Elections Archives — Page 6 of 37 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 27, 2012

WED, NOV. 28

Grannies rally against fiscal cliff outside the Federal Building, Mission and 7th streets, SF, free, jreid@californiaalliance.org. The California Alliance for Retired Americans, Jobs with Justice, Gray Panthers of San Francisco, and other groups will be rallying in San Francisco and other cities as it also lobbies in Washington DC urges Congress and President Barack Obama to avoid driving country off the so-called “fiscal cliff” and making deep cuts to social safety net services. As Alliance Legislative Director Hene Kelley said, “That means Congress must raise more revenues by making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”

THURS, NOV. 29

Report on drone strikes in Pakistan First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin, SF, 7pm, free, Facebook: Drone Warfare. Code Pink members Toby Blome and Dr. Dianne Budd report back from their 32-member citizen diplomat peace mission to Waziristan, Pakistan to share stories about those affected by airstrikes of unmanned US military drones.

Van Jones speaks UCSF, 2130 Fulton, SF, 7:30-9am, $10–$500, tix and info at bydsf.org/vanjones. Black Young Democrats of San Francisco hosts a wrapup of the 2012 presidential election with author, activist, and former presidential advisor Van Jones, whose latest bestselling book is Rebuild the Dream.

SAT, DEC. 1

SF Women and Politics Women’s Building Auditorium, 3543 Capp, SF, 4:30-6:30pm, free, www.sfgreenparty.org. The San Francisco Green Party is sponsoring a community forum on “Women and Politics/The Status of Feminism in San Francisco.” Speakers to include Nicole Derse, Marie Harrison, Kim-Shree Maufus, Helen Grieco and Christina Olague. Child care available.

The plutocrat

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 27, 2012

181

news@sfbg.com

On October 6, 2010, longtime civic leader and financier Warren Hellman stood before the Bay Area Council’s annual dinner and announced the presence of a special guest. MC Hammer stepped forward to introduce the man of honor. His name was Ron Conway, and, according to the SF Business Times, he’d moved to San Francisco from Atherton six years earlier.

But now, he was acting like he owned the place.

Former Mayor Art Agnos was in the audience, and he remembers the moment well. “This guy stood up and said that we have to take the city back from the progressives,” Agnos told us. “I barely knew who he was. I’ve been in San Francisco since 1966, and here he comes telling us what to do.”

Agnos minces no words about the man who is, by some accounts, now the most powerful unelected person at City Hall despite suddenly bursting onto the political scene just last year, shortly after that event. “He’s come to San Francisco using his multimillions of dollars to buy systems and people to effectively mandate his views, to project his way of doing things onto liberal San Francisco.”

So who is this guy? He’s one of Mayor Ed Lee’s closest advisors. He’s poured more than $1 million into the last two local elections — dropping at least $625,000 in this year’s election cycle (journalist Larry Bush reports this year’s total at about $800,000). That includes $275,000 to help pass Prop. E, which lowered the business tax rates for technology companies in which he’s invested, and $69,000 to help oust Sup. Christina Olague for defying Lee and Conway on a couple of key votes.

Conway is one of the Silicon Valley’s preeminent angel investors since just after the dawn of the Internet, parlaying his early successes bankrolling Google, PayPal, and Facebook into investments with a vast array of SF-based tech companies, including Twitter, Digg, Airbnb, and Zynga.

His net worth is widely reported at $1.5 billion, but he disputes that he’s a billionaire. Business Insider obtained a leaked list of his investments in 2011 and it included 228 companies. A report on his investments that appeared on Crunchbase.com quantified many of Conway’s investments, including $10 million each in Square (the SF-based startup by a Twitter founder), Stitcher, Yammer, and Pinterest; $20 million in AddThis, $8.3 million in AirTime; $8 million in BuzzFeed; and $5 million each in Twitter, Friend.ly, and Magnetic, among more than 200 tech investments.

It’s difficult to discern his precise financial worth — but nobody doubts that it’s more than enough to funnel vast amounts into local politics, as Conway has been more willing to do than anyone in these last couple years.

There have always been wealthy people in San Francisco who have tried to throw their money — and political weight — around. Walter Shorenstein, the developer and commercial landlord, dominated Democratic Party politics for decades. Warren Hellman and Gap founder Don Fisher put money and time into political initiatives. The list goes on.

But most of them were fairly homegrown — they’d been active in the city for many years before they became political players. And they tended to make their mark in major charitable and philanthropic efforts as well as partisan politics.

Conway, while he does give money to charities like Ronald McDonald House, is a different type, part of the impatient tech generation that’s right-wing on economic policy (Conway was a registered Republican before switching to decline-to-state as he became political active here in early 2011), wants things done his way, and sees no need for community accountability.

“Warren Hellman was interested in children’s issues, public education, he wanted to invest in building community,” Sup. John Avalos told us. “Conway is all about the bottom line of his industry, and nothing more.”

Avalos complained that Conway (like many in his industry) disdains openness and public access. “It’s all behind the scenes,” he told us. “That’s how he likes to operate.”

In each of the last three years, Conway has doubled or quadrupled his political contributions. He’s the first big spender to operate in the city in the post-Citizens United era, when one rich person can play an outsized role in politics, creating independent expenditure committees that can throw around unlimited amounts of money.

And right now, a lot of City Hall insiders say, this unelected, unappointed operative is helping undermine progressive policy and send city politics in a very different direction.

WEALTHY, CONSERVATIVE ROOTS

Conway declined to be interviewed for this piece, with his press spokesperson — Aaron McLear, who served as press secretary to then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other prominent Republicans — offering up a canned statement for print. So what little we can glean of Conway’s beginnings come from public records, other media reports, and Gary Rivlin’s insightful book The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms.

Ronald Crawford Conway was born in San Francisco on March 09, 1951. The middle child in an Irish-Catholic family of 12 siblings, Conway also has a twin brother, Rick. Ron Conway went to St. Stephen’s boys high school in San Francisco until he was 15, when the family moved to the wealthy nearby enclave of Atherton.

Conway’s father was a top exec at the then-Oakland-based American President Lines, which today is a major shipping company for Walmart’s goods. The elder Conway cashed out for what Conway described as “a couple million dollars,” according to Rivlin.

Driving through Atherton, you get a feel for how starkly different it is from San Francisco. Stone walls 10-feet high surround most homes, many that look like Spanish villas or small castles to the eye of a San Francisco native. The Conways home there was valued at $18 million in 2001.

It was in wealthy, conservative Atherton that Conway found his political voice, according to Rivlin’s book. “It was in high school where I became more outspoken,” Conway told him. While studying political science at San Jose State, Conway served on the Atherton City Council starting at the age of 21, mostly to “counteract the noisy student protesters at nearby Stanford,” Rivlin wrote.

While his father had been active in San Francisco politics as a Democrat, Conway got involved in local Republican politics as a teenager and worked on Nixon’s 1968 campaign for president, telling Rivlin that he and his twin brother were “dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.”

That ideology apparently stayed with Conway, who records show gave $50,000 to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and $90,000 to Schwarzenegger, his “recover team,” and the California Republican Party in 2005-06.

But, Rivlin noted, “he was hardly someone you would describe as politically engaged.” On the issues, Conway told him, “I could care less.” He cares about government, Rivlin noted, “to the extent it has an impact on the business climate.”

GETTING HIS WINGS

Conway worked for National Semiconductor in the 1970s and cofounded Altos Computer Systems in 1979, selling it in the early ’90s and using its proceeds to become an “angel investor,” providing early capital in exchange for an ownership stake, in small tech startups in the early years of the Internet.

To Conway, being an angel seemed to be about helping the rich get richer by pumping up the first big tech bubble. His Angel Investors, LP consisted of Conway and a number of already wealthy Internet and film luminaries, from hardcore investors and disinterested tinkerers, each contributing to the pot that was controlled by Conway.

To be a part of his exclusive investment club you had to have a minimum net worth of at least a million dollars, or have a famous name, according to Rivlin. Countless of the Internet’s rising stars joined Angel Investors and its successor companies. Cobbled from myriad business journals is a small list from among many of Conway’s chosen: Dean Morton of Hewlett Packard, golfer Tiger Woods, Stanford University Engineering Dean Jim Gibbons, Twitter CEO Biz Stone, entertainer MC Hammer, venture capitalist Frank Quattrone, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

For a man who made his fortune investing in the hottest names in tech, Conway is often described as a bit of an anti-tech Luddite. Not relying on product knowledge, his strategy boils down to this: Conway trusts his first impression of a startup’s CEO. He goes with his gut, as he explains in a free Stanford YouTube class featuring Conway.

And though sometimes his companies would fail, the successes more than made up for those failures — so much so, that he had to expand. Conway started new LLCs to handle his expanding investments. Angel Investors II started with $150 million, according to Rivlin. SV Angel III and IV were no slouches either, starting with investments of $40 million apiece, according to SEC filings for the companies.

The number of investments from Angel Investors at the time of Rivlin’s 2001 book was already well over the hundreds. And the most recent numbers for SVAngel, from 2011, list the number of startups they’ve invested in at 290 companies.

Conway disciple David Lee officially took over as head of the Angels last year, according to California business filings, but several sources indicate Conway is still the largest investor in the various “Angel” branded companies.

Conway is also the head of a long list of other shadowy businesses, all incorporated in Delaware for its lax tax and regulatory policies. Among the more than a dozen companies just in San Francisco that list Conway as president, partner, founder, or agent-of-service — for which most have little information publicly available — are SV Angel Management Holding, RC Chirp Fund LLC, RC Chirp Management LLC, 2000 Washington Street, 2006 Washington Street, Conway Family Foundation, and Magillicutty LLC.

What separates Angel Investors, though, from the usual investment angels, is Conway’s unique way of leveraging his network, known as his “Rontourage.” Hundreds of tech luminaries and celebrities tied to Conway’s Angel companies have an understanding that they will trade favors, according to Rivlin’s book.

“The only caveat, whether you joined a side fund, an advisory board, or Angel Investors, was that you should lend a hand when you could,” Rivlin wrote. “If you’re in the club, you can do someone a favor and trust that somehow you’re going to get repaid for that favor,” tech entrepreneur Jad Duwaik told Rivlin.

That strategy goes a long way towards explaining what Conway is doing in San Francisco.

CEO OF SAN FRANCISCO

Mayor Lee nows seems to be getting the royal Conway treatment, and the companies Conway invests in are getting strong support from the Mayor’s Office at City Hall, from the tax breaks that Twitter and Zynga received last year to this year’s unsuccessful effort to maintain Ainbnb’s exemption from the transient occupancy tax (a decision made by the Treasurer/ Tax Collector’s Office, which defied Lee’s public lobbying on the issue).

SV Angel has investments or equity in over 103 total San Francisco startups, according to SV Angel documents leaked to Fortune last year, including Airbnb, Digg, Formspring, Wikia, EventBrite, Zynga, StumbleUpon, Justin.TV, and a little company called Twitter.

It was Twitter’s threat to leave San Francisco in early 2011, which newly appointed Mayor Lee countered with a multi-million-dollar exemption from the city’s payroll tax — followed by a repeal of the city’s tax on stock options — that first attracted Conway and his wealth to city politics as Lee’s biggest benefactor.

Conway formed the independent expenditure group San Franciscans for Jobs and Good Government to back Lee and undermine his challengers, seeding it with $100,000 and urging fellow tech titans including Benioff and Sean Parker, founder of Napster and an early Facebook backer, to do the same (see “The billionaire’s mayor,” 10/18/11).

Beyond just money, Conway tapped his connections to back Lee, filling a re-mix video of MC Hammer’s “2Legit2Quit” promoting Lee with members of his Rontourage, including local sports stars Ronnie Lott and Brian Wilson, former Mayor Willie Brown, Twitter CEO Biz Stone, and Google exec Marissa Mayer — all performing their parts on the roof of Conway’s Pacific Heights home during a party he threw for them.

Emboldened by Lee’s decisive victory and the mayor’s apparently willingness to move Conway’s agenda of propping up tech companies, Conway upped the ante this year.

RAISING THE STAKES

After successfully pushing last year’s measure exempting Twitter and other mid-Market businesses from paying taxes on new hires, Conway this year supported broadening out those tax cuts through an overhaul of the business tax that voters approved as Prop. E this year.

The measure initially pitted Conway and the technology companies against more traditional businesses, at least in terms of which companies would see tax hikes and which would get the cuts. With large payrolls and low revenue streams until they take off, tech companies stood to gain the most from the measure.

Some technology companies could see their business taxes decrease by 25 percent, while large real estate firms could see theirs increase by a similar amount. The San Francisco Controller’s Office estimated “information” companies saw their share of city tax revenues drop from 8 percent to 6 percent under the change, while “Finance, Insurance, Real Estate” rose from 23 percent to 28 percent.

In October, Reuters reporter Gerry Shih reported on an heated exchange during a closed-door meeting at City Hall in April, where Conway reportedly cut off SF Chamber of Commerce leaders, telling them they “need to get on board” with backing the tax overhaul because “the tech industry is producing all the jobs in this city.”

That may not be entirely true, but Conway and his tech allies are certainly acting as if they are indispensable to both the business community and the city’s political landscape. The next month, on May 11, Conway donated $49,000 to the newly formed Mayor Ed Lee for San Francisco Committee.

And that was just the beginning of spendy year for Conway, from the $275,000 he spent to help pass Prop. E to the $69,000 that he and his wife Gayle contributed to San Francisco Women For Accountability to go after Olague for defying Lee by supporting efforts to have Prop. E bring in some extra revenue, creating CleanPowerSF, and the reinstating Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

Now, Conway has pledged to fund the campaign to recall Mirkarimi, continuing his efforts to support Lee and undermine progressives into the new year.

CONWAY’S AGENDA

Whether the Conway-funded attack on Olague was about power, payback, domestic violence, or something else is difficult to say for sure. But his formation earlier this year of San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation (sf.citi) made clear his politics and agenda in a strange video it made.

The video talks about the range of San Francisco’s problems — you can’t get a cab fast enough, Muni doesn’t work very well, and there’s trash and graffiti on the streets. All of these problems, the video suggests, can be solved with technology. But there’s nothing in the video, or in sf.citi’s agenda, about homelessness or poverty or the gap between the rich and the poor — or the fact that the tech boom is making a lot of those problems worse.

In fact, sf.citi — and Conway’s agenda — offers nothing for San Franciscans who are not middle class or above. There is no suggestion of an app for facilitating improvements to dilapidated public housing in the city, or for a map of free immunization clinics in low-income neighborhoods, or a database for easily tracking the political influence of Conway and his wealthy friends.

In the end, Conway had only this to stay in a statement delivered to us by McLear: “I am very proud to support Mayor Lee and members of the Board of Supervisors who are tackling the important issues facing our City head-on, from creating jobs for San Francisco residents to building more affordable housing to improving our parks, transit and infrastructure.

I became involved in San Francisco politics and formed sf.citi with leading technology companies because we believe that the technology industry shares in the responsibility to solve our City’s challenges and give back to our community. That’s why I donated generously this year to support consensus measures for our parks, City College, affordable housing and protect Hetch Hetchy, and why sf.citi and so many of its member companies supported these measures as well. sf.citi member companies and I will continue to partner with City leaders and communities to give back to the City we love and work together to create jobs and to improve our public transit, public schools, public safety and the lives of every San Francisco resident.”

But his record shows that he’s mostly interested in how the public sector can help the private sector. McLear says that Conway has supported many Democrats; that’s true of almost anyone who tries to be a power-broker in a city where Republicans are a tiny minority.

“He is not right-wing,” McLear said, but when we asked McLear to tell us if Conway had ever supported a measure to raise taxes on wealthy people, we got no response.

That’s because Conway’s agenda is about — as he himself announced at the Bay Area Council and again later at the Commonwealth Club — repealing the progressive agenda. “He wants to make this a totally business-friendly city with nothing that would slow down his plans or those of his friends,” Agnos said.

Adds Avalos: “He wants San Francisco to be a mirror image of Silicon Valley, but he doesn’t have any real concern for the social impacts for working people, renters, and the rest of us.”

Conway’s role in the campaign to defeat Olague showed a fascinating, and dangerous, side of his politics. When Lee first named Olague to the Board of Supervisors, she told us she was introduced to Conway as someone who would support her.

“Willie Brown collected some checks from him,” she told us. She also said caustic mayoral aide Tony Winnicker, who sent Olague a vicious text message after the Mirkarimi vote with a vow to “defeat you,” is Lee’s main liaison to the tech industry. That vote was the last straw after she didn’t play along with Conway on taxes and defeating CleanPowerSF, so the Conway shithammer came down.

“It was a calculated, cruel political strategy to punish her, and to send a message to other politicians that this is what happens if you cross him,” Agnos said. “And that message is going to spread unless progressives stand up against it.”

Added Olague: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

And Conway doesn’t like to operate in the sunshine. In fact, that’s a key part of his political strategy: Rather than contributing to existing organizations — the Chamber of Commerce, for example — Conway sets up his own independent committees, sometimes several in an election cycle. That can make it harder for the public to follow the money.

Avalos said the main problem with Conway is that “his campaign contributions gives one person, him, overwhelming influence in San Francisco elections and puts San Francisco’s democracy at great peril. ” Steven T. Jones and Larry Bush contributed to this report

The reason for the season

Andrew Lam

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November 20, 2012

1

culture@sfbg.com

HOLIDAY GUIDE With the presidential election over, we are reminded that though our quest for reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality may continue unabated, making a difference must not be limited to a “Ya Voté” sticker every four years. Here’s a brief list of ways to do good this season, including community gardening, beach cleanups, and gift fairs where you can shop for a good cause.

VOLUNTEER

Outdoorsy types take note. SFGRO (www.sfgro.com) has a mission to elevate the profile of community gardening in San Francisco, and to provide support to local gardeners. You can do your part by helping out in the following areas: composting, garden safety and security, resource material development, administrative tasks, and fundraising. Jump into the mix all over the city: the De Haro, Dearborn, Alioto Mini-Park, Page Street, and Potrero Del Sol gardens all need help.

You can also help out at Hayes Valley Farm (450 Laguna, SF. www.hayesvalleyfarm.com) during it’s last winter. The farm is set to be turned back over to the city next year, at which point founder Jay Rosenburg hopes enough people will have learned agriculture skills at the farm to continue its mission elsewhere. “It will create a big fireworks explosion and everything we’ve created here will break off to little pieces all over town,” he recently told Edible San Francisco.

Help maintain the beauty of the five-mile-long Ocean Beach with the Surfrider Foundation‘s regular cleanups. Bonus: they’ll give you a chance to commune with our sandy spaces in the winter, when the waves are at their most ruggedly beautiful (Next events: Dec. 4 and 18, 10am-noon. Ocean Beach, Stairway No. 17, SF; Dec. 31, 10am-noon. Baker Beach, SF. sf.surfrider.org)

In the North Bay, we suggest you peruse the various opportunities available through Volunteer Marin (555 Northgate Drive, San Rafael. (415) 479-5710, www.volunteermarin.org.) The organization solicits requests from local nonprofits for donations or volunteer time. Its altruistic options include preparing and serving holiday meals, donating food, clothing, or requested gifts, and decorating or wrapping presents.

We are very much proud to say that San Francisco is home to the oldest toy drive in the whole country. The organization responsible for this is our beloved San Francisco Fire Department (www.sffirefighterstoys.org.) Find the nearest fire station to you and be part of the effort to get gifts to over 40,000 disadvantaged children.

Although many homeless shelters tend to fill up their volunteer shifts early on during the holiday season, head to At The Crossroads (Dec. 12, 6-8pm. 333 Valencia, SF. (415) 487-0691, www.atthecrossroads.org), when volunteers are needed to assemble care packages for homeless youth in city.

Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (www.keensanfrancisco.org) is an awesome national organization whose mission is promote physical activity among kids and young adults who have developmental disabilities. KEEN is recruiting people to be volunteer coaches, and those who sign up will be paired with an athlete for hours of fun and games — an easy thing to do that’ll make a big difference in a young person’s life.

And finally, for those of us too lazy or computer-bound to do anything besides point-and-click this holiday season, we present to you Games that Give (www.gamesthatgive.net) Play an online game like solitaire or mini-golf and for every 10 seconds you’re occupied — and viewing the site’s sponsors’ ads — a charity of your choice receives a certain amount of funds.

GIFTS THAT GIVE BACK

One thing people in the Bay Area love to brag about is our access to a wide selection of some of the best wines in the world — which many will be taking full advantage of this holiday season. Sometimes the vast number of options can be anxiety-inducing, which is why we recommend ONEHOPE (www.onehopewine.com), a socially-conscious winery that donates 50 percent of its profits to partner charities and has raised over $750,000 to date.

It’s not only one of the largest events recognizing women’s craft in the nation — the Women’s Building’s Celebration of Craftswomen (Dec. 2, 9am-1pm, free. Fort Mason, SF. (650) 615-6838, www.celebrationofcraftswomen.org) is a great place to satisfy your gift-giving needs. Note: an event as big is this requires all hands on deck — the organization would love your help in admissions, crowd monitoring, relief for exhibitors, plus organizing the raffle and silent auction.

One of our favorite entrepreneurship programs in the city puts together an amazing assemblage of its graduates just in time for your eight crazy nights or stocking stuffing. La Cocina’s Gift Bazaar (Dec. 7, 1-7pm, free. Crocker Galleria, 50 Post, SF. (415) 824-2729, www.giftbazaarsf.com) presents a pageantry-filled flea market dedicated to showcasing foodie goodies and handcrafted/artisan gifts.

This is the first year that the Contemporary Jewish Museum (736 Mission, SF. (415) 655-7800, www.cjm.org) has published a gift catalogue featuring its gift shop’s treasures, like modern-eclectic menorahs — one of which is shaped a cable car — artisan jewelry, and children’s toys. All sales proceeds benefit the museum’s ongoing efforts to bring Jewish art, history, and culture to the Bay Area.

Meals on Wheels (www.mowsf.org) would to invite you and yours to put those creative aptitudes to work brightening the holidays for the elderly and handicapped. Wrap and stuff gifts, and make holidays card for distribution to the group’s meal recipients during the first two weeks of December.

Run over by a reindeer

Andrew Lam

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November 20, 2012

0

culture@sfbg.com

EVENTS

Union Square ice-skating rink Union Square, SF. www.unionsquareicerink.com. Through Jan. 16, 10 a.m.-11:30 p.m. except for when closed for private parties, $10 for 90-minute session. Sweetheart, the rink is open, grab my hand and try not to twist an ankle as we glide in circles around downtown’s living room.

Westin St. Francis sugar castle Westin St. Francis, Landmark Lobby, 335 Powell, SF. www.westinstfrancis.com. Through Jan. 24, on view 24 hours/day. Don’t lick it. For although this ever-growing sweet behemoth which each holiday season occupies the lobby of downtown’s classic luxury digs with its 1,300 pounds, 20 towers, 30 rooms, and sugar replicas of 2012’s movers and shakers has a hold on our heart, its original dimensions were sugar-spun back in 2005. Incredibly made, undeniably festive, but altogether inappropriate for dietary purposes.

Jack London Square holiday tree lighting Jack London Square, Oakl. www.jacklondonsquare.com. Nov. 30, 4:30-7pm, free. Performances by Disney-approved pop stars! Reindeer petting zoo! Miss California 2012 and a kids dress-up station with costumes from the Oakland Ballet! You’ll be hard-pressed not to find some holiday cheer at this annual lighting of Jack London’s fir tree for the masses.

Oakland-Alameda Estuary Lighted Yacht Parade Visible from Jack London Square, Oakl. www.lightedyachtparade.com. Dec. 1, 5:30pm, free. Let those cheeks get rosy, it’s boat-watching time. This yearly tradition sees the yacht owners of the East Bay putting their aquatic rides on display, stringing bulbs galore across decks and sails.

Festival of lights Union between Van Ness and Steiner, Fillmore between Union and Lombard, SF. www.sresproductions.com. Dec. 1, 3-7pm, free. Wiggle your nose at Santa at this explosion of twinkly tinsel and Cow Hollow reindeer — today Union Street puts on the holiday glitz and lays out the welcome mat. Cudworth Mansion (2040 Union) will be hosting a cupcake-decorating session from 3:30-5:30pm, at which Old St. Nick himself will make an appearance out front.

Golden Gate Park holiday tree lighting McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan, SF. www.sfrecpark.org. Dec. 6, 5pm, free. A tradition started by Golden Gate Park grandfather and San Francisco’s first park superintendent John McLaren in 1929, the lighting of the tree returns to Fell Street for the 83rd year in a row. Accompanying fanfare includes live performances, carnival rides, and a visit from Saint Nick.

Great Dickens Christmas Fair Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva, SF. www.dickensfair.com. Fri/23 and Sat.-Sun. Sat/24-Dec. 23, 10am-7pm, $21-25. For an ace weekend drunk this holiday season, toodle over to the Cow Palace. Once ensconced in the warm period embrace of the Dickens Fair, you will have the run of five bars (absinthe!), a multitude of meat pie shoppes, hilarious accents, near-constant stage shows, and the company of “famous Victorians,” including Charles Dickens and Her Majesty, the queen herself.

Family holiday crafts day Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, SF. (415) 554-9600, www.randallmuseum.org. Dec. 1, 10am-3pm, free admission, activities fees vary. Bring the kiddos to the always-free-admission Randall Museum so they can spend the morning making holiday decorations and gifts. Cap off the morning with a performance by Asian American performance troupe Eth-Noh-Tec and its fusion of ancient and contemporary movement.

Community Hanukkah candle lighting Jewish Community Center, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. Dec. 8-14, 4:30pm, free. Join up with your neighbors for the Jewish Community Center’s daily lighting of the menorah in the building’s atrium. Attend the Shabbat celebration on Dec. 14 for a family storytelling session, grape juice, hallah, and Hanukkah gelt.

Bill Graham Menorah Day Union Square, SF. www.chabadsf.org. Dec. 9, festivities start at 3pm, menorah lighting at 5pm, free. Each day from December 8-15, a candle will be ceremoniously lit on the Bill Graham mahogany menorah, a gift from the famous San Francisco promoter to his city. But on the 9th, Bill Graham Menorah Day festivities will occupy Union Square, a beautiful beginning to the Festival of Lights in the city.

Public library winter celebration Bernal Heights Library, 500 Cortland, SF. www.sfpl.org. Dec. 12, 6:30-8:30pm, free. The library’s got all kinds of free holiday programming this year, from cupcake-decorating and card-making to a magic show with a winter wonderland theme. Today’s no exception: join the Bernal Heights community for a kid-friendly celebration featuring the Bernal Jazz Quintet, refreshments, and children’s movies.

Frosting the Conservatory Conservatory of Flowers, 100 John F. Kennedy, SF. (415) 831-2090, www.conservatoryofflowers.org. Dec. 15, 11am-3pm, $10. Make your own ginger-greenhouse at this event amid the hothouse blooms of the Conservatory of Flowers. This events gets our thumbs-up for guaranteed toastiness, because being warm and cozy is a pre-req for Christmas cheer.

Jewish Christmas with Broke Ass Stuart The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com. Dec. 25, 5-11pm, $10. Strip dreidel set to the tune of streaming Woody Allen, Larry David, and Sascha Baron Cohen footage sounds like our kind of Christmas. Such was the vision of DJ Matt Haze and host Broke Ass Stuart, who designed this kitschy extravaganza for all of you (Chosen and Left Behind alike) who can’t stomach staying in on a perfectly good day off. Did we mention there will be a Chinese food buffet?

Kwanzaa celebration Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito. www.baykidsmuseum.org. Dec. 26, 9am-5pm, free. A traditional Kwanzaa altar will greet you upon arriving at the kids museum’s celebration of African-American culture, featuring two performance (at 11am and 1pm) by African Roots of Jazz.

PERFORMANCE

The Christmas Ballet Various times and Bay Area locations. www.smuinballet.org. Nov. 23 — Dec. 23, $25-65. Back by popular demand, the Smuin Ballet Company returns with this annual production, split this year into two acts: “Classical Christmas” and “Cool Christmas.” Both promise eye-opening, energetic entertainment set to eclectic tunes from Elvis to klezmer.

A Christmas Carol American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary, SF. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Nov. 30-Dec. 24, various times, $20–$160. Stressful election year and rumors of apocalypse tightened those purse strings? Exorcise your inner Scrooge at this classic stage production of Charles Dickens’ terrifying ode to generosity and kindness towards diminutive children.

The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. www.victoriatheatre.org. Dec. 6-30, Thu.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 7pm, $30. Our cover girl Cookie Dough co-stars as Sophia Petrillo in this now-traditional SF holiday stage production of the classic sitcom that employs more shoulder pads, even, than the original TV show. You’ll never know a catty elderly network television star until you’ve seen her re-enacted by a drag queen. Buy tickets pronto, the shows usually sell out.

California Revels Oakland Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside, Oakl. (510) 452-8800, www.californiarevels.org. Dec. 7-9, 13-15. Fridays 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays 1 and 5pm, $20-55. Feast and family are cornerstones of this annual interactive period piece performance celebrating the winter solstice. Hoist your mead and turkey leg and sway to the music, friends, good times will be upon ye here.

The Nutcracker Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. www.cityballetschool.org. Dec. 8, 2pm & 7pm; Dec. 9, 2pm, $20. Yes, everyone does The Nutcracker. At this point, it’s like the Rocky Horror Picture Show of ballet. (Would that ballet patrons donned Rat King costumes to attend!) Embrace the tradition, and check out the City Ballet School’s production of a classic.

Charles Phoenix Retro Holiday Show Empress of China Ballroom, 838 Grant, SF. www.charlesphoenix.com. Dec. 12, 8pm, $25. The creator of the Cherpumple, a pie-stuffed cake concoction that rises to the dizzying heights of kitsch, humorist Charles Phoenix celebrates the retro in every occasion. Tonight, he regales the crowd with tales of his favorite SF landmarks, road trips, and yes, feats of food fantasy.

Holiday youth mariachi concert Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org. Dec. 14, 7:30-9pm, $15. Three mariachi troupes made of young people join forces for this exciting holiday program. The hat-dropping, guitar plucking action will be highlighted by Zenon Barron’s Mexican youth folk dance class.

The Snowman Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. Dec. 22, 11am, $13.50-57. Even the smallest budding season ticket holder will find this film-symphony presentation of Joe Nesbø’s classic children’s book a welcome boost to their holiday cheer. The animated version of this story of a youg’n’ whose bud is a Frosty-like chap will soar when paired with the world-class musicians of the SF Symphony.

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy New Asia Restaurant, 772 Pacific, SF. www.koshercomedy.com. Dec. 22-25, various times, $44-64. There’s nothing like having dinner on Christmas to up your alterna (or simply, not pan-Christian) cred. Add stand up comedy and you have a winning formula, which is obvious from the longevity of Lisa Gedulig’s annual show. This year features yucks from Judy Gold, Mike Capozzola, and Adrianne Tolsch.

Clairdee’s Christmas Yoshi’s San Francisco, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600, www.yoshis.com. Dec. 24, 8pm, $20. Everything could use a little soul in lives and the holidays are no exception. Come hear the sounds of soul-jazz vocalist Clairdee, and soak in her ensemble’s rhythmic takes on Christmas standards.

“Holiday Memories” double feature A rare 16mm showing of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales will be accompanied by a screening of The Sweater, a tale of a young hockey player’s passion for the sport, and the dangers that come of wearing the wrong jumper. Dec. 22, 2pm, Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. (415) 563-7337, www.exploratorium.edu

PEACE ON EARTH

Darkness and Light: A Hanukkah Meditation Retreat Jewish Community Center, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. Dec. 9, 10am-5pm, $50-60. No prior experience is needed for this day-long workshop on finding the light within during the Hanukkah season. Sitting and walking meditation will be covered — the perfect primer for a month that can try the patience of even the most festive reveler.

Winter solstice ceremony San Francisco Zen Center, 300 Page, SF. (415) 863-3136, www.sfzc.org. Dec. 21, 6:15pm, free. Recharge on the longest night of the year in the peaceful confines of the SF Zen Center. The crowd here promises to be made of meditation newbies, Zen Center students, and all those in-between. It will also be your best bet to avoid jingles and tinsel, if that’s what your body is craving at this point.

Reclaiming’s Sing Up The Sun ritual Inspiration Point parking lot, Tilden Park, Berk. www.reclaiming.org. Dec. 21, 6:30am, free. Wake up before the sun does to greet it on this, the day of the year when it spends the least time out of its bed. A pagan celebration, you’re welcome to bring musical instruments and a warm Thermos of liquid to the community gathering.

GIFTS

Celebration of Craftswomen Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF. (650) 615-6838, www.celebrationofcraftswomen.org. Nov. 24-25, Dec. 1-2, 10am-5pm, $9 or $12 two-day pass. The first edition of this alternative holiday fair took place 34 years ago at the now-defunct Old Wives’ Tales Bookstore on Valencia Street with 22 female makers-of-things. Today, the event fills the Herbst Pavilion, features 150 juried artists and a mini-film festival. It’s still the best place for feminist shopping, some things don’t change.

Holiday Design Bazaar Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, No. 109, SF. www.artsedmatters.org. Nov. 30, 5-8pm; Dec. 1, noon-6pm, free. An arts fair with 25 local creators, plus live music and refreshments that may well make a difference in our kids’ art education. The event is a benefit for Arts Ed Matters, a group that is looking to build community support for art in schools.

Creativity Explored holiday art sale Creativity Explored, 3245 16th St., SF. www.creativityexplored.org. Dec. 1-2, noon-5pm, free. Shop at this studio for developmentally-disabled artists and half of your bill will go straight into their pocket — standard practice for Creativity Explored, which has been the real-deal spot for outsider art in San Francisco since 1983.

Paxton Gate holiday party Dec. 1, 3-6pm at Paxton Gate’s Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia; 8-10pm at Paxton Gate, 824 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-1872, www.paxtongate.com. One of the city’s most beloved families of taxidermy/kid’s toys/nursery shops, Paxton Gate is turning two decades of age this weekend. What better time to shop there? And what better to get your face painted “Victorian-style” (?!), check out stilt walkers and an accordionist-ballerina duo, and eat snacks during the day at its kids location — then walk two doors down later that night for more circus freakery, door prizes and a Hendrick’s gin open bar at 826 Valencia’s pirate shop?

Palestinian Craft Fair Middle East Children’s Alliance office, 1101 Eighth St., Berk. www.mecaforpeace.org. Dec. 1-2, 10am-5pm, free. Sip Arabic coffee while you paw through painted ceramics from Gaza, children’s book, scarves, West Bank olive oil, and more at this chance to support a nonprofit benefiting craftspeople living in Palestine — a particularly salient cause in this year of war and turmoil.

Bazaar Bizarre Concourse Exhibition Center, East Hall, 620 Seventh St., SF. www.bazaarbizarre.org. Dec. 1-2, 11am-6pm, free. This traveling indie craft fair stocks all the twee and yippee you need to get your gift recipients in your pocket. New in 2012: a mini-version of Forage SF’s Underground market, for all your small biz-sourced holiday edible needs.

Muir Beach Quilters Holiday Arts Fair Muir Beach Community Center, 19 Seascape, Muir Beach. www.muirbeach.com/quiltersfair. Dec. 1, 10am-5pm, Dec. 2 10am-4pm, free. Make a blustery beach journey that has time to spare for handicraft browsing. This annual gift fair stocks locally-made knickknacks by local groups (Muir Beach Garden Club included), and has more than retail opportunities. Hands-on crafts bars will stoke the creative fire of kids and big person shoppers alike.

La Cocina Gift Bazaar Crocker Galleria, 50 Post, SF. www.giftbazaarsf.com. Dec. 7, 1-7pm, free. You’re not going to have problems finding foodie-friendly presents at this fair — but getting them safely to their intended destination sans bite marks might be a problem. La Cocina business incubator program graduates Clairesquares, Onigilly, Love & Hummus Co., Chiefo’s Kitchen, and more will all have their wares for sale.

East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. Dec. 8, 10am-5pm, donations suggested. www.eastbayalternativebookandzinefest.com. For the indie comic nerds on your list, you’ll want to check out this expo of all things zine. Talks by New Yorker illustrator Erik Drooker and Go the Fuck to Sleep author Adam Mansbach spice up the fair’s schedule and there’s rumor of a dance party to take place at day’s end.

KPFA Crafts Fair Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.kpfa.org/craftsfair. Dec. 8-9, 10am-6pm, $10. Our public radio station hosts 220 artists and their wares for this no-brainer shopping weekend. Pick up unique wrapables from leather fashion to gourmet snacks to lotions and creams to pamper your loved ones.

Mercado de Cambio/The Po’ Sto’ market and knowledge exchange 2940 16th St., SF. www.poormagazine.org. Dec. 15, 3-7pm, donations suggested. We can pretty much guarantee you that there is no other gift fair that will have better hip-hop music. The Mercado de Cambio organized by POOR Magazine aims to counterbalance the corporatization of our holiday season. Go here for aforementioned live beats, indigenous crafts, Occupy gear, and POOR-published literature.

Renegade Craft Fair holiday market Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.renegadecraft.com. Dec. 15-16, 11am-6pm, free. A DIY gift wrap station is one of the attractions at this one stop for cute gift shopping, which makes one of its two yearly appearances in the Bay Area for the holiday season. The Oakland Museum of California will truck out its mobile “we/customize” exhibit, and of course, there will be crafters: over 250 will have booths hawking clothes, accessories, home stuff, kid stuff — most handmade, and most awesome.

A hello to arms

Andrew Lam

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November 20, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

FILM The results of the wee election that happened a couple weeks ago were generally a good thing, needless to say, but just as light also causes shadow, so the light bulb that went off for a majority of voters cast into deeper darkness a certain minority. Oh, you’ve heard the wailings and lamentations: the death of “traditional” America (read: white people, “they” are coming to take your women and steal your home entertainment center), brutal new taxations designed to funnel your hard-earned money to whole communities of professional freeloaders, the national anthem to be translated into Communist (it’s a language, like speaking in demonic tongues), etc.

Some patriots, no longer loving it, are leaving it — mostly to inexpensive warmer retirement magnets whose natives aren’t too uppity yet to avoid calling you “Sir” or “Boss.” Others are planning to secede, one state at a time. (Yes, definitely including the ones you were already hoping would somehow cut ties. Can they take Fox News with them?) Mentally and politically, they seceded a while ago. But now it is on — Elvis is leaving the building, because he didn’t get his way so fuck y’all.

What’s bad about this is that, as with any psychotic break, bystanders may suffer for not sharing or getting in the way of the sufferer’s particular symptoms — in this case likely to primarily consist of depression, violent outbursts, substance abuse, weapons stockpiling, paranoid delusions, paranoid delusions, and reckless home schooling. How many basement man caves have been fertilizing plans for what we might term “assassination,” “domestic terrorism” or “going postal” since November 6, imaging personal heroism and national salvation their eventual reward? It’s like a significant section of the populace has turned into our crazy uncle, off his meds, muttering apocalyptically in the corner and sure to remember where we live sooner or later.

So it is with mixed emotions, to say the least, that one greets the alarmingly timely arrival of Red Dawn. A remake of a 1984 movie that seemed a pretty nutty ideological throwback even during the Reagan Era’s revived Cold War air conditioning (and even alongside such crazy Satan-is-Soviet competition as 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV), it is a movie that should have come out a couple years ago, having been shot late 2009. But in the meantime MGM was undergoing yet another seismic financial rupture, and as the film sat around for lack of the means needed for distribution and marketing, it occurred that perhaps it already had a fatal, internal flaw. You see, this update re-cast our invaders from Russkies to People’s Republicans, tapping into the modern fear of China as debtor and international bully. But: China is also a huge fledgling market for Hollywood product, despite censorship, import quotas, and whatnot. China heard about Red Dawn and was not happy, endangering the foreign profit margins for future MGM product.

So a tortured makeover of the remake ensued; scenes were added, re-shot, and digitally altered to impose a drastic narrative change. China now goes unmentioned, replaced as villain by the country which is nobody’s film market, even if that choice is so absurd it gets acknowledged as such by dialogue: “North Korea? It doesn’t make any sense!” someone says here. It’s a query that goes unanswered.

Yup, in the new Red Dawn a coastal Washington state burg — mom, apple pie and flag figuring large in the opening montage — is the first attack point in a wholesale invasion of the U.S. (pop. 315 million) by the Democratic People’s Republic (pop. 25 million). It’s football season, so a Spokane suburb’s team — Wolverines!! — lends its name as battle cry and its revved up healthy young flesh as guerilla martyrs to the fight for, ohm yeah, freedom. Do they drink beer? Do they rescue cheerleader girlfriends from concentration camps? Do they kick North Korean ass? Do you really need to ask?

Of course this Red Dawn is ridiculous, though as a pulp action fantasy it’s actually fairly entertainingly well-crafted by veteran stunt coordinator-second unit director Dan Bradley. The actors maintain straight faces with variable degrees of success — on the upside pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth, (whose other 2009-shot MGM film The Cabin in the Woods also got released this year) as ex-Marine alpha male, on the downside an irksome Josh Peck as his little bro and an inexplicable Connor Cruise as a teammate. The adopted son of a certain really famous Scientologist, the latter surely got this role on merit alone; otherwise we’d be forced to believe he made up in nepotism what he amply lacks in looks, voice, and presence.

So what does this silly movie have to do with the election, you ask? Just this: its production travails mean this rah-rah, just-credibly-gritty-enough (but still mostly video-game-like) tale of fighting the power has arrived just in time to become a training manual (or at least recruitment video) for revolutionist reactionary rednecks. It’s ready-made for an audience so deprived of air, irony, and other key elements to reality that they’re probably in a hundred or more basements right now, plotting the overthrow of our Socialist Islamophilic oligarchy.

RED DAWN opens Wed/21 in Bay Area theaters.

#winning

Andrew Lam

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November 20, 2012

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marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO What’s the biggest, actually good DJ gig you can think of? Festivals, of course: Glastonbury, Sonar, Mutek, those insane-looking events inside that arena in Amsterdam with the indoor fireworks.

But how about being able to drop some serious soul classics for a crowd of 80,000 at a party that will go down in history, one being broadcast on pretty much every TV station in the world? Right about the time Shalamar’s “Second Time Around” ignited a field of tiny waving flags and old school hustle at Chicago’s McCormick Place on the night of Nov. 6, I and many others were blasting out tweets like producer Mark Ronson’s: “Seriously, who is DJing OBAMA HQ? incredible. Teena Marie, MAZE etc….every global news station is blastin’ Frankie Crocker classics.”

The legendary DJ Frankie Crocker rode a white stallion into Studio 54 in the 1970s. On TV in 2012, DJ Mel (www.djmel.com) was soundtracking Obama’s ride into a second presidential term. And Mel wasn’t holding back on the sexy slow jams and up-to-the-minute re-edits, either, waybacking a gloriously colorful Chi-Town crowd — and some teary-eyed people watching at home, anxiously awaiting election results while retracing some old school dance steps. (When it comes to politics, I apply my nightlife philosophy: why stop at two parties when you can have seven? Still, to see and hear the “real America” that I grew up with put forth to the world was something else.) As for the Romney party, sad trombone: left with only the rights to Kid Rock and Toby Keith, they chose to just blast Fox News instead, honk honk.

“This sounds ridiculous, but I really didn’t realize the enormity of what was actually happening until I got home and watched the whole thing on YouTube. I’m still wrapping my head around it,” DJ Mel told me on the phone a couple days after the election from his home in Austin. (Mel’s friend, supercute local DJ Jeffrey Tice, had hooked us up for an interview.) “For me, I had to focus on it like it was a regular gig: get my accommodations and travel set, which they took care of, check my equipment, get to the venue on time, be a professional. I did get kind of an idea of everything once we did the soundcheck in this huge venue, and then when the crowd was piling in. But I was too busy concentrating on keeping the vibe going.

“I mean, the pressure was on, too — if I played a bad song, it wouldn’t just clear the dance floor, it would actually reflect on the President of the United States,” Mel laughed.

“There was one moment of revelation, though. When the results were announced, I was jumping up and down. I was nervous he would lose — in the beginning I thought, ‘Woah, this isn’t looking good, and the recount may go on for weeks.’ But then they said he won. And there I was with the entire world’s press corps behind me …. and no idea what I was going to play. I looked down at my computer and thought, ‘this song is awesome.’ It was the Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout.’

“As soon as that song came on, the production guys around me started breaking into these huge grins. Then this ginormous, incredibly diverse crowd went bananas, singing along. That was a really special moment for me. There I was in Chicago, recreating this iconic moment from Ferris Bueller. I took a look around and thought, ‘ho-lee … this is kind of huge.'”

The rest of the playlist that night was mostly Mel’s own. “They gave me a list of 30 or so songs, but I went through them pretty quickly and dove into my own playlist of songs I love, that I thought were uplifting and fun. I didn’t prepare at all, just went with my instincts to turn this thing into a party. You’ve gotta just pick songs that are relevant to the event and trust what you’ve got.”

OK, so here’s a question: What would Mel have played if Obama had lost? “Oh man, I didn’t even want to think or ask about that!”

The young Mel, one of the most down-to-earth DJs I’ve ever spoken with, has plenty of experience and has already experienced a couple cycles of fame, with gigs at Lollapalooza (a clip he posted of the crowd from 2009 makes me giddy with joy), Austin’s ACL fest, and several world tours. “I’ve been through every phase of music, from crazy industrial and acid house to indie rock and freestyle, so I’m confident enough to know I can move the crowd in different situations. But I was traveling so much, I just got tired of touring, of not knowing anyone personally where I was playing. So I kind of dialed back.”

That dialing back took the unexpected turn of becoming the house DJ for huge Democratic Party events — first the California convention earlier this year in Sacramento, then the national convention in Charlotte, and now this (no word yet on inauguration dance floor plans, however.) “I have a friend who’s really involved in the planning who hooked me up,” Mel told me. “I think they realized that the music was becoming a big aspect of these events, especially when there so much waiting around for things to happen, or moments in-between to fill. It’s a good way to keep things going and relate to people.”

He may have to dial it back up now, though. “There was zero cell phone coverage in the venue at all, because it was overloaded. But as soon as I got out, my phone literally exploded with texts and notifications. My Twitter count jumped a couple 1000. I think people were genuinely shocked that it was an actual DJ at the event. I think beyond what came to me from it, this was a major thing for DJing in general. Turning an event like this into a party, that’s kind of a big deal.”

Hot sexy events: Queer calendars, hot bikes, and Dita

Andrew Lam

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November 14, 2012

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Orientalism to-do aside (who does she think she is, Gwen Stefani?), making eye contact with Dita Von Teese for an extended period of time is an experience I highly recommend.

Von Teese, after all, is “the siren of our times,” as host Lady Rizo told the crowd last night at Big Daddy’s Antiques, where Cointreau is hosting a few nights of cocktails and burlesque amid the whimsical, weird towers of Big Daddy’s old things-for-sale. Last night, a performance by the Cointreauversial Von Teese headlined the event preview, which also featured a vast swath of cocktails shaken up the brand’s “master mixologist” Kyle Ford. You can check out the show, minus Dita, for free with RSVP today Wed/14 and tomorrow Thu/15.

“Ask her if her shit stinks,” whispered my escort for the evening.

I didn’t. But the soft-spoken Von Teese and I managed to cover a few other topics during our brief chat next to a wall of glowing Cointreau bottles. For example, what the most over-the-top feminine woman today considers to be the most masculine thing about herself (“my ability to paralell park. No, my collection of vintage autos. I drive a 1953 Cadillac on a daily basis.”), how she survived the vitriolic election season (“I have a girlfriend who keeps me informed. I fill out my ballot with her. Everything turned out fine in the end…”), and the sexiest thing she’s seen in 2012 — a question for which the seasoned star, surprisingly, had no pat answer for (“you mean, that I can tell you about?”)

But eventually, she hit upon it. “I’ve seen a lot of sexy moments within my show [her revue, “Strip, Strip Hooray!” which features curvy burlesquer Dirty Martini and Perle Noir]. We have a lot of diverse body shapes.”

Does she ever get blowback from fans for featuring fat girls in her shows? (We are talking about fat girls, amiright?) Not, Von Teese told me, from people who have actually watched “Strip, Strip Hooray!”

“But I have had them go, wow, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

… Which was exactly what I was thinking from my front row spot watch Von Teese do her jaw-dropping thing, first in a sequined South Pacific-style two-piece, then a feathered fan, then nothing much of anything — a string of sparkles, pasties, and a coy smile.

La Maison Cointreau Big Daddy’s Antiques 1550 17th St., SF. www.lamaisoncointreau.com. Wed/14-Thu/15 6-9:30pm, free. RSVP for time slot

Bawdy Storytelling: Gender Bender

GenderFork founder Sarah Dopp created an online place to celebrate transgender, genderqueer, and androgynous folks, which is pretty much the perfect resume for a reader at tonight’s Bawdy. The XXX storytelling series explores the nooks and crannies of gender variance. Dopp will be joined by sex educator Reid Mihalko, performer Lily Black, and more at this last Oakland Bawdy for the forseeable future.

Wed/14 7-10:30pm,

The Uptown

1928 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.bawdystorytelling.com

“Everyday Pervertibles: DIY Kink”

When Sister Eden Asp asks you to find pervy uses for a quotidian object, you do it. Porn stars Leo Forte and Element Eclipse may be particularly suited for the task, which means that tonight’s event, at which they’ll share their sexual imaginations, will be a must-attend for anyone who is looking to learn about kink play that’s safe, sane, sexy.

Wed/14 7-9pm

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

Q-Were calendar release parties

Chicagoan photographer Patience Meeks has pulled together this gorgeous 12-monther of queer women just in time for your early holiday shopping (you’re doing that, right?) To celebrate, her team has organized parties on either side of the Bay at sexy hot spots, where they’ll be selling the calendar and mingling with its fans.

Oakland: Thu/15 6pm, free

Feelmore510

1703 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.feelmore510.com

San Francisco: Fri/16 8:45pm, free

Lexington Club

3464 16th St., SF

www.lexingtonclub.com

Progressive International Motorcycle Show

Leather aficionados will vroom vroom for this weekend expo of the burliest, sexiest two- and three-wheeled numbers in the industry. Among the vehicles that will be available for you to cast your voyeuristic eyes all over will be: first person from this country to win the Grand Prix motorcycle racing world championship Kenny Roger’s bikes and Honda’s 2013 bikes, appearing for the first time in public.

Fri/16 3pm-8pm; Sat/17 9:30am-8pm; Sun/18 9:30am-5pm, $15 day pass

San Mateo County Event Center

2495 South Delaware, San Mateo

www.motorcycleshows.com

The Godless Perverts Story Hour

How many times has Jesus poked his meddling beard into your bedroom? We all know that God and his son have no place in your sexual doings. This fact will be celebrated at tonight’s reading, featuring confirmed blasphemers Maggie Mayhem, Greta Christina, David Fitzgerald, Chris Hall, Dana Fredsti, Anthony O’Con, Simon Sheppard, and M.Christian. Earthly lechers, rejoice.

Sat/17 7pm, $10-20

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

Dick Meister: Labor’s big day

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November 14, 2012

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED/TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Now that the election dust has settled, it’s clear that organized labor was a big winner locally, statewide and nationally.

In San Francisco, more than half the winning candidates for local office had labor backing, as did all local candidates for state office and all but two of the winning city propositions.

Labor did as well statewide, with voters soundly rejecting State Prop 32 that would have greatly diminished unions’ political strength. Defeating the proposition was by far labor’s most important election goal.

Almost as important was Prop 30, which will provide badly needed increases in funding for education and other local services and reduce the state budget deficit. Funding will come primarily from higher taxes on the wealthy.

Prop 38, which labor successfully opposed, would have provided only increased education funding and that wouldn’t even have included funding for the community colleges that provide vital job training. Funds for Prop 38 would have come from taxes on everyone, including the poor.

Labor’s campaigning nationally was done largely – and extensively – for President Obama and Democrats who had hoped to substantially increase the party’s narrow margin in the Senate and even regain control of the House.

But though they failed to elect more friendly congressional Democrats who would back labor’s political agenda, unions can correctly assume that Obama will be as friendly to labor in his second term as he was in is first four years in office. Pro-labor measures that unions might fail to push through Congress could very well be enacted through presidential executive orders, if not through presidential pressures on Congress.

Labor’s election victories included increases in the minimum wage rates in Albuquerque, San Jose and Long Beach, and the defeat of anti-union measures in several states.

Labor Notes’ Samantha Winslow reported, for instance, that unions helped defeat a measure in Illinois that would have changed the state constitution to require a three-fifths majority vote by the legislature to increase public employee pensions, while requiring only a simple majority to make pension cuts. It would have superseded collective bargaining over pension improvements at the state and local levels

Unions also played a major role in helping groups fighting voter suppression in Ohio and elsewhere, and in the successful re-election campaign of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the Senate’s most labor- friendly members.

Labor’s political efforts obviously aren’t going to end with the election over. Unions already are planning drives to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from benefit cuts.

“Some legislators and their backers on Wall Street are already set on reaching a ‘grand bargain’ in the next eight weeks,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. He says they’re aiming to raise the retirement age for Social Security and the eligibility requirements for Medicare and Medicaid.

Trumka has a better idea. He says “Congress must let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest 2 percent and make no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.”

Those are among the most important of the many tough political issues now facing unions and their supporters in San Francisco, and throughout California and the rest of the country. As the election proved beyond doubt, unions have what’s needed to seriously challenge their opponents and in the process provide important help to us all.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED/TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

GOLDIES 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 13, 2012

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GOLDIES With Obama’s re-election dominating the news, and the 24th annual Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Awards — or Goldies — dominating this week’s issue, I’m reminded of the 2004 Goldies celebration, a muted affair held just days after George W. Bush was re-elected. Way to wreck our shindig, George. Fortunately, the mood is decidedly happier in 2012. In this issue, we honor local musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and theater and visual artists — all of whom are currently making creative, inspiring contributions to the Bay Area’s arts scene. We aim to award Goldies to those whose careers are still on the rise, having not yet achieved the widespread recognition we suspect they’ll soon be enjoying.

This year, we also bestow an award for Lifetime Achievement on Berkeley’s Shawl-Anderson Dance Studio, a remarkable “heaven for dance” for 54 years (and counting). Thinking back again to Goldies past, the Guardian has had an incredible track record in picking those who’re destined for greatness: Craig Baldwin (film, 1991); Beth Custer (music, 1992); Barry McGee (visual arts, 1994); Charlie Hunter Trio (music, 1994); Charlie Varon (performance, 1995); Dan “The Automator” Nakamura (music, 1997); Krissy Keefer (dance, 1997); Paula Frazer (music, 1997); The Coup (music, 1998); Neurosis (music, 1999) — all big names, and this list ain’t even reached the current millennium yet. In other words, keep this issue around, and you can say you knew ’em when.

The 2012 Goldie winners were selected by a group of Guardian editors and contributors, including Emily Savage, Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, Nicole Gluckstern, and Marke B. Please share the golden moment with us and this year’s winners by hitting up the 2012 Goldies party — details below. Stay gold! (Cheryl Eddy)

GOLDIES PARTY
With Mad Noise, Kat Marie Yoas, Dr. Zebrovski, and DJ Bus Station John
Nov. 28, 9pm, free
111 Minna Gallery, SF.

GOLDIES 2012 (click below to read about our winners):

MUSIC: THE MALLARD

DANCE: JOE LANDINI AND THE GARAGE

FILM: JAMIE MELTZER

PERFORMANCE: MICA SIGOURNEY

VISUAL ART: BRETT AMORY

THEATER: ANNA ISHIDA

MUSIC: 5KINANDBONE5

THEATER: PIANOFIGHT

MUSIC: WATERS

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: FRANK SHAWL AND VICTOR ANDERSON, SHAWL-ANDERSON DANCE STUDIO

Our Weekly Picks: November 14-20

Andrew Lam

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November 13, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 14

outLOUD Radio 10th anniversary gala

It’s Saturday afternoon at the LGBT Community Center, and outLOUD Radio’s youth producers are interviewing queer elders about their fashion sense. The recording session was but one of many that the nonprofit has conducted, an amazing opportunity for baby gays and their elders to connect and preserve their stories for the future. Tonight, outLOUD is celebrating a decade of work with radio greats — NPR’s Ari Shapiro will take the stage for a Q&A with outLOUD youth leaders and KQED’s Scott Schafer. Come out to support the group’s efforts — because even with the nationwide advances made in last week’s elections, more LGBT stories must be told. (Caitlin Donohue)

7pm, $10–$100

Brava Theater Center

2781 24th St., SF

(415) 658-6010

gala.outloudradio.org

THURSDAY 15

“Everyday as History: Selections from Lost Landscapes of San Francisco by Rick Prelinger”

Prelinger Archives founder Rick Prelinger has a collection of over 60,000 so-called “ephemeral films” — including home movies and industrial clips (see: 1935’s “About Bananas,” an 11-minute, black-and-white bit of United Fruit Company propaganda hailing “one of America’s most important foods.”) Prelinger visits the Contemporary Jewish Museum in conjunction with the current exhibit “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-51,” where he’ll be presenting highlights from his popular “Lost Landscapes” series of San Francisco history caught on film. No bananas, probably — but Playland, a youthful Golden Gate Bridge, and post-1906 earthquake scenes will likely make appearances. (Cheryl Eddy)

6:30-8pm, $10 (includes museum admission)

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

www.thecjm.org

Crushed Out

Brooklyn-based band Crushed Out (formerly Boom Chick) mixes swirling, bluesy slide guitar riffs with reverb-laden surf fills, stomping honky tonk rhythms and a host of other early rock’n’roll influences into a truly tasty batch of infectious tunes. When listening to Crushed Out’s new album, Want To Give, it may be hard to believe that it’s just a duo making all that noise — but singer-guitarist Frank Hoier and drummer Moselle Spiller have no problem recreating the full sound when playing live. They’ve opened for fans such as Jon Spencer, and are playing with Social Distortion in the new year—catch them up close tonight while you still can. (Sean McCourt)

With the Lower 48, Halsted

9pm, $8

Hotel Utah

500 Fourth St., SF

(415) 546-6300

www.hotelutah.com

Tame Impala

Recording an LP alone, in Perth, Australia, the world’s most remote city, practically guarantees a finished product permeated by angsty solitude. Psych-rock, though? Not exactly the most common vehicle for the expression of existential dread. Still, Kevin Parker pulls it off brilliantly on Lonerism, the sophomore full-length from Tame Impala, and his first as a lone, multi-tracking solo artist under the moniker. The result is a golden pop album, stuck in limbo between Britney-esque bubblegum vapidity, and Lennon/McCartney’s wholesome pop transcendence. It should be fascinating to watch a full band reinterpret the bittersweet hooks floating around in Parker’s head. (Taylor Kaplan)

8pm, $22.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

FRIDAY 16

SF International Hip Hop DanceFest

The SF International Hip Hop DanceFest is an extraordinary event. Always the same, it’s always new. The formula works. Over the years, curator Micaya has honed her sense of what is hot and what is even hotter without neglecting the vibrant local scene that give this love fest of urban dance its backbone. New this year is Blue Boy from London with two different shows; the Academy of Villains will be back with its competition style fierceness; so is Ill-Abilities whose members travel the world conquering physical challenges. Female crews Decadancetheatre (NY) and Mix’d Ingrdnts (Oakland) will be there. That’s just five of the 16 companies that will make a cheerful noise and shake up the Palace of Fine Arts. (Rita Felciano)

Also Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, 2 and 7pm, $39.99

Palace of the Fine Arts Theatre

3301 Lyon , SF

www.sfhiphopdancefest.com

Vladimir in Butterfly Country

Vladimir Nabokov’s love of butterflies is another example of the often deeply entwined relationship between art and science. His most famous work, Lolita, was composed on several butterfly-collecting trips and he even theorized a migration pattern for the Polyommatus blue butterfly that was later confirmed by scientists. Vladimir in Butterfly Country, hosted by the Old First Church, will begin with readings from the author’s writings about butterflies. These will be followed by an original, one act opera, written by Ann Callaway and Jaime Robles, which brings to life Nobokov’s love affair with the beautiful insect. And if that’s not enough, the group boasts some of the finest chamber musicians in the Bay; Soprano Erino Newkirk will lead, accompanied by flute, bass, piano, bassoon, and percussion. (Molly Champlin)

8pm, $14–$17

Old First Church

1751 Sacramento, SF

(415) 474-1608

www.oldfirstconcerts.org

“Twin Peaks: The Beginning”

When it hit the airwaves in 1990, Twin Peaks caused a sensation — and despite the copycats that sprang up in its wake, remains a singular example of what can happen when a pair of crazily creative minds (David Lynch and Mark Frost) come together and test the boundaries of television. Watching it today, it’s no surprise it became a cult hit after its mainstream popularity waned. The characters! The settings! The bizarro plot twists and quotable lines! Brooklyn’s Silent Drape Runners (+100 for the name) visit the Vortex Room for a special “live re-sound-tracking” of episode one, adding a new score of both original and familiar songs to the adventures of Agent Cooper and company. Let’s rock! (Eddy)

10pm, $10

Vortex Room

1082 Howard, SF

Facebook: The Vortex Room

Anna and the Annadroids present “Clone Zone”

Acrobatics, dance, aerial silks, video game metaphors, and animation compromise Anna and the Annadroid’s latest wacky, philosophical performance, “Clone Zone.” Anna Sullivan started the San Francisco based performance group in 2004, inspired by dark horror films, pop culture, technology, and a love of dolls (though a slightly atypical one that had her building Barbie colonies on her front porch as a child.) This performance will see the Annadroids battling their way through Carl Jung’s model of the human psyche in a video game format. Come for a night that promises a give-and-take exploration of the human condition through rule-breaking and genre-fusing dance. (Champlin)

Through Sat/17, 8pm; also Sun/18, 7pm, $20

Dance Mission Theater 3316 24th St., SF

(415) 826-4441

www.amerifluff.com

SATURDAY 17

BluePrint: “Danzas Breves”

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines,” begins Pablo Neruda’s famous, post-love “Poema XX.” That mainstay of brokenhearted lotharios has been set to music by local composer Chris Pratorius — and debuts alongside a number of other short, contemporary and traditional classical works in the Latin American tradition as part of the wonderful, forward-looking BluePrint series at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In the Conservatory’s gorgeous concert hall, you’ll also hear Gabriela Lena Fran’s “Manchay Tiempo,” Armando Luna’s “Graffiti,” Darius Milhaud’s “Saudades do Brasil, Op. 67,” and more. Conservatory artistic director Nicole Paiement conducts the New Music Ensemble, soprano Julia Metzler provides the vocals, and David Tanenbaum will shine on the essential guitar parts. (Marke B.)

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

8pm, $15-$20

50 Oak, SF

(415) 864-7326

www.sfcm.edu

The Faint

Has it really been a decade since the release of seminal dark wave album Danse Macabre? Released on Saddle Creek Records, the Faint’s crisp and flashy third studio full-length was a standout during the early electro-pop buzz of the Aughts, sounding like it was crafted by a dance-punk band with a heavy metal guitarist, which it pretty much was. Or, Duran Duran tweaked out and covered in blood. Do you remember “Agenda Suicide” pumping out of boomboxes at every party in 2001, and swallowing up goth club and new wave dancefloors? I do. The record got the so-so remix treatment in 2003 by Paul Oakenfold, Junior Sanchez, and more. This October, Saddle Creek released a deluxe edition of Danse Macabre, replete with unreleased tracks and a DVD of live footage from early shows. In conjunction with that news, the recently quiet Faint announced its return with a tour in which the five-piece will play the album in its entirety. (Emily Savage)

With Trust, Casket Girls

8pm, $25–$27

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF (415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

Philistines

Energetic local growler-howler Colin Daly, formerly of Ex-Boyfriends (which won best local band in our 2008 Best of the Bay) and the super-diverse Lucky Jesus, is fronting a new band, the Philistines — and he’s got our indie-loving panties in a twist once again. Self-released debut album Therewolves! rips a page from the Replacements playbook, folds it into a power-pop origami swan, and sails it down a stream of catchy hooks and bouncy riffs. Let’s face it though, I’ve admired hottie Daly’s rad songwriting skills and charismatic onstage energy for years. The real news here that he has a twin brother from Chicago who is in the band with him. Twin brother! Swoon.They’ll be performing with expansive rock soundscapists MINOT, which includes Matthew Solberg from storied Bay Area band From Monument to Masses, who killed me with their live shows in the 2000s. (Marke B.)

9pm, $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

SUNDAY 18

Patchwork Indie Art and Craft Fair

With the holidays approaching, it’s about time to start thinking about gifts for loved ones. If you want something crafty, cute, or just made in California, check out the Patchwork Indie Art and Craft Fair. The fair was started by Los Angeles based painter, Nicole Stevenson, and Delilah Snell, owner of the environmentally friendly store, The Road Less Traveled. The basic concept was to help local artists, designers, and crafters sell their work in an inclusive environment. The biannual event brings vendors, musicians, food, and hands-on craft activities to four different cities in the state. In addition to beautiful ceramics, jewelry and on-the-spot, screen-printed clothing, you’ll likely find some quirkier items like knitted headphone covers (which can double as earmuffs) or whiskey flavored candles. (Champlin)

11am, free

Jack London Square Pavilion

98 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 645-9292

www.patchworkshow.com

Shit happened

Andrew Lam

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November 13, 2012

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CASH FOR TRASH

Recology, the city’s garbage monopoly, has a problem: It charges residential customers only for the black cans full of unrecyclable material headed for the landfill — but thanks to city policy and environmental consciousness, there’s less and less traditional trash out there. Ultimately, the company wants to get rid of the big black cans altogether.

So a business model based on offering free recycling and compost doesn’t work any more — and everyone has known for some time that it had to change.

But there was no discussion of rate changes earlier this year; in fact, Recology folks said there were no plans for an immediate rate hike in the works. That’s because the June ballot included a measure that would have created competitive bidding for the city’s garbage contract — and the last thing Recology wanted was the threat of a rate hike to drive voters toward amending the 1932 City Charter provision that gives just one company complete control over the lucrative waste franchise.

Ah, but the June election is long over, and Recology beat back that effort — so the rate hike we all expected is now on the table.

On Sept. 11, Recology informed the city that it intends to apply for a new rate structure — and while the process is long and convoluted, we’ll see the details in a few weeks, and you can expect to start paying more for your service by next summer.

There’s no formal proposal yet — that will come in December. The director of the Department of Public Works has to approve it, and so does a Rate Board made up of the city administration, the controller and the head of the Public Utilities Commission. But both Recology and the city say there will be some significant changes in the way San Franciscans pay to have their refuse removed.

“We can’t focus our financial operations on a black can if we’re trying to get rid of it,” Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner told us.

Douglas Legg, the finance director at the Department of Public Works agrees. “As we’ve been pushing diversion, the blue and green cans have been pretty heavily subsidized.”

But shouldn’t good habits, like recycling, be subsidized? Should people who recycle and compost more be penalized? “That’s the challenge,” Potashner said.

And in the end, it’s going to be more than a shift in which bins cost how much. There’s no doubt that your bills will be rising, perhaps by a significant amount. “I assume it will go up,” Legg said. “There hasn’t been a cost-of-living increase since 2010.”

Which, of course, brings back the competitive bidding point. If others had a chance to make a play for the city contract, might rates be lower? Or might the city get more out of the deal?

Retired Judge Quentin Kopp, who helped spearhead the campaign for competitive bidding, thinks so. “If we had competitive bidding,” he told us, “these rate hikes would be more moderate.”

OPENING THE LAST CLOSET DOOR

While most everyone’s attention was focused on electoral politics in late October, Supervisors David Campos and Christina Olague were talking about a different level of political issue, one that’s still a huge taboo: Gay men in professional sports. At an Oct. 30 press conference, the two LGBT supes joined with representatives of The Last Closet, an SF-based campaign that’s trying to get gay professional athletes to come out.

It’s remarkable (or maybe, sadly, it isn’t) that in 2012, not one openly gay man has played in any of the Big Five pro sports (football, basketball, hockey, baseball and soccer). There are, everyone knows, plenty of gay athletes, and the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and various soccer associations all have gay players. Some of them have come out after they’ve retired. But on the field (or on the floor, or on the ice)? No way.

Why does anyone care? Because youth sports are still, even in this town, full of homophobic language and homophobic attitudes, and it’s hard to imagine what young LGBT football or basketball players have to endure. Even one gay player could make a world of difference.

“What I saw with the San Francisco Giants, all of the Latino players, was such a source of pride to Latino boys and girls,” Campos told us. “We can’t feel that in the LGBT community. We know there are gay baseball players, but the LGBT youth don’t have those role models to look up to.”

The Last Closet campaign emerged out of a documentary film project that sought to look at homophobia in pro sports. “It became clear that some members of the sports hierarchy were not going to make themselves available to speak about this taboo subject,” the group’s website notes.

In fact, Fawn Yacker, one of the project directors, told us that nobody in a senior position in any sports organization was willing to talk — and that’s turned the movie into a political campaign. “We want the fans to push the sports leaders to address this,” she said.

In fact, all The Last Closeters want right now is for the commissioners of the major sports leagues to make a statement that homophobia is unacceptable and that the leagues will do everything possible to make sure that out gay players are accepted. Seems like a pretty simply no-brainer — but so far, not one sports official has gone along.

It’s pretty crazy, considering that it’s almost inevitable that a few major sports athletes will come out in the next few years — and the leagues are going to look foolish if they pretend it’s not going to happen. Any bets on which sport is going to be the first? “I don’t know,” Yackey said. “I think it might be hockey.”

Protest — and run for office

Andrew Lam

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November 13, 2012

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OPINION Millions of Americans are eager, even desperate, for a political movement that truly challenges the power of Wall Street and the Pentagon. But accommodation has been habit-forming for many left-leaning organizations, which are increasingly taking their cues from the party establishment: deferring to top Democrats in Washington, staying away from robust progressive populism, and making excuses for the Democratic embrace of corporate power and perpetual war.

It’s true that many left-of-center groups are becoming more sophisticated in their use of digital platforms for messaging, fundraising and other work. But it’s also true that President Obama’s transactional approach has had demoralizing effects on his base. Even the best resources — mobilized by unions, environmental groups, feminist organizations, and the like — can do only so much when many voters and former volunteers are inclined to stay home.

For people fed up with bait-and-switch pitches from Democrats who talk progressive to get elected but then govern otherwise, the Occupy movement has been a compelling and energizing counterforce. Its often-implicit message: protesting is hip and astute, while electioneering is uncool and clueless. Yet protesters’ demands, routinely focused on government action and inaction, underscore how much state power really matters.

To escape this self-defeating trap, progressives must build a grassroots power base that can do more than illuminate the nonstop horror shows of the status quo. To posit a choice between developing strong social movements and strong electoral capacity is akin to choosing between arms and legs. If we want to move the country in a progressive direction, the politics of denunciation must work in sync with the politics of organizing — which must include solid electoral work.

Movements that take to the streets can proceed in creative tension with election campaigns. But even if protests flourish, progressive groups expand and left media outlets thrive, the power to impose government accountability is apt to remain elusive. That power is contingent on organizing, reaching the public and building muscle to exercise leverage over what government officials do — and who they are. Even electing better candidates won’t accomplish much unless the base is organized and functional enough to keep them accountable.

Politicians like to envision social movements as tributaries flowing into their election campaigns. But a healthy ecology of progressive politics would mean the flow goes mostly in the other direction. Election campaigns should be subsets of social movements, not the other way around.

For progressives, ongoing engagement with people in communities has vast potential advantages that big money can’t buy — and (we hope) can’t defeat. But few progressive institutions with election goals have the time, resolve, resources or patience to initiate and sustain relationships with communities. For the most part, precinct organizing is a lost art that progressives have failed to revitalize. Until that changes, the electoral future looks bleak.

Norman Solomon is founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of rootsaction.org. A longer version of this piece appears in the Nov. 24 edition of The Nation.

Sorting out a strange election

Andrew Lam

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November 13, 2012

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steve@sfbg.com, tredmond@sfbg.com

The way the San Francisco Chronicle pundits put it, Mayor Ed Lee was the clear winner in a grand San Francisco election. “All his measures on the ballot won hands down,” noted Willie Brown, the high-paid lawyer and political operative who also functions as a Chron columnist. “It was a great day for Ed Lee,” proclaimed columnist C.W. Nevius.

Well, not really.

There are a lot of ways to explain and analyze the inconsistent results of one of the most heavily propagandized elections in recent San Francisco history. But no matter how you look at it, the election was at best a wash for the mayor. Indeed, we’d argue that voters rejected the basic premise of the mayor’s political agenda – that tax cuts and favors for big business are the best economic policy – despite record-breaking outside spending selling that agenda and targeting those who stood in its way.

Let’s take a look at the real facts:

• Every single initiative backed by the mayor, the ones he’s getting credit for – from the City College parcel tax to the housing fund to the business tax – was either a compromise with progressives or a measure that originated on the left. There was nothing the mayor pushed that had any significant progressive opposition; his wins were equally, if not more dramatically, wins for the left.

• Both people the mayor appointed to office were soundly rejected by the voters. Rodrigo Santos, his high-profile appointee to the troubled City College Board of Trustees, spent almost $200,000 and finished a distant sixth. Sup. Christina Olague lost to the candidate Lee had rejected for appointment, London Breed, in a complicated race where the mayor’s actual role was unclear (he never withdrew his endorsement of Olague even as his allies trashed her in nasty ways).

• A million-dollar effort funded by some of the mayor’s allies to oust Sup. Eric Mar was a spectacular failure, suggested some serious problems in the mayor’s political operation, and undermined his emphasis on “civility.”

• The voters made clear on every level that they believe higher taxes on the wealthy and closing tax loopholes on big business are the right approach to the economy and to funding government. From Prop. 30 to Prop. 39 to Prop. A to Prop. E, the message was pretty clear: The tax revolt that started in California in 1978 may be winding down, and the notion of making property owners and the wealthy pay for education and public services is no longer a radical idea.

Robert Cruikshank, who writes for the Calitics blog, argues that the November election signals a major sea change in California. “[The] vote to pass Prop 30 — by a larger margin than most observers expected — does more than just provide $6 billion of badly needed funding to the state’s public school,” he wrote. “It brings to a close a 34-year long tax revolt that came very close to destroying California’s middle class, locking its low income families into permanent poverty, and left the state on the edge of financial ruin.”

That sounds like a progressive message. The agenda put forward by the mayor’s closest allies, including right-wing billionaire Ron Conway, who played a heavy-handed role in this election, not only failed to carry the day; the big-money types may have overplayed their hand in a way that will shape the political narratives going forward.

A LOT OF CONSENSUS

Let’s start with the ballot measures (before we get to the huge and confusing mess that was D5).

Proposition A, the parcel tax for City College, didn’t come out of the Mayor’s Office at all; it came from a City College board whose direction the mayor tried to undermine with the appointment of Santos, a pro-development engineer so conservative that he actually endorsed the Republican opponent of Assembly member Tom Ammiano.

Lee didn’t even endorse Prop. A until a few weeks before the election, and played almost no role in raising money or campaigning for its passage (see “Words and deeds,” 9/11/12). Yet it got a higher percentage of the vote than any of the three measures that Lee actively campaigned for: Props. B, C, and E.

Then there’s Prop. C, the Housing Trust Fund. Lee’s office played a central role in drafting and promoting the measure -– but it wasn’t exactly a Lee initiative. Prop. C came out of the affordable housing community, and Lee, who has strong ties to that community, went along. There were tough negotiations -– the mayor wanted more guarantees and protections for private developers -– and the final product was much more what the progressives who have spent decades on the housing front wanted than what the mayor would have done on his own.

The way the mayor envisioned business-tax reform, the city would have eliminated the payroll tax, which tech firms hate, and replaced it with a gross-receipts tax -– and the result would have been revenue-neutral. It was only after Sup. John Avalos and the progressives demanded that the tax actually bring in more money that the outlines of Prop. E were drafted and it received strong support from groups across the ideological spectrum.

“You had a lot of consensus in the city about these ballot measures,” political consultant David Latterman, who usually works with downtown-backed campaigns, said at SPUR’s post-election round-up.

The supervisorial races were a different story, with unprecedented spending and nasty messaging aimed at tipping the balance in favor of real estate and development interests. Mayor Lee didn’t get directly involved in the District 1 race, but he was clearly not a supporter of incumbent Sup. Eric Mar.

The real-estate and tech folks who are allied with Lee spent more than $800,000 trying to oust Mar — and they failed miserably, with Mar winning by 15 points. While Mar did have the backing of Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak, who raised money and helped organize ground troops to help, Mar’s victory was primarily the result of a massive outpouring of support from labor and progressive activists, many reacting to the over-the-top effort to oust him.

Mar, who voted to put Lee in office, won’t feel a bit indebted to the mayor for his survival against a huge money onslaught. But in District 5, the story was a whole lot more complicated, and impact more difficult to discern.

THE D5 MESS

Before we get into what happened in D5, let’s dispel some of the simplistic and self-serving stories that circulated in the wake of this election, the most prominent being that Olague’s loss -– the first time an incumbent was defeated in a ranked-choice election –- was payback for crossing Mayor Lee and voting to reinstatement Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

It’s certainly true that Lee’s allies went after Olague and supported London Breed, and that they tried to make an issue of domestic violence, but there was much, much more to this district election. Breed is an SF native with a compelling personal story who ran a strong campaign –- and that three strongest progressive candidates in the race each had major flaws that hurt their electability. By most accounts, the Olague campaign was a disaster until the very end. Equally important, the progressive community was divided over D5, leaving room for Breed to slip in.

“It’s hard to unravel what happened here,” Latterman said.

San Francisco Women for Responsibility and an Accountable Supervisor was an independent expenditure group fronted by domestic violence advocates and funded by more than $100,000 from the families of Conway and fellow right-wing billionaire Thomas Coates. It attacked Olague’s Mirkarimi vote as being soft on domestic violence — but it also did a last minute mailer criticizing Olague’s vote for CleanPowerSF, muddling its message of moral outrage.

On election night, Olague told us she believed her split with the Mayor’s Office really had more to do with CleanPowerSF –- which the board approved with a veto-proof majority over the objections of Lee and the business community –- and with her insisting on new revenue from Prop. E than it did with Mirkarimi, whose ouster she dismissed as “a power play” aimed at weakening progressives.

“They don’t want to say it, but it was the whole thing around CleanPowerSF. Do you think PG&E wanted to lose its monopoly?” she said.

Yet Olague said the blame from her loss was also shared by progressives, who were hard on her for supporting Lee, courting his appointment to the D5 seat, and for voting with him on 8 Washington luxury condo project and other high-profile issues. “The left and the right both came at me,” she told us. “From the beginning, people were hypercritical of me in ways that might not be completely fair.”

Fair or not, Olague’s divided loyalties hurt her campaign for the D5 seat, with most prominent progressives only getting behind her at the end of the race after concluding that John Rizzo’s lackluster campaign wasn’t going anywhere, and that Julian Davis, marred as he was by his mishandling of sexual impropriety accusations, couldn’t and shouldn’t win.

Olague told us she “can’t think of anything I would have done differently.” But she later mentioned that she should have raised the threats to renters earlier, worked more closely with other progressive candidates, and relied on grassroots activists more than political consultants connected to the Mayor’s Office.

“The left shouldn’t deal with consultants, we should use steering committees to drive the agenda,” Olague said, noting that her campaign finally found its footing in just the last couple weeks of the race.

Inside sources say Olague’s relations with Lee-connected campaign consultant Enrique Pearce soured months before the campaign finally sidelined him in the final weeks, the result of his wasteful spending on ineffective strategies and divided loyalties once a wedge began to develop between Olague and the Mayor’s Office.

Progressive endorsements were all over the map in the district: The Harvey Milk Club endorsed Davis then declined to withdraw that endorsement. The Tenants Union wasn’t with Olague. The Guardian endorsed Rizzo number one. And none of the leading progressive candidates had a credible ranked-choice voting strategy — Breed got nearly as many second-place votes from Davis and Rizzo supporters as Olague did.

Meanwhile, Breed had a high-profile falling out with Brown, her one-time political ally, after her profanity-laden criticism of Brown appeared in Fog City Journal and then the San Francisco Chronicle, causing US Sen. Dianne Feinstein to withdraw her endorsement of Breed. That incident and Olague’s ties to Lee, Brown, and Pak may have solidified perceptions of Breed’s independence among even progressive voters, which the late attacks on her support from landlords weren’t ever able to overcome.

Ironically, while Breed and some of her prominent supporters, including African American ministers in the district, weren’t happy when Lee bypassed her to appoint Olague, that may have been her key to victory. Latterman noted that while Olague was plagued by having to divide loyalties between Lee and her progressive district and make votes on tough issues like reinstating Mirkarimi –- a vote that could hurt the D5 supervisor in either direction -– Breed was free to run her race and reinforce her independence: “I think Supervisor Breed doesn’t win this race; challenger Breed did.”

But even if Breed lives up to progressive fears, the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors could be up in the air. District 7 soundly rejected Mike Garcia, the hand-picked successor of the conservative outgoing Sup. Sean Elsbernd.

At press time, progressive favorite Norman Yee seemed headed for victory, although FX Crowley was within about 30 votes, making this too close to call. But either way, the once-solid conservative seat will now be a swing vote on many issues, just as Breed will be in the once-solid progressive D5.

“The Board of Supervisors as a whole is becoming a helluva lot more interesting,” was how political consultant Alex Clemens put it at SPUR election wrap-up. “Determining what’s going to happen before it happens just got more difficult.”

GOBS OF MONEY

The other big story of this election was money, gobs of it, and how it can be spent effectively — or used to raise suspicions about hidden agendas.

Third-party spending on D1 loser David Lee’s behalf was $454,921, with another $219,039 to oppose Mar, pushing total spending to defeat Mar up over the $1 million mark, roughly doubling the previous record. Labor groups, meanwhile, spent $72,739 attacking Lee and $91,690 backing Mar. But many political analysts felt that lop-sided spending only served to turn off voters and reinforce the idea that powerful interests were trying to buy the seat.

In District 5, the landlords, Realtors, and tech moguls spent $177,556 in support of Breed, while labor spent $15,067 attacking her as a shill for the landlord lobby. The only other D5 candidate to attract significant spending by outside groups was Olague, who had $104,016 spent against her, mostly by the families of Conway and Coates, and $45,708 spent in support of her by SEIU 1021. Yet ultimately, none of these groups bought very much with their money. Conway, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and San Francisco Association of Realtors each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money, and the most obvious result was to convince San Franciscans that they’re working together to move an agenda in San Francisco. They may have the mayor on their side, but in a politically sophisticated city like San Francisco –- with its cost of living being driven up by the schemes of Lee, Conway, and the Realtors -– they seem to have a long way to go before they achieve they’re stated desire of destroying the progressive movement, particularly with its rising new leaders on the left, including Matt Haney and Sandra Fewer on the school board and Steven Ngo and Rafael Mandelman on the City College board. As Haney said on Election Night, “It was a good night for progressive San Francisco,” which stands for important egalitarian values. “We are the ones about equity and compassion. That’s what this city is about.”

District surprises

Andrew Lam

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November 13, 2012

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tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITOR’S NOTES The Wall Street Journal, which ought to focus on stellar reporting and skip the political analysis, stuck its haughty little nose into California last week, announcing that the Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature spell doom for us all.

“Liberals,” the paper noted, “will pick up enough seats to secure a supermajority. Governor Jerry Brown then will be the only chaperone for the Liberals Gone Wild video that is Sacramento.”

I guess I go to the wrong parties, but I’ve never seen that movie. In fact, a lot of the Dems in Sacramento would have to cough and gasp a bit to call themselves “liberals,” and that’s on a good day. Frankly, the majority party in the Assembly and Senate tends to be relatively conservative, with many of its members afraid to so much as talk about, say, amending Prop. 13 or legalizing marijuana.

The bigger danger is that the Democrats from the more moderate districts will so fear that loss of their seats that they’ll want to be even more cautious about raising taxes than the Republicans.

See, I don’t think either party quite realizes what happened Nov. 6 in California, and what it means for the future.

This election wasn’t an anomaly. It wasn’t a miraculous twist of fate driven by high Obama turnout or by labor’s GOTV efforts to defeat Prop. 32. It was the inevitable result of two forces — the demographic changes in the electoral map of this state, and the utter, complete collapse of the California Republican Party. Neither one is about to change any time soon.

For decades, the GOP has focused on older, white, suburban voters, and there was a time when that strategy worked. But the future of the state is younger, non-white urban voters who are less frightened by crime, less xenophobic about immigration, less likely to have kids in private schools, and largely uninterested in the traditional Republican social issues.

Brian Leubitz, the insightful blogger at Calitics.com, notes that almost 30 percent of the people who went to the polls Nov. 6 were between 18 and 29 years old. “The California GOP, like the greater national party, has lost young voters,” he writes. “If it hopes to return to a semblance of a statewide party, it will need to moderate itself back into a party that accurately represents some portion of California’s electorate.”

How likely is that? Anyone want to bet that the GOP is going to reject the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association the right-wing radio guys in Los Angeles and start promoting immigration reform and an overhaul of Prop. 13? You’ll have to give me pretty long odds.

No: The era of Democratic supermajorities in the California Legislature is here to stay for a while, and the Dems might as well use it. No need to be afraid of a backlash; there’s nothing out there to lash back with. The only real danger is that Democrats and independents will be so disappointed in the Legislature’s failure to act on the huge issues facing the state that they’ll stay home in two years.

Why not talk about a split-role property tax program? Why not an oil-severance tax? Why not let local government raise local taxes without a two-thirds majority? The Wall Street Journal can whine all it wants, but it can’t change reality — right now, the Democrats are the only game in town.

Editor’s notes