Event

Step it Up!

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Tomorrow! Go to Dolores Park at noon and for the National Day of Climate Change. Woo hoo!

March or ride in the parade of bikes and electric cars and other great, green stuff that’s going down to UN Plaza. Carole Migden, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi are going to be there, as well as mayoral candidates Quintin Mecke, Josh Wolf and Chicken John Rinaldi.

According to the press release, “UN plaza will be transformed into a carnival-like atmosphere complete with a Recycle That! art show filled with recycled and reclaimed art, the Sustainable Living Roadshow’s Conscious Carnival, a carbon-eating generator from the Chlorophyll Collective and smoothies made on a solar powered van. Participants will call for real political leadership on global warming, and will ask San Francisco’s political leaders to pledge to the following:

Put a moratorium on new coal and nuclear plants
Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050
Create 5 million new green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
Get back on track to meet San Francisco’s Climate Action Plan

This is a national event, started by super-eco-friendly-guy Bill McKibben, but San Francisco’s event tomorrow is extra-special because we’re pushing an anti-nuke future, despite the kinder, gentler image that nuclear power plants have been getting lately.

Here’s a fun/gross fact: every year vehicles in San Francisco emit more than 16,000 tons of nitrous oxide (nastiness that makes ozone). The Mirant peaker power plants that everyone’s in a tizzy to shut down emit 92 tons.

Hmmm. The take-away = quit driving. Vote yes on Prop A!

Anti-war movement is back

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Guardian photo by Neil Motteram
Apparently, most people aren’t buying the inevitability of the endless Iraq War or the defeatist fatalism expressed by the major political parties and the mainstream media, if Saturday’s massive anti-war march in San Francisco was any indicator. Tens of thousands sent the clear message that we need a new Iraq strategy, one that ends the provocative occupation by American troops as soon as possible. The ANSWER Coalition, which sponsored the event, is trying to marshal the anti-war forces moving toward the next major event in March, when there are calls for a general strike.

Halloween in Rock Rapids. What really happened on Halloween Eve in l95l in the almost famous town of Rock Rapids, Iowa

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I was just settling down to get back into the business of blogging (I have been away at an assembly of the Inter American Press Association in Miami and a convention of the California First Amendment Coalition at USC in Los Angeles) when an ominous email from Washington, D.C., popped up on my computer.

At first I thought it was just more fear-mongering out of the Bush administration, but the head did intrigue me, “Millions of children could be exposed to dangerous toys on Halloween.” It was the announcement for a news conference call with reporters on Tuesday, to release a new report on the “toxic trade of deadly Halloween toys,” toys made in China and being recalled for containing dangerous levels of lead in violation of U.S. safety standards. Halloween was the news peg.

Meanwhile, the word was dire back in San Francisco. The mayor and city fathers were warning people to stay out of the Castro, the gay area that annually sees a tumultuous gathering of hundreds of thousands and police in full riot gear. “HALLOWEEN WARNING: KEEP CLEAR OF THE CASTRO,” trumpeted the San Francisco Chronicle in its Halloween morning edition. “City puts word out: There’s no party, just stay home.”

I was astounded. A full year has gone by since I wrote an almost famous blog disclosing in graphic detail, naming names, what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in my almost famous hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa. As Halloween seems to spin out of control, the story of Halloween in Rock Rapids is worth retelling, as anybody in the almost famous Hermie Casjens gang would argue. And so I am going to do so.

There weren’t any “deadly Halloween toys” nor any toxic trade thereof nor any tumultuous hordes creating a riot situation in Rock Rapids, but there was a bit of targeted hell raising on Halloween. In fact, it was understood that Halloween was the one night of the year when the more adventurous youth of the town could raise a little hell and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops. Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger.

Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs and swings hanging in back yards.

After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow he never caught anybody nor made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.

Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.

It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.

We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.

The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.

Two years ago, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.

Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since. He calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco. He always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.”

Those were the days, my friends. The days of Halloweens without dangerous toys and toxic trade with China and riots on Main Street. B3

Obama in the House?

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The organizers and speakers from Hip Hop 4 Obama make Chris DeMento wonder: Can Obama really do it?

By Chris DeMento

Barack Obama’s been making the biggest grassroots push since JFK’s presidential campaign, but will it take? I spoke and listened to three very intelligent and spirited Obama supporters at a recent Hip Hop 4 Obama event at Berkeley’s Ashkenaz, all of whom were filled with information and the will to help their man beat a Clinton in a primary. One small problem: nobody showed.

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Annemarie Stephens, founder of Hip Hop 4 Obama

Speed demons!

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Driving out to Altamont Motorsports Park on the night after a full moon, just a few days before Halloween, even my metal-maimed eardrums could faintly hear the sound of Mick Jagger’s famous plea for peace, uttered from the Altamont concert stage in 1970’s Gimme Shelter: “Who’s fighting, and what for?”

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The cars that go boom.

Well, I’ll tell ya, fighting on Oct 27 were some 50 roached-out, jerry-rigged race cars, hellbent less on victory than on the glory of completing 300 laps — or in many cases, somewhat less — at the track’s annual Pumpkin Smash.

What about them pumpkins? The reason for the season, no doubt — hundreds of orange mofos gave their lives valiantly for this event. The asphalt was luridly smeared with pumpkin guts and gallons of soapy water. Facilitating and maximizing smash-ups never looked so festive…nor made onlookers long so much for pumpkin pie.

Superfriends for world peace

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Get your tights in a twist for peace with the cwaaazy kids of Sugar Valley this Saturday before the UN Anniversary and Peace Parade! Oh — and don’t forget that the event (that includes a die-in at Dolores Park) will coincide with the world’s attempted biggest “Thriller” dance-a-thon!

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Join Sugar Valley artists on United Nations Day at the San Francisco Parade for World Peace
Sat. Oct 27
UN Plaza, 7th Street and Market, SF
Event at 1pm, parade starts at 2pm
At 4:15, 67 doves released — plus formation of a human peace sign
Superhero attire encouraged — look for others underneath the big red ballon!
More info: www.sugarvalley.org

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Give Cheese a chance

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Is there anything better than a grilled cheese sandwich? A cure for cancer would be nice. And I wouldn’t kick World Peace out of bed for eating crackers. But melted cheese and crispy bread? It’s so good, if it ran for President, I bet it’d beat Hillary and Obama (plus, it’s both likable and has experience – at least, as at being a sandwich).

In fact, the only thing better than a grilled cheese sandwich is the Grilled Cheese Invitational, an L.A.-based event dedicated to all things grilled and cheesy. And for the first time, this year the Bay Area’s gonna get its own shot at artery-clogging glory when the good GCI folks bring the competition to Eli’s Mile High Club on October 25.

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Bread of dubious nutritional quality + cheese product of dubious dairy origin = sexy

Halloween Specials

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Well, ain’t this special!
A Special Report from the Controller and the Legislative Analyst is recommending the establishment of an Office of Special Events.
The impetus for this special study came, says the report, from Sup. Bevan Dufty in the wake of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to cancel a City-sponsored Halloween this year.
The report is already getting activists nervous.
That’s because one of its main thrusts is reviewing “whether the Entertainment Commission’s unfulfilled responsibility to attract and support special events (including those without sponsors) should officially be transferred to some other unit.”
That unit would most likely be contained within the Mayor’s Office.
Now, Piss-poor communication between the Mayor’s Office and the Entertainment Commission over Halloween 2007 became an open secret this year, after a public records request unearthed emails in which commissioners complained that the Mayor’s Office has been trying to avoid meeting with them to discuss plans to shift the event to the waterfront.
This may be why the Special Report recommends that the two be required to communicate in future, or it could be because, as the Special Report notes, a recent Civil Grand Jury found that “communication between the Entertainment Commission and the Mayor’s Office has not been sufficiently good to allow such efforts [promoting the development of a vibrant entertainment and late-night entertainment industry] to move forward.
Either way, it’s an interesting development ten days before this year’s non-event looms, and a tacit admission that no one in Room 200 is expecting to be able to kill Halloween 2008, which occurs on a Friday.
The report, which reviews the role of all the City’s major special events, not just Halloween, finds that San Francisco could benefit economically and culturally from additional special events, but that no city agency is currently focused on “attracting, creating and promoting” such events.
It suggests that the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which receives 56 percent of its $14 million budget from the City’s hotel tax to promote SF as a tourist destination, or another non-profit such as SF’s Grants For Arts, could play a larger role.
It also recommends that “ unsponsored events like Halloween are likely best managed by the Mayor’s Office in cooperation with a Private event producer.”
Stay tuned.

Making naked pretzels

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By Justin Juul

I heard about this Naked Yoga thing via my part-time gig at going.com where I have to scan websites and magazines looking for quirky festivals, art openings, open-bars, etc. When I find a good event, I do a little write up, find a good image to accompany the text, and then I post the whole thing on the site. It sounds like a pretty easy job, I know, but it’s always hard to find things that haven’t already been posted by another stringer. So when I found the catalog for One Taste in SoMa, I was thrilled.

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Upward kitty?

Their mission statement claims that “One Taste is an urban retreat center dedicated to bringing conscious awareness to the senses. They embrace all levels of being; our bodies, our emotions, our minds and our spirits — while promoting a healthy balance between them.” It sounds kinda corny, but I had a hunch that all the new-age rhetoric was a just a gloss the organization was using to put a positive spin on their obsession with sex. The catalog’s cover featured a huge black and white shot of a naked woman and the calendar inside, which I was going to suck dry for material, was full of classes like “naked yoga,” “exploring our lust,” and “prostate massage w/ live demonstration.”

Normally I would have just picked a few events, written a few blurbs, and cashed my check, but as fate would have it, the editor at another one of my freelance gigs sent out a query to see if anyone knew anything about naked yoga. I do, I said. And with that, my fate was sealed. At nine o clock the very next morning I was pedaling toward SoMa, yoga mat in hand, mentally preparing myself to be naked in front of strangers.

As I approached the corner of Folsom and Seventh my mind grew heavy with doubt. Am I packing enough heat? I wondered. Is my belly too big? Are my poor arms too thin?

By any other name

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Fish chili is still chili. Everyone else was wondering or grumbling, but there was never any question in my mind. Fish chili is chili. It just is. If you call a thing a thing, then it is what it is. Ask Popeye.

It was chili because it had chiles in it, or chili powder, and because it was at a chili cook-off and, most important, because the guy who made it called it chili. We live in a free country, and even if we didn’t, fish chili would be chili.

You don’t like that, move to Texas. In Terlingua, at the famous annual "international" chili cook-off, you are not allowed to put beans in your chili. Or pasta. Or rice. Or "other similar items."

Fish? I wonder….

I love Texas-style chili. I prefer it by a mile to your average ground-beef-with-bean varieties. And I love that you can call a chili cook-off an "international" event and then disallow beans and things, pretty much eliminating all the other kinds of chili in the world except Texas-style.

Oh, but chili was invented in Texas.

Give me a break. If so, it has since migrated to New Mexico, where, in Old Mexican fashion, it’s more about the peppers than the meat or the beans or whatever they happen to flavor. Ever been to Cincinnati? Chili has. It’s cinnamony. Beans, onions, and cheese are optional; spaghetti is standard.

Not to blow its cover, but chili lives incognito in Providence, RI, home of the oddly named New York system, which basically means chili dogs slapped together in a line of buns on a guy’s arm. They don’t call it chili, but it’s ground beef with chili powder and cumin, somewhat distinctified by soy sauce, ginger, and — my personal favorite — celery seed.

Now, Oakland is not Terlingua or Cincinnati or Detroit or New York City or New York system or New Castle, Pa. — or a lot of other places, if you think about it. It’s where Joe Rut lives, in a warehouse, and I’m jealous because he gets to vote for Barbara Lee and host chili cook-offs.

I get to go. I get to vote for my favorite chili. In a field of more than 20 contestants, which included a couple of excellent pork chilies, a wild-turkey chili (dude shot the bird hisself!), and an elk and bacon one, among the many beef-and-bean, just-beef, and vegetarian entries, my hands-down, hats-off, and belly-up favorite was the fish chili I’ve been trying to tell you about. It was ridiculously delicious, well stocked with several kinds of fish and shellfish, colorful with peppers, and just all-around pretty. Plus I liked its politics, and philosophy.

My only dilemma was whether to vote for it for best meat chili or best vegetarian. Joe Rut’s chili cook-off ballot, like life, gave me only two choices, neither one quite right, and I had to find my way around that.

This time it was easy: I put number five on both lines. The fish chili was the best meat chili and the best vegetarian one. This from a pork-barbecuing chicken-farmer chick whose favorite two things to eat are raw beef and green salad.

For the record, if there had been a line on the ballot for gumbo, I’d have fived that line too. Hell, if we were voting on pancakes, I’d have voted for the fish chili. You know how sometimes a bowl or plate of food just speaks to you, and speaks your language?

Well, apparently I wasn’t the only one listening. I just got forwarded a mass-mailed e-mail from Joe Rut announcing the winners: fish chili won best meat chili. I love the world!

My guess is about a hundred people voted. Very few were wearing cowboy hats. There must have been at least probably about 150 folks there, you gotta figure, because it was a warehouse and it was crowded. There were bands. There were pies for dessert and a big fruit salad just so everyone could at least have a chance of pooping the next day.

The name of the guy who made this fish chili, also for the record, is — hold on a second — Russ Leslie … and I publish that journalistic fact right here (of all the crazy places) in the wild but sincere hope that he will read this and invite me over for leftovers. Or next time he makes a pot, I guess, because it’s been more than a week.

I miss it.

41st Anniversary Special: Psych out

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> gwschulz@sfbg.com

San Francisco is a beautiful place. But it’s also a city where an extraordinary number of people suffer from mental health problems, sometimes quietly, sometimes visibly. City government has always taken on the burden of caring for those who really need it, but the Gavin Newsom administration has been trying to outsource that obligation in recent years.

Department of Public Health director Mitch Katz has tried for years to trim the number of psychiatric-care beds maintained by San Francisco General Hospital. He proposes to replace those services by contracting them out to local nonprofit Progress Foundation, which earned most of its $11.5 million in revenue last year from government sources.

The proposal is for Progress to develop and operate a community-based psychiatric treatment center as an alternative to SF General’s emergency-room and inpatient beds. A key difference would be that the alternative treatment would be voluntary and cater to those without severe symptoms.

Katz wants to eliminate 14 of SF General’s beds and reduce the number of patients it assesses by 30 percent. Add to that seven other beds that were stripped of funding two years ago, and it’s clear that mental health treatment in San Francisco is changing.

"It’s a problem we have to solve by coming up with alternatives," Katz told the board’s budget committee Oct. 10, "because it’s not right for that person, or for the cost to the system, that [they] be in a locked ward. It’s more downstream alternatives."

Opponents of the cuts, however, including psych nurses at SF General, led by the hospital’s chief of psychiatry, say the Progress proposal might complement SF General’s services but it would be dangerously shortsighted to think it can replace them.

Private-sector hospitals in San Francisco have already cut a combined 100 psych beds over the past 10 years, leaving behind only 75. Patients relying on Medi-Cal subsidies end up at SF General more than ever. Admissions, in fact, have climbed by as much as 50 percent in the past decade.

"I don’t want to be alarmist," said Alfredo Mireles, a psychiatric nurse at SF General who is opposing the cuts, "but we have this one guy who’s been in and out of here since his teens. He’s in his 30s now. He’s smart, college educated. But he has these violent outbursts with no remorse."

The man had assaulted a police officer just the night before, Mireles said. He recalled another patient who was so paranoid he wouldn’t come out of his room to eat. He had ended up in the emergency room after not eating for eight days.

Nonetheless, SF General’s psych ward maxed out last December for the first time in its history, forcing police offers to divert patients to jail or to hospitals unprepared to deal with them. All those facilities can do is strap down the patients or lock them in seclusion until a slot opens at SF General.

"You have to be very acute to get admitted," psych nurse Stacey Murphy said, referring to SF General. "But then we can’t get rid of people, because nobody wants them. They’re not acute enough to technically belong in our hospital, but they belong in a locked facility or in board and care."

Murphy explained that Progress won’t be able to handle certain patients now living in a sort of gray area at SF General — between being willingly and unwillingly hospitalized — such as the drug addled or violent. And that’s one problem with privatization in general: corporations and nonprofits will gladly take over profitable services, but the hard or expensive cases often fall to government … or simply through the cracks.

Progress argues that SF General spends too much time and money on patients who have serious mental health problems but aren’t so acute that they need to be locked up. Its idea is to put psych patients back into the city but help alleviate the misery they might otherwise endure alone or in a maddeningly sterile hospital. It seems to think the hard cases aren’t that hard.

"The time and resources devoted to this group of clients in a psychiatric crisis who are not hospitalized represents a cost to the mental health system that is unnecessary and avoidable if the intervention, triage, assessment, and treatment can occur in a community setting," the Progress Foundation’s June proposal reads.

"To the extent that there are people who would do better if we really wrapped services around them, shouldn’t we all focus on those people who would accept services voluntarily?" Katz asked the committee. "I think to focus a lot of our resources trying to convince people to take treatment against their will as outpatients when so many people would benefit from more loving, positive care, I don’t think it’s the right priority."

Piers Mackenzie still views Katz’s plan as poor public policy. His daughter, then 22, required a brief stay at SF General’s psych ward during a sudden mental health catastrophe four years ago. The event politicized Mackenzie, and he has since agitated against attempts by Katz to scale back psychiatric services at the hospital.

"I couldn’t think of a more retrogressive step, simple as that," Mackenzie said. "When there’s a proven need for more beds than there are presently, to cut them is just plain idiotic. I don’t understand it."

Green City: Meeting the Climate Challenge

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY It is easy to become discouraged by environmental problems, but a few San Franciscans are reminding us that we have collective power to make positive change. And we might even have a little fun along the way.

Paul Scott came up with the idea of the San Francisco Climate Challenge, a citywide contest to reduce household energy consumption. Scott is a lawyer and founding member of One Atmosphere — a nonprofit created by North Beach neighbors concerned with sustainability and conservation. "I think a lot of folks are concerned about climate change, but frustrated by the seeming inaction by the government to solve the problem," Scott told the Guardian. "The purpose of the San Francisco Climate Challenge is to give people something they can do right now."

A joint project by One Atmosphere, the Sierra Club, and SF Environment, the Climate Challenge officially starts Oct. 25 and registration ends the day before. Two top prizes of $5,000 (cash!) will be awarded for greatest overall energy savings and greatest percentage reduction in energy use. Winners will be determined by comparing last November’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bill with this November’s bill, so participants must pay their own utility bill and have lived in their current home — apartment, condo, or house — for at least a year.

Private residences account for about 20 percent of San Francisco’s carbon emissions, so the SF Climate Challenge is specifically focused on reducing household emissions. "Hopefully, this contest will increase people’s awareness of what they can do and the environmental damage done by normal activities," said Jonathan Weiner of One Atmosphere. "Simple changes can have significant impacts."

And what are some of these simple changes to make at home? Turn off lights when you leave a room, replace incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, wear a sweater instead of turning up the heat. And something that people often forget is that appliances use energy even when they’re turned off. So plug your television and stereo into a power strip and, when you’re done watching TV or listening to music, turn that power strip off.

"Eliminating unnecessary, wasteful use and being more efficient with the energy we do use is important," said Aaron Israel of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco chapter. "But you don’t have to eat in the dark or live like a monk. There are very easy things you can do if you’re just a little bit more aware."

Contest participants can sign up for the Climate Challenge as individuals or teams. So far, there teams have been created by neighborhoods, social groups, and sports teams. Even the Board of Supervisors has formed a team, with supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Aaron Peskin, and Sean Elsbernd already committed to participating. Word on the street is that even the Mayor’s Office may compile a team.

The Climate Challenge is also about building community. "This is an initiative to bring together a bunch of folks around how we, as residents in the city, can do things differently," said Mark Miller of One Atmosphere. "The more we see how we’re connected, the more we see how much we affect each other."

Making simple, painless changes at home is a great place to start taking responsibility for the health of our communities, city, and planet. Hopefully, the San Francisco Climate Challenge will inspire people to think about the environment in terms of the positive changes we can make instead of the overwhelming problems we feel helpless to fix.

"We need to paint a vision of our own lives that is better in the future than it is right now, so we are all motivated to take action," said Cal Broomhead of SF Environment. "How can we transform our neighborhoods so they’re more sustainable? We have collective power to make change."

To register for the San Francisco Climate Challenge, or to see a list of sponsors, prizes, and energy-saving tips, go to www.sfclimatechallenge.org. Or attend this upcoming event to learn more: ClimatePalooza, Fri/Oct. 19, 7 p.m., $12 or free with sign up for the SF Climate Challenge, at the Swedish American Hall, 2170 Market, SF. Live music by Ryan Auffenberg, Hyim, Valerie Orth, Sheldon Petersen, and Pixie Kitchen. Call (415) 861-5016 for more information. *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

41st Anniversary Special: Blast from the past

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33 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 5, 1974)


Dianne Feinstein takes off her gloves

By Katy Butler


White gloves still haunt Dianne Feinstein’s political life. She has been wearing them ever since she first went to dancing class, and fellow politicians have accused her of refusing to take them off for politics. Her old political allies bring up the image again and again: those little white gloves seem to crystallize their irritation with her Pacific Heights femininity, the world of the Junior League, the chauffeur and the Goody Two Shoes approach to politics. In 1971 during her disastrous campaign for Mayor, she did her best to reach beyond her background. She promised a Hunters Point crowd she’d never shuck or jive. But she was still wearing those little white gloves.

The white gloves are off now. Feinstein learned from her 1971 defeat and she doesn’t want to lose this time around. She is jostling with state senators Milton Marks and George Moscone for first place at the starting gate in next year’s Mayor’s race, and she is no longer a political dilettante operating on intuition and integrity.

The new Dianne Feinstein is a canny political animal, assiduously cultivating the "homeowner vote" in the foggy reaches of the Avenues while nursing along her original liberal constituency. "She’s dropped the Goody Two Shoes act and she’s willing to play hardball politics," one of her fellow supervisors says admiringly. "She’s moving toward the center and she’s getting very good advice."

"How can you be for the vice squad, for police helicopters, against nude shows and for gay rights?" asks Harvey Milk, a gay former candidate for supervisor. "It doesn’t add up."

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 8, 1976)


Staggering with Bukowski

By William Graham


The beer, the day, whatever the reason, [poet Charles] Bukowski is not reading well — with little enthusiasm, little animation, little inflection in his voice, save the long drawl on certain words. He rarely looks up from his script while reading, as if he hasn’t seen the poems before. Hunched over, his glasses reflect the two spotlights and act as mirrors, blocking the audience from his eyes. At his best he is poetical, distant. At his worst, he is an old man reading the news. And finally the warning, "This is going to be my next-to-last poem." A few say "No, no." Bukowski asks, "Are there any questions?" Again, mixed shoutings answer, a few voices mimic animals, and far from the rear, the high nasal voice says "Bullshit". Bukowski replies, "Lay off that cheeeeeep, rot-gut wine or you’re not going to live a weeeeeeek. If the wine doesn’t get youuuuuuu, I might." The crowd likes this. Shifting gears, the poet says, "Any young girls want my phone number — try Joe Wolberg." Several replies follow, many sound dubious, and the poet says, "Okay, Babe-A."

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 8, 1976)


EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. By Tom Robbins. Houghton-Mifflin, $4.95.

Reviewed by Don McClelland


Tragedy ensues but is softened by the cosmic good humor that shines throughout the book. For this world and its languages, Robbins shows an infectious love that is constantly leading him into literary excesses guaranteed to get him hanged in more proper circles. Didactic, discursive, anthropomorphic, loaded with enough outrageous similes to send a basketful to each poet in the American Academy, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues operates on the refreshing premise that the whole world is alive. This book will make you laugh out loud in the elevator. This book should have champagne and tears spilled on it. This book is Cervantes born again. Thank you, Tom Robbins.

31 YEARS AGO (OCTOBER 29, 1976)


The Film Festival

By Robert Di Matteo


The 20th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, which was held at the Palace of Fine Arts Oct. 13-24, was another one of those Sacred Monster affairs that exist above and beyond almost anything that can be said about them.

For me, there was the added excitement this year of the Guardian‘s Banned-from-the-Festival status (see Guardian 10/8, 10/22/76). Because of our reporting on the Film Festival last year, the Guardian was not allowed to attend this year’s event on the same basis as the 98 acceptable representatives from the press. But we went ahead and bough some tickets on the sly, and on the nights of the showings I slunk in to take my place in the audience, glancing furtively around to make sure I hadn’t been spotted. As something of a natural-born outsider, I found the role of a party crasher to fit like a glove.

Still, my perspective on the festival has not really changed. I doubt that I could ever really resolve my attitudes about culture to fit the festival’s concept of Culture. Movies are still just movies to me, and charging an extra dollar to see them does not alter that fact.

26 YEARS AGO (NOV. 4, 1981)


From the personal ads:

Plug Me In

Says my refrigerator. Very attractive lesbian who lacks only cooking skills would like sympathetic Jewish woman to offer either her knowledge of the art or dinner for the rest of my life. Write P.O. Box 11528 SF CA 94101

Wanted: Wife

Long hours, no pay. For a good-looking San Francisco man, 29. Qualifications: must be beautiful, intelligent, easygoing. No experience necessary. Please, no Republicans.


WM, 38, angry, depressed, timid, gentle, understanding seeks similarly minded F with whom to wait for Godot and/or etc.

My Marriage Was No Fun

Finally my wife and I figured out that we would be happier if we weren’t together. Since then, I have discovered freedom, but it hasn’t been in single bars. It has been squeezing the toothpaste any way I please, or being able to change plans at the last minute. I am 44, nice-looking, secure, and I would be interested in meeting a woman, younger or older, who would like to share her freedom with me.

I am an R.C. priest who takes his religious calling very seriously. But God also made me a man. I have thought about leaving the Church, but feel that that would be very wrong. God didn’t create us to live half lives, He will understand. While I’m sexually inexperienced, I am attractive, accomplished and sincere. Obviously discretion is a must.

Women Are Taught to Say "No"

This one is happy, bright, and attractive, and she is ready to begin saying "Yes." Now, what are the questions?

Plug in, turn on, and feel the noise at the Headphone Fest

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Yep, it’s that time of year again – time to break out the old headphones and plug into some experimento sounds at [:]PLUG3[:], San Francisco’s third annual Global Headphone Festival. Expect the transmission of 48 live local performances, in conjunction with the tenth annual International Headphone Festival, Le Placard X, a self-organized, nonstop streaming, migrating “interaural” experiment.

Organizers advise you to BYOH or bring your own headphones to the event running Sat., Oct. 13, to Sun., Oct. 14, 1 p.m.-1 a.m. both days., at the Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. $5 sliding scale. (415) 864-8855.

Performers include:
100S OF DISMEMBERED HANDBAGS
666GANGSTAZ
ANTHONY MARIN
BEATLE
BEYTAH
BLUE VITRIOL
BLOODY SNOWMAN
CATSYNTH
CONRAD LEWBEL
CYPOD
DELETIST
DOUBLE VISION
DUD
FILTHMILK
FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN
GATHER THE BONES (trance viola drone)
HALCYON HIGH
HEADBOGGLE
HEARTWORM
HORAFLORA
JUSTINO
LANCE GRABMILLER
LES TROIS FEUILLES / 3 LEAFS
LNA
LX RUDIS
MAGNANIMOUS
MATT DAVIGNON
MNEMOTH (black noise)
MOISTURE
MY HELICAL ELK
NOMMO OGO
NO NO SPOT
OZMADAWN (sci-fi noise drone)
PAGAN/PRESLEY (electronic improvisation)
PATRICE SCANLON
PISTOLS WILL AIR
PU22L3
RASTER ROOBIT (strings & pedals)
RESPECTABLE CITIZEN
SAKANA
SLITHER SYNDICATE
SOUNDTRACK FOR A MOVIE ABOUT A DREAM ABOUT NOTHING
TROY BYKER (ambient/experimental)
TELEPATHIK FRIEND
TULLAN VELTE
WELDSCHMERTZ (dual cello drones by members of FILTHMILK + DELETIST)
WESTERN ADDITION
ZENTROPIA

The Living Word

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By Amber Peckham

lwf.jpg

When I heard the phrase “Living Word Festival” my first instinct was to think of some sort of religious revival in the back woods somewhere, with white robes and bathing in the river and people dancing with snakes. I was very far wrong, as any informed cultural citizen of the Bay probably already knows.

The Living Word Festival is a series of events that began on October 6 and ends on November 3. These events are taking place on both sides of the Bay, in all forums and flavors, from a day long discussion, concert, and dance battle tonight, Oct. 12 at Yerba Buena Gardens to the return of internationally acclaimed theater piece Scourge, which began its tour in San Francisco and will return as one of the key closing events for the festival in November. A full listing of events is available at the website of the event’s sponsor, Youth Speaks.

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Scourge

Youth Speaks is an organization that originated in San Francisco with the goal of providing youth the ability to express themselves through all forms of media, a goal that is evident in the vibrant showcase of events the festival is offering. And even though they aren’t dancing in the woods with snakes — there is much more class here — there is a spirituality to their mission and in their events, a desire to express, to connect, and ultimately, to enact positive change through culture.

My favorite part about this whole event is the way the invitation is signed — “With A Radical Acceptance and Abundance”. To me, that is exactly what this event, with the theme of “Traditions in Transition”, embodies; a celebration of the state of flux our society is in, and a promise for acceptance, whatever your story may be.

Youth Speaks Presents: The Living Word Festival
Curated by the Living Word Project
under the direction of Marc Bamuthi Joseph
contemporary urban poetry/ dance/theater/funk/hip-hop

Oct 6- Nov 3, 2007
Events vary in price and age restriction.
www.youthspeaks.org

To market

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What better way to start your day than a trip to the farmers market — the ripe colors, local flavors, and fantastic people-watching give new meaning to dish. Operated by the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market showcases overflowing stalls full of fresh regional produce every Tuesday and Saturday at the eminently cool Ferry Building off the Embarcadero. It’s a veritable Bay Area Eden. Grab your reusable canvas bag and sashay through the thronging crowds in style.

Every year, CUESA spotlights the market’s regional organic goods at a fundraising four-course Sunday dinner prepared by teams of Bay Area chefs. The following mouthwatering recipes made it to the tables at the Sept. 30 event:

SAUTÉED CHARD AND KALE


Recipe by Joseph Boness, Alembic

2 strips bacon, coarsely chopped (you can substitute 2 tablespoons olive oil or unsalted butter)

1–2 shallots, minced (or onion; should total 2 tablespoons)

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup white wine

Salt and pepper to taste

1 bunch kale, center stalks removed, rinsed and drained well, coarsely chopped

1 bunch chard, center stalks removed, rinsed and drained well, coarsely chopped

1 baguette, sliced 1/4–1/2 inch thick, drizzled with olive oil and toasted until golden brown (optional)

1/2 cup goat cheese (optional)

In a large, heavy-bottomed sauté pan over medium heat, cook the bacon until most of the fat is rendered. Add the shallot and sauté in bacon fat until soft.

Add the garlic to pan and then immediately add the vinegar and wine, along with salt and pepper to taste.

Shake pan to combine flavors, turn down heat, and add the kale and chard.

Stir and cook until the greens are just tender. Remove from heat to serving bowl. Serve immediately. Or, if serving as crostini, top each piece of sliced, toasted bread with some of the greens mixture and a dollop of goat cheese. Serve.

RABBIT WITH BALSAMIC VINEGAR WITH A SIDE DISH
OF GREEN BEANS AND CHERRY TOMATOES


Recipe by Rick Hackett, executive chef of MarketBar Restaurant

Yields 4 generous servings

For the rabbit with balsamic vinegar:

4 tablespoons olive oil

5 rabbit legs

3/4 cup white wine

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons capers

1/2 cup black olives

2 anchovy fillets

1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

In a heavy-bottomed pan large enough to hold all of the ingredients, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Sear the rabbit legs until they are nicely browned, working in batches if you need to so as not to crowd them.

Add the wine and balsamic vinegar, scraping the pan to get the browned bits off the bottom. Turn heat down to medium and cook until liquid is reduced to a glaze.

Add the remaining ingredients and simmer over medium to low heat until the rabbit legs are tender, about 1 hour. Serve immediately.

For the green beans and cherry tomatoes:

1/2 lb. pole beans, blanched

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1/2 lb. cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped

Slowly heat the olive oil with the sliced garlic until the garlic turns a golden color. Add the cherry tomatoes and blanched pole beans until warm. Add parsley and serve.

WARREN PEAR SORBET


From Rebecca Courchesne, Frog Hollow Farms

2 lbs. pears, Warren or Comice or Taylor Gold

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)

1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup (or to taste) Tocai Friulano or muscat wine

Peel, core, and cut the pears into quarters. In a saucepan with barely simmering water, heat the pears until soft. (Cooking the pears before pureeing will keep them from oxidizing and will make for a whiter, lighter sorbet.)

Let cool. Puree the pears and the liquid in a food processor. Remove 1/4 cup of the puree and add 1/2 cup sugar in a small saucepan. Stir together completely, and then heat over low flame until the sugar is dissolved. Stir back into the remaining puree and add lemon juice and adjust sugar by adding sugar directly to the base. Add more lemon juice if needed.

Add Tocai or muscat wine. Chill thoroughly, and then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Best to use a soft pear, like a Warren or Comice or Taylor Gold (which is a Comice hybrid). A Tocai will work best here, but a muscat will do also. You could even try a sparkling wine. I recommend something sweet. The Ferry Building wine merchant recommended a Tocai that worked beautifully. Although that particular wine is not available, they or another knowledgeable wine merchant could help you find the perfect match.

MUSCAT GRAPESICLES


Find golden muscat or other sweet muscat wine grapes from the farmers market or from your own or a neighbor’s yard. Make sure they are gold in color, nice and ripe.

Wash, destem, and put in a small shallow container. Freeze (don’t worry — they won’t stick together when frozen).

You can use any grape for this, but the muscats work particularly well. The skin and seeds are a nice foil to the incredible sweetness of the grape and add an earthy texture.

Fashion en-CAPSULE-ated

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By Amber Peckham

If you were inspired by the cool and quirky products in our Style insert this week, make sure you take a few hours to check out the CAPSULE Design Festival this Sunday in Hayes Valley (all around the Hayes Valley Green). Around 140 Bay Area and West Coast designers will be there, all independent, all unique, and all chic.

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Mediums To Masses

This showcase of Bay Area creativity goes above and beyond the normal street fair fare, offering everything from Hilary Williams’s handmade stuffed toys made from scrap fabric to the meticulously crafted tablewares of Mediums to Masses. (And of course, waaaay too much adorable clothing and jewelry to even begin to mention.) Whatever your tastes or price range, there is sure to be at least one must-have in the two block spread of style, and a complete list of the designers who will be there is on the event’s website, with each named handily linked to an information page. If you intend to go check it out, it might be wise to scout out your favorites ahead of time, as odds are the products will be going fast—over 6000 people are expected to attend.

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Creepy? Doll from Hilary Williams

CAPSULE Design Festival
Sunday, October 14, 2007
11:00 am-6:00 pm
Hayes Valley Green
Octavia and Hayes Streets, SF
www.capsulesf.com

Newsom and the chickens

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The chickens were back last night, come home to roost in front of Dede Wilsey’s (the swell’s chicken-in-chief) house, where she helped Mayor Gavin Newsom by hosting a fundraiser to stop Question Time from becoming enforceable law through Prop. E. Fun stuff, but the real fun comes tomorrow night when Newsom tries to shake his chicken image by finally debating the dozen candidates who are running against him, including Chicken John. The League of Women Voters event starts at 6 p.m. in Koret Auditorium at the main library, but seeing as this is the only debate Newsom has agreed to (insert clucking sounds here), attendees are advised to arrive early because it’s expected to be a capacity crowd.
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Photos by Patrick Roddie, webbery.com

Scavenging’s new spirit

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› culture@sfbg.com

>>Click here to check out our Style 2007 Guide

It’s a warm September night, and I’m standing in a crowded art gallery in South San Francisco, staring at a metal octopus that moves its tentacles when you press a button. In many ways, it’s like every other reception I’ve been to: a table with snacks and wine, a healthy feeling of snobbery in the air, and a swath of hipsters blocking my view of everything. But as I walk around I notice some differences. The smell of decomposing flesh, the sound of heavy machinery, the walk-in "free shed," dozens of trash cans, and the mounds of refuse on the horizon all suggest that I’m standing in the middle of a landfill. Which, well, I am. It’s the site of the art exhibition "Waste Deep," by Nemo Gould, the San Francisco Dump’s artist in residence. And what’s most striking? I feel completely at home.

After spending most of September with junk collectors, vintage clothing nerds, and art diggers, I’m now completely accustomed to wallowing in trash and noticing freebies. For example, before driving to the SF Dump this evening I ate free baked goods at the X-rated Cake Gallery in SoMa, scrounged through leftovers at an estate sale in Bernal Heights, and knocked back pints of free Pabst at Broken Record in the Excelsior.

Yes, friends, I have become a bona fide freeloader. But like my newfound partners in grime I shun the connotations of the term. I choose instead to see myself as a sort of hip cultural revolutionary, one of the loose band of entrepreneurs and artists I’ve met over the past month who shamelessly revel in their personal gain because, at the end of the day, they know they’re "working" for a good cause. Not only are we getting a lot of cool free shit, but we’re also helping to transform the traditional hippy-dippy recycle-reuse-redistribute ethos into something more refreshing.

The freestyle movement is growing. Freeganism, a ragtag philosophy of cost-free living in a gift economy, has gained some national attention of late — especially in these economically challenging times — and the freegan ethos incubated in San Francisco, where groups like the Diggers gave away food during the ’60s. This city knows a thing or two about priceless give-and-take. And thanks to the freegan types I’ve been hanging out with, I now look at scavenging as an art form, a party, and a necessary lifestyle, one that has more to do with fashion, art, music, booze, and friendly competition than with fighting world hunger, globalization, or the war machine. Oh, most scavengers are concerned with all of that too, but creating awareness (about irresponsible consumption and the effects of wastefulness on the environment and humanity) is the fortunate by-product of the lifestyle, rather than its focus — which is, of course, copping free stuff.

THRIFTY EYE FOR THE HIP GUY


My journey from a life spent paying to consume to one consumed by the pursuit of freebies began two years ago, when I moved into a new building in the Mission. My neighbor was Aaron Schirmer — a reclusive artist who lives in a world of secondhand designer denim, seminew Macintosh computers, and used sound systems — whom I’d occasionally run into on my way to buy cigarettes and Jim Beam. Usually we’d smile and nod. But one day while he sat smoking on the stoop, he flagged me down. "Check out what I found today," he said.

At his side sat a large bag of American Apparel man panties and a crate of old-school electro cassettes. When I asked where they’d come from, he rambled on about free markets, dumpsters, and swap meets. Then he stopped abruptly, fished for the keys to his house, and said, "Here, I’ll show you."

I followed him into a hallway lined with half-finished paintings and strategically cracked mirrors, through a ’50s-style kitchen, and into his living room. In the corner, beneath a dangling gold and green Eames-style lamp, sat a 50-inch color television. His bedroom walls were lined with random bric-a-brac and outsider art, and his couch was a row of velvet-lined theater seats. Schirmer spread his arms and did his best Vanna White. "Here it is," he said. "I found all of this shit on the streets. People leave piles everywhere, and I just roam around all day and pick through them."

I quickly fell into a routine with Schirmer, a retired world-traveling DJ who now spends his days spinning rare records, tending his garden, and scavenging. I would come over to his house after work, crack a beer, and check out his finds, occasionally claiming certain items for myself. We’d then scroll through the Free section on Craigslist to devise a tentative map for the following day’s scavenge. I rarely had time to join him on his daily hunts, but I quickly learned that the free pot is virtually bottomless. And I was hooked.

These days I roam the neighborhood (corporate dumpsters are always a good bet) or scour the Internet anytime I need something. On my most recent search I found a stuffed bunny, a six-foot-tall stack of records, a pair of cowboy boots, and — I shit you not — Sharon Stone’s old couch. But I’m no expert. Anyone can search a Web site, but it takes a true connoisseur, someone like Kelly Malone, to build a business from scavenging.

FREE-MARKET ECONOMY


Malone, cofounder of the Mission Indie Mart, spent 10 years climbing the retail ladder at places like the Gap and Limited until she worked her way up to a glamorous life as a traveling designer. But then tragedy struck — in the form of ovarian cancer and its debilitating treatment process — and she had to quit. After spending the first few days of her indefinite vacation watching television, drinking too much at the Phone Booth, and watching old movies, she decided to revisit an old hobby: scavenging. "I just started over and kept positive," Malone said. "When I wasn’t sick from the chemo, I was trash-picking for cool stuff to sew and reconstruct." Malone began meticulously scouring estate sales, flea markets, and garage sales for that perfect owl clock or a one-of-a-kind sundress. She also got into interior and exterior design, grabbing spare paint and building materials off the streets, then enlisting her friends to help construct a backyard oasis.

Soon, though, Malone’s home had morphed into a retro junk museum. Her backyard was now dotted with old benches, barbecue grills, sculptures, and a sound system. Clothes were spilling out all over the place, and she had enough paint to cover a mansion. It was time to expand.

Malone began taking her stuff down to the flea market in South San Francisco. She set up a booth with music and goodies, offered free beer and hot dogs to friends, and spent whole weekends selling dolled-up vintage goods and making friends with others who did the same. It was there that she struck up a business relationship with Charles Hurbert, a public relations representative at a marketing firm who has a penchant for outsider art and found fashion. Soon Malone and Hurbert combined forces and decided to look beyond sanctioned venues. Malone’s backyard beckoned. The Mission Indie Mart was born.

The first mart went off without a hitch. Malone and Hurbert invited swap meet–interested friends to set up booths in Malone’s backyard. Cheapo flyers were designed, beer was purchased and resold at cost, and reimagined found apparel was offered for sale. It was a thrifty one-off that felt like an illegal rave, and people loved it. Mission District locals swarmed Malone’s backyard and nearly bought up her entire inventory. When she held it again the next month, the mart was even more successful and attracted more people — so many that her landlord threatened to evict her. So Malone sought sponsors and a new venue. The next Mission Indie Mart will be at 12 Galaxies and will feature a set by DJ Lovedust, extremely cheap Stella Artois, and an even bigger collection of vendors.

The mart’s success suggests that this model benefits its founders, who make some income from the event, and attendees, who get cheap goods, as much as it does San Francisco’s thriving community of independent designers, vintage-clothing dealers, and the recycling-scavenging movement in general. Malone and Hurbert are proving again that with a little effort and creativity, free shit can be turned into gold.

FRUGAL PHILANTHROPY


That’s also what Jason Lewis and Monica Hernandez, the founders of SwapSF, are doing at CELLspace — but for them the party and the product are more important than the money.

The couple started SwapSF a few years ago as a way to poach their friends’ unwanted apparel. "I had this friend who owned like a million pairs of limited-edition sneakers that he never wore," Lewis said. "The swap idea started as a way for me to get my hands on some of them." So Hernandez and Lewis, who have been throwing events since they met at a party five years ago, did what came naturally: they drew up a flyer, bought a bunch of cheap beer and pizza, and invited their friends to get down.

The idea has taken off, as I witnessed Sept. 22 when I threw a few shirts, a pair of pants, and some old hats in a bag and pedaled down to Bryant and 18th Street to volunteer at their recent event, the Most Hyperbolically Stupendous Clothing Swap Ever. It was to be a win-win situation: a little time in exchange for first dibs at free clothes. I arrived at CELLspace at 11 a.m. to find a DJ spinning downtempo hip-hop, a handful of kids sorting through bags, and Hernandez, who greeted me with a smile, a name badge, and a beer. I’d envisioned spending a leisurely afternoon sipping beer provided by Trumer Pilsner (the event sponsor) with about a hundred other scavengers, and the day seemed to be turning out that way.

But neither I nor the organizers were quite prepared for the four-hour clusterfuck that awaited us. Soon the volunteers were drowning in a mile-high volcano of pants, shirts, scarves, and underwear. By noon, the event’s official start time, a line wound around 19th Street. At 12:30 p.m. the place was packed. It was as if every hipster in the Mission had gotten wind of an opportunity for free music, beer, and dancing and had gathered up their unwanted clothes to join the party — a party that happened to result in free clothing for charity organizations like A Woman’s Place, the AIDS Emergency Fund, and San Francisco General Hospital.

FREE YOUR MIND


Since starting in Lewis and Hernandez’s apartment and then relocating, the SwapSF event has become so popular that it’s getting hard to handle. Even the duo have been surprised by its sudden and exponential growth. It seems that by using sarcastic graphic design on their flyers, guerrilla promotion techniques (word of mouth, stickers, blogs, etc.), and a refrigerator full of beer, Hernandez and Lewis have tapped into a new way to market charity events to a community of self-obsessed hipsters. Like Malone, the SwapSF duo see something wrong with the way our culture consumes and wastes, but they’re reluctant to jump on a soapbox — or even stand close to one.

Which may be why their parties have been garnering more attention and support than have the more traditional free markets that have been held across the nation for years. Malone and her contemporaries are creating awareness with no pretenses, no preaching, and no Hacky Sack–playing hippies. They are nurturing a world of gift exchange that speaks to a new generation of recyclers who enjoy the selfish thrills of scoring, a good party, and daytime drinking more than — or at least as much as — the satisfaction people find in collective self-sacrifice and charity.

Even San Francisco Dump artist Nemo Gould isn’t making his garbage art purely, or even mostly, as a political statement. "By virtue of it being made out of garbage, my art does make a statement about waste and overconsumption," Gould said. "But that’s not what it’s really about." Although Gould sees the danger in the complex environmental situations that create places like the SF Dump, his desire to work there had more to do with personal satisfaction than with changing the world. The dump’s Artist in Residence Program offers one of the most coveted positions in the city because it guarantees lifelong access to free garbage.

"There’s a scavenger spirit," Gould said. "Whoever has it is compelled to collect. Whatever comes after that is up to the scavenger."

The scavenger spirit is currently creating a subculture. Like skateboarders who view the city’s byways as a concrete playground, the new breed of scavengers looks at the urban environment from a different perspective. In their eyes the streets of San Francisco are aisles in a seven-mile-by-seven-mile warehouse of free shit. Their primary goal is to decorate their homes with one-of-a-kind furniture, dress their bodies in fly gear, and pad their pocketbooks, all while avoiding overdraft charges and, on the side, helping to generate awareness. In their separate and edgy styles, Gould, Malone, Hernandez, Lewis, and Schirmer have managed to turn this spirit into a lifestyle that doesn’t alienate people with its self-righteousness. I mean, everyone wants free shit, right? Who can’t relate to that?

THE (FREE) SHIT LIST

There’s a fine line between scavenging to make a statement and being a straight-up freeloader. Luckily, it’s up to the individual to decide exactly where that line is drawn. Here are some resources for learning more about the score.

FREEGAN.INFO


Information about strategies for sustainable living beyond capitalism; includes freegan hot spots in San Francisco.

freegan.info/?page=SanFrancisco

REALLY, REALLY FREE MARKET


A monthly alternate-economy festival and a really good place to get rid of your old stuff.

www.reallyreallyfree.org

MISSION INDIE MART


Kelly Malone and Charles Hurbert’s unique party take on the freegan ethos.

www.myspace.com/missionindiemart

SWAPSF


Jason Lewis and Monica Hernandez’s fabulous swap bonanza.

www.swapsf.com

MYOPENBAR.COM


A list of every open bar, happy hour, and extremely cheap alcohol event in the city.

sf.myopenbar.com

GOING.COM


A cross between MySpace and Yelp that focuses entirely on events, including a free section featuring happy hours, art openings, and concert ticket giveaways.

www.going.com

SAN FRANCISCO DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT


Official city site for recycling, disposal, and reuse information.

www.sfenvironment.org

SAN FRANCISCO DUMP


Learn about our city’s unique take on garbage and strategies for recycling.

www.sunsetscavenger.com

SCRAPEDEN SF


An art foundation dedicated to transforming trash into interactive public sculptures.

www.blackrockarts.org/projects/scrapeden-sf

ARTGOODHITLERBAD


Mission Indie Mart cofounder Hurbert blogs his best scavenger finds.

www.artgoodhitlerbad.com

NEMO GOULD


The latest artist in residence at the SF Dump has been making cool stuff from garbage for years.

www.nemomatic.com

The price of the sweeps

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› amanda@sfbg.com

The number of homeless individuals slapped with quality-of-life citations and the cost to the city of processing those citations reached new highs in the past 14 months, according to a study released by Religious Witness with Homeless People. San Francisco taxpayers have paid more than $2 million for more than 15,000 citations issued to people for crimes committed because they have no place to live.

"The quality-of-life citation … begins an extremely expensive process," said Michael Bien, a lawyer on the steering committee of Religious Witness, an interfaith activist group started in 1993 by Sister Bernie Galvin.

The study, released at an Oct. 4 press conference, was based on documents provided by various city departments. The authors collated the costs from the initial ticket issued by a cop through the entire court process, including the new price of prosecution by the District Attorney’s Office (see "The Crime of Being Homeless," 10/3/07).

The results are an update of a similar survey conducted last year (see "Homeless Disconnect," 9/5/06). Collectively, the two studies found that a total of 46,684 citations have been issued to homeless people, at a cost of more than $7.8 million, since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office.

But the mayor might not want you to know that. While Religious Witness was unveiling the study at a press conference in the South Light Court of City Hall, the mayor was hosting a simultaneous event about his heavily promoted Care Not Cash program, which provides homeless people with services and housing instead of the money they once received through the County Adult Assistance Program.

"What really bothers me," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told the crowd gathered to hear Religious Witness, "is that we learn at the last minute that Mayor Newsom decides to have a press conference at the exact same time. To me, that couldn’t be more base and exhibitive of bad form … to try and upstage a press conference like this." He said the mayor’s administration should be working with organizations like Religious Witness, not competing against them.

NEWSOM WON’T MEET


Galvin expressed dismay that the mayor chose not to attend, on top of scheduling a competing press conference on the issue of homelessness. "We’ve never had a press conference where we didn’t have full press coverage," Galvin said.

"We’ve been trying to meet with Mayor Newsom since the day he took office," Bien said. "He hasn’t even given us the dignity of a response."

Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard, said he knew nothing about the event until he returned from his boss’s fete at the Pierre Hotel, a single-room-occupancy hotel on Jones Street that houses some Care Not Cash recipients. He denied any intention to detract attention from Religious Witness’s study. "I chose to do this a couple of weeks ago. There’s no deep, dark conspiracy," Ballard said. The day was chosen to announce that Care Not Cash had "reached a significant milestone of housing over 2,000 formerly homeless individuals," according to a press release.

Actually, the Care Not Cash program exceeded the 2,000 mark in August, according to statistics posted on the mayor’s Web site.

This is not the first time the mayor has scheduled a competing press conference. In June, on the same day the Board of Supervisors passed the city’s Community Choice Aggregation plan for more city-owned renewable energy, the mayor announced a new partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric Co., to study tidal power (see "Turning the Tides," 6/27/07).

Religious Witness chose Oct. 4 to release the study results because it’s the Feast of St. Francis, a day celebrating the city’s patron saint, "a man known to have enormous compassion," Father Louie Vitale explained. "Does the mayor have compassion fatigue?" he wondered aloud.

The decisions about where a city spends money speak volumes about its values. "Every budget is a moral document," said John Fitzgerald, who enumerated many other uses to which the $2 million could have gone, from placing 1,028 people in three-month residential drug treatment to five new drop-in mental health clinics, 157 new caseworkers, or 10,230 preventable evictions.

THE NEW MATRIX


Sup. Chris Daly, who attended but did not sponsor the Religious Witness press conference, said, "Not only is the use of police to target homeless people uncompassionate and inhumane, but it’s also ineffective." He recalled the first Religious Witness press conference, which denounced then-mayor Frank Jordan’s Matrix program, which teamed police officers with social workers to remove homeless people from Union Square and later Golden Gate Park. That program was deemed a failure because it criminalized homeless people and alienated them from helpful services by teaming outreach workers with law enforcement.

"We’re repeating a policy that we know is a failure," Daly said. "It’s a complete lack of compassion."

Recently Daly made public a memo he obtained from the mayor’s office through a public records request. The document outlined a new "downtown outreach plan," similar in sound and structure to Jordan’s Matrix. In a Sept. 28 Weekly Report to Newsom’s chief of staff, Phil Ginsburg, deputy chief of staff Julian Potter wrote, "The pilot program includes three separate teams of officers and social service staff that work a 15-block area" in two separate shifts patrolling the SoMa district. "In each of the three teams an officer will work in tandem with two social service representatives. Any person committing a crime (littering, encampment, trespassing, urinating, defecating, dumping, blocking sidewalk, intoxication, etc.) will be asked to cease the behavior and enter into services. If the individual resists services the officer will issue a citation."

Though it’s reminiscent of the approach that Jordan advocated, both the Operation Outreach team, made of police officers who typically interface with homeless people, and the Homeless Outreach Team, operated by the Department of Human Services, have denied they would accept the approach as Potter penned it.

"I have to be very emphatic," said Dr. Rajesh Parekh, director of HOT. "We are not going to be teamed up with police officers." Though police officers often refer HOT to specific people, he said recent news reports are inaccurate and "in the interest of our clients we’ve never done shoulder-to-shoulder work."

Lt. David Lazar, who heads the San Francisco Police Department’s Operation Outreach, agreed that his officers won’t walk in lockstep with the doctors and social workers who are offering services. But the line can get a little fuzzy: "We’re there at the same time, but we’re not necessarily together," he said. "We’re separate in our approach."

"Basically what the memo is proposing is illegally arresting people," Jenny Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told us.

Under state law, people can’t be taken into custody for infractions like urination and littering. But camping illegally can be considered a misdemeanor, and a citation could eventually lead to an arrest and a jury trial. Prosecuting and imprisoning people is far more expensive than providing shelter.

While some see the coupling of enforcement with services as a way to encourage more people to get help, others contend it’s not a simple equation.

"I think some people are not always able to say yes the first time we do outreach with them," Parekh said. "I’m hoping that as time goes on we’ll be able to persuade them. It’s an ongoing process. It’s not a one-time thing." He said more than half of the help offered is accepted in some form, but it can take as many as 20 attempts to win over what amounts to a small number of people who require persuasion.

Representatives from the Coalition on Homelessness on Oct. 4 witnessed the first of the SoMa sweeps, or "displacements," as they’re more kindly called, and confirmed that the cops and service providers had some distance between them.

"That’s what they did during the first month of Matrix," Daly said to the Guardian. "That will change over time."

In the meantime, the supervisor has reintroduced a $5 million allocation for supportive housing for homeless people that was passed by the board last spring but defunded by Newsom.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The Blue Angels buzzed the Castro Street Fair on Oct. 7, one of the planes missing the top of Twin Peaks by what looked like a few feet. And almost nobody seemed to notice.

The roar of the jets couldn’t possibly compete with the energy onstage, where Cookie Dough and the Monster Show were acting out a Wizard of Oz sketch to the sounds of "Boogie Oogie Oogie." I only saw one guy in the crowd even looking up, and he was just kind of shaking his head. Sailors are, of course, always popular in the Castro, but the United States Navy really isn’t.

A former Naval officer I know understands exactly why. She was drummed out years ago; the Naval Investigative Service followed her to a lesbian bar in New Orleans, and suddenly a talented and successful ensign who had just been promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) was tossed ashore, all benefits lost. She can joke about it now, but she’s still pissed.

The crazy thing of it all, she tells me, is that the Navy is "by far the gayest of all the services, and everyone knows it." If even this one branch just gave up the pretense and allowed queers to serve openly, she says, Fleet Week would take on a whole new meaning in San Francisco. But that’s not the only issue with Fleet Week, obviously. Like a lot of people in this town (and much of the queer community), I’m not terribly into the military, and I don’t like turning San Francisco into a giant, expensive recruitment ad. Besides, as we used to say about nuclear weapons, one Blue Angel can ruin your whole day: a few feet lower, a tiny mistake, and that F-A/18 flying toward Twin Peaks loaded with explosive jet fuel could have taken out hundreds of homes, killed thousands of people. It’s not as if it doesn’t happen; twice in the past year members of the Navy’s expert precision flying team have crashed.

There’s also the fact that this is a city overwhelmingly opposed to the war and to military adventurism in general. San Francisco’s idea of supporting the troops is bringing them home and giving them honorable discharges, medical care, and education benefits.

I’m always astonished that more local political leaders don’t just come out and say that. In fact, I’m astonished (although I probably shouldn’t be) that Mayor Gavin Newsom and Rep. Nancy Pelosi act as if Fleet Week is a wonderful San Francisco event, with no mention of the issues involved.

In fact, on June 11, after Sup. Chris Daly tried to ground the Blue Angels, Newsom wrote directly to David Winter, the secretary of the Navy, rolling out the red carpet. "My office and the community could not be more supportive of the Navy and their representatives, the Blue Angels," he wrote.

Nothing from Mr. Same-Sex Marriage about don’t ask, don’t tell. Nothing about the war. Nothing about San Francisco’s long and noble history as a center of the peace movement. Just praise for military might. He’s sounding a lot like Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

And by the way, on the contradictions beat: San Francisco is poised to give a huge, lucrative contract to Clear Channel Communications, one of the worst corporations in the country. Labor leaders are pissed, and they should be. I wonder: If there’s a lot of money to be made selling ads on bus shelters, why doesn’t the city just run the program itself? Why share the profits with the likes of Clear Channel?

Green City: PG&E’s two faces

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY If Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is really working to become "the nation’s greenest utility," as it claims, why is it opposing more renewable energy in California? Pending legislation — which PG&E opposes — would require a larger percentage of the state’s energy to be produced from renewable resources by 2020.

The fact that PG&E is against Senate Bill 411 doesn’t jibe with its self-proclaimed goal of going green. Current law — established as the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) — requires investor-owned utilities like PG&E to procure at least 20 percent of their energy from renewable resources by the end of 2010. SB 411 would increase the amount of required renewable energy to 33 percent by 2020. It makes sense that a green-aspiring company would want to support renewable-energy generation, right?

Yet PG&E is struggling to meet the current deadline of 20 percent by 2010, as the Guardian reported in "Green Isn’t PG&E" (4/18/07) and San Francisco Chronicle business reporter David R. Baker wrote Sept. 27. By way of explanation, Baker wrote, "California currently doesn’t have enough windmills, solar panels, and geothermal fields to do the job."

Jim Metropulos, legislative representative for Sierra Club California, told us the issue is one not of resources but of priorities. "PG&E has continued to make investments in fossil-fuel generation while not investing as much as they should in renewables." In other words, PG&E is in danger of not meeting the RPS deadline — and actively opposing more renewable energy generation in our state — because it’s been choosing to put its money elsewhere (such as front-page "Green is …" ads in the Chronicle and other campaigns to greenwash its image and fight public power).

PG&E did not return our phone calls seeking comment, but the "opposition argument" against SB 411 listed on the California Senate Web site reads, in part, "Opponents argue the bill … eliminates opportunities for utilities to identify potentially less costly means of meeting requirements."

This is a seemingly innocuous sentence, but it brings to mind another piece of pending legislation, Assembly Bill 809, that is currently on the governor’s desk, awaiting his signature. This bill would enable utilities to meet the current requirement of 20 percent by 2010 by changing the legal definition of renewable energy. AB 809 would effectively dilute the definition of renewable and give investor-owned utilities renewable credit for power generated by environmentally destructive large dams.

Under current law, hydroelectric plants that produce fewer than 30 megawatts meet the standards of renewable. AB 809 would extend the definition of renewable to include larger hydro plants that implement "efficiency improvements."

Instead of investing in legitimately sustainable means of producing energy, PG&E seeks to water down the standards and gain RPS credit for already existing hydroelectric plants. Nice way to cut costs, eh? As Metropulos puts it, "PG&E supports AB 809 since they get a lot of power from hydro."

Again, the question at hand is: if PG&E is seeking the title of "the nation’s greenest utility," why is it working against green energy in California?

Aliza Wasserman of Green Guerrillas Against Green Washing said the answer is simple: "Their actions are blatantly hypocritical." She sees PG&E as a duplicitous entity, pandering to the public with its "Let’s green this city" marketing blitz while simultaneously lobbying against renewable energy.

Wasserman notes that while PG&E is touting itself as a friend of the environment and sponsoring "every environmental event and organization in town to appear green," it only generates 1 percent of its energy from solar and less than 2 percent from wind. Comparatively, 24 percent of its energy is from nuclear generation, an energy source that produces toxic by-products and harms aquatic ecosystems.

SB 411 comes up for vote again in January 2008, pending a feasibility report by the California Energy Commission. "This is a critical moment in history," Wasserman says. "Are our legislators going to sell out or step up?"

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Meet the Candidates: Chicken John Rinaldi

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The Bay Guardian is interviewing the candidates for the 2007 elections. Unfortunately, our tape recorder crapped out during our hilarious interview with Chicken John, so we can only offer his info below. We’ll be updating this entry as more information comes in. Post your thoughts or comments below.

Chicken John Rinaldi

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Chicken John asked us to endorse him for second place. When asked if his campaign was akin to a hamster running on a wheel, Rinaldi elaborated on the twin issues that he holds dear to his heart — art and innovation — by talking about innovative ways to streamline the current complexities that artists, performers, and others must face when trying to get a permit to put on an event in San Francisco.

“I’m running for the idea of San Francisco,” Rinaldi told us, and claims to be painting a campaign logo in the style of a mural on the side of his warehouse in the Mission district. “It’s going to say, ‘Chicken, it’s what’s for Mayor,’ or ‘Chicken, the other white Mayor,” Rinaldi said.

Click here for Chicken John’s video blog

http://voteforchicken.com

Visit the Guardian 2007 Election Center for updates, more interviews, and 2007 election news.

Girl power – with goodies!

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By Soo Oh

Every year in September, Girls Incorporated holds its Women of Taste event at the terraced gardens of Oakland Museum to support young girls in Alameda County, encouraging them to be “strong, smart, and bold.” It doesn’t hurt to be a patron (matron?) to the cause when it involves three levels of catered food from Bay Area restaurants on a slightly breezy Saturday night in the East Bay.

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