriate height limits on port land. Forest City is moving with a ballot proposal to use Pier 70 to build new buildings of 9 stories…the same height as one of current historic buildings they will preserve on that site for artists.

The Pier 70 project will include 30 percent low-income…affordable and middle class housing on site… along with low-tech industries, office space and a water front promenade that stretches along the entire shoreline boundary. A good project that offers what the city needs will win an increase in height limits because it works for everybody. A bad one will not. My friends…I have completed my elected public service career. There will be no more elections for me.

And as I review my 40 years in public life…I am convinced of one fundamental truth. The power of the people should… and must… determine what kind of a city this will be. It must not be left to a high tech billionaire political network that wants to control city hall to fulfill their vision of who can live here and where. It starts with you… the people of this city’s neighborhoods… empowered to participate in the decisions that affect our future. You are the ones who must be vigilant and keep faith with values that make this city great. This city is stronger when we open our arms to all who want to be a part of it…to live and work in it…to be who they want to be…with whomever they want to be it with. Our dreams for this city are more powerful when they can be shared by all of us in our time…

We are the ones …here and now… who can create the climate to advance the San Francisco dream to the next generation. And the next opportunity to do that will be election day 
June 3. Thank you.

B3 note: The full Athenian oath: “We will never bring disgrace on this our City by an act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for the ideals and Sacred Things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the City’s laws and will do our best to incite a like reverence and respect in those above us who are prone to annul them or set them at naught. We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public’s sense of civic duty. Thus, in all ways, we will transmit this City not only, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted back to us.”  The National League of Cities publishes the oath and says it “was recited by the citizens of Athens, Greece, over 2,000 years ago. It is frequently referenced by civic leaders in modern times as a timeless code of civic responsibility.” 

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012. He can be reached at Bruoe@sfbg.com) 

 

 

 

THE GUARDIAN CLEAN SLATE

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GOVERNOR
Jerry Brown

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Gavin Newsom

SECRETARY OF STATE
Derek Kressman

CONTROLLER
Betty Yee

TREASURER
John Chiang

ATTORNEY GENERAL
Kamala Harris

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER
Dave JOnes

SUPERVISOR OF SCHOOLS
Tom Torlakson

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION
Fiona Ma

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17
David Campos

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 19
Phil Ting

PROPOSITION 41
Yes

PROPOSITION 42
Yes

SF PROPOSITION A
Yes

SF PROPOSITION B
Yes

SF SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE
Daniel Flores

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12
Nancy Pelosi

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 13
Barbara Lee

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 14
Jackie Speier

To read our full endorsements, click here.

Chiu mailer highlights Guardian praise, despite our Campos endorsement

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Politics is dirty business, and I should never underestimate the willingness of politicians to turn any editorial praise they receive into an electoral advantage, distorting the context as needed, a lesson that I was reminded of this week.

Several Guardian readers have called me this week to complain about a mailer dropped on voters by the David Chiu for Assembly campaign, which includes long quotes from Chiu’s endorsements by the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area Reporter, as well as positive quotes from the Bay Guardian and San Francisco Examiner.

Although neither the Guardian nor the Examiner has endorsed Chiu — we enthusiastically endorsed David Campos in that race, while the Examiner is waiting until the fall rematch to do endorsements — our readers said the flyer left the impression that we had.

Chiu campaign spokesperson Nicole Derse disputes that view. “It definitely did not leave that impression,” she told me. “We were very clear about who has endorsed.” She said the Examiner and Guardian were included because “it’s important to highlight objective sources like newspapers.”

The Guardian quote was from a July 23, 2013 blog post in which I indeed wrote, “It is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislation lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city.”

It was certainly true at the time, although I received a lot criticism for what I wrote from the progressive community, which pointed out how Chiu had maneuvered himself into the swing vote position on key issues such as condo conversions and CEQA reform. And the compromises Chiu forged actually allowed fiscal conservatives to erode San Francisco’s standing as a progessive city while burgeoning his own political resume.

So I ran another blog post to air those concerns, and then we ran a hybrid of the two in the next week’s paper that closes with this line, “In the end, Chiu can be seen as an effective legislator, a centrist compromiser, or both. Perspective is everything in politics.” BTW, in that original post, I also noted that the Airbnb legislation Chiu was working on should challenge his political skills and reputation, and indeed it took many more months to introduce and has been met by a storm of criticism, becoming the marquee political fight of the summer at City Hall.

After that first post, I also heard from Campos and his supporters predicting that the Chiu campaign would use my well-meaning praise to convey support from the Guardian in a misleading way, a prophecy that has now proven prescient.

But I also think that Campos has done a good job at undermining Chiu’s greatest strength in this election, that of being an effective legislator, by hammering on the reality that things have gotten worse for the average San Francisco because Chiu and his allies have been most effective on behalf of the tech companies, landlords, and other rich and powerful interests that are undermining the city’s diversity, affordability, and progressive values.

“Effective for whom? That’s what’s important,” Campos told us during his endorsement interview, noting that, “Most people in San Francisco have been left behind and out of that prosperity.”

Chiu’s campaign counters by overtly and in whisper campaigns saying that progressives can’t be effective in Sacramento, blatantly overlooking the fact that the incumbent he’s running to replace, Tom Ammiano, has been both a consistent, trustworthy progressive, and an effective legislator who has gotten more bills signed than most of his colleagues, even as he takes on tough issues like reforms to Prop. 13 and prison conditions.

And Ammiano hasn’t just said good things about David Campos, his chosen successor — Ammiano has actually endorsed Campos. 

Guardian Intel: Guardian Clean Slate clip-out guide, Intersection for the Arts halts programs

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GUARDIAN CLEAN SLATE

Our clip-out guide to take to the polls for the June 3 election. Read our full endorsements at www.tinyurl.com/SFBGJune2014Endorsements

GOVERNOR: Jerry Brown

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Gavin Newsom

SECRETARY OF STATE: Derek Cressman

CONTROLLER: Betty Yee

TREASURER: John Chiang

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Kamala Harris

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: Dave Jones

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS: Tom Torlakson

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION: Fiona Ma

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17: David Campos

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 19: Phil Ting

PROPOSITION 41: Yes

PROPOSITION 42: Yes

SF PROPOSITION B: Yes

SF SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: Daniel Flores

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12: Nancy Pelosi

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 13: Barbara Lee

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 14: Jackie Speier

MELTING ICE

Family members of federal immigration detainees gathered in downtown San Francisco May 23, calling for the release of three asylum seekers who’ve been detained in Texas for months. Joined by San Francisco Organizing Project activists and other supporters, they rallied outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, and spoke about how tough it’s been to be separated from their loved ones. One detainee, Guatemalan refugee Ricardo Ivan Martinez, who previously lived in San Francisco with his wife and daughter, received death threats after reporting a rape to U.S. Border Patrol. Yeni and Dariela Escobar-Pereira, sisters from Honduras, fled from violence and are now being detained; their mom, a San Francisco resident, is worried sick. The detainees “have been subjected to the ‘hielera’ or the ‘ice box’,” according to a statement issued by faith groups lending support, “where detainees are placed in a cold room for hours and even days with little clothing.”

OCEAN PROTEST LAYDOWN

The best way to become environmentally conscious is to start young. 850 Marin students, grades 2-7, spent the better part of a day last week cleaning up Ocean Beach. After, the students laid down to form a Western Grebe plucking a fish out of the ocean, with the words “Only One Ocean” above it, for an aerial photo. Western Grebe populations are in decline, the California Coastal Commission said. There’s nothing more inspiring than young people doing something to save the world.

INTERSECTION HALTED

In the latest blow to San Francisco’s arts community, one of our oldest alternative art spaces, Intersection for the Arts, has halted its programming and laid off key staff.

“Our financial situation is deeply challenged,” wrote Board of Directors Chair Yancy Widmer in a post on Intersection for the Arts’ website (www.theintersection.org),

“and it has become apparent that the current business model is no longer sustainable.”

“With the specific shifts in the economy and culture of San Francisco, it has been increasingly difficult to operate and sustain a community-based nonprofit arts organization like Intersection,” ousted program directors Kevin B. Chen, Rebeka Rodriguez and Sean San Jose wrote in a joint statement.”

The decades-old studio and artists space will lay off most of its staff and program directors by the end of the month, and will no longer produce its own arts programming.

HOT OPERA

The San Francisco Opera‘s frisky summer season is upon us — this little sister to its annual cavalcade of spectacle is the perfect opportunity to dip your toes into the world of grand song and drama. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s milestone musical Showboat (pictured) kicks the series off June 1, with La Traviata (June 11) and Madama Butterfly (June 15) following close behind. www.sfopera.org

DEFENESTRATION TOSSED

Enjoy it in its final weeks: Artist Brian Goggin’s iconic installation at San Francisco’s former Hugo Hotel at Sixth Street and Howard, “Defenestration” — the one with all the furniture climbing out of the building’s windows — is scheduled to be dismantled June 3. According to Laughing Squid, Goggin is preparing to sell the beloved furniture at the Varnish Fine Art Gallery. (www.varnishfineart.com)

 

Progressives challenge mayor’s abuse of authority

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EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee has repeatedly overstepped his authority on behalf of the entrenched political and economic interests who put him into office, and we’re happy to see Sup. John Avalos and his progressive allies on the Board of Supervisors starting to push back and restore a more honest and equitable balance of power at City Hall.

There was no excuse for Lee and his political appointees on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to sabotage a decade of work creating the CleanPowerSF program, the only mechanism the city has for creating the renewable energy projects we need to meet our climate change goals.

This was a program created by a veto-proof majority on the Board of Supervisors, the body that the City Charter gives the authority to create such programs on behalf of the people who elect them, then the SFPUC used a vote that should have been a procedural formality to block it (see “Power struggle,” 9/17/13).

Lee refused to work with the supervisors to address his stated concerns — most of which have already been addressed by now anyway, from the program’s cost to the involvement of Shell Energy North America, which is now out — draining the CleanPowerSF funding and providing more evidence that this ruse was really all about protecting PG&E from competition.

So Avalos and other progressives of the Budget & Finance Committee last week rejected the SFPUC budget, forcing Lee and allies to now bargain in good faith. That’s the kind of realpolitik in service of progressive values that we’ve been missing at City Hall in recent years, the willingness to get tough with the grinning mayor who disingenuously talks about civility while his operatives stab their opponents in the back.

Avalos is also sponsoring a fall ballot measure that would let voters fill vacancies on the Board of Supervisors, rather than letting the mayor, who heads the executive branch, stack the legislative branch of government in his favor. We should have done that a decade ago after Gavin Newsom executed his infamous “triple play” to gain another ally on the board, and it’s especially relevant now that two supervisors are running against either other for the Assembly.

Avalos isn’t stressing the balance of powers argument for his Let’s Elect our Elected Officials Act of 2014, which would call a special election to fill vacancies in all the locally elected positions if the next election was more than year away (both the Board of Education and City College Board of Trustees would appoint interim members). It even gives up the supervisors’ power to appoint a new mayor (with the board president serving the interim, as is now the law). San Francisco isn’t a dictatorship, as much as that might please Lee’s business community allies. The people and our district-elected supervisors need to have a stronger voice in how this city is being run, so we at the Bay Guardian are happy to see a few new green shoots of democracy springing up at City Hall.

Agnos offers waterfront development history lesson during SFT speech

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[Editor’s Note: This is the text of a speech that former Mayor Art Agnos gave at San Francisco Tomorrow’s annual dinner on May 21. We reprint it here in its entirely so readers can hear directly what Agnos has been saying on the campaign trail in support of Prop. B]

I am delighted to speak to the members and friends of SFT about the waterfront tonight…and a special shout out to Jane Morrison as one of the pioneer professional women in the media and one of the finest Social Service Commissioners in our City’s history.

I also welcome the opportunity to join you in honoring tonight’s unsung heroes: Becky Evans, with whom I have worked closely over the past year and half; Tim Redmond, the conscience of the progressive community for the past 35 years; and Sara Shortt and Tommi Avicolli Mecca from the Housing Rights Committee, who stand up every day for poor and working people who need a voice in our city.

Twenty-four years ago, in 1990, I made one of the best decisions of my mayoralty when I listened to the progressive environmental voice of San Francisco and ordered the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. That freeway was not only a hideous blight but also a wall that separated the city from its waterfront.

Hard to believe today, but it was a very controversial decision back then. Just three years before, in 1987, the voters had defeated a proposal by Mayor Feinstein to demolish it. The Loma Prieta Earthquake gave us a chance to reconsider that idea in 1990.

Despite opposition of 22,000 signatures on a petition to retrofit the damaged freeway, combined with intense lobbying from the downtown business community led by the Chamber of Commerce, North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, and especially Chinatown, we convinced the Board of Supervisors to adopt our plan to demolish the freeway, by one vote.

And the rest is history — until today.

After a period of superb improvements — that include a restored Ferry Building, the ball park, two new public piers where one can walk further out into the bay than ever before in the history of this city, the Exploratorium, the soon to be opened Jim Herman Cruise Ship Terminal, Brannan Wharf Park — there is a new threat.

Private development plans that threaten to change the environment of what Herb Caen first called “our newest precious place,” not with an ugly concrete freeway wall, but with steel and glass high-rises that are twice as tall. Today, the availability of huge amounts of developer financing, combined with unprecedented influence in City Hall and the oversight bodies of this city, the waterfront has become the new gold coast of San Francisco.

Politically connected developers seek to exploit magnificent public space with high-rise, high profit developments that shut out the ordinary San Franciscan from our newest precious place. We love this city because it is a place where all of us have a claim to the best of it, no matter what our income, no matter that we are renter or homeowner, no matter what part of the city we come from.

And connected to that is the belief that waterfront public land is for all of us, not just those with the biggest bank account or most political influence. That was driven home in a recent call I had from a San Franciscan who complained about the high cost of housing for home ownership or rent, the high cost of Muni, museum admissions, even Golden Gate Bridge tours, and on and on.

When he finished with his list, I reminded him I was mayor 23 years ago and that there had been four mayors since me, so why was he complaining to me? “Because you are the only one I can reach!” he said.

Over the past few weeks, that message has stuck with me. And I finally realized why. This is what many people in our city have been seeking, someone who will listen and understand. Someone who will listen, understands, and acts to protect our newest precious place, our restored waterfront.

You see, it was not just about luxury high-rise condos at 8 Washington last year. It was not just a monstrous basketball arena on Pier 30-32 with luxury high-rise condos and a hotel across the street on public land. It’s about the whole waterfront that belongs to the people of San Francisco, all seven and a half miles of it, from the Hyde Street Piers to India Basin. And it must be protected from the land use mistakes that can become irrevocable.

This is not new to our time: 8 Washington and the Warriors arena were not the first horrendous proposals, they were only the latest. Huge, out of scale, enormously profitable projects, fueled by exuberant boosterism from the Chamber of Commerce, have always surfaced on our waterfront.

Fifty years ago, my mentor in politics, then-Supervisor Leo McCarthy said, “We must prevent a wall of high rise apartment along the waterfront, and we must stop the filling in of the SF bay as a part of a program to retain the things that have made this city attractive.”

That was 1964. In 2014, former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said it best this way: “It seems like every 10 years, every generation has to stand up to some huge development that promises untold riches as it seeks to exploit the waterfront and our public access to it.”

Public awareness first started with the construction of the 18 stories of Fontana towers east and west in 1963. That motivated then-Assemblyman Casper Weinberger to lead public opposition and demand the first height limits, as well as put a stop to five more Fontana-style buildings on the next block at Ghirardelli Square. This was the same Casper Weinberger who went on to become Secretary of HEW [formerly the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare] and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan.

In 1970, the Port Commission proposed to rip out the then “rotting piers” of Piers 1 – 7 just north of the Ferry Building. They were to be replaced with 40 acres of fill (three times the size of Union Square) upon which a 1200-room hotel and a 2400 car garage would be built.

It passed easily through Planning and the Board of Supervisors. When the proposal was rejected on 22 to 1 vote by BCDC [the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission], Mayor Alioto complained, “We just embalmed the rotting piers.”

No, we didn’t, we saved them for the right project. And if one goes there today, they see it, the largest surviving renovated piers complex with restaurants, walk-in cafes, Port offices, free public docking space, water taxis, and complete public access front and back. In 2002, that entire project was placed on the U.S. National Historic Register.

But my favorite outrageous proposal from that time was plan to demolish another set of “rotting piers” from the Ferry Building south to the Bay Bridge. And in place of those rotting piers, the plans called for more landfill to create a Ford dealership car lot with ,5000 cars as well as a new shopping center. That too was stopped.

So now it’s our turn to make sure that we stop these all too frequent threats to the access and viability of our waterfront. In the past two weeks, we have seen momentum grow to support locating the George Lucas Museum on Piers 30-32 or the sea wall across the Embarcadero.

I love the idea, but where would we be with that one if a small band of waterfront neighbors and the Sierra Club had not had the courage to stand up to the Warriors and City Hall two years ago. Once again, they used the all too familiar refrain of “rotting piers” as an impending catastrophe at Piers 30-32.

Proposition B will help prevent mistakes before they happen. Most of all, Prop. B will ensure protection of the Port on a more permanent basis by requiring a public vote on any increases to current height limits on Port property. All of the current planning approval processes will stay in place — Port Commission, Planning Commission, Board of Permit Appeals, Board of Supervisors, all will continue to do what they have always done.

But if a waiver of current height limits along the waterfront is granted by any of those political bodies, it must be affirmed by a vote of the people. Prop B does not say Yes or No, it says Choice. It is that simple. The people of SF will make the final choice on height limit increases on Port property.

The idea of putting voters in charge of final approval is not new. In the past, the people of San Francisco have voted for initiatives to approve a Children’s budget, a Library budget, retaining neighborhood fire stations, minimum police staffing, as well as to require public authorization for new runway bay fill at our airport. And at the Port itself, there have been approximately 18 ballot measures to make land use and policy decisions.

So we are not talking about ballot box planning, we are talking about ballot box approval for waivers of existing height limits on public property. Opponents like Building Trades Council, Board of Realtors, and Chamber of Commerce are raising alarms that we will lose environment protections like CEQA by creating loopholes for developers. Astonishing!

Prop B is sponsored by the Sierra Club. Tonight we honor Becky Evans of the Sierra Club who sponsored Proposition B. That same set of opponents are joined by city bureaucrats issuing “doomsday” reports stating that we will lose thousands of units of middle class housing, billions of dollars in Port revenues, elimination of parks and open space on the waterfront. Astonishing!

These are the same bureaucrats who issued glowing reports a couple of years ago that the America’s Cup would mean billions in revenue for the Port and the city. And they wanted to give Oracle’s Larry Ellison 66-year leases to develop on five of our Port piers for that benefit! Now, how did THAT work out? So far, City Hall will admit to $11 million in known losses for the taxpayers. Another opponent, SPUR [San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association], says any kind of housing will make a difference and there are thousands in the pipeline, so don’t worry. Astonishing!

We have not seen one stick of low income or affordable housing proposed on the waterfront since the ‘80s and ‘90s when Mayor Feinstein and I used waterfront land for that very purpose. Hundreds of low-income housing dwellings like Delancey Street and Steamboat Point Apartments, affordable and middle class housing like South Beach Marina apartments and Bayside village, comprise an oasis of diversity and affordable housing in the midst of ultra expensive condos.

For me, that was part of an inaugural promise made in January 1988. I said, “At the heart of our vision is a refusal to let San Francisco become an expensive enclave that locks out the middle class, working families, and the poor. At the center of our strategy is a belief in the basic right of people to decent jobs and housing.”

Yes, that was the commitment on public land on the waterfront by two mayors of a recent era, but not today. Indeed, San Francisco has been rated the #1 least affordable city in America, including NY Manhattan. That is one of the many reasons we see middle class people, as well as working poor, being forced to leave San Francisco for Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area.

That reality was reinforced in the February 10, 2014 issue of Time Magazine. Mayor Lee said, “I don’t think we paid any attention to the middle class. I think everybody assumed the middle class was moving out.”

Today, an individual or family earning up to $120,000 per year — 150 percent of the median in this city — does not qualify for mortgage and can’t afford the rent in one of the thousands of new housing units opening in the city. The Chronicle reported a couple of weeks ago that a working family of three who have lived in a rent-controlled studio apartment in the Mission was offered $50,000 to leave.

That is what the purely developer-driven housing market offers. And that philosophy is reinforced by a Planning Commission whose chair was quoted in December 2013 issue of SF Magazine saying, “Mansions are just as important as housing.”

Prop B changes that dynamic by putting the citizen in the room with the “pay to play” power brokers. That is what it is all about my friends: Power.

Former SF city planning director and UC School of City Planning Professor Alan Jacobs recently related what he called the Jacobs Truism of land economics: “Where political discretion is involved in land use decisions, the side that wins is the side with the most power. And that side is the side with the most money.”

Prop B will ensure that if developers are going to spend a lot of money to get a height waiver on Port property, the best place to spend it will be to involve, inform, and engage the citizen as to the merit of their request, not on the politicians. Today that power to decide is in a room in City Hall. I know that room. I have been in that room.

You know who is there? It is the lobbyists, the land use lawyers, the construction union representatives, the departmental directors, and other politicians. You know who is not in the room? You. The hope is that someone in that room remembers you.

But if you really want your voice to be heard, you have to go to some departmental hearing or the Board of Supervisors, wait for three or four hours for your turn, and then get two minutes to make your case. Prop B changes that dynamic and puts you in the room that matters. No more “advisory committees” that get indulged and brushed off. No more “community outreach” that is ignored.

It will all matter. That is why today there is no opposition from any waterfront developer. They get it. We are going to win. It is easy to see how the prospect of Prop B on the ballot this June has changed the dynamics of high-rise development along the waterfront.

The Warriors have left and purchased a better location on private land in Mission Bay. The Giants have publicly announced that they will revise their plans with an eye to more appropriate height limits on Port land. Forest City is moving with a ballot proposal to use Pier 70 to build new buildings of nine stories, the same height as one of current historic buildings they will preserve on that site for artists.

The Pier 70 project will include 30 percent low-income, affordable and middle class housing on site, along with low-tech industries, office space, and a waterfront promenade that stretches along the entire shoreline boundary. A good project that offers what the city needs will win an increase in height limits because it works for everybody. A bad one will not.

My friends, I have completed my elected public service career. There will be no more elections for me. And as I review my 40 years in public life, I am convinced of one fundamental truth: The power of the people should, and must, determine what kind of a city this will be.

It must not be left to a high-tech billionaire political network that wants to control City Hall to fulfill their vision of who can live here and where. It starts with you, the people of this city’s neighborhoods, empowered to participate in the decisions that affect our future. You are the ones who must be vigilant and keep faith with values that make this city great.

This city is stronger when we open our arms to all who want to be a part of it, to live and work in it, to be who they want to be, with whomever they want to be it with. Our dreams for this city are more powerful when they can be shared by all of us in our time.

WE are the ones, here and now, who can create the climate to advance the San Francisco dream to the next generation. And the next opportunity to do that will be election day June 3.

Thank you.

 

The strange, unique power of San Francisco mayors

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Mayor Ed Lee wields a strange and unique power in San Francisco politics, passed down from Mayor Gavin Newsom, and held by Mayor Willie Brown before him.

No, we’re not talking magic, though mayors have used this ability to almost magically influence the city’s political winds. 

When elected officials leave office in San Francisco and a seat is left vacant, the mayor has the legal power to appoint someone to that empty seat. A study by San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission conducted March last year shows out of 117 jurisdictions in California, and ten major cities nationwide, only seven jurisdictions give their executives (governors, mayors) the ability to appoint an official to a vacant seat. The other jurisdictions hold special elections or allow legislative bodies to vote on a new appointment. 

The power of a San Francisco mayor then is nearly singularly unique, the report found, but especially when seen in the context of the nation’s major cities.

“Of the 10 cities surveyed here,” the study’s authors wrote, “no other city among the most populous grants total discretion for appointments.” 

The study is especially relevant now, as Sup. John Avalos introduced a charter amendment to change this unqiuely San Franciscan mayoral power, and put the power back in the hands of the electorate.

His amendment would require special elections when vacancies appear on public bodies like the community college board, the board of education, or other citywide elected offices. He nicknamed it the “Let’s Elect our Elected Officials Act,” and if approved by the Board of Supervisors it will go to this November’s ballot.

Avalos touched on the LAFCo study while introducing his amendment at the board’s meeting on Tuesday [5/20]. 

“One of the striking results is how unique San Francisco’s appointment process is,” Avalos said. “There’s no democratic process or time constraint when the mayor makes these appointments.”

He pointed to then-Assessor Recorder Phil Ting’s election to California Assembly in 2012. Camen Chu, his successor, was not appointed by the mayor until February 2013, he said, a longstanding vacancy.

So what’s the big deal? Well, voters notoriously tend to vote for the incumbents in any race, so any official with their name on the slot as “incumbent” come election time has a tremendous advantage. In fact, only one supervisor ever appointed by a mayor was ever voted down in a subsequenet district-wide (as opposed to city-wide) election. This dataset of appointed supervisors was culled from the Usual Suspects, a local political-wonk blog:

Supervisor

Appointed

Elected

 

Terry Francois

1964

1967

 

Robert Gonzalez

1969

1971

 

Gordon Lau

1977

1977

 

Jane Murphy

1977

Didn’t run

 

Louise Renne

1978

1980

 

Donald Horanzy

1978

Lost in 1980

Switched from District to

Citywide elections.

Harry Britt

1979

1980

 

Willie B. Kennedy

1981

1984

 

Jim Gonzalez

1986

1988

 

Tom Hsieh

1986

1988

 

Annemarie Conroy

1992

Lost in 1994

 

Susan Leal

1993

1994

 

Amos Brown

1996

1998

 

Leslie Katz

1996

1996

 

Michael Yaki

1996

1996

 

Gavin Newsom

1997

1998

 

Mark Leno

1998

1998

 

Alicia D. Becerril

1999

Lost in 2000

Switched from Citywide to

District elections.

Michela Alioto-Pier

2004

2004

 

Sean Elsbernd

2004

2004

 

Carmen Chu

2007

2008

 

Christina Olague

2012

Lost in 2012

Only loss by a district

appointed supervisor.

Katy Tang

2013

2013


So mayoral appointments effectively sway subsequent elections, giving that mayor two prongs of power: the power to appoint someone who may agree with their politics, and the power to appoint someone who will then owe them.

A San Francisco Chronicle article from 2004 describes the power derived from appointees former Mayor Willie Brown infamously enjoyed.

Once at City Hall, Brown moved quickly to consolidate power, and using the skills he honed during his 31 years in the state Assembly, gained control of the Board of Supervisors. Before the 2000 election, he appointed eight of the 11 members, filling vacancies that he helped orchestrate, as supervisor after supervisor quit to run for higher office or take other jobs.

The board majority was steadfastly loyal, pushing through Brown’s policies and budget priorities with little debate. In a 1996 magazine article, he was quoted as likening the supervisors to “mistresses you have to service.”

Voters may soon choose what elected officials they want in offices. The mistresses of the mayor, or the mistresses of the people.

Graph of the LAFCo study produced by Guardian intern Francisco Alvarado. LAFCo looked at California jurisdictions as well as ten major cities nationwide.

The legacy of Harvey Milk, and remembering the “Twinkie Defense”

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Today is Harvey Milk’s birthday, but are we celebrating the life of a champion for social justice, or only remembering his assassination? As San Franciscans mourn the city supervisor who fought for gay rights and other progressive issues in San Francisco and statewide, we thought we’d share with you selected articles from our “Milk Issue, [11/18/08]” that discussion his death by examining his life. 

The year was 2008, and to commemorate the opening of the biopic film, Milk, we devoted an issue of the Bay Guardian to honoring the man who gave ’em hope.

In the first selected piece, Guardian founding publisher Bruce Brugmann recalls his first brush with Milk, and the last time he saw him alive. In our second piece, the Guardian’s current Publisher Marke B. asks if the LGBT movement canonizes Milk’s death without honoring what his life stood for, an important lesson to remember now. The third selection by current and former Guardian Editors-in-Chief, Steven T. Jones and Tim Redmond respectively, who remember Milk’s progressive politics. Our fourth piece, penned by soon-to-be termed out Assemblyperson Tom Ammiano, a Milk political ally who dissects the oh-too-familiar tone of discrimination rising up from the opposition to naming San Francisco Airport after Milk. Lastly, a reporter who covered the Milk assassination takes us through a first person account of covering the trial of Milk’s killer, Dan White.

And as an extra bonus, we’ve embedded the issue from after the Dan White trial as a PDF at the bottom of this page.

Check them out below, and remember Milk not only as a man who died, but as a man who lived, and raised hell. 

The Bay Guardian “Milk” issue, circa 2008:

 

I REMEMBER HARVEY

Toward the end of the supervisorial campaign in 1973, I got an intercom call from Nancy Destefanis, our advertising representative handling political ads. Hey, she said, I got a guy here by the name of Harvey Milk who is running for supervisor and I think you ought to talk to him.

Milk? I replied. How can anybody run for supervisor with the name of Milk?

Continued here

 

THE APATHY AND THE ECSTACY

“OMG! Marriage is the new AIDS!” a friend screeched to me through her cell phone after witnessing West Hollywood’s cop-clashing response to the passage of Proposition 8. She meant, of course, the unexpected, exhilarating, and somewhat clumsy reemergence of queer protest energy that has overtaken many a civic center and public park since the November election and its attendant LGBT letdown.

Continued here.

 

POLITICS BEHIND THE PICTURE

The new Harvey Milk movie, which opens later this month, begins as a love story, a sweet love story about two guys who meet in a subway station and wind up fleeing New York for San Francisco. But after that, the movie gets political — in fact, by Hollywood standards, it’s remarkably political.

The movie raises a lot of issues that are alive and part of San Francisco politics today. The history isn’t perfect (see sidebar), but it is compelling. And while we mourn Milk and watch Milk, we shouldn’t forget what the queer hero stood for.

Continued here.

 

MILK’S REAL LEGACY

Ever since Supervisor David Campos announced his proposal to add Harvey Milk’s name to SFO, there’s been an unending string of criticism — mostly from one source — that has an eerily familiar ring to it.

We heard it years ago when we tried to change the name of Douglas School in the Castro to Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Believe it or not, it took seven years before the School Board finally voted for the name change — and there was still bitterness. This was a school in Harvey’s neighborhood that Harvey personally helped when he was alive.

Continued here.

 

BEHIND THE TWINKIE DEFENSE

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who wanted to decriminalize marijuana, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to be elected to public office in America. November also marks the release of a film about the case titled Milk. Although a former policeman, homophobic Dan White, had confessed to the murders, he pleaded not guilty. I covered his trial for the Bay Guardian.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I said “Thank you” to the sheriff’s deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However, this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass…

Continued here

San Francisco Bay Guardian after Harvey Milk’s death by FitztheReporter

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian after Harvey Milk's death by FitztheReporter

Political power play unseats SF Police Commissioner

0

Police Commissioner Angela Chan fought the federal government as they unjustly tried to deport undocumented San Franciscans who were guilty of no crimes, and won. She fought to arm the SFPD with de-escalation tactics instead of Tasers, and won again.

But at the April 30 Board of Supervisors meeting, Chan lost. The board denied her reappointment to the Police Commission, and seven supervisors voted to appoint her opponent, Victor Hwang, instead.

The decision came after heated backdoor politicking by Chinatown political leader Rose Pak, insiders told us. Politicians involved would only speak on background, for fear of reprisal from Pak, yet indicated that Pak felt Chan did not consult often enough with Chinatown interests and focused too broadly on issues of concern to other communities.

Chan gained national recognition for her work against Secure Communities, challenging a provision that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to call for illegal holds of undocumented persons they’d later like to deport. Pak came out swinging against Chan in the wake of those battles, we were told.

“It’s a sad day for the immigrant rights movement when a strong leader cannot be reappointed,” Sup. Eric Mar said just before the vote.

After Sup. Katy Tang introduced the motion to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and replace it with Hwang’s, other supervisors noted the obvious elephant in the room — there was not only one vacant seat on the police commission, but two.

Supervisor John Avalos suggested the Board of Supervisors make a motion to request the mayor appoint Hwang himself, allowing for both Chan and Hwang to be appointed.

But Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said he’d asked Mayor Lee that very question to no avail. “It is not something that will happen,” he said. “It is not the practice of the mayor to solve difficult decisions of the board. It’s up to us.”

Sups. Mark Farrell, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, London Breed, Jane Kim, Tang and Chiu voted to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and to vote to appoint Hwang instead. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

LAWSUIT FILED TO HALT TECH SHUTTLE PILOT

The road to regulating Google Buses has a new pothole: a lawsuit.

A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court May 1 demands the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s commuter shuttle pilot program be put on hold while a full environmental review is conducted under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“We know that these buses are having devastating impacts on our neighborhoods, driving up rents and evictions of long-time San Francisco residents,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and one of the lawsuit petitioners. “We’ve protested in the streets and taken our plea to City Hall to no avail. We hope to finally receive justice in a court of law.”

The suit was filed against the City and County of San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, the Board of Supervisors, the SFMTA, Google, Genentech, Apple, and a handful of private transportation providers. It alleges the tech shuttle pilot project is in violation of the California Vehicle Code, which prohibits any vehicle — except common carriers (public buses) — to pull into red zones that are designated as bus stops. It also alleges the city abused its discretion and violated the CEQA by exempting the Shuttle Project from environmental review. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

ILLEGAL ANTI-CAMPOS FLYERS TARGETED IN ETHICS COMPLAINT

Several San Francisco neighborhoods over the last week have been targeted with illegal campaign flyers against Assembly candidate David Campos — breaking both state election laws requiring the group and its funding source to be identified and local laws against placing political flyers on utility poles and other surfaces.

Former Ethics Commission Eileen Hansen this week filed a complaint about the guerilla campaigning with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which has jurisdiction over state races.

“I am asking for the intervention of your office into what appears to be a blatant and arrogant violation of campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws in California’s 17th Assembly District Primary Election,” Hansen wrote in the April 30 letter. “As you well know, the political climate in San Francisco is quite sensitive, and nerves are raw. If this violation is allowed to continue, it will have a chilling effect on the entire election and further alienate voters, and potential voters.”

The race between Campos and David Chiu has indeed gotten more heated in recent weeks, but Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse denies that the campaign has any knowledge or involvement with the illegal campaigning: “We think everyone in this race should be transparent.”

In her letter, Hansen casts doubt on the Chiu campaign’s claims of innocence: “The wide distribution, professional design, and overnight appearance in distant locations strongly suggest that these flyers have been produced and distributed by a funded political organization aligned with Assembly candidate David Chiu, whose aim is to attack and discredit Chiu’s opponent David Campos.”

And she even identifies a leading suspect in this illegal campaigning: Enrique Pearce and his Left Coast Communications firm, which has a history of dirty tricks campaigning on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee and other establishment politicians. Hansen notes that the flyers appeared right after the registration of a new campaign committee, San Franciscans for Effective Government to Support David Chiu. Although the group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, its contact phone number goes to Left Coast Communications and Pearce, who hasn’t yet returned our calls on the issue.

This campaign stunt in reminiscent of an “independent expenditure” effort in the District 6 supervisorial race in 2010, when Pearce was connected to a mailer supporting Sup. Jane Kim that was funded partially by Willie Brown, again because the supposedly independent group listed his phone number even though he was worked directly for Kim.

The anti-Campos mailers include some nasty and misleading charges, labeling Campos “City Hall’s Hypocrite” by falsely claiming Campos ignored rising evictions until he decided to run for the Assembly and that he was concerned about Google buses but wanted to charge them less than $1 per stop. A third flyer claims Campos “lets wifebeater sheriff keep his job” for his vote against removing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

“This is a secretly funded shadow organization aligned with David Chiu, committing a desperate move that is as illegal and it is false in its claims,” Campos told us, saying he hopes the FPPC is able to stop and punish those involved. (Steven T. Jones)

SUPES CALL FOR INCREASED YOUTH FUNDING

José-Luis Mejia says he’s seen a little bit of everything in his work with transitional-age youth.

A few have died suddenly; others wound up incarcerated. Then there are those who beat the odds by attending top-level universities, opening up their own businesses, or dedicating themselves to public service.

As associate director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco, Mejia was part of a grassroots coalition that has been working for about two years on crafting a measure that aims to increase funding for youth programs, seeking to give a boost to transitional-age youth services in particular.

It culminated with the April 30 introduction at the Board of Supervisors of a suite of new proposals to support youth programs, including a pair of charter amendments that will appear on the November ballot.

An amendment sponsored by Sup. John Avalos would renew the existing Children’s Fund, renaming it the Children and Youth Fund, and increasing the property-tax set-aside that supports it from three cents per $100 of assessed valuation to five cents. Funding would be designated for programs set up to aid “disconnected transitional-aged youth,” including homeless or disabled youth, unmarried parents, those who identify as LGBTQ or are aging out of foster care, and other specified categories. The amendment would also create a Commission on Children, Youth, and Their Families, to oversee the Department of Children Youth and their families. A second charter amendment would extend the Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF), another source of funding for youth programs.

Avalos has strong support on the Board, but the mayor’s office has reportedly been pressuring supervisors not to support Avalos’ measure.

“As we all know, San Francisco is experiencing incredible economic activity,” Avalos noted April 30. “We’re experiencing growth and speculation that is lifting many boats, but not lifting all boats. And some of the people who are not doing so well are children and families.”

The Children’s Fund, and PEEF currently set aside over $100 million for children and youth in San Francisco. The funding sources would sunset if action were not taken to extend them. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

Illegal anti-Campos flyers the subject of an ethics complaint

189

Several San Francisco neighborhoods over the last week have been targeted with illegal campaign flyers against Assembly candidate David Campos — breaking both state election laws requiring the group and its funding source to be identified and local laws against placing political flyers on utility poles and other surfaces.

Former Ethics Commission Eileen Hansen this week filed a complaint about the guerilla campaigning with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which has jurisdiction over state races.

“I am asking for the intervention of your office into what appears to be a blatant and arrogant violation of campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws in California’s 17th Assembly District Primary Election,” Hansen wrote in the April 30 letter. “As you well know, the political climate in San Francisco is quite sensitive, and nerves are raw. If this violation is allowed to continue, it will have a chilling effect on the entire election and further alienate voters, and potential voters.”

The race between Campos and David Chiu has indeed gotten more heated in recent weeks, but Chiu campaign spokesperson Nicole Derse denies that the campaign has any knowledge or involvement with the illegal campaigning: “We think everyone in this race should be transparent.”

In her letter, Hansen casts doubt on the Chiu campaign’s claims of innocence: “The wide distribution, professional design, and overnight appearance in distant locations strongly suggest that these flyers have been produced and distributed by a funded political organization aligned with Assembly candidate David Chiu, whose aim is to attack and discredit Chiu’s opponent David Campos.”

And she even identifies a leading suspect in this illegal campaigning: Enrique Pearce and his Left Coast Communications firm, which has a history of dirty tricks campaigning on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee and other establishment politicians. Hansen notes that the flyers appeared right after the registration of a new campaign committee, San Franciscans for Effective Government to Support David Chiu. Although the group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, its contact phone number goes to Left Coast Communications and Pearce, who hasn’t yet returned our calls on the issue. [UPDATE: Pearce called back and categorically denied any involvement with the illegal flyers, and he blasted Hansen for speading what you called “scurrilous lies” with no foundation, saying he has called her directly and expects an apology.]

This campaign stunt in reminiscent of an “independent expenditure” effort in the District 6 supervisorial race in 2010, when Pearce was connected to a mailer supporting Sup. Jane Kim that was funded partially by Willie Brown, again because the supposedly independent group listed his phone number even though he was worked directly for Kim.

The anti-Campos mailers include some nasty and misleading charges, labeling Campos “City Hall’s Hypocrite” by falsely claiming Campos ignored rising evictions until he decided to run for the Assembly and that he was concerned about Google buses but wanted to charge them less than $1 per stop. A third flyer claims Campos “lets wifebeater sheriff keep his job” for his vote against removing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

“This is a secretly funded shadow organization aligned with David Chiu, committing a desperate move that is as illegal and it is false in its claims,” Campos told us, saying he hopes the FPPC is able to stop and punish those involved. 

Two views of the waterfront

31

rebecca@sfbg.com

The Golden State Warriors’ announcement that its planned 18,000-seat basketball arena would be moved off the San Francisco waterfront was fresh in everyone’s mind when former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos visited the Bay Guardian office on April 23, and he was electrified by the win.

“I resent anyone suggesting that this is not a genuine people-powered victory — again,” Agnos said. “Because that’s what it was, bottom line.”

The former mayor has traveled up and down the city in recent months promoting Proposition B, an initiative on the June 3 ballot that may well have cleared the Warriors Arena from its proposed waterfront perch at Piers 30-32 had the team not announced that it would be taking that step independently.

If it passes, Prop. B will require voter approval for any development project along city-owned waterfront property that exceeds height limits set by the Waterfront Land Use Plan approved in 1997. Such a rule would have squarely targeted the Warriors’ proposal.

The sports arena had been slated for a 13-acre parcel a stone’s throw from the Bay Bridge that is now a parking lot, where it would have hovered above the water like a floating spacecraft. Across the street, at a site known as Seawall Lot 330, the Warriors had proposed installing shops, parking, a condo tower, and a hotel.

Agnos and the backers of Prop. B hadn’t anticipated the Warriors’ announcement that its waterfront venue would be moved to private property, a 12-acre lot in Mission Bay purchased from tech giant Salesforce.com.

“We thought, because people at the top of this city’s government told us so, they would prevail,” Agnos said of Mayor Ed Lee and others championing the waterfront arena. “They didn’t.”

Agnos and his allies say it was the prospect of voters having to sign off on a proposal that was hatched behind closed doors that caused the Warriors to choose a more appropriate location.

“We helped them go to a different place where we now support what they’re doing — because it makes more sense for this city, and for our bay, as well as our waterfront. That’s what the issue is,” Agnos told us. “The spin doctors had their ass handed to ’em … had their ass handed to ’em, by a low-income group of allies, over their $20,000–$30,000, gold-plated contracts per month. And so now, they understand.”

They understand that the waterfront of San Francisco is a battleground and the people are willing to fight to ensure the public interest trumps private profits.

pier70

A rendering of proposed development at Pier 70, envisioning tech offices and housing.

PRECIOUS PARCELS

A historic map hanging in a corridor at the Port of San Francisco building, in a rehabbed terminal at Pier 1 along The Embarcadero, traces the original curve of a coastline that once separated the city from San Francisco Bay.

The existing waterfront juts out considerably from where its natural edge once fell, and today’s urban landscape features a mix of entire neighborhoods, tall buildings, parks, restaurants, merchant corridors, and transport terminals, all perched atop fill covered by layers of concrete.

Its shipping days long gone, much of San Francisco’s human-constructed waterfront now serves as a draw for visitors, the iconic subject of countless tourist photographs. But at other locations along the shoreline, vacant waterfront parcels are hotly contested land-use battlefronts.

“We’re clearly in a period of significant controversy,” the Port’s Special Project Manager Brad Benson told us. The Warriors Arena, Benson said, had been an opportunity for the Port to rehabilitate and generate revenue from Piers 30-32, which originated as two finger piers constructed in 1912, joined by a concrete slab in the 1950s.

Despite being in control of some of the most valuable real estate along the West Coast, the Port of San Francisco remains in a perpetual financial pinch, due to its need to fix up crumbling piers and aging infrastructure. The Port is governed by a Waterfront Land Use Plan, outlining possible uses for each parcel, and it also conducted a survey to identify properties that could be developed to help generate revenue.

“The Port has a big capital need,” Benson said, noting that many of the “piers and buildings were beyond their useful life when they were transferred to the city” from the state in 1968. Facing nearly $2 billion in capital needs, the Port’s modus operandi is to seek out private developers to partner with on development projects for parcels under its ownership, in order to secure funding that would go toward backlogged improvements.

That didn’t happen with the Warriors, however — the sports team approached the city out of the blue, and the project quickly won the fervent backing of Mayor Lee, who has appointment power over the five-member commission that governs the Port. At one point, Lee even claimed that this flashy sports arena would be his “legacy project.”

To longtime grassroots activists who are deeply involved in how land-use decisions are made on valuable waterfront parcels, it looked to be yet another example of what Prop. B supporter Jennifer Clary called “kneejerk development” — out of sync with carefully thought out shoreline planning efforts.

“The Port gets jerked around by every mayor,” said Clary, president of San Francisco Tomorrow, part of the coalition backing Prop. B. “Every mayor comes up with some stupid project.” She ticked off a list of failed waterfront developments (such as Mills Mall, proposed for Piers 27-31; and a 50-story U.S. Steel Building that would have towered over the Ferry Building), only to have them voted down or halted by grassroots neighborhood activists who viewed them as inappropriate designs fueled by greed and greased by political connections.

Behind the objection to Prop. B, Clary added, “is that the mayor will have to think a little more” before backing projects of this nature.

Whether opponents of the Warriors Arena plan looked at it and saw a traffic nightmare, an inappropriate use of public land, or a bad financial deal for a city needing to contend with ever-growing pressures on its critical infrastructure, members of the coalition that’s backing Prop. B feared the public would have little sway when it came to the final decision-making. A bid to restore that balance, by arming voters with veto power under the law, was the impetus behind Prop. B.

City Hall has ignored the will of regular folks who collectively own Port land along the shoreline, said Agnos, campaign consultant Jon Golinger, and Prop. B proponent and Sierra Club volunteer Becky Evans — listening only to the Mayor’s Office and deep-pocketed developers who stand to make millions by building on extremely valuable land that’s held in the public trust under California law.

“The people are putting the developers in touch with the values of this city, and what we want in this city,” Agnos said, thumping his index finger on the table to emphasize the point. “Prop. B puts people in the room who have not been there, and now [developers] have to pay attention.”

The task of developing Piers 30-32 would have required expensive substructure modification, requiring the involvement of bureaucratic agencies such as the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Bay Conservation Development Commission, and the State Lands Commission. The Warriors estimated that it would invest $120 million in improvements such as seismic upgrades and an elevation grade to deal with the looming problem of sea-level rise, but the threat of having to win voter approval represented yet another hoop to jump through. So when a new option opened up offering greater certainty, the Warriors pulled the plug on Piers 30-32.

Even though Lee’s “legacy project,” the main physical target of Prop. B, is no longer a factor in the June election, backers of the initiative say the measure is still important to restore democratic balance in a development process that freezes out ordinary citizens. Opponents, meanwhile, say the initiative threatens to undermine a complex planning process that engages the public and needn’t be tampered with.

 

IN THE PIPELINE

Prop. B would prohibit city officials from approving taller buildings than are currently allowed under zoning for Port-owned waterfront parcels, unless voters give those height increases a green light at the ballot box.

Since many of the properties in question are already built out, or preserved by historic landmark designation, Prop. B would impact only a handful of waterfront lots that remain in play as potential sites for new development. Among them are Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 351, the site of the 8 Washington luxury condo tower that the electorate flushed down the tubes in a decisive ballot referendum vote last fall, despite Board of Supervisors’ approval.

The same group that opposed 8 Washington launched Prop. B. Last year’s ballot referendum — also named Prop. B, and buoyed by the campaign slogan No Wall on the Waterfront — asked voters whether they favored increasing building heights above the zoning limit at the waterfront site where the luxury condo project would have gone.

San Francisco voters, in no mood to support a high rise for the superrich at a time when anger over skyrocketing rents was bubbling over and droves of low-income residents were being edged out by eviction, shot it down. Many political observers took the outcome as a signal that City Hall politicians are out of touch with voters.

Simon Snellgrove, the developer of the failed 8 Washington project, is reportedly working on a new building design. But since any new plans for 8 Washington are embryonic at best, and the fate of Piers 30-32 is anyone’s guess, the Prop. B ballot measure has immediate implications for two waterfront developments in particular.

One, on and around Pier 48, is being pushed by the San Francisco Giants. The other lies farther south, at Pier 70, a sprawling strip of waterfront that runs behind Illinois Street, from The Ramp restaurant at Mariposa to the old Potrero Power Plant.

giantsdev

The Giants’ planned development would be a short distance from AT&T Park. 

During World War II, some 18,500 workers built ships at Pier 70 for the war effort, in brick and metal warehouses that still stand vacant and dilapidated. The site also housed a coal-fired power plant that was later converted to natural gas, leaving behind toxic residue that is up to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to remediate. Farther north along Pier 70, BAE Systems conducts ship repair, a task that has been performed at the site since 1868.

Today, a 28-acre parcel of Pier 70 that is proposed for development by Forest City is home to nothing more than pigeons, feral cats, and the occasional hawk that swoops into a cavernous metal-roofed structure that stands near the waterfront and dates back to 1941, barely visible from the street. Someday in the not-so-distant future, developers imagine it will be populated with tech office workers (Google is used as an example of an anchor tenant in slides presented to the city), makers and small vendors, and thousands of residents who would call the place home.

The site is zoned with a 40-foot height limit, but developers are considering plans with a range of building heights that would be on a similar scale to Mission Bay. Part of the improvements to the property will require raising the elevation grade to deal with sea-level rise. Forest City has planned for a minimum of around 1,000 residential units — the majority market-rate, but with a mix of affordable housing as well.

Representatives from Forest City said that if Prop. B passes, “We’ll be prepared to seek voter approval with a dynamic project guided by … a community-based master plan,” and had not taken an official stance on the ballot measure. If voters were to reject an increase of the 40-foot height limit at the site, which is zoned for heavy industry, the project would no longer be financially feasible.

 

GIANT TOWER SCRUTINIZED

At Seawall Lot 337, a parcel near the Giants’ stadium which is primarily used as a parking lot during baseball games, the team is backing a project that would include 3.5 million square feet of new residential, office, and retail development, possibly including a 380-foot tower. Across the way at Pier 48 would be a new Anchor Steam brewery, and about five acres of open space.

The Giants plan resulted from the Port’s request for potential development partners to submit bids for that property, which went out in 2007.

“They very quietly have been pushing a plan that Prop. B made public,” Golinger said of the Giants’ plans. “They screamed at everyone involved in our coalition during the signature drive to get us to drop it. They funded a lawsuit … to get it kicked off the ballot.”

The Guardian independently confirmed that the team is part of the group that has challenged Prop. B in court. That legal challenge was unsuccessful in getting the initiative struck from the June ballot, but a judge could take up the question again if Prop. B is approved.

The parcel where the Giants have pitched a rental housing, office, and retail complex with a maximum height limit of 380 feet is zoned with a height limit of zero, zoned for open space in city plans. Nevertheless, “The [Port’s request for qualifications] called for developing up to 300 feet,” Benson explained, calling the current zoning “a remnant of the old Mission Bay plan,” which envisioned a park with wetlands and open space. The Port’s request for proposals went out after a subcommittee was formed, and public hearings were held on the design plans.

Asked why the Port would bake such a tall height limit into its RFQ, Benson responded, “There was a desire to avoid replicating the heights at Mission Bay,” the nearby redevelopment area characterized by lower, boxy buildings that seem to be universally regarded as ugly and lacking charm.

Few people are as intimately familiar with Mission Bay as Corinne Woods, whose houseboat is enveloped on either side by the sprawling development. When Woods first claimed a berth at Mission Creek for her floating home in 1985, “it was surrounded by open empty fields, abandoned warehouses, and lots of fennel,” she said. “We had wonderful parties.”

Outside her dock just off Channel Street is a community garden, a strip of green space shaded by willow and eucalyptus trees where night herons take refuge. Just beyond that is the Mission Bay South redevelopment area, a sprawling construction site that’s ushered in building cranes, swirling dust, pile drivers, and more recently, a five-alarm blaze that required the entire Fire Department to extinguish.

The fledgling neighborhood that now occupies the already-built part of Mission Bay might as well have dropped out of the sky, and the building profiles are wide and flat. “I would rather see slim, articulated towers, with more open space,” Woods admitted.

In the years between 1985 and today, Woods has fought the Port on behalf of her live-aboard community to be allowed to remain floating in place, becoming an unlikely expert on the byzantine process of waterfront planning along the way.

As a key member of half-dozen or so community advisory groups formed to weigh in on major waterfront developments, Woods has ardent faith in the civic engagement aspect of the planning process. She fears Prop. B could upset years of careful neighborhood negotiations by limiting the discussion to nothing more than a conversation about height limits.

houseboat

Corinne Woods opposes Prop. B.

Woods is a plaintiff in the lawsuit the Giants are funding to challenge Prop. B, aligned with developer-friendly housing activist Tim Colen and building trades head Michael Theriault on the side that opposes Prop. B. But despite the millions of dollars that are on the line, Woods insists she has no dog in this fight. “I can’t even get free tickets to Giants games,” she said.

She does hope for the five-acre park that the Giants plan would install as part of the Seawall 337 / Pier 48 plan, a short walk from her houseboat. But she says her opposition to Prop. B is rooted in her experience of a traditional planning process that rewards neighbors who have the patience to sit through hours of grueling advisory group meetings with negotiating power vis-à-vis developers. Asked directly what the problem is with letting voters weigh in, Woods responded, “Because they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about!”

But that leave-it-to-the-experts attitude is just the thing that Prop. B’s backers say is dangerous for waterfront planning, since it places final decision-making in the hands of profit-seeking real estate interests, a public agency in dire need of funding, and a mayor with political ties to developers.

 

THE HOUSING QUESTION

Given that the thrust of Prop. B is to democratize the planning process, few are in a hurry to align themselves with the formal No on B campaign — most of the opposition money seems to have been funneled into the Giants’ lawsuit, even though the Giants have officially taken a neutral stance on Prop. B. However, the message from opponents of Prop. B is that the initiative would kill sorely needed housing.

The Port of San Francisco, which is legally barred from taking a position on the initiative, reported in a February analysis to the Department of Elections that it could have the effect of leaving between 1,990 and 3,690 new housing units “delayed, reduced, or abandoned,” including between 268 and 596 affordable units. Those figures are based on early project proposals brought by the Warriors, the Giants, and Forest City, assuming those planning proposals would be “delayed by a need for a vote, or rejected by the voters” under a Prop. B regime.

A nonbinding Giants term sheet notes that the team would build rental housing, 15-20 percent of those units affordable, while Forest City’s Pier 70 proposal includes 1,000 new housing units with on-site affordable that would exceed the 12 percent required under city law.

Targeting housing “is a scary message,” campaign consultant Golinger said, charging the opposition with preying on voters’ fears to encourage people to vote down a measure that would democratize waterfront planning.

“This myth that we’re trying to stop housing is just that,” Agnos chimed in. “It’s just a political ploy by those who want to build high-end, high-rise, luxury condos — a la 8 Washington, a la Giants — on public property.”

The housing question is key. At a time when so many people are facing eviction or being priced out, the refrain that building more housing is the only solution to relieve pressure is oft-repeated, particularly by developers. However, these projects would introduce far more market-rate units than affordable projects, plopping down well-to-do neighborhoods in spaces that have sat on the margins in recent history, further changing the social character of the city. And proponents of Prop. B question whether the waterfront is really the right place to add new affordable units.

Meanwhile, the affordable housing community seems to be aligned in its support of Prop. B. The San Francisco Tenants Union, the Affordable Housing Alliance, the AIDS Housing Alliance of San Francisco, and other organizations that have aligned to push for stronger tenants’ rights and promote affordable housing have all endorsed the measure.

WHO DECIDES?

Given the popularity of a measure that fundamentally seeks to democratize the planning process, all development teams with skin in the game have declined to take a position on the measure. So have Mayor Lee and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who each played significant roles in recent waterfront battles, with Lee championing the Warriors Arena and Chiu opposing 8 Washington and assisting with the signature-gathering effort to stop it.

Sup. David Campos, in contrast with Chiu and Lee, has taken a stance on Prop. B. In a recent interview, he outlined his reasons for supporting it.

“I think that something has happened in City Hall, where I think the approval process is such that it has led to certain projects being approved that don’t really reflect the reality of what this city needs, and that have truly left the public out of the process in a meaningful way,” Campos told us. “And 8 Washington passed 8-3 at the Board of Supervisors, with a supermajority. The fact that the voters overwhelmingly rejected that project tells you that there has been a disconnect between what the board and folks in City Hall are doing, and where the public actually is.” To correct that imbalance and allow more San Franciscans to shape the city’s waterfront, Campos said, “I think it’s appropriate for us to go to the ballot and let the voters decide.”

Guardian endorsements

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OUR CLEAN SLATE VOTERS GUIDE TO TAKE TO THE POLLS IS HERE.

 

Editor’s Note: Election endorsements have been a long and proud part of the Guardian’s 48-year history of covering politics in San Francisco, the greater Bay Area, and at the state level. In low-turnout elections like the one we’re expecting in June, your vote counts more than usual, and we hope our endorsements and explanations help you make the best decisions.

 

GOVERNOR: JERRY BROWN

There is much for progressives to criticize in Jerry Brown’s latest stint as governor of California. He has stubbornly resisted complying with federal court orders to substantially reduce the state’s prison population, as well as shielding the system from needed journalistic scrutiny and reforms of solitary confinement policies that amount to torture. Brown has also refused to ban or limit fracking in California, despite the danger it poses to groundwater and climate change, irritating environmentalists and fellow Democrats. Even Brown’s great accomplishment of winning passage for the Prop. 30 tax package, which eased the state back from financial collapse, sunsets too early and shouldn’t have included a regressive sales tax increase. Much more needs to be done to address growing wealth disparities and restore economic and educational opportunity for all Californians.

For these reasons and others, it’s tempting to endorse one of Brown’s progressive challenges: Green Party candidate Luis Rodriguez or Peace and Freedom Party candidate Cindy Sheehan (see “Left out,” April 23). We were particularly impressed by Rodriguez, an inspiring leader who is seeking to bring more Latinos and other marginalized constituencies into the progressive fold, a goal we share and want to support however we can.

But on balance, we decided to give Brown our endorsement in recognition of his role in quickly turning around this troubled state after the disastrous administration of Arnold Schwarzenegger — and in the hope that his strong leadership will lead to even greater improvement over his next term. While we don’t agree with all of his stands, we admire the courage, independence, and vision that Brown brings to this important office. Whether he is supporting the California High-Speed Rail Project against various attacks, calling for state residents to live in greater harmony with the natural world during the current drought, or refusing to shrink from the challenges posed by global warming, Jerry Brown is the leader that California needs at this critical time.

 

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: GAVIN NEWSOM

Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco before he ascended to the position of Lieutenant Governor, and we at the Bay Guardian had a strained relationship with his administration, to put it mildly. We disagreed with his fiscally conservative policies and tendency to align himself with corporate power brokers over neighborhood coalitions. As lieutenant governor, Newsom is tasked with little — besides stepping into the role of governor, should he be called upon to do so — but has nevertheless made some worthwhile contributions.

Consider his stance on drug policy reform: “Once and for all, it’s time we realize that the war on drugs is nothing more than a war on communities of color and on the poor,” he recently told a crowd at the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. “It is fundamentally time for drug policies that recognize and respect the full dignity of human beings. We can’t wait.” In his capacity as a member of the UC Board of Regents, Newsom recently voted against a higher executive compensation package for a top-level administrator, breaking from the pack to align with financially pinched university students. In Sacramento, Newsom seems to come off as more “San Francisco” than in his mayoral days, and we’re endorsing him against a weak field of challengers.

 

SECRETARY OF STATE: DEREK CRESSMAN

Although the latest Field Poll shows that he has only single-digit support and is unlikely to make the November runoff, we’re endorsing Derek Cressman for Secretary of State. As a longtime advocate for removing the corrupting influence of money from politics through his work with Common Cause, Cressman has identified campaign finance reform as the important first step toward making the political system more responsive to people’s needs. As Secretary of State, Cressman would be in a position to ensure greater transparency in our political system.

We also like Alex Padilla, a liberal Democrat who has been an effective member of the California Senate. We’ll be happy to endorse Padilla in November if he ends up in a runoff with Republican Pete Peterson, as the current polling seems to indicate is likely. But for now, we’re endorsing Cressman — and the idea that campaign finance reform needs to be a top issue in a state and country that are letting wealthy individuals and corporations have disproportionate influence over what is supposed to be a democracy.

 

CONTROLLER: BETTY YEE

The pay-to-play politics of Leland Yee and two other California Democrats has smeared the Assembly. Amid the growls of impropriety, a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting has painted Speaker of the Assembly John Perez, a leading candidate for Controller, with a similar brush. CIR revealed Perez raised money from special interest groups to charities his lover favored, a lover later sued for racketeering and fraud.

Betty Yee represents an opportunity for a fresh start. On the state’s Board of Equalization she turned down campaign donations from tobacco interests, a possible conflict of interest. She also fought for tax equity between same-sex couples. The Controller is tasked with keeping watch on and disbursing state funds, a position we trust much more to Yee’s careful approach than Perez’s questionable history. Vote for Yee.

 

TREASURER: JOHN CHIANG

While serving as California’s elected Controller, John Chiang displayed his courage and independence by refusing to sign off on budgetary tricks used by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and some legislative leaders, insisting on a level of honesty that protected current and future Californians. During those difficult years — as California teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, paralyzed by partisan brinksmanship each budget season, written off as a failed state by the national media — Chiang and retiring Treasurer Bill Lockyer were somehow able to keep the state functioning and paying its bills.

While many politicians claim they’ll help balance the budget by identifying waste and corruption, Chiang actually did so, identifying $6 billion by his estimate that was made available for more productive purposes. Now, Chiang wants to continue bringing fiscal stability to this volatile state and he has our support.

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL: KAMALA HARRIS

Kamala Harris has kept the promise she made four years ago to bring San Francisco values into the Attorney General’s Office, focusing on the interests of everyday Californians over powerful vested interests. That includes strengthening consumer and privacy protections, pushing social programs to reduce criminal recidivism rather than the tough-on-crime approach that has ballooned our prison population, reaching an $18 billion settlement with the big banks and mortgage lenders to help keep people in their homes, and helping to implement the Affordable Care Act and the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state.

Harris has maintained her opposition to the death penalty even though that has hurt her in the statewide race, and she brings to the office an important perspective as the first woman and first African American ever to serve as the state’s top law enforcement officer. While there is much more work to be done in countering the power of wealthy individuals and corporations and giving the average Californian a stronger voice in our legal system, Harris has our support.

 

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: DAVE JONES

We’ve been following Dave Jones’s legislative career since his days on the Sacramento City Council and through his terms in the California Legislature, and we’ve always appreciated his autonomy and progressive values. He launched into his role as Insurance Commissioner four years ago with an emergency regulation requiring health insurance companies to use no more than 20 percent of premiums on profits and administrative costs, and he has continued to do what he can to hold down health insurance rates, including implementing the various components of the Affordable Care Act.

More recently, Jones held hearings looking at whether Uber, Lyft, and other transportation network companies are adequately insured to protect both their drivers and the general public, concluding that these companies need to self-insure or otherwise expand the coverage over their business. It was a bold and important move to regulate a wealthy and prosperous new industry. Jones deserves credit for taking on the issue and he has earned our endorsement.

 

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS: TOM TORLAKSON

This race is a critical one, as incumbent Tom Torlakson faces a strong challenge from the charter school cheerleader Marshall Tuck. An investment banker and Harvard alum, Tuck is backed by well-heeled business and technology interests pushing for the privatization of our schools. Tech and entertainment companies are pushing charter schools heavily as they wait in the wings for lucrative education supply contracts, for which charter schools may open the doors. And don’t let Waiting for Superman fool you, charter schools’ successful test score numbers are often achieved by pushing out underperforming special needs and economically disadvantaged students.

As national education advocate Diane Ravitch wrote in her blog, “If Tuck wins, the privatization movement will gain a major stronghold.” California ranks 48th in the nation in education spending, a situation we can thank Prop. 13 for. We’d like to see Torlakson advocate for more K-12 school dollars, but for now, he’s the best choice.

 

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION: FIONA MA

Fiona Ma was never our favorite member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and in the California Legislature, she has seemed more interested in party politics and leadership than moving legislation that is important to San Francisco. There are a few exceptions, such as her attempts last year to require more employers to offer paid sick days and to limit prescription drug co-payments. But she also notoriously tried to ban raves at public venues in 2010, a reactionary bill that was rejected as overly broad.

But the California Board of Equalization might just be a better fit for Ma than the Legislature. She’s a certified public accountant and would bring that financial expertise to the state’s main taxing body, and we hope she continues in the tradition of her BOE predecessor Betty Yee in ensuring the state remains fair but tough in how it collects taxes.

 

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17: DAVID CAMPOS

The race to replace progressive hero Tom Ammiano in the California Assembly is helping to define this important political moment in San Francisco. It’s a contest between the pragmatic neoliberal politics of Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and the populist progressive politics of Sup. David Campos, whom Ammiano endorsed to succeed him.

It’s a fight for the soul of San Francisco, a struggle to define the values we want to project into the world, and, for us at the Bay Guardian, the choice is clear. David Campos is the candidate that we trust to uphold San Francisco’s progressive values in a state that desperately needs that principled influence.

Chiu emphasizes how the two candidates have agreed on about 98 percent of their votes, and he argues that his effectiveness at moving big legislation and forging compromises makes him the most qualified to represent us in Sacramento. Indeed, Chiu is a skilled legislator with a sharp mind, and if “getting things done” — the prime directive espoused by both Chiu and Mayor Ed Lee — was our main criterion, he would probably get our endorsement.

But when you look at the agenda that Chiu and his allies at City Hall have pursued since he came to power — elected as a progressive before pivoting to become a pro-business moderate — we wish that he had been a little less effective. The landlords, tech titans, Realtors, and Chamber of Commerce have been calling the shots in this city, overheating the local economy in a way that has caused rapid displacement and gentrification.

“Effective for whom? That’s what’s important,” Campos told us during his endorsement interview, noting that, “Most people in San Francisco have been left behind and out of that prosperity.”

Campos has been a clear and consistent supporter of tenants, workers, immigrants, small businesses, environmentalists — the vast majority of San Franciscans, despite their lack of power in City Hall. Chiu will sometimes do right by these groups, but usually only after being pushed to do so by grassroots organizing and lobbying efforts.

Campos correctly points out that such lobbying is more difficult in Sacramento, with its higher stakes and wider range of competing interests, than it is on the local level. Chiu’s focus on always trying to find a compromise often plays into the hands of wealthy interests, who sometimes just need to be fought and stopped.

We have faith in Campos and his progressive values, and we believe he will skillfully carry on the work of Ammiano — who is both an uncompromising progressive and an effective legislator — in representing San Francisco’s values in Sacramento.

 

ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 19: PHIL TING

Incumbent Phil Ting doesn’t have any challengers in this election, but he probably would have won our support anyway. After proving himself as San Francisco’s Assessor, taking a strong stance against corporate landowners and even the Catholic Church on property assessments, Ting won a tough race against conservative businessman Michael Breyer to win his Assembly seat.

Since then, he’s been a reliable vote for legislation supported by most San Franciscans, and he’s sponsoring some good bills that break new ground, including his current AB 1193, which would make it easier to build cycletracks, or bike lanes physically separated from cars, all over the state. He also called a much-needed Assembly committee hearing in November calling out BART for its lax safety culture, and we hope he continues to push for reforms at that agency.

 

PROPOSITION 41: YES

Over a decade ago, Californians voted to use hundreds of millions of our dollars to create the CalVet Home and Farm Loan Program to help veterans purchase housing. But a reduction in federal home loan dollars, the housing crisis, and a plummeting economy hurt the program.

Prop. 41 would repurpose $600 million of those bond funds and raise new money to create affordable housing rental units for some of California’s 15,000 homeless veterans. This would cost Californians $50 million a year, which, as proponents remind us, is one-tenth of 1 percent of the state budget. Why let hundreds of millions of dollars languish unused? We need to reprioritize this money to make good on our unfulfilled promises to homeless veterans.

 

PROPOSITION 42: YES

This one’s important. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown sought to gut the California Public Records Act by making it optional for government agencies to comply with many of the requirements built into this important transparency law. The CPRA and the Ralph M. Brown Act require government agencies to make records of their activities available for public scrutiny, and to provide for adequate notice of public meetings. Had the bill weakening these laws not been defeated, it would have removed an important defense against shadowy government dealings, leaving ordinary citizens and journalists in the dark.

Prop. 42 is a bid to eliminate any future threats against California’s important government transparency laws, by expressly requiring local government agencies — including cities, counties, and school districts — to comply with all aspects of the CPRA and the Brown Act. It also seeks to prevent local agencies from denying public records requests based on cost, by eliminating the state’s responsibility to reimburse local agencies for cost compliance (the state has repeatedly failed to do so, and local bureaucracies have used this as an excuse not to comply).

 

SF’S PROPOSITION A: YES

Prop. A is a $400 million general obligation bond measure that would cover seismic retrofits and improvements to the city’s emergency infrastructure, including upgrades to the city’s Emergency Firefighting Water System, neighborhood police and fire stations, a new facility for the Medical Examiner, and seismically secure new structures to house the police crime lab and motorcycle unit.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to place Prop. A on the ballot, and a two-thirds majority vote is needed for it to pass. Given that San Franciscans can expect to be hit by a major earthquake in the years to come, upgrading emergency infrastructure, especially the high-pressure water system that will aid the Fire Department in the event of a major blaze, is a high priority.

 

SF’S PROPOSITION B: YES

As we report in this issue (see “Two views of the waterfront”), San Francisco’s waterfront is a valuable place targeted by some ambitious development schemes. That’s a good thing, particularly given the need that the Port of San Francisco has for money to renovate or remove crumbling piers, but it needs to be carefully regulated to maximize public benefits and minimize private profit-taking.

Unfortunately, the Mayor’s Office and its appointees at the Port of San Francisco have proven themselves unwilling to be tough negotiators on behalf of the people. That has caused deep-pocketed, politically connected developers to ignore the Waterfront Land Use Plan and propose projects that are out-of-scale for the waterfront, property that San Francisco is entrusted to manage for the benefit of all Californians.

All Prop. B does is require voter approval when projects exceed existing height limits. It doesn’t kill those projects, it just forces developers to justify new towers on the waterfront by providing ample public benefits, restoring a balance that has been lost. San Francisco’s waterfront is prime real estate, and there are only a few big parcels left that can be leveraged to meet the needs of the Port and the city. Requiring the biggest ones to be approved by voters is the best way to ensure the city — all its residents, not just the politicians and power brokers — is getting the best deals possible.

 

SF SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: DANIEL FLORES

Daniel Flores has an impressive list of endorsers, including the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties of San Francisco — a rare trifecta of political party support. But don’t hold the GOP nod against Flores, who was raised in the Excelsior by parents who immigrated from El Salvador and who interned with La Raza Centro Legal while going to McGeorge School of Law. And he did serve in the Marines for six years, which could explain the broad range of support for him.

Flores is a courtroom litigator with experience in big firms and his own practice, representing clients ranging from business people to tenants fighting against their landlords. Flores told us that he wants to ensure those without much money are treated fairly in court, an important goal we support. We also liked Kimberly Williams and hope she ends up on the bench someday, but in this race, Flores is the clear choice.

 

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12: NANCY PELOSI

This was a hard decision for us this year. Everyone knows that Pelosi will win this race handily, but in past races we’ve endorsed third party challengers or even refused to endorse anyone more often than we’ve given Pelosi our support. While Pelosi gets vilified by conservatives as the quintessential San Francisco liberal, she’s actually way too moderate for our tastes.

Over her 21 years in Congress, she has presided over economic policies that have consolidated wealth in ever fewer hands and dismantled the social safety net, environmental policies that have ignored global warming and fed our over-reliance on the private automobile, and military policies that expanded the war machine and overreaching surveillance state, despite her insider’s role on the House Intelligence Committee.

Three of her opponents — Democrat David Peterson, Green Barry Hermanson, and fiery local progressive activist Frank Lara of the Peace and Freedom Party — are all much better on the issues that we care about, and we urge our readers to consider voting for one of them if they just can’t stomach casting a ballot for Pelosi. In particular, Hermanson has raised important criticisms of just how out of whack our federal budget priorities are. We also respect the work Lara has done on antiwar and transit justice issues in San Francisco, and we think he could have a bright political future.

But we’ve decided to endorse Pelosi in this election for one main reason: We want the Democrats to retake the House of Representatives this year and for Pelosi to once again become Speaker of the House. The Republican Party in this country, particularly the Tea Party loyalists in the House, is practicing a dangerous and disgusting brand of political extremism that needs to be stopped and repudiated. They would rather shut the government down or keep it hopelessly hobbled by low tax rates than help it become an effective tool for helping us address the urgent problems that our country faces. Pelosi and the Democrats aren’t perfect, but at least they’re reasonable grown-ups and we’d love to see what they’d do if they were returned to power. So Nancy Pelosi has our support in 2014.

 

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 13: BARBARA LEE

Barbara Lee has been one of our heroes since 2001, when she was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, braving the flag-waving nationalism that followed the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to warn that such an overly broad declaration of war was dangerous to our national interests. She endured death threats and harsh condemnation for that principled stand, but she was both courageous and correct, with our military overreach still causing problems for this country, both practical and moral.

Lee has been a clear and consistent voice for progressive values in the Congress for 16 years, chairing both the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus, taking stands against capital punishment and the Iraq War, supporting access to abortions and tougher regulation of Wall Street, and generally representing Oakland and the greater Bay Area well in Washington DC. She has our enthusiastic support.

 

CONGRESS, DISTRICT 14: JACKIE SPEIER

Jackie Speier has given her life to public service — almost literally in 1978 when she was an aide to then-Rep. Leo Ryan and survived the airstrip shootings that triggered the massacre at Jonestown — and she has earned our ongoing support. Speier has continued the consumer protection work she started in the California Legislature, sponsoring bills in Congress aimed at protecting online privacy. She has also been a strong advocate for increasing federal funding to public transit in the Bay Area, particularly to Muni and for the electricification of Caltrain, an important prelude to the California High-Speed Rail Project. In the wake of the deadly natural gas explosion in San Bruno, Speier has pushed for tough penalties on Pacific Gas & Electric and expanded pipeline safety programs. She has been a strong advocate of women’s issues, including highlighting the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses and in the military, seeking greater protections, institutional accountability, and recourse for victims. More recently, Speier has become a key ally in the fight to save City College of San Francisco, taking on the federal accreditation process and seeking reforms. Speier is a courageous public servant who deserves your vote.

Will San Francisco Game of Thrones oust police commissioner?

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Police Commissioner Angela Chan did not pay fealty to the proper lords and houses, sources say, and in a true to life Game of Thrones, she may now lose her office. The throne in question is a seat on the Police Commission, which Chan may be reappointed to by the Board of Supervisors today [Tues/29], but her chances don’t look good. 

In a political tussle reminiscent of House Lannister’s schemes against House Stark, political machines far larger than the idealistic Chan are churning to keep her from regaining her political office. The forces of Chinatown community leader Rose Pak and her fellow power brokers are backing potential replacement police commissioner Victor Hwang, whose sudden candidacy took many off guard. 

As first reported by Tim Redmond of 48hills.org, Pak’s political pushers dialed every supervisor and marshalled their armies, hellbent on unseating Chan. 

They may win, but not because Chan was a bad commissioner. Actually, the problem might be that she was too effective, and now people in power want her out.

Expanding the mayor’s power

In a Rules Committee meeting Apr. 17, backers of both candidates wore their house sigils, green or white buttons meant to support their chosen candidate, both of whom are seemingly very qualified.

On the one side, Hwang is an ex-assistant district attorney, ex-public defender, ex-nonprofit attorney, and advocate with over 20 years of experience holding police to task for their wrongdoing. He’s fought human trafficking and litigated against out-of-control cops. 

But the incumbent, Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, has many similar qualifications. She also has a proven track record on the Police Commission: she crafted the Crisis Intervention Team, tasked with de-escalating standoffs with mentally ill offenders; advocated language access in the police force; helped to revise rules protecting children at school facing arrest; and opposed arming police with tasers.

Both candidates have an extensive list of backers. District Attorney staffers, the Anti-Defamation League, advocates from the Chinatown Development Center, and Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic all wrote to supervisors backing Hwang. The Guardian even named him a “local hero” in our Best of the Bay issue in 2004.

But the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, members of the Central Americans Resource Center, Board of Education President Sandra Fewer, the local NAACP, and even a retired police officer all backed Chan. The Guardian also named her a local hero, in 2010. 

A change.org petition calling for her reappointment to the commission has 255 signatures, as of this writing. 

Chan hasn’t yet given up the ghost.

“I’m hoping the full board will recognize I work extremely hard,” she told the Guardian. “I look after the community, especially those who are most marginalized.”

Though many issues have political bents and political sides, one aspect of this tussle reveals the power play behind the curtain: the two candidates are competing for one empty seat on the commission, when there are actually two seats vacant.

Why fight over just one seat? 

The answer lies in political motivations insiders would only outline for reporters on background. You see, in a city where many commissions (see: SFMTA) are fully appointed by the Mayor’s Office, and therefore beholden to his whims, the Police Commission has a mechanism to dilute that power — a minority of seats are appointed by the Board of Supervisors. The seat Chan and Hwang are fighting for is the supervisor appointed seat, and for now the mayor’s seat sits empty and uncontested.

Hwang was co-chair of Progress for All, which ran the Run, Ed, Run campaign for Lee’s mayoral candidacy. If the question was really just about making Hwang a commissioner, the mayor could appoint him today with a snap of his fingers. But that’s not the point.

Many insiders, including ones that seemingly support Hwang, told the Guardian that Mayor Ed Lee has plenty of reason to usher Chan out and appoint Hwang in her place. The SFPD long pushed for tasers but found a formidable opponent in Chan, and the mayor would benefit from police support next election, they said. Others said her combative style ruffled people’s feathers, a seemingly legitimate complaint until you consider more cooperative boards like the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency define “cooperative” by mostly voting in unison and with little discussion, coincidentally also often in agreement with the mayor’s positions.

Angela Chan asks an SFPD station captain if officers use verbal means to de-escalate situations. 

That’s why Chan is dangerous; she’s a freethinker, and a loud one at that. By pushing the supervisors to appoint Hwang, we were told, the mayor would unseat a potential political liability, and net a freebie commission seat appointment in the deal. 

Win-win.

This isn’t to say Hwang is a bad guy. He longs for public service (nicknaming his practice the Ronin Law Firm), and expressed disappointment in political power struggles beyond his control.

“For me it’s not about Angela, it’s about the police commission,” he told the Guardian. “To give Angela credit, I think the work she’s done on Crisis Intervention Team and language access are important issues.”

And for his part, he said that though many political entities aligned with political powerbroker Rose Pak are pushing for his appointment, he wouldn’t be beholden to her, or them.

“Are Chinatown issues important to me? Yes, they’re very important to me,” he said. “Am I going to answer to one or two folks just because of whoever they are? No. That would be putting my own 20 years of work aside to kowtow to one particular person over anyone else.”

Hwang told us Supervisor Eric Mar is asking the mayor to appoint him to the second vacant police commission seat, but if that effort isn’t successful Chan and Hwang will go head to head.

So the supervisors have a tough choice ahead of them, but for some, the decision is tougher than others.

Conflict of interest

Some of the supervisors have votes that are fair to guess at. Long time progressives like Sups. Mar, John Avalos, and David Campos are ideologically aligned with Chan, and have reason to vote in her favor. 

Chan needs six votes to be re-appointed to the commission, and some of those votes are up in the air.

Sups. Norman Yee, and Katy Tang voted to approve Chan in the Rules Committee, the first round before today’s Board of Supervisors vote. But that’s no guarantee they’ll vote for her again. 

Sup. Jane Kim has an odd conflict of interest. Ivy Lee, an attorney and one of Kim’s staffers, is Hwang’s romantic partner. The couple has three children together. He dedicated a brief he wrote for the Asian American Law Journal, “to my incredible partner Ivy Lee, who gave birth to our second son Kaiden, as I was writing the brief at the hospital.”

Is that conflict of interest grounds for Kim to recuse herself from the vote? Is it proper for her to vote to appoint her staffer’s partner to a political position? We reached out to Kim’s office but did not hear back from her before going to press. 

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s vote is also an open question. 

Chiu worked with Chan in 2011 to fight against the federal Secure Communities program, which as we then reported, was a database allowing the feds to circumvent local policies protecting local immigrants who have been arrested but not convicted of any crimes and deport them.

They were partners in the struggle for human rights. So will Chiu back his former ally, Chan, in her re-appointment?

We called, texted, and harangued Chiu to call us back, but did not hear from him before press time. To be fair, he’s running for the Assembly and was likely between one of his dozens of necessary appearances. He did have an aide call us back, but he was unable to give us a hint at which direction Chiu may vote in. 

Complicating his choice is a mix of allegiances. With so many former and current allies on both sides, Chiu will make someone angry no matter which potential police commissioner he votes for, insiders told us. 

And Chiu’s vote may be the deciding one. With real reform of the SFPD on the line, the stakes are higher than the fictional Game of Thrones.

Ultimately, Chiu will have to vote his conscience. 

Correction 3:28pm: The article earlier identified Ivy Lee as married to Victor Hwang. In actuality, Hwang and Lee are romantic partners who decided not to marry in direct protest of the LGBT community being denied the right to marry.

Update 6:50pm: The vote was cast, and Victor Hwang was appointed to the Police Commission in place of Angela Chan. Read our full story.

Where there’s smoke

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news@sfbg.com

It was April 20 in Golden Gate Park, the fabled 4/20 in the parlance of pot smokers, and we found Nick and Chris standing under the shade of a tree with a cluster of friends, including Geoff, the proud owner of a five-foot bong.

Nick had done several hits through the supersized smoking device that day. Beside him, Chris took hits from his own handheld bong. “I’m feeling good,” Nick reported. “But I’m also kinda hungry. I could go for some Chinese food. Ohh, and some Sapporo!”

Administering a hit of marijuana through such unwieldy paraphernalia is quite the operation, requiring one person to stand and hold one end, another to light the marijuana once it’s packed into the bowl, and a third to inhale the five-foot column of milky smoke that rises through the chamber. The smokers on the receiving end contorted their faces as they inhaled, inevitably coughing and laughing as they breathed out, seemingly amazed by the experience. The college-age friends were in 420-induced bliss.

The annual 420 celebration in Golden Gate Park is unpermitted, with no official organizers, yet thousands of festivalgoers nevertheless flock to it year after year. It’s a quintessentially San Francisco experience: Young and old congregate for a collective daylong smoke-out, bringing drums, dogs, grills, shade structures, hand-blown glass, tie-dyed tapestries, Hacky Sacks, sound systems, and other picnic paraphernalia along with them.

The area around Hippie Hill — at the eastern end of the park, near Kezar Stadium — was a jumble of humanity crammed elbow to elbow, reeking of pot smoke. The crowd reflected a wide range of ethnicities and brought out many displaying an outlandish sense of fashion, sporting shiny plastic marijuana-leaf necklaces, sleeve tattoos, piercings, face paint, and piles upon piles of dreadlocked hair.

San Francisco maintains an iconic status as a weed-friendly city. While 420 in Golden Gate Park is a lighthearted scene that’s also proved irksome for city agencies plagued by leftover trash and traffic jams, serious year-round marijuana advocacy efforts continue to mark the Bay Area as a hotbed for drug policy reform and thriving, legitimate pot-based entrepreneurship.

 

GREEN BEACON

The movement to legalize marijuana for medical purposes started in San Francisco, the lovechild of the city’s hippie movement and its caregiving response to the AIDS epidemic. It was Dennis Peron and other activists here who wrote Proposition 215, the statewide legalization measure that California voters approved in 1996.

A decade ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a comprehensive set of regulations for its two dozen or so medical marijuana dispensaries, guidelines that have proven to work well and be a model for other jurisdictions to follow, elevating pot purveyors into accepted members of the business community (see “Marijuana goes mainstream,” 1/27/10).

Some have even begun to regard the Bay Area as a model for how to implement a sensible approach to regulating marijuana. On April 16, US Rep. Dina Titus (D-Las Vegas) traveled to San Francisco on a fact-finding mission after Clark County, Nevada legalized medical marijuana, with Las Vegas and other Nevada cities expected to follow shortly.

“I want the state to learn from someone who’s done it right,” Titus told the Guardian as she toured The Apothecarium on Market Street, an elegant dispensary reputed to be one of San Francisco’s finest.

In addition to helping guide Nevada’s implementation of medical marijuana legalization, Titus said she’s working on federal legislation that would better protect small businesses involved with a marijuana industry that is growing rapidly in the US, thanks to Colorado and Washington taking the next step and legalizing even recreational uses of marijuana.

For example, Titus wants to make sure marijuana businesses have full access to banking services, something that the US Department of Justice has occasionally interfered with. As Titus told us, “The federal government shouldn’t be wasting time and going after people who are abiding their state laws.”

 

BLISS AND BOUNDARIES

Back at 420 on Hippie Hill, Amber and Charlie lounged on a blanket with Gizmo, an affectionate pooch they’d adopted from “this guy who lives in a tree house” in Santa Cruz. The young couple, ages 18 and 20 respectively, had hitchhiked to California from Washington. Yes, “we may have done some weed,” Charlie said before letting out a peal of laughter.

“It’s been pretty awesome,” Amber said. “Literally, there was smoke coming from everywhere,” the moment 4:20pm arrived. As far as the eye could see, she said, the scene was nothing but “people smoking weed. It was crazy.”

Lilian was at the park with a friend, wearing a crown of daisies she’d woven with flowers plucked from nearby the park entrance. “All day we’ve been doing joints and blunts and pipes,” she explained. “We haven’t had any bong hits yet, but we had a couple vape hits, because they were like giving free test trials here at the park. So we were like, alright, why not?”

Lilian exulted the “positive vibes” of the event, but it wasn’t all weed and roses. A short while later, reports of gunfire sent police cars racing into the park with sirens wailing. While police later reported that they never found evidence of anyone actually discharging a weapon, two different individuals were arrested on charges of possessing a firearm.

Emergency personnel responded to four medical calls, police reported the following day, including one person who had a seizure, someone who suffered an abrasion at Haight and Ashbury streets, and two underaged individuals who experienced problems after becoming overly intoxicated. For a crowd of thousands pushed the boundaries of indulgence, quite a small number suffered harm.

Eight other arrests stemmed from charges of selling marijuana or possessing it for sale, possession or sale of opiates, one warrant arrest, and another on charges of “malicious mischief,” according to police.

A few days before the unpermitted gathering, city officials held a press conference announcing a “comprehensive plan” to crack down on the anticipated debauchery, which included not only the Golden Gate Park marijuana celebration but the “Hunky Jesus” competition, a countercultural hallmark held annually on Easter Sunday in Dolores Park.

“Last year we had a lot of challenges,” said Sup. London Breed, whose District 5 encompasses Golden Gate Park. “We need to make the city and streets safe this year. We want people to come and enjoy San Francisco, but we also want them to respect San Francisco.”

Thus, city agencies ramped up deployment of both plainclothes and uniformed police officers, and sent out more parking and traffic control officers.

The previous year, when massive amounts of debris had been left strewn throughout the park, it took 25 city employees over 12 hours to clean up five tons of trash left by intoxicated visitors, said Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. The Department of Public Works’ tab for cleanup exceeded $10,000.

But the main draw of the event, in true San Francisco fashion, was behavior Police Chief Greg Suhr hinted in advance would essentially be tolerated. “The sale of marijuana is still a felony,” Suhr emphasized, “but I don’t think [the SFPD is] naive enough to believe that we can stop people from smoking on 4/20.”

 

CANNABIS AS MEDICINE

Advocates for legalizing even recreational use of marijuana had hoped to make the November ballot this year, but the campaign’s signature-gathering effort has sputtered out.

Sponsored by the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative, the legalization measure was named for Jack Herer, a renowned cannabis advocate who passed away in 2010. The campaign is now ramping up for another try in 2016, when some advocates hope the presidential election will drive younger voters to the polls.

But while efforts to legalize weed in California for recreational use falter for now, the legitimate use of cannabis for medicinal purposes has giving rise to healthy businesses and research on health benefits. At the April 16 event at the Apothecarium, Titus had lots of questions for Allie Butler, an expert in marijuana who has a master’s degree in public health and told Titus, “I want to do cannabis research for the rest of my life.”

Butler introduced Titus to the various strains of marijuana, explaining what ailments each is good for. The CaliWidow can be a cure for headaches, she explained, and Blue Dream is “good for nausea. We prescribe that for cancer patients all day.” She indicated another strain, saying, “this is the Jack Herer, it’s my mom’s favorite.” Fancy, knowledgeable, and above ground, this isn’t your mom’s marijuana business anymore.

Left out

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steve@sfbg.com

It’s never been easy for progressives to mount a serious campaign for the California governor’s office. The high water mark was in 1934 when famous author/activist Upton Sinclair ran on his End Poverty In California platform and got nearly 38 percent of the vote despite being shut out by the major newspapers at the time.

That campaign was cited by both of this year’s leading leftist challengers to Gov. Jerry Brown — Green Party candidate Luis Rodriguez and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Cindy Sheehan — who say the goal of ending poverty is more important than ever, but who are also having a hard time getting media coverage for that message.

The latest Field Poll from April 9 shows Brown with a 40-point lead on his closest challenger, conservative Republican Tim Donnelly (57 to 17 percent, with 20 percent undecided). Republicans Andrew Blount and Neel Kashkari were at 3 and 2 percent, respectively, while Rodriguez and Sheehan are among the 11 also-rans who shared the support of 1 percent of the California electorate.

Perhaps that’s to be expected given that Brown is a Democrat who pulled the state back from the edge of the fiscal abyss largely by backing the Prop. 30 tax package in 2012, with most of the new revenue coming from increased income taxes on the rich. But to hear Rodriguez and Sheehan tell it, Brown is just another agent of the status quo at a time when the growing gap between rich and poor is the state’s most pressing problem.

“We have to put all our resources into ending poverty,” Rodriguez told us.

The campaigns that Rodriguez and Sheehan are running seem indicative of the state of progressive politics in California these days, with good work being done on individual issues by an array of groups, but little coordination among them or serious work on the kind of organizing and coalition-building needed to win statewide office.

There is still hope, particularly given California’s open primary system, where all Rodriguez or Sheehan need to do is beat the top Republican challenger in June in order to face Brown in a two-person race in November — an outcome that would definitely elevate their progressive message.

“One of our sayings is ‘second place wins the race,'” Sheehan told the Guardian.

But at this point, that seems unlikely, a longshot that points to the need for progressive-minded Californians to rebuild the movement and win over new generations of voters, particularly the young people disconnected from electoral politics and largely behind by the economic system.

 

REACHING VOTERS

When we asked Sheehan how her campaign was going, she replied, “It’s going.” When we pushed for a bit more, she told us, “It’s very, very grassroots and we’ve been trying to get the word out.”

And by “very, very grassroots,” Sheehan seems to mean that it’s not going very well, in terms of fundraising, volunteer support, media exposure, or any of the things a campaign needs to be successful. It’s been a disappointment for a woman who started her public political life as a media darling.

The year after Sheehan’s son Casey died fighting the Iraq War in 2004, she set up an encampment outside then-President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, instantly becoming a high-profile anti-war activist just as public opinion was turning strongly against the war.

Sheehan parlayed that fame into international activism for peace and other progressive causes, writing a pair of autobiographical/political books, and mounting a primary challenge against then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2008, finishing in second place with about 16 percent of the vote. Sheehan was also the running mate of presidential candidate Roseanne Barr in 2012, although their Peace and Freedom Party ticket didn’t appear on the ballot in most states.

But these days, Sheehan has found it tougher to recapture the media spotlight she once enjoyed, causing her to sometimes bristle with frustration and a sense of entitlement, as she did with us at the Guardian for failing to help her amplify her message before now.

“Who came in 2nd against Pelosi? Who received well into ‘double digits?’ The campaign can’t get steam if ‘lefties’ put the same criteria as the [San Francisco] Chronicle for example for coverage. If I were truly in this for my ‘ego’ I would have quit a long time ago. You write, I campaign all over the world for the things I care about,” Sheehan wrote in a testy April 3 email exchange with me after a supporter seeking our coverage sent her a message in which I questioned the prospects of her campaign.

But getting progressive support in a race against Pelosi in San Francisco clearly isn’t the same thing as having a progressive campaign gain traction with a statewide audience, particularly because Sheehan doesn’t have many prominent endorsers or organizational allies.

By contrast, Rodriguez seems to be outhustling Sheehan, racing up and the down the state to promote his candidacy and work on rebuilding the progressive movement, with an emphasis on reaching communities of color who feel estranged from politics.

“People like me and others on the left need to step up if we’re not going to just accept the control of the two-party system. We have to fight for that democratic reality, we have to make it real,” Rodriguez told us. “You can’t just say vote, vote, vote. You have to give them something to vote for.”

 

ON THE ISSUES

Rodriguez is the author of 15 books, including poetry, journalism, novels, and a controversial memoir on gang life, Always Running, winning major writing awards for his work. He lives in the Los Angeles area, where he’s been active in community-building in both the arts and political realms.

Rodriguez is running on a platform that brings together environmental, social justice, and anti-poverty issues, areas addressed separately by progressive groups who have made only halting progress on each, “which is why we need to make them inseparable.”

While he said Brown has improved the “terrible situation he inherited from Schwarzenegger,” Rodriguez said that the fortunes of the average Californian haven’t turned around.

“People are hurting in the state of California. I think Brown has to answer for that,” Rodriguez said, noting that people are frustrated with the economic system and looking for solutions. “I don’t think Gov. Brown has a plan for it. In fact, I think he’s making it worse.”

Sheehan is critical of Brown for his opposition to full marijuana legalization, his resistance to prison reform, for allowing fracking, and for doing little to challenge the consolidation of wealth.

“My main issue is always, of course, peace and justice. But a corollary of that is for the resources of this state to be more fairly distributed to help people’s lives,” Sheehan said, calling that economic justice stand an outgrowth of her anti-war activism. “Since my son was killed, I’ve been starting to connect the dots about the empire we live under.”

When she studied California history at UCLA, Sheehan said, “I was inspired by Upton Sinclair and his End Poverty In California campaign in the ’30s.” She reminisces about the California of her childhood, when college education was free and the social safety net was intact, keeping people from economic desperation.

“It’s been done before and we can do it again,” Sheehan said. “I love this state, I love its potential, and I miss the way it was when I was growing up.”

 

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

Money is a challenge for statewide candidates given the size of California, which has at least a half-dozen major media markets that all need to be tapped repeatedly to reach voters throughout the state.

“I won’t take any corporate dollars and only people with money get heard,” Rodriguez told us.

But he says California has a large and growing number of voters who don’t identify with either major party, as well as a huge number of Latino voters who have yet to really make their voices heard at election time.

“I’m really banking on the people that nobody is counting,” Rodriguez said. “This is the time when people need to come together. We have to unite on these central things.”

That’s always a tough task for third-party candidates. Sheehan has a paltry list of endorsers, owing partly to the left-leaning organizations like labor unions staying with Brown, even though Sheehan claims many of their members support her.

“The rank and file is supportive of our message, but the leadership is still tied in with the Democratic Party,” Sheehan told us. “This state is deeply controlled by the Democratic Party, even more than it was a few years ago.”

But Sheehan considers herself a strong and seasoned candidate. “I’ve run for Congress, I’ve run for vice president, and I think that politics should be local,” Sheehan told us, saying her main strength would be, “I would work with people to create a better state, not against people.”

It was a theme she returned to a few times in our conversation, her main selling point. “It’s about inspiring a movement,” Sheehan said. “My biggest gift is getting out there and talking to people.” But if her strengths are indeed inspiring a movement, working with allies, and building coalitions, then why isn’t her campaign doing those things? Sheehan admits that it’s been difficult, telling us, “I found it easier in San Francisco to get the word out.”

Film Listings: April 9 – 15, 2014

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Cuban Fury Nick Frost, Rashida Jones, and Chris O’Dowd star in this comedy about competitive salsa dancing. (1:37)

Dom Hemingway We first meet English safecracker Dom (Jude Law) as he delivers an extremely verbose and flowery ode to his penis, addressing no one in particular, while he’s getting blown in prison. Whether you find this opening a knockout or painfully faux will determine how you react to the rest of Richard Shepard’s new film, because it’s all in that same overwritten, pseudo-shocking, showoff vein, Sprung after 12 years, Dom is reunited with his former henchman Dickie (Richard E. Grant), and the two go to the South of France to collect the reward owed for not ratting out crime kingpin Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir). This detour into the high life goes awry, however, sending the duo back to London, where Dom — who admits having “anger issues,” which is putting it mildly — tries to woo a new employer (Jumayn Hunter) and, offsetting his general loutishness with mawkish interludes, to re-ingratiate himself with his long-estranged daughter (Emilia Clarke). Moving into Guy Ritchie terrain with none of the deftness the same writer-director had brought to debunking James Bond territory in 2006’s similarly black-comedic crime tale The Matador, Dom Hemingway might bludgeon some viewers into sharing its air of waggish, self conscious merriment. But like Law’s performance, it labors so effortfully hard after that affect that you’re just as likely to find the whole enterprise overbearing. (1:33) Elmwood. (Harvey)

Draft Day Kevin Costner stars in this comedy-drama set behind the scenes of the NFL. (2:00) Presidio.

Finding Vivian Maier Much like In the Realms of the Unreal, the 2004 doc about Henry Darger, Finding Vivian Maier explores the lonely life of a gifted artist whose talents were discovered posthumously. In this case, however, the filmmaker — John Maloof, who co-directs with Charlie Siskel — is responsible for Maier’s rise to fame. A practiced flea-market hunter, he picked up a carton of negatives at a 2007 auction; they turned out to be striking examples of early street photography. He was so taken with the work (snapped by a woman so obscure she was un-Google-able) that he began posting images online. Unexpectedly, they became a viral sensation, and Maloof became determined to learn more about the camerawoman. Turns out Vivian Maier was a career nanny in the Chicago area, with plenty of former employers to share their memories. She was an intensely private person who some remembered as delightfully adventurous and others remembered as eccentric, mentally unstable, or even cruel; she was a hoarder who was distrustful of men, and she spoke with a maybe-fake French accent. And she was obsessed with taking photographs that she never showed to anyone; the hundreds of thousands now in Maloof’s collection (along with 8mm and 16mm films) offer the only insight into her creative mind. “She had a great eye, a sense of humor, and a sense of tragedy,” remarks acclaimed photographer Mary Ellen Mark. “But there’s a piece of the puzzle missing.” The film’s central question — why was Maier so secretive about her hobby? — may never be answered. But as the film also suggests, that mystery adds another layer of fascination to her keenly observed photos. (1:23) Clay, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden Extensive archival footage and home movies (plus one short, narrative film) enhance this absorbing doc from San Francisco-based Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (2005’s Ballets Russes). It tells the tale of a double murder that occurred in the early 1930s on Floreana — the most remote of the already scarcely-populated Galapagos Islands. A top-notch cast (Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnour) gives voice to the letters and diary entries of the players in this stranger-than-fiction story, which involved an array of Europeans who’d moved away from civilization in search of utopian simplicity — most intriguingly, a maybe-fake Baroness and her two young lovers — and realized too late that paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Goldfine and Geller add further detail to the historic drama by visiting the present-day Galapagos, speaking with residents about the lingering mystery and offering a glimpse of what life on the isolated islands is like today. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Interior. Leather Bar. James Franco and Travis Mathews’ “docufilm” imagines and recreates footage cut from the 1980 film Cruising. (1:00) Roxie.

Joe “I know what keeps me alive is restraint,” says Nicolas Cage’s titular character, a hard-drinking, taciturn but honorable semi-loner who supervises a crew of laborers clearing undesirable trees in the Mississippi countryside. That aside, his business is mostly drinking, occasionally getting laid, and staying out of trouble — we glean he’s had more than enough of the latter in his past. Thus it’s against his better judgment that he helps out newly arrived transient teen Gary (the excellent Tye Sheridan, of 2012’s Mud and 2011’s The Tree of Life), who’s struggling to support his bedraggled mother and mute sister. Actually he takes a shine to the kid, and vice versa; the reason for caution is Gary’s father, whom he himself calls a “selfish old drunk.” And that’s a kind description of this vicious, violent, lazy, conscienceless boozehound, who has gotten his pitiful family thrown out of town many times before and no doubt will manage it once again in this new burg, where they’ve found an empty condemned house to squat in. David Gordon Green’s latest is based on a novel by the late Larry Brown, and like that writer’s prose, its considerable skill of execution manages to render serious and grimly palatable a steaming plate load of high white trash melodrama that might otherwise be undigestible. (Strip away the fine performances, staging and atmosphere, and there’s not much difference between Joe and the retro Southern grind house likes of 1969’s Shanty Tramp, 1974’s ‘Gator Bait or 1963’s Scum of the Earth.) Like Mud and 2011’s Killer Joe, this is a rural Gothic neither truly realistic or caricatured to the point of parody, but hanging between those two poles — to an effect that’s impressive and potent, though some may not enjoy wallowing in this particular depressing mire of grotesque nastiness en route to redemption. (1:57) (Harvey)

The New Black The Human Rights Watch Film Festival (April 10-27 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) kicks off with Yoruba Richen’s look at uneasy tensions between African American Christians and marriage-equality activists. Though Richen is careful to give voice to both sides, The New Black‘s most charismatic figure is Sharon Lettman-Hicks of the National Black Justice Coalition, who’s straight and a churchgoer, but is tirelessly dedicated to LGBT rights both professionally and personally — as in a scene in which a backyard barbecue at her home turns into a friendly but assertive education session for her less open-minded relatives. Elsewhere, we meet an African American church leader who’s against same-sex marriage but isn’t portrayed as a one-note villain; a group of young LGBT political volunteers, many of whom are estranged from intolerant parents; an adorable two-mom family hoping to make their partnership legal; and the gospel singer formerly known as Tonéx, whose decision to come out greatly affected his burgeoning Christian music career. Maryland’s same-sex marriage referendum, decided during the 2012 election, is the film’s focal point, but it also boldly digs into deeper issues, exploring why a community that fought so hard for its own civil rights a generation ago has such trouble supporting the LGBT cause. (1:22) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Eddy)

Oculus Tim (Brenton Thwaites) and Kaylie (Karen Gillan) are grown siblings with a horrible shared past: When they were children, their parents (Rory Cochrane, Katee Sankhoff) moved them all into a nice suburban house, decorating it with, among other things, a 300-year-old mirror. But that antique seemed to have an increasingly disturbing effect on dad, then mom too, to ultimately homicidal, offspring-orphaning effect. Over a decade later, Tim is released from a juvenile mental lockup, ready to live a normal life after years of therapy have cleaned him of the supernatural delusions he think landed him there in the first place. Imagine his dismay when Kaylie announces she has spent the meantime researching aforementioned “evil mirror” — which turns out to have had a very gruesome history of mysteriously connected deaths — and painstakingly re-acquiring it. She means to destroy it so it can never wreak havoc, and has set up an elaborate room of camcorders and other equipment in which to “prove” its malevolence first, with Tim her very reluctant helper. Needless to say, this experiment (which he initially goes along with only in order to debunk the whole thing for good) turns out to be a very, very bad idea. The mirror is clever — demonically clever. It can warp time and perspective so our protagonists don’t know whether what they’re experiencing is real or not. Expanding on his 2006 short film (which was made before his excellent, little-seen 2011 horror feature Absentia), Mike Flanagan’s tense, atmospheric movie isn’t quite as scary as you might wish, partly because the villain (the spirit behind the mirror) isn’t particularly well-imagined in generic look or murky motivation. But it is the rare new horror flick that is genuinely intricate and surprising plot-wise — no small thing in the current landscape of endless remakes and rehashes. (1:44) (Harvey)

Rio 2 More 3D tropical adventures with animated birds Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway) and their menagerie of pals, with additional voices by Andy Garcia, Leslie Mann, Bruno Mars, Jamie Foxx, and more. (1:41) Four Star, Presidio.

Under the Skin See “The Hunger.” (1:47)

ONGOING

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq Writer-director Nancy Buirski’s documentary follows the short, brilliant career of a young dancer named Tanaquil Le Clercq, who came up in the New York City ballet world of the 1940s and ’50s. Le Clercq was discovered by George Balanchine, married him (as three other dancers had done before her), sparked a paradigm shift in the ballet world regarding what was considered the quintessential dancer’s body, had numerous ballets set on her by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, and then, at the peak of her career, at age 27, was stricken by polio and left paralyzed in both legs. The film takes its time moving toward this catastrophe, recounting Le Clercq’s early adult life through interviews with her contemporaries and tracking her professional progress through gorgeous archival footage of her performances. Equally moving archival material are the letters from a longtime correspondence between Le Clercq and Robbins that documented two very different periods of her life: the first, when Robbins was choreographing ballets for her, including Afternoon of a Faun, and professing his love; the second, after her paralysis, when she wrote him a series of poignant communications describing her impressions of her illness and her new, circumscribed world. The film has some trouble holding on to its center — as in life, Balanchine proves a magnetic force, and Afternoon of a Faun feels inexorably drawn to his professional and personal details. We don’t get enough of Le Clercq, which you could say is the tragedy of her story — nobody did. But the letters do provide a sense of someone resourceful and responsive to life’s richness and joys, someone who would get past this crisis and find a way to reshape her life. (1:31) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

Bad Words Settling a grudge score whose precise origin remains unclear until late in the game, world-class misanthrope Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman) is celebrating his 40th birthday by competing in a national spelling bee. Yes, spelling bees are generally for children, and so is this one. But Guy has found a legal loophole permitting his participation, and the general hate wending his way from contest staff (Allison Janney, Philip Baker Hall) — let alone the tiger-mom-and-dad parents ready to form a lynch mob — is just icing on the cake where he’s concerned. What’s more, as some sort of majorly underachieving near-genius, he’s in fact well equipped to whup the bejesus out of overachieving eight-year-olds when it comes to saying the right letters out loud. The only people on his side, sorta, are the online journalist (Kathryn Hahn) reporting on his perverse quest, and the insidiously cute Indian American competitor (Rohan Chand) who wants to be besties, or perhaps just to psych him out. (Note: The tyke’s admitted favorite word is “subjugate.”) Written by Andrew Dodge, this comedy in the tradition (a little too obviously) of 2003’s Bad Santa and such provides the always enjoyable Bateman with not only a tailor-made lead role, but a directorial debut as well. He does just fine by both. Yet as nicely crafted and frequently-pretty-funny Bad Words is, at core it’s a rather petty movie — small, derivative, and cynically mean-spirited without the courage of genuine biliousness. It’s at once not-half-bad, and not half as badass as it pretends to be. (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Breathe In In Drake Doremus’s lyrical tale of a man in midlife crisis, Guy Pearce plays Keith Reynolds, a high school music teacher living in upstate New York with his wife, Megan (Amy Ryan), and teenage daughter, Lauren (Mackenzie David). Quietly harboring his discontent, Keith spends solitary moments wistfully sifting through glory-days photographs of his former band and memories of the undomesticated life he and Megan led two decades ago in New York City, which the two revisit in a low-toned call-and-response that doesn’t need to erupt into a blistering argument to clarify their incompatible positions. The melancholy calm is disrupted by the arrival of a British exchange student named Sophie (Felicity Jones, who also starred in Doremus’s 2011 film, Like Crazy). Evading a scene of loss and heartbreak at home, 18-year-old Sophie has come to spend a semester at Lauren’s high school, a juxtaposition that presents us with two wildly distinct species of teenager. Lauren is a brittle, popular party girl whom we watch making poor choices with a predatory classmate; Sophie is a soulful, reserved young woman whose prodigious talent at the piano first jars Keith out of his malaise into an uncomfortable awareness. A scene before Sophie’s arrival in which the family plays Jenga and Keith pulls out the wrong piece, toppling the tower, perhaps presses its ominous visual message too hard. Meanwhile, similarities to 2012’s Nobody Walks underscore the argument that this subject matter is an old, tired tale. But for the most part, the intimacy that develops between Keith and Sophie is constructed with delicate restraint, and Doremus and writing partner Ben York Jones have crafted a textured portrait of a man trying to repossess the past. (1:37) Metreon. (Rapoport)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Marvel’s most wholesome hero returns in this latest film in the Avengers series, and while it doesn’t deviate from the expected formula (it’s not a spoiler to say that yes, the world is saved yet again), it manages to incorporate a surprisingly timely plot about the dangers of government surveillance. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), hunkiest 95-year-old ever, is still figuring out his place in the 21st century after his post-World War II deep freeze. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has him running random rescue missions with the help of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), but SHIELD is working on a top-secret project that will allow it to predict crimes before they occur. It isn’t long before Cap’s distrust of the weapon — he may be old-fashioned, but he ain’t stupid — uncovers a sinister plot led by a familiar enemy, with Steve’s former BFF Bucky doing its bidding as the science-experiment-turned-assassin Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). Anthony Mackie, Robert Redford, and series regular Cobie Smulders are fine in supporting roles, and Johansson finally gets more to do than punch and pose, but the likable Evans ably carries the movie — he may not have the charisma of Robert Downey Jr., but he brings wit and depth to a role that would otherwise be defined mainly by biceps and CG-heavy fights. Oh, and you know the drill by now: superfans will want to stick around for two additional scenes tucked into the end credits. (2:16) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Cesar Chavez “You always have a choice,” Cesar Chavez (Michael Peña) tells his bullied son when advising him to turn the other cheek. Likewise, actor-turned-director Diego Luna had a choice when it came to tackling his first English-language film; he could have selected a less complicated, sprawling story. So he gets props for that simple act — especially at a time when workers’ rights and union power have been so dramatically eroded — and for his attempts to impact some complicated nuance to Chavez’s fully evident heroism. Painting his moving pictures in dusty earth tones and burnt sunlight with the help of cinematographer Enrique Chediak, Luna vaults straight into Chavez’s work with the grape pickers that would come to join the United Farm Workers — with just a brief voiceover about Chavez’s roots as the native-born son of a farm owner turned worker, post-Depression. Uprooting wife Helen (America Ferrera) and his family and moving to Delano as a sign of activist commitment, Chavez is seemingly quickly drawn into the 1965 strike by the Mexican workers’ sometime rivals: Filipino pickers (see the recent CAAMFest short documentary Delano Manongs for some of their side of the story). From there, the focus hones in on Chavez, speaking out against violence and “chicken shit macho ideals,” hunger striking, and activating unions overseas, though Luna does give voice to cohorts like Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson), growers like Bogdanovitch (John Malkovich), and the many nameless strikers — some of whom lost their lives during the astonishingly lengthy, taxing five-year strike. Luna’s win would be a blue-collar epic on par with 1979’s Norma Rae, and on some levels, he succeeds; scanning the faces of the weathered, hopeful extras in crowd scenes, you can’t help but feel the solidarity. The people have the power, as a poet once put it, and tellingly, his choice of Peña, stolidly opaque when charismatic warmth is called for, might be the key weakness here. One suspects the director or his frequent costar Gael García Bernal would make a more riveting Chavez. (1:38) Elmwood, Metreon. (Chun)

Divergent Based on the blockbuster dystopian-future YA novel by Veronica Roth (the first in a trilogy), Divergent is set in a future city-state version of Chicago in which society is divided into five character-based, color-coded factions: Erudite, Amity, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless. Like her peers, Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley), the film’s Abnegation-born teenage heroine, must choose a permanent faction — with the help of a standardized aptitude test that forgoes penciling in bubbles in favor of virtual reality psychic manipulation. When the test fails to triangulate her sole innate personality trait, she learns that she belongs to a secret, endangered sixth category: Divergent, an astonishing set of people who are not only capable of, say, acts of selflessness but can also produce intelligent thought, or manifest bravery in the face of danger. Forced to hide her aberrant nature in a society whose leaders (Kate Winslet) are prone to statements like “The future belongs to those who know where they belong,” and seemingly bored among Abnegation’s hive of gray cardigan-wearing worker bees, Beatrice chooses Dauntless, a dashing gang of black-clad, alterna-rock music video extras who jump on and off moving trains and live in a warehouse-chic compound whose dining hall recalls the patio at Zeitgeist. Fittingly, a surly, tattooed young man named Four (Theo James) leads Beatrice, now Tris, and her fellow initiates through a harsh proving regimen that, if they fail, will cast them into an impoverished underclass. Director Neil Burger (2006’s The Illusionist, 2011’s Limitless) and the behemoth marketing force behind Divergent are clearly hoping to stir up the kind of madness stoked by the Twilight and Hunger Games series, but while there are bones a-plenty to pick with those franchises, Divergent may have them beat for pure daffiness of premise and diameter of plot holes — and that’s after screenwriters Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor’s major suturing of the source material’s lacunae. The daffiness doesn’t translate into imaginative world-building, and while a couple of scenes convey the visceral thrills of life in Dauntless, the tension between Tris and Four is awkwardly ratcheted up, and the film’s shift into a mode of crisis is equally jolting without generating much heat. (2:20) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Ernest & Celestine Belgian animators Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier are best known for the stop-motion shorts series (and priceless 2009 subsequent feature) A Town Called Panic, an anarchic, absurdist, and hilarious creation suitable for all ages. Their latest (co-directed with Benjamin Renner) is … not like that at all. Instead, it’s a sweet, generally guileless children’s cartoon that takes its gentle, watercolor-type visual style from late writer-illustrator Gabrielle Vincent’s same-named books. Celestine (voiced by Pauline Brunner) is an orphaned girl mouse that befriends gruff bear Ernest (the excellent Lambert Wilson), though their improbable kinship invites social disapproval and scrapes with the law. There are some clever satirical touches, but mostly this is a softhearted charmer that will primarily appeal to younger kids. Adults will find it pleasant enough — but don’t expect any Panic-style craziness. (1:20) Elmwood, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Non-Stop You don’t want to get between Liam Neeson and his human shield duties. The Taken franchise has restyled the once-gentle acting giant into the type of weather-beaten, all-business action hero that Harrison Ford once had a lock on. Throw in a bit of the flying-while-addled antihero high jinks last seen in Flight (2012) and that pressured, packed-sardine anxiety that we all suffer during long-distance air travel, and we have a somewhat ludicrous but nonetheless entertaining hybrid that may have you believing that those salty snacks and the seat-kicking kids are the least of your troubles. Neeson’s Bill Marks signals the level of his freestyle alcoholism by giving his booze a stir with a toothbrush shortly before putting on his big-boy air marshal pants and boarding his fateful flight. Marks is soon contacted by a psycho who promises, via text, to kill one person at a time on the flight unless $150 million is deposited into a bank account that — surprise — is under the bad-good air marshal’s name. The twists and turns — and questions of who to trust, whether it’s Marks’ vaguely likeable seatmate (Julianne Moore) or his business class flight attendant (Michelle Dockery) — keep the audience on edge and busily guessing, though director Jaume Collet-Serra doesn’t quite dispel all the questions that arise as the diabolical scheme plays out and ultimately taxes believability. The fun is all in the getting there, even if the denouement on the tarmac deflates. (1:50) Four Star. (Chun)

The Grand Budapest Hotel Is this the first Wes Anderson movie to feature a shootout? It’s definitely the first Anderson flick to include a severed head. That’s not to say The Grand Budapest Hotel, “inspired by” the works of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, represents too much of a shift for the director — his intricate approach to art direction is still very much in place, as are the deadpan line deliveries and a cast stuffed with Anderson regulars. But there’s a slightly more serious vibe here, a welcome change from 2012’s tooth-achingly twee Moonrise Kingdom. Thank Ralph Fiennes’ performance as liberally perfumed concierge extraordinaire M. Gustave, which mixes a shot of melancholy into the whimsy, and newcomer Tony Revolori as Zero, his loyal lobby boy, who provides gravitas despite only being a teenager. (Being played by F. Murray Abraham as an older adult probably helps in that department.) Hotel‘s early 20th century Europe setting proves an ideal canvas for Anderson’s love of detail — the titular creation rivals Stanley Kubrick’s rendering of the Overlook Hotel — and his supporting cast, as always, looks to be enjoying the hell out of being a part of Anderson’s universe, with Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Adrien Brody having particularly oversized fun. Is this the best Wes Anderson movie since 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums? Yes. (1:40) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Great Beauty The latest from Paolo Sorrentino (2008’s Il Divo) arrives as a high-profile contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, already annointed a masterpiece in some quarters, and duly announcing itself as such in nearly every grandiose, aesthetically engorged moment. Yes, it seems to say, you are in the presence of this auteur’s masterpiece. But it’s somebody else’s, too. The problem isn’t just that Fellini got there first, but that there’s room for doubt whether Sorrentino’s homage actually builds on or simply imitates its model. La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963) are themselves swaying, jerry-built monuments, exhileratingly messy and debatably profound. But nothing quite like them had been seen before, and they did define a time of cultural upheaval — when traditional ways of life were being plowed under by a loud, moneyed, heedless modernity that for a while chose Rome as its global capital. Sorrentino announces his intention to out-Fellini Fellini in an opening sequence so strenuously flamboyant it’s like a never-ending pirouette performed by a prima dancer with a hernia. There’s statuary, a women’s choral ensemble, an on-screen audience applauding the director’s baffled muse Toni Servillo, standing in for Marcello Mastroianni — all this and more in manic tracking shots and frantic intercutting, as if sheer speed alone could supply contemporary relevancy. Eventually The Great Beauty calms down a bit, but still its reason for being remains vague behind the heavy curtain of “style.” (2:22) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

It Felt Like Love Set on the outer edges of Brooklyn and Queens, writer-director Eliza Hittman’s debut feature tracks the summertime wanderings and missteps of 14-year-old Lila (Gina Piersanti), whose days mainly consist of trailing in the wake of her more sexually experienced and perpetually coupled-off best friend, Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni). The camera repeatedly finds Lila in voyeur mode, as Chiara and her boyfriend, Patrick (Jesse Cordasco), negotiate their physical relationship and redefine the limits of PDA, unfazed by Lila’s silent, watchful presence. It’s clear she wants some part of this, though her motivations are a murky compound of envy, loneliness, and longing for a sense of place among her peers. A brief encounter with an older boy, Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), whom Chiara knows — more of a sighting, really — provides the tiniest of openings, and Lila forces her way through it with an awkward insistence that is uncomfortable and sometimes painful to witness. Lila lacks Chiara’s fluid verbal and physical vernacular, and her attempts at mimicry in the cause of attracting Sammy’s attention only underline how unready and out of her depth she is. As Lila pushes into his seedy, sleazy world — a typical night is spent getting wasted and watching porn with his friends — their encounters don’t look like they feel like love, though Piersanti poignantly signals her character’s physical desire in the face of Sammy’s bemused ambivalence. Hittman unflinchingly leads her hapless protagonist through scenes that hover uneasily between dark comedy and menace without ever quite landing, and this uncertainty generates an emotional force that isn’t dispelled by the drifting, episodic plot. (1:22) Roxie. (Rapoport)

Jinn (1:37) Metreon.

Jodorowsky’s Dune A Chilean émigré to Paris, Alejandro Jodorowsky had avant-garde interests that led him from theater and comic book art to film, making his feature debut with 1968’s Fando y Lis. Undaunted by its poor reception, he created El Topo (1970), a blood-soaked mix of spaghetti western, mysticism, and Buñuellian parabolic grotesquerie that became the very first “midnight movie.” After that success, he was given nearly a million dollars to “do what he wanted” with 1973’s similarly out-there The Holy Mountain, which became a big hit in Europe. French producer Michel Seydoux asked Jodorowsky what he’d like to do next. Dune, he said. In many ways it seemed a perfect match of director and material. Yet Dune would be an enormous undertaking in terms of scale, expense, and technical challenges. What moneymen in their right mind would entrust this flamboyant genius/nut job with it? They wouldn’t, as it turned out. So doc Jodorowsky’s Dune is the story of “the greatest film never made,” one that’s brain-exploding enough in description alone. But there’s more than description to go on here, since in 1975 the director and his collaborators created a beautifully detailed volume of storyboards and other preproduction minutiae they hoped would lure Hollywood studios aboard this space phantasmagoria. From this goldmine of material, as well as input from the surviving participants, Pavich is able to reconstruct not just the film’s making and unmaking, but to an extent the film itself — there are animated storyboard sequences here that offer just a partial yet still breathtaking glimpse of what might have been. (1:30) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

The Lego Movie (1:41) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Lunchbox Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a self-possessed housewife and a great cook, whose husband confuses her for another piece of furniture. She tries to arouse his affections with elaborate lunches she makes and sends through the city’s lunchbox delivery service. Like marriage in India, lunchbox delivery has a failure rate of zero, which is what makes aberrations seem like magical occurrences. So when widow Saajan (Irrfan Khan) receives her adoring food, he humbly receives the magical lunches like a revival of the senses. Once Ila realizes her lunchbox is feeding the wrong man she writes a note and Saajan replies — tersely, like a man who hasn’t held a conversation in a decade — and the impossible circumstances lend their exchanges a romance that challenges her emotional fidelity and his retreat from society. She confides her husband is cheating. He confides his sympathy for men of lower castes. It’s a May/December affair if it’s an affair at all — but the chemistry we expect the actors to have in the same room is what fuels our urge to see it; that’s a rare and haunting dynamic. Newcomer Kaur is perfect as Ila, a beauty unmarked by her rigorous distaff; her soft features and exhausted expression lend a richness to the troubles she can’t share with her similarly stoic mother (Lillete Dubey). Everyone is sacrificing something and poverty seeps into every crack, every life, without exception — their inner lives are their richness. (1:44) Embarcadero. (Vizcarrondo)

Mistaken for Strangers Tom Berninger, brother to the National vocalist Matt Berninger, is the maker of this doc — ostensibly about the band but a really about brotherly love, competition, and creation. It spins off a somewhat genius conceit of brother vs. brother, since the combo is composed of two sets of siblings: twins Aaron and Bryce Dessner on guitars and Scott and Bryan Devendorf on bass and drums respectively. The obvious question — what of singer Matt and his missing broheim? Turns out little bro Tom is one of those rock fans — of metal and not, it seems, the National — more interested in living the life and drinking the brewskis than making the music. So when Matt reaches out to Tom, adrift in their hometown of Cincinnati, to work as a roadie for the outfit, it’s a handout, sure, but also a way for the two to spend time together and bond. A not-quite-realized moviemaker who’s tried to make his own Z-budget scary flicks but never seems to finish much, Tom decides to document, and in the process gently poke fun at, the band (aka his authority-figures-slash-employers), which turns out to be much more interesting than gathering their deli platters and Toblerone. The National’s aesthetic isn’t quite his cup of tea: they prefer to wrap themselves in slinky black suits like Nick Cave’s pickup band, and the soft-spoken Matt tends to perpetually stroll about with a glass of white wine or bubbly in hand when he isn’t bursting into fourth-wall-busting high jinks on stage. Proud of his sib yet also intimidated by the National’s fame and not a little envious of the photo shoots, the Obama meetings, and the like, Tom is all about having fun. But it’s not a case of us vs. them, Tom vs. Matt, he discovers; it’s a matter of connecting with family and oneself. In a Michael Moore-ian sense, the sweet-tempered Mistaken for Strangers is as much, if not more so, about the filmmaker and the journey to make the movie than the supposed subject. (1:15) Roxie. (Chun)

The Monuments Men The phrase “never judge a book by its cover” goes both ways. On paper, The Monuments Men — inspired by the men who recovered art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and directed by George Clooney, who co-wrote and stars alongside a sparkling ensemble cast (Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh “Earl of Grantham” Bonneville, and Bill Fucking Murray) — rules. Onscreen, not so much. After they’re recruited to join the cause, the characters fan out across France and Germany following various leads, a structural choice that results in the film’s number one problem: it can’t settle on a tone. Men can’t decide if it wants to be a sentimental war movie (as in an overlong sequence in which Murray’s character weeps at the sound of his daughter’s recorded voice singing “White Christmas”); a tragic war movie (some of those marquee names die, y’all); a suspenseful war movie (as the men sneak into dangerous territory with Michelangelo on their minds); or a slapstick war comedy (look out for that land mine!) The only consistent element is that the villains are all one-note — and didn’t Inglourious Basterds (2009) teach us that nothing elevates a 21st century-made World War II flick like an eccentric bad guy? There’s one perfectly executed scene, when reluctant partners Balaban and Murray discover a trove of priceless paintings hidden in plain sight. One scene, out of a two-hour movie, that really works. The rest is a stitched-together pile of earnest intentions that suggests a complete lack of coherent vision. Still love you, Clooney, but you can do better — and this incredible true story deserved way better. (1:58) Four Star. (Eddy)

Mr. Peabody and Sherman Mr. P. (voiced by Ty Burrell) is a Nobel Prize-winning genius dog, Sherman (Max Charles) his adopted human son. When the latter attends his first day of school, his extremely precocious knowledge of history attracts jealous interest from bratty classmate Penny (Ariel Winter), with the eventual result that all three end up being transported in Peabody’s WABAC time machine to various fabled moments — involving Marie Antoinette, King Tut, the Trojan Horse, etc. — where Penny invariably gets them in deep trouble. Rob Minkoff’s first all-animation feature since The Lion King 20 years ago is spun off from the same-named segments in Jay Ward’s TV Rocky and Bullwinkle Show some decades earlier. It’s a very busy (sometimes to the brink of clutter), often witty, imaginatively constructed, visually impressive, and for the most part highly enjoyable comic adventure. The only minuses are some perfunctory “It’s about family”-type sentimentality — and scenarist Craig Wright’s determination to draw from history the “lesson” that nearly all women are pains in the ass who create problems they must then be rescued from. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Muppets Most Wanted Building on the success of The Muppets, Jim Henson’s beloved creations return to capitalize on their revitalized (and Disney-owned) fame. This follow-up from Muppets director James Tobin — technically, it’s the seventh sequel to the original 1979 Muppet Movie, as Dr. Bunsen Honeydew points out in one of the film’s many meta moments — improves upon the 2011 film, which had its charms but suffered by concentrating too much on the Jason Segal-Amy Adams romance, not to mention annoying new kid Walter. Here, human co-stars Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, and others (there are more cameos than you can count) are relegated to supporting roles, with the central conflict revolving around the Muppets’ inability to notice that Constantine, “the world’s most dangerous frog,” has infiltrated their group, sending Kermit to Siberian prison in his place. Constantine and his accomplice (Gervais, whose character’s last name is “Badguy”) use the Muppets’ world tour as a front for their jewel-heist operation; meanwhile, his infatuated warden (Fey) forces Kermit to direct the annual gulag musical. Not helping matters are a bumbling Interpol agent (Ty Burrell) and his CIA counterpart (Sam the American Eagle, natch). Really, all that’s needed is a simple plot, catchy songs, and plenty of room to let the Muppets do their thing — Miss Piggy and Animal are particularly enjoyable here; Walter’s still around, but he’s way more tolerable now that he’s gotten past his “man or muppet” angst — and the film delivers. All the knowing winks to the grown-up fans in the audience are just an appreciated bonus. (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Need for Speed Speed kills, in quite a different way than it might in Breaking Bad, in Aaron Paul’s big-screen Need for Speed. “Big” nonetheless signals “B” here, in this stunt-filled challenge to the Fast and the Furious franchise, though there’s no shame in that — the drive-in is paved with standouts and stinkers alike. Tobey (Paul) is an ace driver who’s in danger of losing his auto shop, also the hangout for his pals (Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Ramon Rodriguez) and young sidekick Pete (Harrison Gilbertson), when archrival Dino (Dominic Cooper) arrives with a historic Mustang in need of restoration. Tragedy strikes, and Tobey must hook up with that fateful auto once more to win a mysterious winner-takes-all race, staged by eccentric, rich racing-fiend Monarch (Michael Keaton). Along for the ride are the (big) eyes and ears for the Mustang’s new owner — gearhead Julia (Imogen Poots). All beside the point, since the racing stunts, including a showy helicopter canyon save, are the real stars of Speed, while the touchstone for stuntman-turned-director Scott Waugh — considering the car and the final SF and Northern California race settings — is, of course, Bullitt (1968), which is given an overt nod in the opening drive-in scene. The overall larky effect, however, tends toward Smokey and the Bandit (1977), especially with Keaton’s camp efforts at Wolfman Jack verbiage-slanging roaring in the background. And despite the efforts of the multicultural gallery of wisecracking side guys, this script-challenged popcorn-er tends to blur what little chemistry these characters have with each other, skip the residual car culture insights of the more specific, more urban Fast series, and leave character development, in particular Tobey’s, in the dust in its haste to get from point A to B. (2:10) Metreon. (Chun)

Noah Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical epic begins with a brief recap of prior Genesis events — creation is detailed a bit more in clever fashion later on — leading up to mankind’s messing up such that God wants to wipe the slate clean and start over. That means getting Noah (Russell Crowe), wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), and their three sons and one adopted daughter (Emma Watson) to build an ark that can save them and two of every animal species from the imminent slate-wiping Great Flood. (The rest of humanity, having sinned too much, can just feed the fishes.) They get some help from fallen angels turned into Ray Harryhausen-type giant rock creatures voiced by Nick Nolte and others. There’s an admirable brute force and some startling imagery to this uneven, somber, Iceland-shot tale “inspired” by the Good Book (which, needless to say, has endured more than its share of revisions over the centuries). Purists may quibble over some choices, including the device of turning minor Biblical figure Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) into a royal-stowaway villain, and political conservatives have already squawked a bit over Aronofsky’s not-so-subtle message of eco-consciousness, with Noah being bade to “replenish the Earth” that man has hitherto rendered barren. But for the most part this is a respectable, forceful interpretation that should stir useful discussion amongst believers and non believers alike. Its biggest problem is that after the impressively harrowing flood itself, we’re trapped on the ark dealing with the lesser crises of a pregnancy, a discontented middle son (Logan Lerman), and that stowaway’s plotting — ponderous intrigues that might have been leavened if the director had allowed us to hang out with the animals a little, rather than sedating the whole menagerie for the entire voyage. (2:07) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Nymphomaniac: Volume I Found battered and unconscious in a back alley, Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is taken in by good Samaritan Seligman (Stellan Skarsgaard), to whom she explains “It’s all my fault — I’m just a bad human being.” But he doesn’t believe there are such things. She seeks to enlighten him by narrating the story of her life so far, from carnally curious childhood to sexually voracious adulthood. Stacy Martin plays her younger self through a guided tour of excesses variously involving Christian Slater and Connie Nielsen as her parents; a buncha guys fucked on a train, on a teenage dare; Uma Thurman as one histrionically scorned woman; and Shai LaBeouf as a first love who’s a cipher either because he’s written that way, or because this particular actor can’t make sense out of him. For all its intended provocation, including some graphic but unsurprisingly (coming from this director) unerotic XXX action, von Trier’s latest is actually less offensive than much of his prior output: He’s regained his sense of humor here, and annoying as its “Look at me, I’m an unpredictable artist” crap can be (notably all the stuff about fly-fishing, cake forks, numerology, etc. that seems randomly drawn from some Great Big Book of Useless Trivia), the film’s episodic progress is divertingly colorful enough. But is Joe going to turn out to be more than a two-dimensional authorial device from a director who’s never exactly sussed women (or liked people in general)? Will Nymphomaniac arrive at some pointed whole greater than the sum of its naughty bits? The answer to both is probably “Nah.” But we won’t know for sure until the two-hour second half arrives (see review below) of a movie that, in fairness, was never really intended to be split up like this. (1:50) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Nymphomaniac, Volume II The second half of Lars von Trier’s anecdotal epic begins with Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) recalling the quasi-religious experience of her spontaneous first orgasm at age 12. Then she continues to tell bookish good Samaritan Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) — who reveals he’s an asexual 60-something virgin — the story of her sexually compulsive life to date. Despite finding domestic stability at last with Jerome (Shia LeBeouf), she proves to have no talent for motherhood, and hits a tormenting period of frigidity eventually relieved only by the brutal ministrations of sadist K (Jamie Bell, burying Billy Elliott for good). She finds a suitable professional outlet for her peculiarly antisocial personality, working as a sometimes ruthless debt collector under the tutelage of L (Willem Dafoe), and he in turn encourages her to develop her own protégé in the form of needy teenager P (Mia Goth). If Vol. I raised the question “Will all this have a point?,” Vol. II provides the answer, and it’s (as expected) “Not really.” Still, there’s no room for boredom in the filmmaker’s most playfully arbitrary, entertaining, and least misanthropic (very relatively speaking) effort since his last four-hour-plus project 20 years ago, TV miniseries The Kingdom. Never mind that von Trier (in one of many moments when he uses Joe or Seligman as his mouthpiece) protests against the tyranny of political correctitude that renders a word like “Negro” unsayable — you’re still free to feel offended when his camera spends more time ogling two African men’s variably erect dicks in one brief scene that it does all the white actors’ cocks combined. But then there’s considerably more graphic content all around in this windup, which ends on a predictable note of cheap, melodramatic irony. But that’s part of the charm of the whole enterprise: Reeling heedlessly from the pedantic to the shocking to the trivial, like a spoiled child it manages to be kinda cute even when it’s deliberately pissing you off. (2:10) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

On My Way Not for nothing too does the title On My Way evoke Going Places (1974): director Emmanuelle Bercot is less interested in exploring Catherine Deneuve’s at-times-chilled hauteur than roughing up, grounding, and blowing fresh country air through that still intimidatingly gorgeous image. Deneuve’s Bettie lost her way long ago — the former beauty queen, who never rose beyond her Miss Brittany status, is in a state of stagnation, working at her seafood restaurant, having affairs with married men, living with her mother, and still sleeping in her girlhood room. One workday mid-lunch hour, she gets in her car and drives, ignoring all her ordinary responsibilities and disappearing down the wormhole of dive bars and back roads. She seems destined to drift until her enraged, equally lost daughter Muriel (Camille) calls in a favor: give her son Charly (Nemo Schiffman) a ride to his paternal grandfather’s. It’s chance to reconnect and correct course, even after Bettie’s money is spent, her restaurant appears doomed, and the adorable, infuriating Charly acts out. The way is clear, however: what could have been a musty, predictable affair, in the style of so many boomer tales in the movie houses these days, is given a crucial infusion of humanity and life, as Bercot keeps an affectionate eye trained on the unglamorous everyday attractions of a French backwater and Deneuve works that ineffable charm that draws all eyes to her onscreen. Her Bettie may have kicked her cigarette habit long ago, but she’s still smokin’ — in every way. (1:53) Embarcadero. (Chun)

Particle Fever “We are hearing nature talk to us,” a physicist remarks in awe near the end of Particle Fever, Mark Levinson’s intriguing doc about the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson particle. Earlier, another scientist says, “I’ve never heard of a moment like this in [science] history, where an entire field is hinging on a single event.” The event, of course, is the launch of the Large Hardon Collider, the enormous machine that enabled the discovery. Though some interest in physics is probably necessary to enjoy Particle Fever, extensive knowledge of quarks and such is not, since the film uses elegant animation to refresh the basics for anyone whose eyes glazed over during high-school science. But though he offers plenty of context, Levinson wisely focuses his film on a handful of genial eggheads who are involved in the project, either hands-on at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), or watching from afar as the mighty LHC comes to life. Their excitement brings a welcome warmth to the proceedings — and their “fever” becomes contagious. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Raid 2 One need not have seen 2011’s The Raid: Redemption to appreciate this latest collaboration between Welsh director Gareth Evans and Indonesian actor, martial artist, and fight choreographer Iko Uwais — it’s recommended, of course, but the sequel stands alone on its own merits. Overstuffed with gloriously brutal, cleverly choreographed fight scenes, The Raid 2 — sometimes written with the subtitle “Berendal,” which means “thugs” — picks up immediately after the events of the first film. Quick recap of part one: a special-forces team invades an apartment tower controlled by gangsters. Among the cops is idealistic Rama (Uwais). Seemingly bulletproof and fleet of fists and feet, Rama battles his way floor-by-floor, encountering machete-toting heavies and wild-eyed maniacs; he also soon realizes he’s working for a police department that’s as corrupt as the gangster crew. The Raid‘s gritty, unadorned approach resonated with thrillseeking audiences weary of CG overload. A second Raid film was inevitable, especially since Evans — who became interested in Indonesian martial arts, or pencak silat, while working on 2007 doc The Mystic Art of Indonesia — already had its story in mind: Rama goes undercover within a criminal organization, a ploy that necessitates he do a prison stint to gain the trust of a local kingpin. Naturally, not much goes according to plan, and much blood is shed along the way, as multiple power-crazed villains set their sinister plans into motion. With expanded locations and ever-more daring (yet bone-breakingly realistic) fight scenes aplenty — including a brawl inside a moving vehicle, and a muddy, bloody prison-yard riot — The Raid 2 more than delivers. Easily the action film of the year so far, with no contenders likely to topple it in the coming months. (2:19) Metreon. (Eddy)

Rob the Mob Based on a stranger-than-fiction actual case, this rambunctious crime comedy stars Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda as Tommy and Rosie, a coupla crazy kids in early 1990s Queens — crazy in love, both before and after their strung-out robbery antics win them both a stint in the pen. When Tommy gets out 18 months later, he finds Rosie has managed to stay clean, even getting a legit job as a debt collector for positive-thinking nut and regular employer of strays Dave (a delightful Griffin Dunne). She wants Tommy to do likewise, but the high visibility trial of mob kingpin John Gotti gives him an idea: With the mafia trying to keep an especially low profile at present, why not go around sticking up the neighborhood “social clubs” where wise guys hang out, laden with gold chains and greenbacks but (it’s a rule) unarmed? Whatta they gonna do, call the police? This plan is so reckless it just might work, and indeed it does, for a while. But these endearingly stupid lovebirds can’t be counted on to stay under the radar, magnetizing attention from the press (Ray Romano as a newspaper columnist), the FBI, and of course the “organization” — particularly one “family” led by Big Al (Andy Garcia). Written by Jonathan Fernandez, this first narrative feature from director Raymond DeFitta since his terrific 2009 sleeper hit City Island is less like that screwball fare and more like a scaled down, economically downscaled American Hustle (2013), another brashly comedic period piece inspired by tabloid-worthy fact. Inspiration doesn’t fully hold up to the end, but the film has verve and style to spare, and the performances (also including notable turns from Cathy Moriarty, Frank Whaley, Burt Young, Michael Rispoli, Yul Vazquez and others) are sterling. (1:42) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Sabotage Puzzle over the bad Photoshop job on the Sabotage poster. The hard-to-make-out Arnold Schwarzenegger in the foreground could be just about any weathered, sinewy body — telling, in gory action effort that wears its grit like a big black sleeve tattoo on its bicep and reads like an attempt at governator reinvention. Yet this blood-drenched twister, front-loaded with acting talent and directed by David Ayer (2012’s End of Watch), can’t quite make up its mind where it stands. Is it a truth-to-life cop drama about a particularly thuggy DEA team, an old-fashioned murder mystery-meets-heist-exercise, or just another crowd-pleasing Pumping Arnie flick? Schwarzenegger is Breacher, the leader of a team of undercover DEA agents who like to caper on the far reaches of bad lieutenant behavior: wild-eyed coke snorting (a scene-chomping Mireille Enos); sorry facial hair (Sam Worthington, as out of his element as the bead at the end of his goatee); unfortunate cornrows (Joe Manganiello); trash-talking (Josh Holloway); and acting like a suspiciously colorless man of color (Terrence Howard). We know these are bad apples from the start — the question is just how bad they are. Also, how fast can the vanilla homicide cops (Olivia Williams, Harold Perrineau) lock them down, as team members are handily, eh, dismembered and begin to turn on each other and Schwarzenegger gets in at least one semi-zinger concerning an opponent with 48 percent body fat? Still, the sutured-on archetypal-Arnie climax comes as a bit of a shock in its broad-stroke comic-book violence, as the superstar pulls rank, sabotages any residual pretense to realism, and dons a cowboy hat to tell his legions of shooting victims, “I’m different!” Get to the choppers, indeed. (1:49) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

300: Rise of An Empire We pick up the 300 franchise right where director Zack Snyder left off in 2006, with this prequel-sequel, which spins off an as-yet-unreleased Frank Miller graphic novel. In the hands of director Noam Murro, with Snyder still in the house as writer, 300: Rise of an Empire contorts itself, flipping back and forth in time, in an attempt to explain the making of Persian evil prince stereotype Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) —all purring androgyny, fashionable piercings, and Iran-baiting, Bush-era malevolence — before following through on avenging 300‘s romantically outnumbered, chesty Spartans. As told by the angry, mourning Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey of Game of Thrones), the whole mess apparently began during the Battle of Marathon, when Athenian General Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) killed Xerxes’s royal father with a well-aimed miracle arrow. That act ushers in Xerxes’s transformation into a “God King” bent on vengeance, aided and encouraged by his equally vengeful, elegantly mega-goth naval commander Artemisia (Eva Green), a Greek-hating Greek who likes to up the perversity quotient by making out with decapitated heads. In case you didn’t get it: know that vengeance is a prime mover for almost all the parties (except perhaps high-minded hottie Themistokles). Very loosely tethered to history and supplied with plenty of shirtless Greeks, taut thighs, wildly splintering ships, and even proto-suicide bombers, Rise skews toward a more naturalistic, less digitally waxy look than 300, as dust motes and fire sparks perpetually telegraph depth of field, shrieking, “See your 3D dollars hard at work!” Also working hard and making all that wrath look diabolically effortless is Green, who as the pitch-black counterpart to Gorga, turns out to be the real hero of the franchise, saving it from being yet another by-the-book sword-and-sandal war-game exercise populated by wholesome-looking, buff, blond jock-soldiers. Green’s feline line readings and languid camp attitude have a way of cutting through the sausage fest of the Greek pec-ing order, even during the Battle of, seriously, Salamis. (1:43) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Unknown Known After winning an Oscar for 2003’s The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamera, Errol Morris revisits the extended-interview documentary format with another Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. The film delves into Rumsfeld’s lengthy political career — from Congress to the Nixon, Ford, and George W. Bush administrations — drawing insights from the man himself and his extensive archive of memos (“there have to be millions”) on Vietnam, 9/11, Osama bin Laden, the “chain of command,” torture, the Iraq War, etc., as well as archival footage that suggests the glib Rumsfeld’s preferred spin on certain events is not always factually accurate (see: Saddam Hussein and WMDs). Morris participates from behind the camera, lobbing questions that we can hear and therefore gauge Rumsfeld’s immediate reaction to them. (The man is 100 percent unafraid of prolonging an awkward pause.) A gorgeous Danny Elfman score soothes some of the anger you’ll feel digesting Rumsfeld’s rhetoric, but you still may find yourself wanting to shriek at the screen. In other words, another Morris success. (1:42) Elmwood, Presidio. (Eddy)

Le Week-End Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi first collaborated two decades ago on The Buddha of Suburbia, when the latter was still in the business of being Britain’s brashest multiculti hipster voice. But in the last 10 years they’ve made a habit of slowing down to sketching portraits of older lives — and providing great roles for the nation’s bottomless well of remarkable veteran actors. Here Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent play a pair of English academics trying to re-create their long-ago honeymoon’s magic on an anniversary weekend in Paris. They love each other, but their relationship is thorny and complicated in ways that time has done nothing to smooth over. This beautifully observed duet goes way beyond the usual adorable-old-coot terrain of such stories on screen; it has charm and humor, but these are unpredictable, fully rounded characters, not comforting caricatures. Briefly turning this into a seriocomedy three-way is Most Valuable Berserker Jeff Goldblum as an old friend encountered by chance. It’s not his story, but damned if he doesn’t just about steal the movie anyway. (1:33) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

The Wind Rises Hayao Miyazaki announced that Oscar nominee The Wind Rises would be his final film before retiring — though he later amended that declaration, as he’s fond of doing, so who knows. At any rate, it’d be a shame if this was the Japanese animation master’s final film before retirement; not only does it lack the whimsy of his signature efforts (2001’s Spirited Away, 1997’s Princess Mononoke), it’s been overshadowed by controversy — not entirely surprising, since it’s about the life of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed war planes (built by slave labor) in World War II-era Japan. Surprisingly, a pacifist message is established early on; as a young boy, his mother tells him, “Fighting is never justified,” and in a dream, Italian engineer Giovanni Caproni assures him “Airplanes are not tools for war.” But that statement doesn’t last long; Caproni visits Jiro in his dreams as his career takes him from Japan to Germany, where he warns the owlish young designer that “aircraft are destined to become tools for slaughter and destruction.” You don’t say. A melodramatic romantic subplot injects itself into all the plane-talk on occasion, but — despite all that political hullabaloo — The Wind Rises is more tedious than anything else. (2:06) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) *

 

Covered San Francisco unveiled

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At the tail end of a long Board of Supervisors meeting last week, Sup. David Campos introduced legislation to create Covered San Francisco, a city healthcare option designed to remedy a coverage gap that will be created under the Affordable Care Act.

Lately, we’ve gotten reports of San Franciscans hoping to enroll in Covered California — the state-run health insurance marketplace created under the ACA — leaving meetings with enrollment counselors in tears of frustration. Even though these would-be enrollees are technically eligible for Covered California — which makes them ineligible to stay in Healthy San Francisco — the insurance cost is nevertheless too high to be a realistic option.

“In high cost-of-living cities like San Francisco, many will simply not be able to afford it,” Campos said when he introduced the legislation. “The most authoritative study says 40 percent of San Franciscans who are eligible for Covered California still will not be able to afford it.”

Co-sponsored by Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim, the legislation seeks to address the problem by creating a new option for employees to receive subsidies to purchase health insurance under Covered California through the Department of Public Health. The funding would be derived from an employer spending requirement already in place under the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, the law that created Healthy San Francisco.

The proposal also seeks to close a loophole that Campos said incentivizes employers to set up health reimbursement accounts for employees that cannot be used to purchase Covered California insurance plans. To discourage the use of these accounts, the proposal would make spending irrevocable, meaning employers would be unable to claw back funding they’ve contributed. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

PG&E INDICTMENT DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH

A federal grand jury in San Francisco issued a criminal indictment against Pacific Gas & Electric for negligence in the 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people and destroyed an entire neighborhood. But that falls far short of what this rapacious company and its conniving executives — none of whom face personal criminal charges — should be facing.

The indictment omits key details of what happened leading up this tragic and entirely preventable explosion, buying into the fiction that there is a meaningful difference between PG&E Co., the regulated utility, and PG&E Corp., the wealthy and powerful Wall Street corporation. This is a stark example of how corporations are given all the rights of individuals, but accept few of the responsibilities, with the complicity of the political and economic systems.

The 12-count indictment focused on violation of the Pipeline Safety Act, which requires companies to maintain their potentially dangerous pipelines, including keeping detailed records and doing safety inspections that would detect flaws like the faulty weld that caused the San Bruno explosion on Sept. 9, 2010 — work the company negligently failed to perform.

But PG&E’s wanton disregard for public safety, combined with the greed and shameless self-interest of then-CEO Peter Darbee and other executives, goes far deeper than that. A report by the California Public Utilities Commission released in January 2012 found that $100 million in ratepayer funds that had been earmarked for pipeline maintenance and replacement, including this section in San Bruno, was instead diverted to executive bonuses and shareholder profits.

“PG&E chose to use the surplus revenues for general corporate purposes,” the audit said, noting that the company was flush with cash at the time and there was no good reason to neglect this required maintenance. (Steven T. Jones)

 

911 DISPATCHERS STRESSED

The controversial tax breaks given to tech companies in San Francisco in 2011 came under fire again last week, as emergency dispatchers protested crippling budget shortages on April 2 in front of the Department of Emergency Management.

“When you call 911, there should be enough people working to pick up the phone,” said Ron Davis, an emergency dispatcher in San Francisco for 13 years. “It’s upsetting when you or someone you love is in a life-threatening emergency and you’re put on hold for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, or even a minute and longer.”

The department receives, on average, nearly 3,000 phone calls per day, and the workers who spoke at the rally described long hours and inadequate coverage for the volume of calls that they receive. California law mandates that 90 percent of 911 calls be answered in 10 seconds or less, but in San Francisco that number often drops to 60 percent or lower. Davis said that on particularly busy nights, such as New Year’s Eve, there can be up to 20 calls in the queue waiting for an available dispatcher.

The rally was organized by SEIU Local 1021 and was part of the union’s contract negotiations with the city. Larry Bradshaw, vice president for the San Francisco region of the union, said workers were willing to make sacrifices during the recession but now, “we just want to recoup our losses and make up for lost ground.” (Brian McMahon)

 

WILL AIRBNB PAY UP?

Airbnb has agreed to start collecting and paying the transient occupancy tax in San Francisco sometime this summer — finally acknowledging that’s the only workable way to meet the tax obligation it shares with its hosts. But that leaves open the question of whether this $10 billion corporation intends to pay the tax debt it has accumulated for years while trying to duck its responsibility to the city.

That’s at least several million dollars that the city could really use right now. As we’ve previously reported, Airbnb commissioned and publicized a study in late 2012 claiming its San Francisco hosts collected $12.7 million from Airbnb guest in fiscal year 2011-12, meaning they should have collected and remitted to the city $1.9 million.

In early 2012, the San Francisco Tax Collector’s Office held public hearings to clarify whether the TOT applies to the short-term rentals facilitated by Airbnb and similar companies, ruling in April 2012 that the TOT does apply to those stays and that it is a “joint and several liability” shared by the hosts and Airbnb, which conducts the transaction and takes a cut.

As we also reported, despite heavily lobbying during the hearing and being acutely aware of the outcome and its resulting tax obligation, Airbnb simply refused to comply and tack the 15 percent surcharge onto its transactions, as similar companies such as Roomorama were doing.

So if Airbnb was really being the good corporate citizen that it’s now claiming to be, it would not only start charging the 15 percent fee and sharing that money with the city, it would also cut San Francisco a check for around $4 million, or whatever the tax would be on what this growing business has collected from its guests since April 2012. (Steven T. Jones)

 

BURSTING THE MONTEREY SHALE BUBBLE

“We’ve been told that there’s a great oil boom on the immediate horizon,” billionaire investor Tom Steyer noted at the start of a March 27 talk in Sacramento.

But Steyer (who has pledged to spend $100 million on ad campaigns for the 2014 election to promote action on climate change) wasn’t there to trumpet the oil industry’s high expectations. Instead, he introduced panelists who dismissed the buzz on drilling the 1,750-square-mile Monterey Shale as pie-in-the-sky hype.

Dr. David Hughes, a geoscientist with the Post Carbon Institute, and researcher Robert Collier had been invited to speak by Next Generation, a policy group focused on climate change that was co-founded by Steyer.

Both experts questioned the findings of a University of Southern California study that wound up being cited time and again as the basis for the oil industry’s arguments, in the context of a statewide debate on fracking.

Partially funded by the Western States Petroleum Association, the USC report outlined a rosy economic outlook stemming from oil extraction in the Monterey Shale, estimating that it would create 2.8 million jobs and $24 billion in tax revenues, findings that were “echoed by politicians of both parties,” Collier noted.

Yet prominent economists could find no basis for certain claims. “They said: ‘We cannot see any justification for these incredible numbers,” Collier reported. “They seem too big to be believable.” The Post Carbon Institute and Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy published their own report challenging the findings, titled Drilling California: A Reality Check on the Monterey Shale. (Rebecca Bowe)

Billionaire helps poke holes in oil industry’s argument for drilling Monterey Shale

“We’ve been told that there’s a great oil boom on the immediate horizon,” billionaire investor and Pac Heights resident Tom Steyer noted at the start of a March 27 talk in Sacramento. 

But Steyer (who has pledged to spend $100 million on ad campaigns for the 2014 election to promote action on climate change) wasn’t there to trumpet the oil industry’s high expectations. Instead, he introduced panelists who dismissed the buzz on drilling the Monterey Shale as pie-in-the-sky hype.

Dr. David Hughes, a geoscientist with the Post Carbon Institute, and researcher Robert Collier had been invited to speak by Next Generation, a policy group focused on climate change that was co-founded by Steyer.

Last year, researchers from the University of Southern California released a study that wound up being cited time and again as the basis for the oil industry’s arguments in the context of a statewide debate on fracking ignited by environmentalists.

Partially funded by the Western States Petroleum Association, oil industry lobbyists, the USC report outlined a rosy economic outlook stemming from oil extraction in the Monterey Shale, a vast geologic formation touted as “a new, economy-spurring natural resource.”

The Monterey Shale spans 1,750 square miles, running beneath much of the San Joaquin Valley and into Southern California. Authors of a private-sector report produced by INTEK, referenced by the USC report, estimated that 15.4 billion barrels of oil could be extracted from the shale formation – mostly through nontraditional methods such as fracking or acidizing, a process that involves pumping acid underground.

But Hughes, the geoscientist, characterized this estimate as unrealistic. “The Monterey Shale certainly will produce more oil and gas, but likely only a very small fraction of what’s been reported in the INTEK report,” he said. “Projections are highly unlikely to be realized.” The Post Carbon Institute and Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy published their own report, Drilling California: A Reality Check on the Monterey Shale.

Also unlikely to be realized are the optimistic figures on job creation and economic activity, Collier noted.

California is the nation’s fourth largest oil producer, but its production has been on a steady decline for the past two decades. “So the hopes for the Monterey Shale come in the context of a gradual decline, and the hopes that California will echo the big boom of North Dakota and Texas,” he said.

The USC report contained sensational projections, predicting that 2.8 million net new jobs would be created statewide in sectors indirectly or directly associated with oil. The most optimistic scenario predicted 4.4 million net new jobs. The report also predicted that opening up the Monterey Shale for drilling would result in a 14 percent increase in per capita GDP, as well as  $24 billion in state and local tax revenues.

And as the debate about regulating fracking raged on, the findings in this study were “echoed by politicians of both parties,” Collier noted.

But prominent economists, tapped by Next Generation to analyze the study, said they could find no basis for certain claims.

Next Generation researchers turned to University of California economists Jerry Nickelsburg of UCLA, Jesse Rothstein of UC Berkeley and Olivier Deschênes of UC Santa Barbara. “They said: ‘We cannot see any justification for these incredible numbers,” Collier reported. “They seem too big to be believable.”

Instead, the economists believed the potential job creation was closer to 100,000 in total direct and indirect employment, he added. More information is presented in Next Generation’s report.

So arguments that the oil industry has been using in favor of opening up the Monterey Shale might be based on flimsy math. 

Steyer, at the close of the talk, put in a plug for focusing on clean-energy sector growth instead.

“When we sit here and talk about jobs, let’s remember that the clean energy jobs are most likely to solve our employment problems,” he said. “If we want a boom in energy production, then we have a boom in energy production. I think it’s clear, our future is in advanced energy.”