garbage

Religious Girls want to believe

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Experimental Oakland band Religious Girls released new album I Want to Believe today (well, technically this morning at midnight) – and it’s free for download until the witching hour. After that, even the band is unsure of what the cost will be – they’re still looking for a label to release it. Suffice to say, you should check it today.

Full disclosure: I was slipped the file early, and having been freaking out about it for the past week. As the X-Files-referenced name implies, it’s a hazy, eerie explosion of a record, all tribal drumming and swelling screams – perfect for extraterrestrial hunting in a misty forest, or Flukeman crushing.

Listen to a track after the jump.


It’s all very familiar, in a sick, twisted world way. Even the font used for the band name looks like some gloopy neon green 1990s reference, something out of Garbage Pail Kids or Aaahh!!! Real Monsters or Nickelodeon’s slime, or something more sinister. And here’s the trippy blog post about it.

The band’s next SF show is Sept. 30 at Public Works.

 

Homeless camp raided

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California Highway Patrol police, San Francisco police, Cal Trans workers, Department of Public Works, and workers from the mayor’s Homeless Outreach Team descended today on an encampment on Fourth and King.

Yesterday, 40-50 people lived on the sidewalk and under the freeway overpass next to the Caltrain tracks. The encampment had tents, mobile units, and other makeshift housing. One group of residents had a large tent with a well-maintained garden in the front yard.

Another, a woman who several residents said suffered from mental illness, had built a home out of metal that looked like parts of carts, wood, sheets and mattresses. After about four hours this morning, most other residents were moved out of the camp, but she remained, moving and packing suitcases. After Homeless Outreach Team members, police, workers, and humanitarian volunteers approached her, she took a single suitcase and walked to the sidewalk, then sat and watched as her other suitcases, mattresses, and the structures that constituted her house were thrown into a garbage truck.

The eviction began around 8am. Some residents said they were told they could take with them only what they could carry or, if they had something wheeled like a shopping or bike cart, what they could push. Others said they hadn’t been told one way or another what they could take, just that they had to get out.
 
The items in the dump trucks, said CHP Officer Sarah Wrathall, is “the stuff they said they don’t want.” Wrathall said people were given the chance to keep whatever they wanted to, and that items they wanted to keep but could not carry would be stored and tagged for retrieval later.

Jamie Crisco, a resident of the camp who was moving out, said that this was an unusual eviction. “There isn’t usually this dog and pony show,” said Crisco. A large amount of media was present at the eviction.

“Usually they will tell people to get out, and people will start packing. And in the process the workers will come and start taking stuff and throwing it away,” said Crisco, a veteran who had been living in a small trailer for a year.

“I don’t understand that,” added Crisco. “You’re creating a criminal element when you do that. You’re putting people in a position where they have to steal to acquire what just got taken from them.”

According to John Gallagher, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness who did outreach at the encampment before it was evicted, trash was pushed safely to the side and the camp was clean and peaceful before this morning’s “clean up.”

“We’re respectful, we’re quiet. Honestly, we keep this area cleaner than they ever could dream to,” agreed one person who was staying in the camp.

Wrathall described a very different situation, saying that the area under the overpass had amassed trash, waste and rats.

She said that the eviction was based on complaints from neighbors and other residents.

“People have a right to complain if they can’t walk down the sidewalk to get to Caltrain,” said Wrathall. She said that some people feared the dogs that lived in the camp.

She said illegal lodging and trespassing was reason enough to evict the camp’s residents. “It doesn’t have to be any other kind of crime.”

No citations were issued this morning.

Camp resident Margaret Stallings said that the camp was very peaceful and neighbors walked on the sidewalk and parked their cars in the adjacent parking lots without issues.

“This is a dead end street,” she said. The area under the freeway is out of the way of most city life and, according to Stallings, “Some people have been underneath there for eight years.”

In an outreach report written based on Gallagher’s observations, he stated that “This camp is so peaceful that I saw more that four people on their way to work walk unafraid right down the middle of camp.”

Patrice Perkins, who had been living in the camp for two and a half months, said that the encampment’s location was relatively tucked away. He expressed frustration that many of the residents will be pushed out towards other parts of SoMa and downtown.

“We found a place where you’re not in public. We’re not bothering anybody here,” he said. He pointed out the no parking signs along the street.

“See, no parking. It’s not being used.”

His neighbor in the camp, James Belcher, said that the eviction was causing him to miss two classes at Laney College. “I missed Civil War History this morning, and I’ll miss math at 10:30,” he said. Belcher said he has been studying for a few solid semesters and earning good  grades while looking for work, but struggling, based in part on issues associated with being a disabled veteran.

“It’s difficult for me to study in this little tent and stay in school,” he said.

One resident, who said she provided first aid at the camp, shared disinfectant wipes with a DPW worker when he expressed a need for them.

One of the city’s stated concerns with the camp was the presence of children, and in Gallagher’s outreach statement he said at least two children lived in the camp. None were present this morning, and Wrathall said that in her previous visits to the camp, she hadn’t seen any.

“I’ve never seen kids here, but if I did, I would take them to CPS [Child Protective Services]. Of if they’re older, 16 or 17, I would connect them to services like Huckleberry House. I would never walk away from someone who is 18 or under in the encampment. Its not safe,” she said.
 
“Homelessness is not a crime. People are afraid for the public to see their children because they will be taken away from them. And for what, the crime of being poor?” said Gallagher.

The Homeless Outreach Team secured rooms for several of the people who were evicted, including Stallings and Crisco.

“They’re housing me. I’ve been waiting on the VA list for housing for four and a half years,” said Crisco. “I’m a combat vet. I used to be a business owner. But life does things to you. Ends up putting you in places you didn’t plan on being.”

Crisco said he was happy to accept the room, but frustrated in general with the way the homeless are pushed around.

“I’m only human. I can only take so much pushing and prodding,” he said. “Sometimes, someone’s going to snap. And they’ll say, it’s the drugs. They never say, maybe it’s us. Maybe its what we’re doing to them.”

Fiona Ma’s vampire garbage bill

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State Assembly Member Fiona Ma, who wants to keep 15-year-olds in prison for life, has been trying for a while now to help the big garbage outfits, Recology and Waste Management Inc., avoid running into local laws that could block their use of landfills. So far, she hasn’t been able to get it through the normal commitee process.

But she’s not giving up: As the session winds down, she’s done the ol’ gut and amend and created AB 845, which looks pretty much like the bill she hasn’t been able to get through committee. And she got this reborn Dracula of a bill it through the state Senate, which means she just needs concurrence at the Assembly, and away she goes.

Ma says that garbage is a statewide concern — true, as far as it goes — but she’s also helping Recology avoid problems in Solano County, where local residents want a cap on the amount of outside garbage trucked in from other places (like San Francisco) and buried in Solano landfills.

By the way, she’s also been helping Recology fight those pesky recycling poachers who make a few extra bucks by getting the bottles and cans out of the bins before Recology can.

And the garbage giant hasn’t even been her biggest campaign contributor. Her non-campaign for state Senate got $1,500, her campaign for state Board of Equalization got $500, and she picked up $3,000 more in her Assembly races.

Oh, and she isn’t returning my calls and emails.

A week after police crack down, People’s Library still operating in East Oakland

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The building where activists, some from Occupy Oakland, created a free library and garden August 13 was raided by police that night. But that was Monday, this is Friday– and the Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez, or People’s Library, is still in full form.

The books and garden have moved from the building, which was built in 1918 in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, to the sidewalk. But it’s still a lively scene. Books are shelved the block in front of the old library’s entrace, and around the corner participants have built gadren beds. In the sidewalk library and garden, children browse books, play chess, dig holes for seeds, water plants, ride bikes and scooters, and casually work on the fence around the building with pliers. 

The building at 1449 Miller was donated to the city of Oakland as part of a grant from Andrew Carnegie, and functioned as a library until 1979. It was one of eight libraries closed by the City Librarian following the passage of Prop 13, according to Harry Hamilton, City of Oakland public information officer. It was subsequently used for the Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, an alternative high school that now operates on 29th street. It was owned by the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, whose members allocated money to it in their 2005 five-year plan, but no redevelopment of the building had begun when redevelopment agencies across California were dissolved last fall. It is now owned by the the Redevelopment Successor Agency housed within the City of Oakland’s Office of Neighborhood Investment, and, for all official purposes, remains vacant.

On Monday morning, activists entered the building, intent to revitalize it themselves. Empty wooden bookshelves covered the walls, and the floor was strewn with trash. A few mattresses indicated that the officially vacant building certainly hasn’t been.

Those building the People’s Library brought in brooms, sponges and trashbags. A few hours later, the place was cleaned up and hundreds of donated books lined the long-empty shelves. Neighbors came in through the open doors, helping to clean, checking out books, and reading to their kids. In the backyard, kids and adults built raised beds and started planting in them.

At 6:30, there was a potluck and a poetry reading. Most families had wandered off by 10pm. At 11:30, about a dozen people remained. That’s when 80 police arrived, blocked off the street for two blocks in all directions, and told them that they had 15 minutes to gather their books and exit the building, or risk arrest.

The creators of the Victor Martinez People’s Library did as they were told. But they didn’t go far. The next morning, they set up the library again, this time on the sidewalk outside the now-boarded up building. The kids and families came back. Police did, too, but they stayed in cars on corners around the building, watching.

Now, it’s been a week, and what organizer Jaime Yassin calls “the only 24-hour library in the US” is still here.

“That was on their agenda, at some point, to do this. What the people are doing now,” said Emji Spero, a poet who heard about the action from people invovled in Monday’s poetry reading. “But instead, they’re spending money on police to come shut it down. Someone said to me, I can see the dollar signs floating off the police cars as they run their engines.”

“This is the social reform that the city is supposed to be doing,” said Khalid Shakur, another Oakland resident who was involved in setting up the library.

On Wednesday Yassin, who had been researching the building’s history, sat down with me on a couch by the library. He explained that the clean sidewalk where the couch now sits was an unofficial garbage dump days earlier, covered in old clothes, drug paraphenalia, and other trash.

Yassin showed me a 2005 report from the Urban Ecology 23rd Avenue Working Group. the plan, a result of focus groups and surveys of people in the neighborhood of the People’s Library, includes a plan to “rehabilitate Miller Library” as a top priority for beneficial development in the neighborhood.

“Renovation, however, will be expensive and require the city’s help,” the report reads. “the city-owned library needs seismic reinforcement, repair to flood damage, asbestos removal and handicap accesibility improvements.”

As I spoke with Yassin, a 10-year-old who had been gardening and playing on the sidewalk scooted up. He handed some scissors, just retrieved from his home a block away, to one of the people making signs to organize the library.

“I never saw nobody use it using it since I got here,” he said when I asked him about the building.

“I liked it when you guys came,” he added to Yassin, smiling, before racing off on his scooter.

Juan Delgadillo, who owns Plaza Automotive, a business across the street from the library, said he plans to borrow some books from the People’s Library. “It’s a very good idea,” said Delgadillo. “I support it.”

The group has been holding nightly potlucks, and is planning to host a community barbecue tomorrow (August 18) at 2pm.

NUDE BEACHES 2012

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Editors Note: Below you’ll find our annual update on the state of nude beaches in the Bay Area, along with detailed guides and directions to several of our favorites. For details on dozens more, please see our complete Nude Beaches Guide, which we are in the process of updating. 

NUDE BEACHES Arrests for being naked on the sand, anti-nudity warning signs going up at previously unthreatened spots, outright threats of beach closures, social activists making their mark on San Francisco’s most well-known clothing-optional beach: this is shaping up to be one of Northern California’s busiest nude beach seasons in recent memory.

Faced with a July 1 deadline, on June 28 Governor Jerry Brown’s administration announced it saved or would stall shutting down all but one of 70 state parks and beaches targeted for closure due to budgetary shortfalls. These include three sites in our annual guide: Montara’s Gray Whale Cove, Carmel’s Garrapata State Park, and Zmudowski State Beach in northern Monterey County.

Officials said they would use $13 million in bond money in the budget to keep the properties running at least through summer. Some 40 parks will remain open for an estimated one to five years, due to temporary funding and support agreements being negotiated with nonprofit foundations and other organizations. More than 25 other properties, including Gray Whale Cove, also known as Devil’s Slide, will keep going while deals are completed.

When asked exactly how long Gray Whale Cove, Garrapata, and Zmudowski would stay open, California State Parks spokesman Dennis Weber told me they could keep going for a month, the entire summer, a year, or even longer. “We don’t know how much time we have,” he said.

Paul Keel, the state parks sector superintendent for the area that includes Gray Whale Cove, was more optimistic. He told me he’s keeping the popular beach open through at least the end of July because while “nothing’s been signed or inked, it’s fair to say we are optimistic” an agreement with a private operator or nonprofit will be finalized before then. Until the state took control, the site was run by a private licensee, San Francisco developer Carl Ernst and his company, Gray Whale Cove Enterprises, Inc.

Ruth Coleman, head of the State Parks and Recreation Department, said the bonds would fund solar power systems, as well as automatic pay machines that take credit and debit cards. And visitors arriving at Devil’s Slide or Garrapata are likely to notice signs that urge them to pay for parking instead of parking outside.

The card machines are likely to be particularly handy at Devil’s Slide after a long-awaited tunnel bypassing rockslide-prone Highway 1, which remains the access point to the beach, is expected to open this fall. Keel suspects the Devil’s Slide Tunnel will bring larger crowds to the beach.

But the news wasn’t all good. Maintenance and garbage pick up operations are likely to remain reduced or eliminated. In late June, Brown partly vetoed a larger, $41 million funding bill that had been OKed by the state legislature. State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who coauthored the bigger funding plan, criticized the veto, calling it “a lost opportunity to take action.” Another lost opportunity: in November 2010, California voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have raised about $500 million for state parks.

Meanwhile, while Sacramento was cutting back beach services, activists were making additions to the section of San Francisco’s Baker Beach used by nudists. Naturists have erected driftwood art sculptures and tent-like structures without walls, called “dunies,” at the north end of the beach. And they’ve vowed to keep the site free of gawkers by staring them down in what organizers call a non-confrontational approach to self-policing. “They usually decide to leave pretty soon,” says Santosh, 46, an artist and street fair producer.

Speaking of policing, in the past year cops have raided Garrapata and put up signs about nudity at Bonny Doon Beach and at least two other beaches north of Santa Cruz.

At Garrapata, rangers and lifeguards cited over a dozen persons for public nudity last summer and began patrolling the beach at least two times a day after receiving what lifeguard Eric Sturm told the Carmel Pine Cone were reports of “sex acts on the beach.”

And at Bonny Doon, Laguna Creek, and Panther Beach, “Nudity In The State Park System Is Prohibited” signs have been posted, although naturists there remain defiant and are still visiting the sites. “A 50-year tradition (of clothing-optional use at Bonny Doon) cannot be extinguished by a simple sign,” said Rich Pasco, coordinator of the Bay Area Naturists, after the signs went up. He urged nudists to “be polite and respectful” of rangers and suit up “if requested,” but to engage them in “intelligent conversations.” After two months, the signs at Bonny Doon, though, were taken down because, according to Joe Connors, public safety superintendent for state beaches in the Santa Cruz area, “we don’t get a big volume of complaints there.”

Want to join others in having fun at a clothing-optional spot this summer? The USA’s only naked “Full Moon Hikes” will take place in Castro Valley in late July, August, and September (see our listings online at SFBG.com for Last Trampas in Contra Costa County for details). Another idea to meet and socialize with fellow naturists: drop by Bonny Doon on September 15, when fans of the site will be gathering to keep it pristine by finding and removing trash.

Finally, you can aid the naturist community by sending me your new beach discoveries, trip reports, and improved directions (especially road milepost numbers), along with your phone number to garhan@aol.com or Gary Hanauer, c/o San Francisco Bay Guardian, 71 Stevenson, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105.

Our ratings: [full moon] signifies a beach that is large or well-established and where the crowd is mostly nude; [half moon] indicates places where fewer than half the visitors are nude; and [quarter moon] means small or emerging nude areas.

SAN FRANCISCO

NORTH BAKER BEACH, SAN FRANCISCO

RATING: A

Social activists have begun streaming onto the sand of America’s biggest urban nude beach, creating what visitor Santosh calls “a tone that’s like Burning Man,” with regulars bringing guitars, drums, and Frisbees to the sand, putting up art work best described as eclectic, and occasionally staring down gawkers.” There’s no requirement that you go nude,” says Santosh, an artist, graphic artist, and producer of San Francisco’s How Weird Street Faire, an outdoor street fair held each year in the SoMa neighborhood as a fundraiser for the World Peace Through Technology Organization. “But if a creeper dude plops down next to a (nude) person or if they are staring at someone’s private parts and it’s happening close to where we are, on the far north end (of North Baker), then they will start being the object of ridicule.

Directions: Take the 29 Sunset bus or go north on 25th Avenue to Lincoln Boulevard. Turn right and take the second left onto Bowley Street. Follow Bowley to Gibson Road, turn right, and follow Gibson to the east parking lot. At the beach, head right to the nude area, which starts at the brown and yellow “Hazardous surf, undertow, swim at your own risk” sign. Some motorcycles in the lot have been vandalized, possibly by car owners angered by bikers parking in car spaces; to avoid trouble, motorcyclists should park in the motorcycle area near the cyclone fence.

LAND’S END BEACH

RATING: A

Considered one of the most beautiful places in the Bay Area to doff your togs, Land’s End should really be called Swimsuit’s End. The reason: although it draws more clothed users than nudists, more than a few swim tops and bottoms magically “disappear” on warm spring, summer, and fall days at the little cove off Geary Boulevard. Come early to grab your share of the sand on this semi-rocky shoreline, which is sometimes dotted with rock-lined windbreaks left by previous sunbathers. Bring a light jacket or sweatshirt in case the weather changes.

Directions: Follow Geary Boulevard to the end, then park in the dirt lot up the road from the Cliff House. Take the trail at the far end of the lot. About 100 yards past a bench and some trash cans, the path narrows and bends, then rises and falls, eventually becoming the width of a road. Don’t take the road to the right, which leads to a golf course. Just past another bench, as the trail turns right, go left toward a group of dead trees where you will see a stairway and a “Dogs must be leashed” sign. Descend and head left to another stairway, which leads to a 100-foot walk to the cove. Or, instead, take the service road below the El Camino del Mar parking lot 1/4 mile until you reach a bench, then follow the trail there. It’s eroded in a few places. At the end, you’ll have to scramble over some rocks. Turn left (west) and walk until you find a good place to put down your towel.

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE BEACH

RATING: A

On the hottest days, Golden Gate Bridge Beach becomes so packed with people that one visitor describes it as a “gay mob scene.” But the rocky shore, which connects three picturesque coves, also gets its share of straight men and women. Prime, non-cruising activities include sunbathing, enjoying breathtaking views of the Bridge, and even taking some dips in the water. “You can sometimes go out over 100 feet during low tide,” a woman tells me.

Directions: from the toll booth area of Highway 101/1, take Lincoln Boulevard west about a half mile to Langdon Court. Turn right (west) on Langdon and look for space in the parking lots, across Lincoln from Fort Winfield Scott. Park and then take the beach trail, starting just west of the end of Langdon, down its more than 200 steps to Golden Gate Bridge Beach, also known as Marshall’s Beach. Despite recent improvements, the trail to the beach can still be slippery, especially in the spring and winter.

FORT FUNSTON BEACH

RATING: C

What’s the only Golden Gate National Recreation Area park where you can walk your dog without a leash, as well as the spot where the world record for the farthest tossed object (a flying ring sent soaring 1,333 feet by Erin Hemmings) was set in 2003? Answer: Fort Funston, which is affectionately called Fort Fun by its fans. Known for its magnetic sand, steady winds (especially in March and October) that make its cliffs popular for hang gliding, and, in particular, its dogs, who appear here with their human escorts by the hundreds, the area even attracts a few naturists from time to time. Mostly hidden away in the sand dunes on the beach, naked sunbathers usually stay away on the weekends, when families swarm the area. To keep the “fun” in Fort Funston, even on weekdays, be sure to use caution before disrobing.

Directions: From San Francisco, go west to Ocean Beach, then south on the Great Highway. After Sloat Boulevard, the road heads uphill. From there, curve right onto Skyline Boulevard, go past one stoplight, and look for signs for Funston on the right. Turn into the public lot and find a space near the west side. At the southwest end, take the sandy steps to the beach, turn right, and walk to the dunes. Find a spot as far as possible from the parking lot.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY

LAS TRAMPAS REGIONAL WILDERNESS, CASTRO VALLEY

RATING: C

Want to go walking around nude at night outside without being hauled off to jail? Imagine hiking naked guided only by your flashlight in the East Bay Hills, with the trail silhouetted by a full moon and small herds of horses coming up to greet you.

“It’s absolutely surreal,” says Jurek Zarzycki. “The horses come within inches of you, so close you can feel their breath. It’s like being on a moonscape with aliens. You may be a little afraid at first, but the horses are very friendly.”

America’s only nude “Full Moon Hikes” have been taking place on summer full moon nights in Castro Valley for more than seven years. The next ones will be held July 29, August 31 (arrive by 6pm), and September 28 (starting at 5:15pm) “We start early so that we have the full moon already risen by the time the sun sets,” says San Leandro’s Dave Smith, who leads most of the hikes. “Then we hike up the trail around sunset.”

Coordinated by a partnership between the Sequoians Naturist Club and the Bay Area Naturists, based in San Jose, walkers leave the property of the Sequoians fully clothed at dusk and walk through meadows and up hills until the moon rises, before heading back down the slopes completely nude, with their clothes folded neatly into their backpacks.

After the walk, most hikers shower at The Sequoians, and, for a fee of $5, take a dip in the 86-degree pool there and enjoy a plunge in the facility’s hot tub. “It was fabulous,” says Zarzycki about an earlier trek. “I pitched my tent right there at The Sequoians and then slept under the sky.”

Directions: Contact The Sequoians (www.sequoians.com) or the Bay Area Naturists (www.bayareanaturists.org) for details on how to join a walk. Meet at The Sequoians. To get there, take Highway 580 east to the Crow Canyon Road exit. Or follow 580 west to the first Castro Valley off-ramp. Take Crow Canyon road toward San Ramon .75 mile to Cull Canyon road. Then follow Cull canyon road around 6.5 miles to the end of the paved road. take the dirt road on the right until the “Y” in the road and keep left. Shortly after, you’ll see The Sequoians sign. Proceed ahead for about another .75 mile to The Sequoians front gate.

SAN MATEO COUNTY

DEVIL’S SLIDE, MONTARA

RATING: A

Although Devil’s Slide, also known as Gray Whale Cove, was scheduled to be closed this month by the state due to budget shortfalls, officials plan to keep it open while they negotiate with what Paul Keel, San Mateo coast state parks sector superintendent, calls a prospective “donor to keep it in operation for the coming year.” At press time, Keel told us that although “nothing’s been signed or inked, it’s fair to say we are optimistic, so hopefully we will know more in the next month.” Access to the site, though, is changing: after a long-awaited, voter-approved Devil’s Slide tunnel is completed this fall, Keel and others expect a possible increase in traffic to the beach, as more pedestrians and bicyclists use a nearby section of Highway 1 that is being closed. Meanwhile, rangers say they will allow a long-standing tradition of nudity to continue on the sand unless visitors complain.

Directions: Driving from San Francisco, take Highway 1 south through Pacifica. Three miles south of the Denny’s restaurant in Linda Mar, turn left (inland or east) on an unmarked road, which takes you to the beach’s parking lot and to a 146-step staircase that leads to the sand. Coming from the south on Highway 1, look for a road on the right (east), 1.2 miles north of the Chart House restaurant in Montara. Starting this fall, from the north, take Highway 1 through the Devil’s Slide tunnel and then turn left onto the road described above. From the south, continue using the above directions. Most naturists use the north end of the beach, which is separated by rocks from the rest of the shore.

SAN GREGORIO NUDE BEACH, SAN GREGORIO

RATING: A

Still the USA’s longest continually used nude beach, San Gregorio even has its own web site and live web cam at www.freewebs.com/sangregoriobeach. The privately run operation, which is located next to San Gregorio State Beach, recently began its 46th year of serving the clothing-optional community.

The beach often draws a large gay crowd, along with some nude and suited straight couples, singles, and families. “It’s a really romantic spot,” says a single woman. However, first-timers are sometimes annoyed (as I was, years ago) by the driftwood structures on the sandy slope leading down to the beach, which are used by some visitors as “sex condos.” However, fans of the beach savor San Gregorio’s stunning scenery. It has “awesome natural beauty,” says regular visitor Bob Wood. Attractions of the 120-acre site include two miles of soft sand and tide pools to explore, as well as a lagoon, lava tube, and, if you look closely enough on the cliffs, the remains of an old railroad line.

Directions: From San Francisco, drive south on Highway 1, past Half Moon Bay, and, between mileposts 18 and 19, look on the right side of the road for telephone call box number SM 001 0195, at the intersection of Highway 1 and Stage Road, and near an iron gate with trees on either side. From there, expect a drive of 1.1 miles to the entrance. At the Junction 84 highway sign, the beach’s driveway is just .1 mile away. Turn into a gravel driveway, passing through the iron gate mentioned above, which says 119429 on the gatepost. Drive past a grassy field to the parking lot, where you’ll be asked to pay an entrance fee. Take the long path from the lot to the sand; everything north of the trail’s end is clothing-optional (families and swimsuit using visitors tend to stay on the south end of the beach). The beach is also accessible from the San Gregorio State Beach parking area to the south; from there, hike about a half-mile north. Take the dirt road past the big white gate with the Toll Road sign to the parking lot.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY

GARDEN OF EDEN, FELTON

RATING: C

Tucked away in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, between Santa Cruz and Felton, the Garden Of Eden is a much-used skinny-dipping hole on the San Lorenzo River, which is also visited by clothed families. Some hikers are surprised when they see people nude there and either use the spot anyway or keep walking. Watch out for poison oak and slippery sections on the trail. Eden is one of three clothing-optional swimming holes on the river. To find them, look for cars pulled over on Highway 9, next to the state park, which bans nudity but seldom sends ranger patrols to the creek.

Directions: From Santa Cruz, drive north on Highway 9 and look for turnouts on the right side of the road, where cars are pulled over. The first, a wide turnout with a tree in the middle, is just north of Santa Cruz. Rincon Fire Trail starts about where the tree is, according to reader Robert Carlsen, of Sacramento. The many forks in the trail all lead to the river, down toward Big Rock Hole and Frisbee Beach; Carlsen says the best area off this turnout can be reached by bearing left until the end of the trail. Farther up the highway, 1.3 miles south of the park entrance, is the second and bigger pullout, called the Ox Trail Turnout, leading to Garden of Eden. Park in the turnout and follow the dirt fire road downhill and across some railroad tracks. Head south, following the tracks, for around .5 miles. Look for a “Pack Your Trash” sign with park rules and hours and then proceed down the Eden Trail.

Ox Trail, which can be slippery, and Eden Trail both wind down steeply to the creek. “The path continues to the left, where there are several spots for wading and sunbathing,” Carlsen says. The main beach is only 75 feet long and 30 feet wide, but fairly sandy. Carlsen’s favorite hole is accessible from a trail that starts at the third turnout, a small one on the right side of the road, about 4.5 miles from Highway 1 and just before Felton. A gate marks the start of the path. The trail bends left. When you come to the road again, go right. At the railroad tracks, go right. From here, look for the river down the hill on your left; many paths lead to it. Says Mike: “Within 10 yards, you can be in the water.”

BONNY DOON NUDE BEACH, BONNY DOON

RATING: A

Despite the temporary erection of anti-nudity warning signs at longtime nudie fan favorite Bonny Doon Beach, north of Santa Cruz, officials have told us they have no immediate plans to issue citations at the north end of the site, which has traditionally been occupied by naturists. In fact, the signs were taken down after just two months.

In fact, in June, Pam, of San Mateo, even found a nudist at the main public, south side of the beach, which is used by suited visitors. A 15-foot long rock on the sand, along with a sloping cliff with rocks that jut out, separate the two sides of the cove that form Bonny Doon.

“In the short term, things at Bonny Doon are destined to continue the way they are,” says Kirk Lingenfelter, sector superintendent for Bonny Doon and nearby state beaches. Lingenfelter says he likes Bonny Doon just the way it is. “It’s one of our pocket beaches,” he explains. “They can really give you the feeling of rugged, untouched majesty. I like standing on those beaches. You can sometimes forget that there’s a highway in the distance. It’s a very important feeling to maintain. “The clothing-optional section usually attracts more women and couples than most nude beaches. “Minuses” include occasional vehicle burglaries and gawkers on the bluffs or in the bushes.

Directions: From San Francisco, go south on Highway 1 to the Bonny Doon parking lot at milepost 27.6 on the west side of the road, 2.4 miles north of Red, White, and Blue Beach, and some 11 miles north of Santa Cruz. From Santa Cruz, head north on Highway 1 until you see Bonny Doon Road, which veers off sharply to the right just south of Davenport. The beach is just off the intersection. Park in the paved lot to the west of Highway 1; don’t park on Bonny Doon Road or the shoulder of Highway 1. If the lot is full, drive north on Highway 1, park at the next beach lot, and walk back to the first lot. Or take Santa Cruz Metro Transit District bus route 40 to the lot; it leaves the Metro Center three times a day on Saturdays and takes about 20 minutes. To get to the beach, climb the berm next to the railroad tracks adjacent to the Bonny Doon lot, cross the tracks, descend, and take a recently improved, sign-marked trail to the sand. Walk north past most of the beach to the nude cove on the north end. Alternately, Dusty suggests parking as far north as possible, taking the northern entrance, and, with good shoes, following a “rocky and steep” walk down to the sand.

2222 BEACH, SANTA CRUZ

RATING: A

In late May, when my girlfriend and I visited a little cliffside park above it and peered down on the aptly named 2222 — it’s the number of the house across the street — we discovered that the pocket-size cove looked as beautiful as ever. In fact, America’s smallest nude beach is so small it could probably fit in your yard. And that’s what makes it a magical place. You won’t find crowds at 2222, which takes scrambling to reach and isn’t recommended for children or anyone who isn’t a good hiker. However, those who are agile enough to make it down a steep cliff and over some concrete blocks on the way down will probably be rewarded with an oasis of calm and a good spot to catch some sunrays.

Directions: The beach is a few blocks west of Natural Bridges State Beach and about 2.5 miles north of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. From either north or south of Santa Cruz, take Highway 1 to Swift Street. Drive .8 miles to the sea, then turn right on West Cliff Drive. 2222 is five blocks away. Past Auburn Avenue, look for 2222 West Cliff on the inland side of the street. Park in the nine-car lot next to the cliff. If it’s full, continue straight and park along Chico Avenue. Bay Area Naturists leader Rich Pasco suggests visitors use care and then follow the path on the side of the beach closest to downtown Santa Cruz and the Municipal Wharf.

PRIVATES BEACH, SANTA CRUZ

RATING: A

“Privates is one of my favorite beaches,” says Brittney Barrios, manager-buyer of Freeline Design Surf Shop, which is located nearby and sells keys to unlock the gate leading to the clean, beautiful cove. “It’s always very peaceful.” Visitors include nudists, surfers, families, and local residents. “Everyone gets along,” adds Barrios. “And it’s never crowded.”

Barrios says many of the naturists, who often visit in groups, like to play Paddle Ball on the sand. As for Barrios, she prefers to “lay out,” as she calls it, in the sun.

There’s almost no litter, wind, noise, or troublemakers — security guards plus a locked gate keep the latter out — and world class surfers, such as those who starred in Endless Summer II, regularly put on a free show for the naked people who share the warm, clean sand with surfers.

“It’s really nice,” says Hunter Young, a former worker at Freeline, which sells up to 600 beach passes a year. “Surfers love it because it has good waves. It’s 100 percent standup surfing, with paddling. Anytime I go to Privates, I can expect a long ride on my longboard.”

“The beach is also very family oriented,” explains Barrios. “And it’s OK for dogs too.”

“There are two different coves on the beach,” says Young. “Clothed families who use the beach know which cove is nude and stay away from it. If you want to play naked Frisbee, at the bottom of the beach stairs you just walk to the left.”

Directions: 1) Some visitors walk north from Capitola Pier in low tide (not a good idea since at least four people have needed to be rescued). 2) Others reach it in low tide via the stairs at the end of 41st Avenue, which lead to a surf spot called the Hook at the south end of a rocky shore known as Pleasure Point. 3) Surfers paddle on boards for a few minutes to Privates from Capitola or the Hook. 4) Most visitors buy a key to the beach gate for $100 a year at Freeline (821 41st Ave., Santa Cruz, 831-476-2950) 1.5 blocks west of the beach. Others go with someone with a key or wait outside the gate until a person with a key goes in, provided a security guard is not present (they often are there). “Most people will gladly hold the gate open for someone behind them whose hands are full,” says Bay Area Naturists leader Rich Pasco. The nude area starts to the left of the bottom of the stairs.

MARIN COUNTY

MUIR NUDE BEACH, MUIR BEACH

RATING: A

Mellow times are continuing at one of the Bay Area’s easiest to reach and most enjoyable nude beaches, the clothing-optional north side of Muir Beach. Also known as Little Beach, it’s separated by the main public beach by a line of large rocks that visitors usually walk over. Says Lucas Valley’s Michael Velkoff, who switched from Red Rock to become a regular at Muir: “This season, there’s plenty of sand. It’s also a great place for women because people leave you alone here. Nobody’s hitting on you. And high tide only comes a third of the way up the beach.” Recent additions include a new bridge over a marshy, lagoon-like area near the parking lot, plus about a half dozen Porta-Potties.

Directions: From San Francisco, take Highway 1 north to Muir Beach, to milepost 5.7. Turn left on Pacific Way and park in the Muir lot (to avoid tickets, don’t park on Pacific). Or park on the long street off Highway 1 across from Pacific and about 100 yards north. From the Muir lot, follow a path and boardwalk to the sand. Then walk north to a pile of rocks between the cliffs and the sea. You’ll need good hiking or walking shoes to cross; in very low tide, try to cross closer to the water. The nude area starts north of it.

RED ROCK BEACH, STINSON BEACH

RATING: B

One of the most popular Bay Area nude beaches, Red Rock has struggled with sand erosion that’s left a smaller site the last few seasons, along with a more crowded feel to it and, perhaps in reaction, fewer overall visitations. Except for being a little overgrown with vegetation in early July and some poison oak on the half nearest the highway, the beach trail, however, is reported in good shape this year. “Just wear shoes with socks, go single file in spots, and you should be okay,” advises Stinson Beach attorney-teacher Fred Jaggi. Rock climbing and various kinds of Frisbee continue to be frequent pastimes at Red Rock — Ultimate Frisbee games there can last as long as three hours. Naked Scrabble and Nude Hearts are among the other games played by sunbathers. “It’s very peaceful at the beach,” says Jaggi. “Nobody ever brings down a large boombox.”

Directions: Go north on Highway 1 from Mill Valley, following the signs to Stinson Beach. At the long line of mailboxes next to the Muir Beach cutoff point, start checking your odometer. Look for a dirt lot full of cars to the left (west) of the highway 5.6 miles north of Muir and a smaller one on east side of the road. The lots are at milepost 11.3, one mile south of Stinson Beach. Limited parking is also available 150 yards to the south on the west side of Highway 1. Or from Mill Valley, take the West Marin/Bolinas Stage toward Stinson Beach and Bolinas. Get off at the intersection of Panoramic Highway and Highway 1. Then walk south .6 mile to the Red Rock lots. Follow the long, steep path to the beach that starts near the Dumpster next to the main parking lot.

BOLINAS, BASS LAKE

After Tracey, of San Anselmo, hiked to what she called “beautiful, clean, sunny” Bass Lake, she went onto a message board in June to urge those who are considering trying the Bolinas attraction to “Go. Go. Go now.” “The trail was a little overgrown. But I had fun swimming nude in the lake,” says regular Dave Smith, of San Leandro, about his adventure last year. “If you want to visit an enchanted lake, Bass is it,” agrees Ryan, also of the East Bay. “Tree branches reach over the water, forming a magical canopy, and huge branches of calla lilies bloom on the shore.” Ryan isn’t kidding: even walking (45-60 minutes from the parking area over 2.8 mostly easy miles) to Bass can be an adventure unlike any other. One time, rangers stopped and cited a clad man with an unleashed dog, but let some passing nudists continue. And Smith, who usually walks naked, has come across bobcats and mountain lions early in the morning. “I came around a corner and there was a mountain lion sitting like Egypt’s Great Sphinx of Giza 50 yards down the path,” he says.

Directions: From Stinson Beach, go north on Highway 1. Just north of Bolinas Lagoon, turn left on the often-unmarked exit to Bolinas. Follow the road as it curves along the lagoon and eventually ends at Olema-Bolinas Road. Continue along Olema-Bolinas Road to the stop sign at Mesa Road. Turn right on Mesa and drive four miles until it becomes a dirt road and ends at a parking lot. On hot days the lot fills quickly. A sign at the trailhead next to the lot will guide you down scenic Palomarin Trail to the lake. For directions to Alamere Falls, 1.5 miles past Bass Lake, please see “Elsewhere In Marin” in our online listings.

RCA BEACH, BOLINAS

RATING: A

Want to recharge your life? A trip to RCA can do just that. And a single stopover at the beautiful beach will probably inspire you to keep coming back. “It hasn’t changed much in 20 years,” says regular visitor Michael Velkoff. “A downside is that it’s very exposed to the wind. The good news is that there are lots of nooks that are sheltered from the wind. And there’s so much driftwood on the sand that many people build windbreaks or even whole forts. You could build a village with all that driftwood. The last time I went, somebody built a 30 foot tall dragon out of it.” Suited and unsuited males and females and families visit the shoreline, which seems even bigger than its one mile length because, adds Velkoff, “we’ll see six people on a beautiful day on a Sunday. Picture [please see next listing] Limantour as far as how people are spread out on the sand. Everybody’s like 100 feet apart. It’s great.”

Directions: From Stinson Beach, take Highway 1 (Shoreline Highway) north toward Calle Del Mar for 4.5 miles. Turn left onto Olema Bolinas Road and follow it 1.8 miles to Mesa Road in Bolinas. Turn right and stay on Mesa until you see cars parked past some old transmission towers. Park and walk .25 miles to the end of the pavement. Go left through the gap in the fence. The trail leads to a gravel road. Follow it until you see a path on your right, leading through a gate. Take it along the cliff top until it veers down to the beach. Or continue along Mesa until you come to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Enter through the gate here, then hike .5 miles through a cow pasture on a path that will also bring you through thick brush. The second route is slippery and eroding, but less steep. “It’s shorter, but toward the end there’s a rope for you to hold onto going down the cliff,” tells Velkoff.

LIMANTOUR BEACH, OLEMA

RATING B

At Limantour, in Point Reyes National Seashore, you can walk a mile wearing nothing but your smile. “I just head away from any people and put my towel down in the dunes or against a wall,” says visitor Michael Velkoff. “Nobody bothers you. Of course, I carry a pair of shorts, just in case I need to put them on. I love it at Limantour. Plus it has tons of nice sand.” You may also want to don a pair of binoculars for watching birds, seals, and other wildlife. This May, Velkoff saw a whale from his vantage point on the sand; he’s also seen porpoises frolicking just offshore. The long shoreline is one of America’s most beautiful beaches, yet few visitors realize the narrow spit of sand is clothing-optional. The site is so big — about 2.5 miles in length — you can wander for hours, checking out ducks and other waterfowl, shorebirds such as snowy plovers, gray whales, and playful harbor seals. Dogs are allowed on six-foot leashes on the south end of the beach. To grab the best parking, arrive by 10:30am.

Directions: Follow Highway 101 north to the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard exit, then follow Sir Francis through San Anselmo and Lagunitas to Olema. At the intersection with Highway 1, turn right onto 1. Just north of Olema, go left on Bear Valley Road. A mile after the turnoff for the Bear Valley Visitor Center, turn left (at the Limantour Beach sign) on Limantour Road and follow it 11 miles to the parking lot at the end. Walk north .5 miles until you see some dunes about 50 yards east of the shore. Nudists usually prefer the valleys between the dunes for sunbathing, which may be nearly devoid of or dotted with users, depending on the day.

 

Leaked documents add to CPMC’s credibility problems

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Three key members of the Board of Supervisors today presented what they say are documents leaked by a whistleblower within California Pacific Medical Center showing it will likely shut down St. Luke’s Hospital by invoking an escape clause in the development agreement that the Mayor’s Office negotiated and the board is now considering.

The CPMC internal financial documents sent to the supervisors Sunday from an anonymous whistleblower predict a financial scenario in which the operating revenue will fall below a 1 percent margin by 2018.  The predicted loss would allow CPMC to exit its 20-year commitment to St. Luke’s and close the hospital in 2020, just five years after its scheduled reopening.  Sups. David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Christina Olague say they worry the financial shortfall would also limit CPMC’s charitable donations while its Sutter Health parent company cuts hundreds of hospital jobs to save a projected $70 million per year.

 CPMC has promised to seismically retrofit St. Luke’s and run it for 20 years. In return, the medical group gets to build a massive hospital on Cathedral Hill. Inserted into the deal is what Chiu calls the fine print, which states if CPMC operating margin falls below 1 percent for two years it may close the hospital. Chiu said CPMC presented the escape clause as a very unlikely event, occurring only in a catastrophic scenario.

Instead, the leaked documents present a negative operating margin as an incredibly probably situation that CPMC has known about for months and misrepresented to city officials. “CPMC knew it was possible and likely they would default on their commitment,” Cohen said, adding that her greatest grievance is CPMC’s refusal to do anything about the situation.

Cohen said the financial revelations aren’t surprising considering Sutter Health has a reputation for shady practices. She said we should all wonder how a supposedly not-for-profit corporation is able to make so much profit.

CPMC spokesman Sam Singer said the documents are fraudulent, flawed financial reports that CPMC threw away a long time ago. He suggested someone must have dug them out of the garbage in a conspiracy like fashion. Singer said the mayor had learned about the document a few weeks ago.

Chui said that may help explain why  the Mayor’s Office recently acknowledged it reentered negotiations with the CPMC after becoming concerned about the viability of St. Luke’s, telling supervisors it was based on CPMC’s revised revenue estimates, sparking a controversy during last week’s hearing.

Whatever the reason, the three supervisors want more time to investigate the matter.

“Let’s be clear,” said Cohen said, “these contract negotiations should be informed by actual financial information and not just by the word of CPMC leadership, which we’ve unfortunately found to be untrustworthy.”

 

 

Chuckle connection: The Bay’s most diverse comedic line-up goes on tour

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There’s no question that a childhood spent growing up Ethiopian in Haight-Ashbury made fertile ground in which to grow a stand-up career. That’s where Yanye Abeba is coming from. Abeba is performing in Kung Pao Kosher Comedy‘s second Color of Funny comedy tour on Thu/21 and Fri/22. Her schtick will be part of a unique line-up — and afterall, how many other people can pull on the interactions between their first generation African father and the homeless kids on Haight Street for their funny?

The divergent Color of Funny’s line-up can perhaps best be described as a comedic gumbo. Other performers include one of India’s few professional female stand-ups, venture capitalist turned storyteller Dhaya Lakshminarayanan. Joining her, award-winning broadcast journalist Maureen Langan (at the Thu/21 Berkeley show only) will bring tales of being the daughter of an Irish immigrant mother and garbage man father. Recent college graduate Nathan Habib (at the Fri/22 Santa Cruz) grew up in a Jewish-Israeli household with a Latvian mother and an Italian-raised dad. [Editor’s note: we interviewed Habib about pushy moms and Chinese restaurants back when he was a fresh-faced 21 years old.]

 

“There are so many points of view in this world,” Abeba says of this group of funny people in an interview with the Guardian. “Talking about our experiences in a comedic way gets people interested. They realize that even though their parents are from the ‘burbs and mine are from Africa, we have common experiences.”

Abeba’s acts recurrently discuss the clash between her Ethiopian and American backgrounds. “Ethiopian culture is so different from American culture and it makes for great comedy,” she says, adding that she is still shocked by how many people can’t find Ethiopia on a map but know the region was starving. “Inspired by Whoopie Goldberg,” Abeba employs comedy to combat cultural ignorance. Lately, she says her stand-up is focused increasingly on politics because she is concerned about this country. 

“I worry that people have become apathetic and aren’t really paying attention as their lives slip deeper into poverty,” says the comedian. 

So when the Occupy movement arrived in SF, Abeba was excited and began attending events. But she quickly became disenfranchised when she encountered people whose focus was on personal issues with parents and cops, not capitalism or the banking system. 

That disconnect became punchline fodder. “I just looked at it as another source for material,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the original message of the Occupy movement and I think that it is time things changed so that more people have opportunity. I think this country is for everyone, not just the Koch brothers.”

So she’s not diminished the Occupy ethos – but she is looping its reality in with her own activism of simply being a woman in stand-up. Because there are not many female comedians, and even less female comedians of color, Abeba has had to roll over several gender stereotypes. 

“I have a had a lot of men in this industry tell me that women have no place doing comedy, and that women aren’t funny,” she says. “They think all we do is talk about our periods and dating.”

She adds that if she had a nickel for every time she heard a man talk about anal sex and some hot chick, she would own a Range Rover. 

“Some of my favorite local comedians are different from the mold,” she says. “They are transgender, disabled, Indian, gay, and their point of view matters. As you get to know them through their comedy, you become more accepting of some one who is different because they touched you with their truth.”

“Kung Pao Kosher Comedy Presents the Second (Sorta-Annual) Color of Funny”

Thu/21 8pm, $20

Julia Morgan Theatre

 2640 College, Berk.

www.berkeleyplayhouse.org


Fri/22 8pm, $20

Kuumbwa Jazz Center

320 Cedar, Santa Cruz

www.kuumbwajazz.org

It’s the money, stupid

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If you want to know what American politics looks like in a post-Citizens United world, check out the June 5 elections.

It’s not that this specific court case played a role in all of the key races — the tobacco industry could have spent $47 million to defeat a cigarette tax with or without Citizens United — but around the country, you saw the role that big money played in literally altering the political landscape.

Take Wisconsin. The national news media twist on this will call it a test of Obama’s field campaign and a referendum on labor, but it was really all about money. Walker and his big-biz allies raised $30 million, a lot of it through barely-regulated super PACs, and outspent Tom Barrett by more than 7-1.

In California, Prop. 29, which would have put a $1 tax on each pack of cigarettes to pay for cancer research, was way ahead in the polls, and I was pretty sure it was going to win handily — how can you vote against a tax on a product that kills people to fund a cure for the disease it causes? Prop. 29 had a 30-point lead a couple of months ago.

Then came the blitz — $47 million in TV ads, funded by a couple of big tobacco companies. The ads were classics of the type — misdirection and confusion aimed at getting people to vote No. And it worked: Prop. 29 is going down to a narrow defeat.

In San Francisco, Prop A, with little money and not much of a campaign, never had a serious chance. But the flood of Recology money made sure it never got even 25 percent of the vote (although if you asked people, outside of the campaign, whether the garbage contract should be put out to bid, most of them would say yes).

I think Recology money had an impact on the Democratic County Central Commitee, too; Recology paid for a lot of slate cards that promoted a lot of more moderate candidates. The company also paid for progressive slate cards (the Milk Club etc.), and I haven’t counted them all, but in the end, slate cards matter in the DCCC and they may have made the difference.

The local election was so low-turnout that it’s hard to draw any serious conclusions from it. But overall, money carried the day June 5 — and that’s a scary message.

 

Early SF results: No on A, Yes on B

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The first results just got posted, and it’s a fairly large number of votes. More than 60,000 people voted by mail, and there’s enough to draw a few conclusions.

Prop. A, the measure that would have required competitive bidding for the city’s garbage contracts, is dead, losing in the early absentees 77-23. No surprise that it’s losing; getting 23 percent of the vote with no campaign to speak of up against the full might of Recology’s money and political connections is actually pretty impressive.

Prop. B, the Coit Tower measure, is winning, 55-45, which is a good place to be at this stage. I’d say it’s time for the Yes on B camp to start celebrating.

The DCCC early returns show a lot of what we expected — the elected officials and incumbents are doing well. David Chiu is in first, beating Scott Wiener, who is beating John Avalos. For what it’s worth.

After that, it’s Bevan Dufty, David Campos, former Sup. Leslie Katz and former state Sen. Carole Migden.

Interestingly, Matt Dorsey, an appointed incumbent facing the electorate for the first time, is ahead of Sup Malia Cohen. Rafael Mandleman, Zoe Dunning, Alix Rosenthal, Petra DeJesus, and Justin Morgan finish out the top 14 on the East Side.

Those are the early absentees, and the difference between Morgan and incumbent Gabriel Haaland, now in 18th place, is just 800 votes. So it will change.

Right now, the progressives have 9 of the 14 seats on the East Side, but only 4 of the 10 on the West Side, which won’t be enough to elect a progressive chair and ensure good endorsements in the fall. But the margins are so thin and it’s so early we can’t call it yet.

On the West Side of town, Assessor Phil Ting is comfortably in the lead for the 19th Assembly District, but newcomer Michael Breyer, a conservative Democrat who spent a ton of money, is edging Republican Matthew Del Carlo by two points, setting up the possibility that Ting will have to raise money and face off against Breyer in November.

Vote yes on Prop A for competitive bidding for garbage and against Recology monopoly

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As a reporter for the old Redwood City Tribune in 1965 or so, I got a call one day from the late  Luman Drake, then an indefatigable environmental activist in Brisbane.  “Bruce,” he said, “you are good at exposing scandals on the Peninsula, but you have missed the biggest scandal of them all. Garbage, garbage in the Bay off Brisbane, garbage alongside the Bay Shore going into San Francisco.”

He then outlined for me, his voice rising in anger, how the scavengers of an early era had muscled through a longtime contract to dump San Francisco’s garbage into the bay alongside the Bay Shore freeway.  And, he said, they are still doing it. Why can’t you fight it? I asked naively.

“Fight it, fight it,” he replied. “The scavengers are the most powerful political force in San Francisco and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.” I checked out his story, then and through the years, and he was right.  Everyone driving in and out of San Francisco could watch with horror  for years as the scavengers kept dumping San Francisco garbage into a big chunk of the bay.  (Note the oral history from Drake and then Mayor Paul Goercke and others who fought the losing fight for years to kick out the scavengers from Brisbane.) http://legendarymarketingenius.com/oralhistorySBMW.html)

Five decades later, the scavengers are still a preeminent political power in San Francisco. The scavengers (now Recology) have operated since 1932 without competitive bidding, without regulation of its high residential and commercial rates, without a franchise fee, and without any real oversight. Finally, after all these years as king of the hill, Recology’s monopoly is being challenged by Proposition A, an initiative aimed at forcing Recology for the first time to undergo competitive bidding and thereby save city residents and businesses millions of dollars  in rates and service.

Let me say up front that I salute former State Senator and retired Judge Quentin Kopp and Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Hill Boosters and the Guardian’s candidate for District l0 election (Potrero Hill/BayView/Hunters Point). They have taken this measure on when nobody else would, without much money or resources, and up against  a $l.5 million campaign by Recology and enormous, nasty political pressure.  I also salute those who publicly signed on to their brochure: Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, San Francisco Tomorrow, SF Human Services Network, David Bisho,Walter Farrell, George Wooding, Irene Creps, Alexa Vuksich, the San Francisco Examiner, SF Appeal.com, and the Guardian. 

I was delighted to get a Yes on A brochure at my house in West Portal and find that Kopp and Kelly et al had money enough to make a strong statement in a strong  campaign mailer.  Kopp and Kelly persuasively summarized the key points for A and against more galloping  Recology monopoly in the brochure.  Meanwhile, the  Recology forces have been  using  gobs of money, a massive mail campaign, robot calls, and deploying the kind of political muscle their predecessors used to keep dumping garbage in the bay off Brisbane for decades. Since the Yes on A camp has trouble cutting through the cannonading and the flak, let me lay out the A  arguments verbatim from its brochure.

Question in the brochure:  “Why is Recology spending millions to buy this election? Recology has contributed $l,580,292.70 against Prop A. (Form 460 SF Ethics Commission.” Answer in the brochure;  “So they can raise your garbage rates after the election! ‘San Francisco Prepares For Recology to Raise Garbage Rates’ (Contract is Proof Recology Plans to Hike Garbage Rates Following Election’”) Then they laid out l0 reasons to vote Yes on A.

1. “71 Bay Area cities have competitive bidding or franchise agreements for garbage services. Because San Francisco doesn’t, residential trash collection rates have increased 136% in the last 11 years, with another massive increase coming after the election! We pay more than twice as much for garbage and recycling as San Jose, a city with twice the land and about 400,000 more people.

2. “The garbage collection/recycling monopoly now grosses about $220 million per year from the city’s residents and businesses, without any regulation of commercial rates.

3. “How did we end up paying so much? In 2001 the monopoly requested a 52% rate increase, Department of Public Works staff recommended 20% and the then DPW director (now Mayor) Ed Lee granted a 44 %rate increase. That’s why the Examiner said: ‘no-bid contracts generally make for dirty public policy, and this includes…The City’s garbage collection monopoly…’

4. “Don’t believe the monopoly’s 78% recycling rate claim backed only by its puppet city department. A former Recology recycling manager has testified under oath that fraudulent reporting, excessive state reimbursements and even kickbacks to and from Recology employees are behind this bogus claim.  Another ‘whistleblower’ has revealed that even sand removal from the Great Highway was included in this 78%.

5. “With a far smaller population, Oakland receives $24 million each year as a franchise fee, which supports city services and prevents other tax and fee increases.  San Francisco receives zilch from the monopoly holder in franchise fees for our General Fund.

6. “Proposition A is on the ballot through citizen/ratepayer time and effort, in the face of intimidation and harassment by the monopoly’s agents and its multi-million dollar campaign against it.

7. “Proposition A is simple: it authorizes the Director of Public Works and the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Analyst to prepare competitive bidding regulations for residential and commercial collection, recycling, and disposal, by modifying an outdated 1932 ordinance.

8. “Like all other competitive-bid city contracts, the winning garbage service bid will be ratified by the Board of Supervisors without any political tinkering.  The winning bid will contain the best deal for city ratepayers.

9. “If the monopoly is truly the corporation portrayed in its expensive campaign to defeat Prop A, it would easily win every bid.  As the Examiner stated last year, ‘…contracts won by competitive bidding are always better for the public in the long run.’

10. And then the list of endorsers ‘and tens of thousands of other ratepayers.’”

Kopp and Kelly et al are providing a major public service by challenging an arrogant monopoly of an essential public service and keeping alive the concept of competitive bidding on city contracts in San Francisco.   I drink to them from a pitcher of Potrero Hill martinis. Vote early and often for Prop A.  B3

Election turnout expected to be less than 40 percent

2

If they held an election and nobody noticed, would it still count? Because that’s what this Tuesday’s presidential primary election is starting to feel like: the election that everyone ignored.

Okay, okay, not everyone is ignoring this election. San Francisco Elections Director John Arnst tells us that his department has received about 55,000 mail-in ballots so far out of the nearly 217,000 they sent out, a turnout of about 25 percent. And 1,110 voters have cast their ballots in person during early voting at City Hall as of this afternoon, a level lower than the 2010 or 2008 primaries “by quite a bit,” Arnst said.

That’s not really surprising given that both major political parties have already chosen their presidential candidates, there are no other offices being seriously contested, and the rest of the ballot consists of the Democratic County Central Committee (and its Green and Republican parties counterparts) races and a pair each of ho-hum statewide and local ballot measures. The most interesting one is Proposition A, which seeks to break Recology’s waste collection monopoly in San Francisco by requiring competitive bidding.

“If the garbage issue is the most exciting issue on the ballot, you know it’s the most boring election ever,” says Tony Kelly, who is leading the campaign for Prop. A.

With the exception of a press conference that Kelly and other Prop. A supporters held last week to accuse Recology of being complicit in an alleged recycling kickback scheme by some of its employees, there’s been little to indicate Prop. A has much chance of success given that almost every endorsing group (except the Guardian) opposes the measure.

“Goliath doesn’t lose very often, and we’re being outspent 100 to one,” Kelly said, expressing hopes that the measure can at least garner 35-40 percent of the vote to send a message that Recology should work with the city to allow competitive bidding on some of its contracts.

But with turnout expected to be low, Recology isn’t taking any chances. Its political consultant, Eric Potashner, says the campaign has been assembling up to a couple hundred volunteers and its SoMa headquarters each weekend and “we’re doing the full grassroots outreach.” He expressed confidence that the measure will be defeated: “Folks have been well educated on this issue.”

Arnst estimates that this will be a historically low turnout election: “Top end right now, comparing the last three presidential primaries, I’m looking at 40 percent as the top turnout possible.”

But you know what that means, right? Your vote could be more decisive than ever, particularly for the 24 members of the DCCC, the outcome of which could move the ideological center of that body before its important endorsements in the fall Board of Supervisors races. So click here to take a look at the Guardian’s endorsements and don’t forget to vote.

June 6 hearing may spell the end of HANC recycling center

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It’s just a triangle of land on Frederick Street, right next to Kezar Stadium. But the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) recycling center has been the subject of years of political battles- and depending on the results of a June 6 hearing, they may get shut down for good.

HANC got an eviction notice in December 2010. HANC’s lawyer, Robert DeVries, successfully challenged the eviction. The Recreation & Parks department sued for eviction again in in June 2011, and that matter may finally come to a close June 6. The Guardian is awaiting comment from Rec & Parks.

In December, the Planning Commission approved a plan to turn the site into a community garden. They meant a garden run by Rec & Parks, not HANC. But HANC got to work building one, and Executive Director Ed Dunn is proud to say that they did so “without a cent of taxpayer money.”

Dunn emphasizes that “over the course of the past year or so the operation has been completely transformed.” The new community garden has 50 beds, which resident gardener Greg Gaar says are divided into about 100 plots, are are planted with mostly native plants that are currently in full bloom.

“We could build one community garden like this per month at no cost to the city,” said Dunn, referencing a recent SPUR report that talked about the benefits and challenges of urban agriculture.

Said Dunn, “we can help fill in some of those challenges.”

The center has a history of working on the cutting edge of environmentally friendly trends. The site at 780 Frederick was established as a recycling center in 1974, a decade before San Francisco implemented curbside recycling. The curbside program became fully operational in the early ‘90s. But 18 recycling centers remain in the city- and state Bottle Bill laws require the existence of recycling centers in “convenience zones.” Dunn says the HANC recycling center fulfills the legal requirement to be nearby a recycling center for several supermarkets.

Now, many San Francisco residents rely on curbside recycling, rather than trucking their bottles, cans, and paper products to a recycling center. But a large population uses recycling centers- for excess amounts of recyclables that don’t fit in the bins, other material that doesn’t fit like large cardboard, or to generate income. Those who benefit from money traded for recyclables include housed people looking to supplement income, often immigrants and the elderly, and people living on the streets. But the center’s opponents have painted the population it serves as mostly or all homeless, and the city has argued for its eviction on the grounds that the recycling center attracts homeless people to the area.

“[Gavin Newsom] thought the eviction was one way they could ward off camping in Golden Gate Park,” said Dunn.

Some neighbors have raised concerns about the noisy garbage-picking in the nightime, and questioned the need for recycling centers with curbside in place. If the center is shut down, though, it won’t signal the end of recycling centers or those who benefit from them. It will likeley change where people go to cash in on recyclables; HANC’s recycling center is centrally located, while the majority of  San Francisco’s recycling centers are in neighborhoods on the city’s borders, including several in Bayview-Hunters Point.

Regardless of the centers effects on the community, HANC’s landlord, Rec & Parks, doesn’t legally need a reason to evict them- they just need to give notice. HANC has fought the eviction, but after almost two years of successful stalling, Rec & Parks may finally succeed.

Recology’s slate cards

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Wow. Every single slate card I’ve seen so far for this election has been paid for at least in part by Recology, which is fighting a measure that would require competitive bidding on its garbage contract.

The Richmond Democratic Club. The Teacher’s Union. The SF Women’s Political Committee. The SF Democratic Party. The Milk Club. The Alice B. Toklas Club. I’m sure there are a few more out there. And every one has a big “No on A” ad on the back.

The good news is that a lot of these mailers list good candidates for the County Central Commitee, and getting their message out to more people helps. And this is nothing new — everyone looks to the people with money to fund slate cards, and Recology’s spending a lot of money this spring. And I’m confident that every one of these groups took a No on A position before they asked for slate-card money.

Still: You look at the pile and it looks like Recology owns San Francisco politics.

On eve of May Day, Valencia, Mission Police Station vandalized

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A group of protesters left a trail of broken glass and paint tonight as they made their way from Dolores Park to Duboce on Valencia. Windows were broken, garbage cans overturned, paint bombs thrown, and messages saying “yuppies go home” as well as anarchist symbols were spray-painted on several restaurants, art galleries and cafes.

The façade of the police station on Mission and 17th was vandalized and broken.

A gathering at Dolores Park was advertised as a “a ruckus street party to counter gentrification, capitalism, and the policing of our communities.” About 200 attended, and chatted about their plans for the following day’s May Day activities while music played.

Shortly after 9pm, the group left the park and began to march on Dolores. Some overturned recycling bins and vandalized the windows at Farina restaurant minutes after turning the corner on 18th St, while others held back.

Dozens flocked to the sidewalk and began yelling, “this is not an Occupy SF action!”  while passers-by looked on, concerned.

The group turned on Valencia, continuing to shrink in size and break windows. Within half an hour there were less than 50 people in the march.

About 40 of police on foot followed the march along Valencia, trailing behind as vandalism continued. SFPD representatives were not immediately available for comment, but based on witness accounts there were no arrests.

Neighborhood residents were angered and confused by the destruction. One man who did not wish to be named said, “They kept doing it while other people in the march were trying to get them to stop. It was childish.”

Occupy Oakland protester Jesse Smith told CBS he was “more than a little shaken” by the events. 

“I know Occupiers,” Smith told CBS. “None of us have any idea who they were.”

A message on the Occupy SF website reads, “The march in the Mission Monday night was not an OccupySF event. OccupySF does not endorse this kind of destruction of the 99%’s property. The individuals involved in this destruction are not known to OccupySF, and we believe they are outside provocateurs sent in to tarnish the image of Occupy prior to the May Day actions.”

Kids, dogs, and naked people in Dolores Park

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The interwebs are all buzzy over the notion that some parents might want a fence around the playground in Dolores Park. Uptown Almanac denounces the Dolores Park Brats. Sfist says it’s all a plot to undermine gay beach

Well: I have two kids and a dog, and all of us in some groupings or manifestations use Dolores Park, including the playground, the grass and the dog area, and I hate to see any nudity or semi-nudity go away because then I wouldn’t get to gawk at all the hot young people who otherwise would have no interest in being naked around an old man like me.

And really, it works just fine.

I’ve been going to DP for a couple of decades, first just with a dog then just with a kid and now with the whole pack, and I’ve never seen any problems. Yeah, a dog will wander into the playground every once in a while, but the dogs that get that far away from the (overwhelmingly responsible) owners tend to be friendly and harmless. If a toddler gets knocked over by a dog, that’s sad, but it’s really not all that sad; the playground surface is designed for kids to fall on it and kids get knocked over by other kids all the time. This is a big, crowded city; we coexist in the parks, and I’m amazed at how well the active park users normally get along.

But if you want to talk about fences (and I’m against fences in parks in general, tho the one at Civic Center makes sense) the thing to remember is that you should fence in kids, not fence out dogs.

I know that sounds awful, and I’m not advocating putting children on leashes (tho at the airport I’ve though about it a few times). But little kids need to be contained — that is, parents need to know where they are. If they’re at the DP playground, somebody needs to keep an eye on them because if they’re like my kids, they’ll get into someone’s picnic, the garbage, knock over someone’s wine bottle, step on a sleeping person’s face … you know, the things kids do. And unlike dogs, they rarely come when they’re called.

Once they’re a little older it gets a little better (and then it gets much, much worse), but at the young playground age, I worry less about dogs running in than kids running out.

 

Guardian endorsements for June 5 election

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>>OUR ONE-PAGE “CLEAN SLATE” PRINTOUT GUIDE IS HERE. 

As usual, California is irrelevant to the presidential primaries, except as a cash machine. The Republican Party has long since chosen its nominee; the Democratic outcome was never in doubt. So the state holds a June 5 primary that, on a national level, matters to nobody.

It’s no surprise that pundits expect turnout will be abysmally low. Except in the few Congressional districts where a high-profile primary is underway, there’s almost no news media coverage of the election.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some important races and issues (including the future of San Francisco’s Democratic Party) — and the lower the turnout, the more likely the outcome will lean conservative. The ballot isn’t long; it only takes a few minutes to vote. Don’t stay home June 5.

Our recommendations follow.

PRESIDENT

BARACK OBAMA

Sigh. Remember the hope? Remember the joy? Remember the dancing in the streets of the Mission as a happy city realized that the era of George Bush and The Gang was over? Remember the end of the war, and health-care reform, and fair economic policies?

Yeah, we remember, too. And we remember coming back to our senses when we realized that the first people at the table for the health-policy talks were the insurance industry lobbyists. And when more and more drones killed more and more civilian in Afghanistan, and the wars didn’t end and the country got deeper and deeper into debt.

Oh, and when Obama bailed out Wall Street — and refused to spend enough money to help the rest of us. And when his U.S. attorney decided to crack down on medical marijuana.

We could go on.

There’s no question: The first term of President Barack Obama has been a deep disappointment. And while we wish that his new pledge to tax the millionaires represented a change in outlook, the reality is that it’s most likely an election-year response to the popularity of the Occupy movement.

Last fall, when a few of the most progressive Democrats began talking about the need to challenge Obama in a primary, we had the same quick emotional reaction as many San Franciscans: Time to hold the guy accountable. Some prominent left types have vowed not to give money to the Obama campaign.

But let’s get back to reality. The last time a liberal group challenged an incumbent in a Democratic presidential primary, Senator Ted Kennedy wounded President Jimmy Carter enough to ensure the election of Ronald Reagan — and the begin of the horrible decline in the economy of the United States. We’re mad at Obama, too — but we’re realists enough to know that there is a difference between moderate and terrible, and that’s the choice we’re facing today.

The Republican Party is now entirely the party of the far right, so out of touch with reality that even Reagan would be shunned as too liberal. Mitt Romney, once the relatively centrist governor of Massachusetts, has been driven by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum so deeply into crazyland that he’s never coming back. We appreciate Ron Paul’s attacks on military spending and the war on drugs, but he also opposes Medicare and Social Security and says that people who don’t have private health insurance should be allowed to die for lack of medical care.

No, this one’s easy. Obama has no opposition in the Democratic Primary, but for all our concerns about his policies, we have to start supporting his re-election now.

U.S. SENATE

DIANNE FEINSTEIN

The Republicans in Washington didn’t even bother to field a serious candidate against the immensely well-funded Feinstein, who is seeking a fourth term. She’s a moderate Democrat, at best, was weak-to-terrible on the war, is hawkish on Pentagon spending (particularly Star Wars and the B-1 bomber), has supported more North Coast logging, and attempts to meddle in local politics with ridiculous ideas like promoting unknown Michael Breyer for District Five supervisor. She supported the Obama health-care bill but isn’t a fan of single-payer, referring to supporters of Medicare for all as “the far left.”

But she’s strong on choice and is embarrassing the GOP with her push for reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act. She’ll win handily against two token Republicans.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 2

NORMAN SOLOMON

The Second District is a sprawling region stretching from the Oregon border to the Golden Gate Bridge, from the coast in as far as Trinity County. It’s home to the Marin suburbs, Sonoma and Mendocino wine country, the rough and rural Del Norte and the emerald triangle. There’s little doubt that a Democrat will represent the overwhelmingly liberal area that was for almost three decades the province of Lynn Woolsey, one of the most progressive members in Congress. The top two contenders are Norman Solomon, an author, columnist and media advocate, and Jared Huffman, a moderate member of the state Assembly from Marin.

Solomon’s not just a decent candidate — he represents a new approach to politics. He’s an antiwar crusader, journalist, and outsider who has never held elective office — but knows more about the (often corrupt) workings of Washington and the policy issues facing the nation than many Beltway experts. He’s talking about taxing Wall Street to create jobs on Main Street, about downsizing the Pentagon and promoting universal health care. He’s a worthy successor to Woolsey, and he deserves the support of every independent and progressive voter in the district.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12

NANCY PELOSI

Nancy Pelosi long ago stopped representing San Francisco (see: same-sex marriage) and began representing the national Democratic party and her colleagues in the House. She will never live down the privatization of the Presidio or her early support for the Iraq war, but she’s become a decent ally for Obama and if the Democrats retake the House, she’ll be setting the agenda for his second term. If the GOP stays in control, this may well be her last term.

Green Party member Barry Hermanson is challenging her, and in the old system, he’d be on the November ballot as the Green candidate. With open primaries (which are a bad idea for a lot of reasons) Hermanson needs support to finish second and keep Pelosi on her toes as we head into the fall.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 12

BARBARA LEE

This Berkeley and Oakland district is among the most left-leaning in the country, and its representative, Barbara Lee, is well suited to the job. Unlike Pelosi, Lee speaks for the voters of her district; she was the lone voice against the Middle East wars in the early days, and remains a staunch critic of these costly, bloody, open-ended foreign military entanglements. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

U.S. CONGRESS, DISTRICT 13

JACKIE SPEIER

Speier’s more of a Peninsula moderate than a San Francisco progressive, but she’s been strong on consumer privacy and veterans issues and has taken the lead on tightening federal rules on gas pipelines after Pacific Gas and Electric Company killed eight of her constituents. She has no credible opposition.

STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 11

MARK LENO

Mark Leno started his political career as a moderate member of the Board of Supervisors from 1998 to 2002. His high-profile legislative races — against Harry Britt for the Assembly in 2002 and against Carole Migden for the Senate in 2008 — were some of the most bitterly contested in recent history. And we often disagree with his election time endorsements, which tend toward more downtown-friendly candidates.

But Leno has won us over, time and again, with his bold progressive leadership in Sacramento and with his trailblazing approach to public policy. He is an inspiring leader who has consistently made us proud during his time in the Legislature. Leno was an early leader on the same-sex marriage issue, twice getting the Legislature to legalize same-sex unions (vetoed both times by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger). He has consistently supported a single-payer health care system and laid important groundwork that could eventually break the grip that insurance companies have on our health care system. And he has been a staunch defender of the medical marijuana patients and has repeatedly pushed to overturn the ban on industrial hemp production, work that could lead to an important new industry and further relaxation of this country wasteful war on drugs. We’re happy to endorse him for another term.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 17

TOM AMMIANO

Ammiano is a legendary San Francisco politician with solid progressive values, unmatched courage and integrity, and a history of diligently and diplomatically working through tough issues to create ground-breaking legislation. We not only offer him our most enthusiastic endorsement — we wish that we could clone him and run him for a variety of public offices. Since his early days as an ally of Harvey Milk on gay rights issues to his creation of San Francisco’s universal health care system as a supervisor to his latest efforts to defend the rights of medical marijuana users, prison inmates, and undocumented immigrants, Ammiano has been a tireless advocate for those who lack political and economic power. As chair of Assembly Public Safety Committee, Ammiano has blocked many of the most reactionary tough-on-crime measures that have pushed our prison system to the breaking point, creating a more enlightened approach to criminal justice issues. We’re happy to have Ammiano expressing San Francisco’s values in the Capitol.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 19

PHIL TING

Once it became abundantly clear that Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting wasn’t going to get elected mayor, he started to set his eyes on the state Assembly. It’s an unusual choice in some ways — Ting makes a nice salary in a job that he’s doing well and that’s essentially his for life. Why would he want to make half as much money up in Sacramento in a job that he’ll be forced by term limits to leave after six years?

Ting’s answer: he’s ready for something new. We fear that a vacancy in his office would allow Mayor Ed Lee to appoint someone with less interest in tax equity (prior to Ting, the city suffered mightily under a string of political appointees in the Assessor’s Office), but we’re pleased to endorse him for the District 19 slot.

Ting has gone beyond the traditional bureaucratic, make-no-waves approach of some of his predecessors. He’s aggressively sought to collect property taxes from big institutions that are trying to escape paying (the Catholic Church, for example) and has taken a lead role in fighting foreclosures. He commissioned, on his own initiative, a report showing that a large percentage of the foreclosures in San Francisco involved some degree of fraud or improper paperwork, and while the district attorney is so far sitting on his hands, other city officials are moving to address the issue.

His big issue is tax reform, and he’s been one the very few assessors in the state to talk openly about the need to replace Prop. 13 with a split-role system that prevents the owners of commercial property from paying an ever-declining share of the tax burden. He wants to change the way the Legislature interprets Prop. 13 to close some of the egregious loopholes. It’s one of the most important issues facing the state, and Ting will arrive in Sacramento already an expert.

Ting’s only (mildly) serious opponent is Michael Breyer, son of Supreme Court Justice Breyer and a newcomer to local politics. Breyer’s only visible support is from the Building Owners and Managers Association, which dislikes Ting’s position on Prop. 13. Vote for Ting.

DEMOCRATIC COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE

You can say a lot of things about Aaron Peskin, the former supervisor and retiring chair of the city’s Democratic Party, but the guy was an organizer. Four years ago, he put together a slate of candidates that wrenched control of the local party from the folks who call themselves “moderates” but who, on critical economic issues, are really better defined as conservative. Since then, the County Central Committee, which sets policy for the local party, has given its powerful endorsement mostly to progressive candidates and has taken progressive stands on almost all the ballot issues.

But the conservatives are fighting back — and with Peskin not seeking another term and a strong slate put together by the mayor’s allies seeking revenge, it’s entirely possible that the left will lose the party this year.

But there’s hope — in part because, as his parting gift, Peskin helped change state law to make the committee better reflect the Democratic voting population of the city. This year, 14 candidates will be elected from the East side of town, and 10 from the West.

We’ve chosen to endorse a full slate in each Assembly district. Although there are some candidates on the slate who aren’t as reliable as we might like, 24 will be elected, and we’re picking the 24 best.

DISTRICT 17 (EAST SIDE)

John Avalos

David Campos

David Chiu

Petra DeJesus

Matt Dorsey

Chris Gembinsky

Gabriel Robert Haaland

Leslie Katz

Rafael Mandelman

Carole Migden

Justin Morgan

Leah Pimentel

Alix Rosenthal

Jamie Rafaela Wolfe

 

DISTRICT 19 (WEST SIDE)

Mike Alonso

Wendy Aragon

Kevin Bard

Chuck Chan

Kelly Dwyer

Peter Lauterborn

Hene Kelly

Eric Mar

Trevor McNeil

Arlo Hale Smith

State ballot measures

PROPOSITION 28

YES

LEGISLATIVE TERM LIMITS

Let us begin with a stipulation: We have always opposed legislative term limits, at every level of government. Term limits shift power to the executive branch, and, more insidiously, the lobbyists, who know the issues and the processes better than inexperienced legislators. The current system of term limits is a joke — a member of the state Assembly can serve only six years, which is barely enough time to learn the job, much less to handle the immense complexity of the state budget. Short-termers are more likely to seek quick fixes than structural reform. It’s one reason the state Legislatures is such a mess.

Prop. 28 won’t solve the problem entirely, but it’s a reasonable step. The measure would allow a legislator to serve a total of 12 years in office — in either the Assembly, the Senate, or a combination. So an Assembly member could serve six terms, a state Senator three terms. No more serving a stint in one house and then jumping to the other, since the term limits are cumulative, which is imperfect: A lot of members of the Assembly have gone on to notable Senate careers, and that shouldn’t be cut off.

Still, 12 years in the Assembly is enough time to become a professional at the job — and that’s a good thing. We don’t seek part-time brain surgeons and inexperienced airline pilots. Running California is complicated, and there’s nothing wrong with having people around who aren’t constantly learning on the job. Besides, these legislators still have to face elections; the voters can impose their own term limits, at any time.

Most of the good-government groups are supporting Prop. 28. Vote yes.

PROPOSITION 29

YES

CIGARETTE TAX FOR CANCER RESEARCH

Seriously: Can you walk into the ballot box and oppose higher taxes on cigarettes to fund cancer research? Of course not. All of the leading medical groups, cancer-research groups, cancer-treatment groups and smoking-cessation groups in the state support Prop. 29, which was written by the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.

We support it, too.

Yes, it’s a regressive tax — most smokers are in the lower-income brackets. Yes, it’s going to create a huge state fund making grants for research, and it will be hard to administer without some issues. But the barrage of ads opposing this are entirely funded by tobacco companies, which are worried about losing customers, particularly kids. A buck a pack may not dissuade adults who really want to smoke, but it’s enough to price a few more teens out of the market — and that’s only good news.

Don’t believe the big-tobacco hype. Vote yes on 29.

San Francisco ballot measures

PROPOSITION A

YES

GARBAGE CONTRACT

A tough one: Recology’s monopoly control over all aspects of San Francisco’s waste disposal system should have been put out to competitive bid a long time ago. That’s the only way for the city to ensure customers are getting the best possible rates and that the company is paying a fair franchise fee to the city. But the solution before us, Proposition A, is badly flawed public policy.

The measure would amend the 1932 ordinance that gave Recology’s predecessor companies — which were bought up and consolidated into a single behemoth corporation — indefinite control over the city’s $220 million waste stream. Residential rates are set by a Rate Board controlled mostly by the mayor, commercial rates are unregulated, and the company doesn’t even have a contract with the city.

Last year, when Recology won the city’s landfill contract — which was put out to bid as the current contract with Waste Management Inc. and its Altamont landfill was expiring — Recology completed its local monopoly. At the time, Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, Sup. David Campos, and other officials and activists called for updating the ordinance and putting the various contracts out to competitive bid.

That effort was stalled and nearly scuttled, at least in part because of the teams of lobbyists Recology hired to put pressure on City Hall, leading activists Tony Kelley and retired Judge Quentin Kopp to write this measure. They deserve credit for taking on the issue when nobody else would and for forcing everyone in the city to wake up and take notice of a scandalous 70-year-old deal.

We freely admit that the measure has some significant flaws that could hurt the city’s trash collection and recycling efforts. It would split waste collection up into five contracts, an inefficient approach that could put more garbage trucks on the roads. No single company could control all five contracts. Each of those contracts would be for just five years, which makes the complicated bidding process far too frequent, costing city resources and hindering the companies’ ability to make long-term infrastructure investments.

It would require Recology to sell its transfer station, potentially moving the waste-sorting facility to Port property along the Bay. Putting the transfer station in public hands makes sense; moving it to the waterfront might not.

On the scale of corrupt monopolies, Recology isn’t Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It’s a worker-owned company and has been willing to work in partnership with the city to create one of the best recycling and waste diversion programs in the country. For better or worse, Recology controls a well-developed waste management infrastructure that this city relies on, functioning almost like a city department.

Still, it’s unacceptable to have a single outfit, however laudatory, control such a massive part of the city’s infrastructure without a competitive bid, a franchise fee, or so much as a contract. In theory, the company could simply stop collecting trash in some parts of the city, and San Francisco could do nothing about it.

As a matter of public policy, Prop. A could have been better written and certainly could, and should, have been discussed with a much-wider group, including labor. As a matter of real politics, it’s a messy proposal that at least raises the critical question: Should Recology have a no-bid, no contract monopoly? The answer to that is no.

Prop. A will almost certainly go down to defeat; Kopp and Kelly are all alone, have no real campaign or committee and just about everyone else in town opposes it. Our endorsement is a matter of principle, a signal that this longtime garbage deal has to end. If Recology will work with the city to come up with a contract and a bid process, then Prop. A will have done its job. If not, something better will be on the ballot in the future.

For now, vote yes on A.

PROPOSITION B

YES

COIT TOWER POLICY

In theory, city department heads ought to be given fair leeway to allocate resources and run their operations. In practice, San Francisco’s Department of Recreation and Parks has been on a privatization spree, looking for ways to sell or rent public open space and facilities as a way to balance an admittedly tight budget. Prop. B seeks to slow that down a bit, by establishing as city policy the premise that Coit Tower shouldn’t be used as a cash cow to host private parties.

The tower is one of the city’s most important landmarks and a link to its radical history — murals painted during the Depression, under the Works Progress Administration, depict local labor struggles. They’re in a bit of disrepair –but that hasn’t stopped Rec-Park from trying to bring in money by renting out the place for high-end events. In fact, the tower has been closed down to the public in the past year to allow wealthy patrons to host private parties. And the city has more of that in mind.

If the mayor and his department heads were acting in good faith to preserve the city’s public spaces — by raising taxes on big business and wealthy individuals to pay for the commons, instead of raising fees on the rest of us to use what our tax dollars have already paid for — this sort of ballot measure wouldn’t be necessary.

As it is, Prop. B is a policy statement, not an ordinance or Charter amendment. It’s written fairly broadly and won’t prevent the occasional private party at Coit Tower or prevent Rec-Park from managing its budget. Vote yes.

 

Coachella Day 3: The Weeknd of Hives and Justice

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All photos by Eric Lynch.

Bears, bloggers and bands, oh my.  Sunday indeed brought sun, by mid afternoon all the good shadows were occupied — the lengths of tree shadows, behind garbage cans, and next to the churro stand. I arrived just as the largest crowd yet was dissipating from Santigold.  

Schoolmarms, Real Estate did nothing to upset our expectations with their “variations on a single theme” set.  Sweet and predictable, like watching old episodes of I Love Lucy to help you sleep — you don’t have to see what’s going to happen, because you already know and everything’s going to be OK.  

The Weeknd captivated with a solid and lively performance. Good stuff.

The Hives were a trip for me. Three songs in the photo pit and I got pushed, trampled, and shoved so many times by photogs trying to get “the shot,” I just kept thinking, “What is this guy, Kanye or something?” I mean c’mon. But Pelle Almqvist was this photographer’s dream. Jumping over the first two pits, climbing on speakers, throwing his mike while doing jumps. These guys were 1920s street buskers with trampolines, and believe me, I was buying.

If Radiohead had their wall of recyclable plastic bottles, then French duo, Justice had their wall of Marshall ’60s speakers-cum-light modulators.  If there’s that many knobs on the front of their set, what the hell is going on on the side? From wherever they conjure those sounds, this Justice-novice is glad the facade is not broken.  

Coachella Day 1: Girls, EMA, WU LYF, Mazzy Star, Pulp, more

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All photos by Eric Lynch

I guess the story of the first day was the weather. Everyone checking their iPhones for what time the rain would begin.  And it eventually came, not SF rain, but a startling event none the less for Coachella.

Intermittent showers and sprinkles throughout the day (after 4:30 ish). Fans got creative using garbage bags or just ignored it altogether, in their hipster finery.  By the end of the day there were shivering shirtless Coachella bros everywhere.  

M83 was astounding. They were a definite crowd favorite. 

I almost peed my pants leaning on the speakers in front of Amon Tobin ISAM.

There were a lot of crabby people for Mazzy Star (too quiet, no lights, plus rain equals crabby twenty somethings who have no idea really who Hope Sandoval is and seemed unwilling to give her a chance.)

While I think Pulp is old news, Jarvis Cocker really brought out the camp and strutted the stage like he meant it. 

WU LYF: simple clean and unpretentious as one can be with an affected voice like that.

Girls are not very photogenic but the crowd was wild for them. The three background singers brought it up a notch.

 

Inside-outside

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS One of my favorite places to be is at the foot of Potrero Hill in Jackson Park, where I played pick-up baseball in the 1990s and soccer in the 2000s. It’s very unclaustrophobic around there, maybe you’ve noticed. Although: the air is thick with Anchor Steam hops and, for me, memories of athletic style glory such as grounding out to third.

Shit, I got old. Wait. Did I? I am sappy and nostalgic. My foot hurts and I have to “put it up.” I take fiber supplements. Loud music annoys me. I’m almost always cold. We are looking into getting a camper.

Very soon, if all goes as planned, I will be able to stick my hands in boiling water like Grandma Rubino did. And then I will know that I have made it.

Meanwhile, there’s laundry to do. I have a football game tonight and all my sports bras are stinky from playing soccer and soccer and racquetball and ping-pong, so — wait a minute — maybe I’m not old.

Yeah. Maybe loud music only annoys me when it isn’t the Verms. Which it was one time, at Thee Parkside. At the foot of Potrero Hill. Across from Jackson Park.

One of my favorite things about San Francisco these days is that bar food is stepping up — and in interesting ways such as crawfish grits and wedding soup at Broken Record, the whiskey-infused bacon burgers at Bender’s, and fried pickles and chili-cheese tater tots at Thee Parkside.

The burgers aren’t as good as the ones at Bender’s, though. Come to think of it, the tater tots aren’t either. But the music is better, especially on Twang Sundays. That must have been what it was when I saw the Verms there.

Now, the Verms. The Verms are by miles and miles my new favorite band. It’s Earl Butter! What this means is the songs are about underwear and pork sandwiches. In fact, as serendipity would have it, they played the pork sandwich song while we were eating ours.

We were me, Hedgehog, and Kayday, sitting and standing around a small, tall table near the door. Kayday wasn’t eating, and Hedgehog wouldn’t tell me what she wanted.

“Surprise me,” she said.

So I went out to the patio and stared at the menu for about a half hour. There were kids running around, people eating, people waiting to eat, people dancing.

It’s really nice, the indoor-outdoor layout of the place. You can adjust your volume, light, and air intakes simply by poking around the premises. In fact, there used to be a ping-pong table in the way-back, but I forgot to notice if it was still there.

Anyway: pork sandwich. Yes. And a bacon burger with barbecue sauce. Skinny fries. Tater tots. The idea being a 50-50 split.

This was before the goddamn gluten-free garbage, praise Jesus, or I’d have had to eat all the buns and none of the meat. As it was, I messed up anyway.

See, I love barbecue sauce on burgers. Hedgehog — surprise! — does not. Worse, when we halved the burger, luck would have it, she drew the slathered half and mine had next to none — just the first bite, so that I would know what I was missing for the rest of them.

Bite. Damn! Bite. Damn!

I wish we’d have worked it all out in advance, like communicative adults, but it’s hard in bars. The loud music. Lack of light.

By the time we even knew each other’s disappointment, it was too late: The burger was gone.

Ironically, while everyone loves barbecue sauce on barbecue, the pulled pork sandwich came without. Just coleslaw was on it, by which they mean pickled purple cabbage, and a special mayo-y mix, so… hold that.

Good food, great place, amazing show.

Hedgehog still has the set list. She takes it out sometimes, and looks at it.

Me, I’ve gotta go catch some footballs and pull some flags. Tomorrow, hopefully victorious, I set sail for Frisco — and will see you all in the flesh (or thereabouts) next week. At my new favorite restaurant!

THEE PARKSIDE

Mon.-Fri. 2pm-2am; Fri.-Sat. 3pm-2am

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

Cash only

Full bar

www.theeparkside.com

American Idol: The Diddy and Hilfiger edition

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Two things:

1. You can’t do a whole American Idol with a Billy Joel theme. He didn’t write any good songs, and most of them are really bad. All it does it make the contestants look lame.

2. Diddy’s not much of a song coach. Tommy Hilfiger, this week’s celebrity fashion guru, has no idea how to dress performers for the show. Every suggestion they made was dumb. Every contestant who wore Hilfiger’s picks looked horrible, out of place, ridiculous. Sell some jeans, Tommy.

Actually, three things:

3. The only one who got how stupid all of this was and responded in style was Heejun, who made fun of the whole spectacle, pissed off Steven Tyler (who never gets mad), confused J-Lo and Randy — and had me laughing so hard I almost lost my Bud Light.

On to the show:

J-Lo, as always, looks gorgeous. Steven might as well be wearing pajamas. Randy needs to lose the weird pins on his shirt.

Deandre tries “Only the Good Die Young.” Diddy tells him to look J-Lo right in the eye, because “she’s a Catholic girl and she’ll get it.” He doesn’t. The song is nothing but pop schlock; he does the best he can, but you know, garbage in, garbage out.

Erika. “New York State of Mind.” A painful dirge. Viv’s OK with it. I hate it.

Joshua. “She’s Gone Away.” Whatever.

Skylar. “Shameless.” The best of the night so far; she makes a dumb song sound kinda country. Except that outfit! Tommy! Sell some jeans. Go away.

Elise. “Vienna.” At least she sounds like a smoky lounge singer, and since Billy Joel pretty much defines bad lounge singer, it worked.

Phillip. “Moving’ Out.” Totally different from the original, like a new song, with almost a punk edge to it. Nice. Best interpretation of Billy Joel ever.

Holli. “Honesty.” Terrible song, great singer.

And then Heejun. This guy’s a winner. He made fun of Tommy Hilfiger, made fun of the whole fashion-statement thing, made fun of the piano player — and really, really made fun of Billy Joel. “My Life” is one of the worst BJ songs ever, which is saying something, and Heejun raced around and sang it like he was making a joke on everyone, starting with the songwriter. Amazing. The best and only AI parody in history. Steven was angry from the start — he realized immediately that this was a goof, and at the end he told Heejun that “at some point, you have to take it more seriously.” J-Lo didn’t quite get the joke (or maybe she did), but she did call it “a breath of fresh air.” Ayup.

Jessica. “Everybody Has a Dream.” She’s such a great singer, even this crap can’t hold her down. Colton. Someone had to do “Piano Man,” and he plays the piano, so why not. Viv loved it. J-Lo got the “goosies” again. Me? I love Jennifer’s goosies, but I’ll pass on the Piano Man.

Heejun was in the bottom two, since America clearly has no sense of humor, but he survived and Erika’s gone home, new hairdo and all. Catch you next week.

 

 

Our Weekly Picks: March 21-27

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WEDNESDAY 21

Al Pacino

Iconic actor Al Pacino brings his new experimental documentary Wilde Salome to the city tonight for its U.S. debut screening, with a red carpet celebration and a variety of special guests including Jean-Paul Gaultier, Dita Von Teese, and more. Pacino has described the film, a look into legendary writer Oscar Wilde’s works and influence, as his most personal project ever, and he will also be on hand tonight for the gala screening that benefits the GLBT Historical Society, and commemorates the 130th anniversary of the legendary writer’s visit to San Francisco. (Sean McCourt)

6 p.m., $25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 777-5455

Glbthistory.org/WildeSalome

 

of Montreal

A part conspiratorial, part confessional Kevin Barnes lies at the heart of Paralytic Stalks, the latest release from the of Montreal mastermind and his rotating ensemble of collaborators. Paralytic is complex and genre-bending like most of the of Montreal repertoire. In Paralytic‘s first half, Barnes croons moody lyrics transposed on psychedelic pop melodies not unlike 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Paralytic‘s second half challenges listeners with Barnes’ violent tones jumbled with harrowing electronic-classical interludes. (Kevin Lee)

With Deerhoof, Kishi Bashi

8 p.m., $21

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

Also Thurs/22, 8 p.m., $22

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Bonaparte

An electro rock’n’roll circus led by an inspired madman, Berlin’s Bonaparte has campaigned through Europe, Russia, and Australian, but is just now taking aim at the U.S. via SXSW. A rotating collective of musicians, designers, dancers, and freaks (performing in wildly excessive costumes), Bonaparte combines a trash punk energy with a theatricality that borders on the surreal. The ringleader, Tobias Jundt, is a sharp lyricist hiding behind dada non sequiturs and unbridled hedonism. (Witness the apt “gloryhole to the universe” line on “Computer in Love.”) Remember: when they ask “Are you ready to party with the Bonaparte?” — it’s a rhetorical question. (Ryan Prendiville)

With 2 Men Will Move You, Stay Gold DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning

9 p.m., $10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com


THURSDAY 22

indifference and MASTERWORK

Outsiders and insiders at once, Lisa Townsend and Mica Sigourney culminate their CounterPULSE winter residencies with indifference and MASTERWORK. Experimental choreographer Townsend leaps off from Camus and the idea of free will in a dance-theater piece investigating the conflict between society and the solitary action, or not, of the stranger. Sigourney offers MASTERWORK, a concept demanding the all-caps title, an experiment in hubris promising “the most important performance of our generation and time.” Maybe. But if you’ve seen any of Sigourney’s work (recently in Laura Arrington’s “Wag,” or more recently with a bottle of bourbon, two glasses, and some sheets of paper at a crowded reading in the SomARTS men’s room) —or drag persona VivvyAnne ForeverMORE! and the envelope-pushing drag queen confab-cabaret “Work MORE!” — you’ll be there just to make sure. (Robert Avila)

Thurs/22-Sun/25, 8 p.m., $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060 www.counterpulse.org

 

“Hope Mohr Dance: Fifth Annual Home Season”

Christy Funsch recently choreographed an intriguing evening of solos for Bay Area dancers. One of its delights was watching Hope Mohr — exquisite, focused and powerful — take to the stage. In the last few years Mohr has focused her energy on creating work for her own company, but she clearly is still a mesmerizing performer. During her Fifth Annual Home Season, she is premiering “Reluctant Light” for her troupe, but she will also dance her 2011 solo “Plainsong”, inspired by the myth of Penelope and first seen at last year’s San Francisco International Dance Festival. As is her want, Mohr has invited an out of town company whose work she feels complements her own to share this evening. They are the Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre from New York. (Rita Felciano)

Thurs/22-Sat/24, 8 p.m., $20–$25

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.zspace.org


FRIDAY 23

The Brightness of the Day . . .

Peter Whitehead makes instruments out of the things you’ve got in your kitchen, toolbox, and garbage bin — and makes them sound fucking rad. Brightness of the Day . . . will feature his experimental instruments, including his spoon harp, ektar, and buzzing bass lyre, alongside his textile paintings and collages. Whitehead’s visual art and musical endeavors parallel each other: his art illustrates music’s patterns and variation, and he conceptualizes music visually. Whitehead has exhibited his instruments in various museums and galleries in the past, but this is the first time he’ll be bringing together the various aspects of his visual art, music, and instrument building for an exhibit. (Mia Sullivan)

6 p.m., free

60Six

66 Elgin Park, SF

(415) 621-8377

www.gallery60six.com

 

Saviours

When Saviours first broke into the Bay Area metal and punk scenes, their unrepentant Thin Lizzy worship, filtered through a nasty hardcore sensibility, was as refreshing as a cold Hamm’s on a hot Tuesday afternoon. Like their recently-disbanded peers, Annihilation Time, Saviours dig deep into the record vault of the great hoary cannon of metal’s early days, reemerging with forgotten treasures like the weedeley-weedeley twin-guitar lead, and lyrics about getting epically baked. The band plans to get loud at a familiar San Francisco haunt, the Elbo Room, this Friday. (Tony Papanikolas)

With Holy Grail, Hazard’s Cure

9:30 p.m., $10–$13

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

Yuksek

Someone repeatedly tapping a note on a natural sounding piano. A bunch of finger snaps. An additional R&B riff on the keys. A man singing…Fitz and the Tantrums?…with an accent. Who is this? Metronomy? French accent. Phoenix? An electro snare/kick. MGMT? Background children’s vocals. Justice? Errrrr. Times up. We could play another song, or the full album, but it probably wouldn’t help. With Living on the Edge of Time, an album inspired by life as a lonely electronic musician on the road, French producer Yuksek expanded his sound — heading into a lighter, melodic though dance-oriented pop territory — as well as his band, which kicks off its US tour here. (Prendiville)

With Tenderlions, Realboy, DJ Aaron Axelsen

9 p.m., $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

SATURDAY 24

Napoleon

Fans of silent film and early cinema are in for an incredibly special treat this week and next when the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents a series of screenings featuring Abel Gance’s legendary 1927 masterpiece Napoleon. Lauded for its use of then-groundbreaking and innovative techniques, the epic five-and-a-half hour biography of the French ruler has been painstakingly restored over the past several years, and will be shown accompanied by a live musical score performed by the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this amazing event in the Bay Area’s own movie palace, the Paramount Theatre — these performances will not be staged anywhere else in the world. (McCourt)

Sat/24-Sun/25, March 31, April 1

1:30 p.m., $40–$120

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

www.silentfilm.org

 

Thee Oh Sees

As prolific as they are prodigiously loud, San Francisco favorites Thee Oh Sees have cultivated over the course of ten albums (and a shitload of EPs, singles, etc.) a familiar wilderness, equal parts Black Flag and Their Satanic Majesties Request. This shouldn’t mask how unpredictable the band can sound — like the vaguely grotesque, multicolored nightmare aesthetic of the band’s instantly recognizable fliers and album covers, Thee Oh Sees couldn’t be any less concerned with weirding out our delicate sensibilities. (Papanikolas)

With White Mystery, Coathangers, Guantanamo Baywatch, Cyclops

9 p.m., $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

The Magnetic Fields

The Magnetic Fields are known for their sardonic, poetic, and, at times, absolutely hilarious songs that tend to focus on loneliness, sexual identity, unrequited love, and other love-related mishaps. Lead singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt has been releasing albums with the Magnetic Fields for more than two decades. Their new album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, marks the indie pop group’s return to a synthy sound, which they were all about in the ’90s, but veered from in their past three albums (Realism, Distortion, and I). Love at the Bottom of the Sea delves into sexual taboos with catchy tracks like “God Wants Us to Wait” and “Andrew in Drag.” (Sullivan)

8 p.m., $35

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 548-3010

www.thefoxoakland.com


TUESDAY 27

Kendrick Lamar

Best of lists, while good for selling issues or getting views, are guaranteed to start arguments. So it’s no surprise that when XXL released its 2012 Freshmen Issue, crowning emerging hip-hop artists, there was fallout: A$AP Rocky opted out, readers cried foul over selections, and firebrand Azaelia Banks put Iggy Azalea on blast (starting a beef which, given their names, was inevitable.) Time will sort it out, though, as it has with 2011 inductee Kendrick Lamar, who a year later has made the grade, and is now teasing a follow-up to his stellar Section.80. (Although I’m still trying to understand his “I climax where you begin” line on “Rigamortis.”) (Ryan Prendiville) With Hopsin 8 p.m., $30-$50 Regency Ballroom 1300 Van Ness, SF (800) 745-3000 www.theregencyballroom.com

 

Mr. Gnome

Fuzzy Cleveland drums-and-guitar duo Mr. Gnome has been named some variant on the “band to watch” so many times now, it’s best you lift your chin and pay attention. Maybe, you’ll also be scratching that chin, because the band — sugary singer-guitarist Nicole Barille and thwacking drummer-pianist Sam Meister — doesn’t quite sound like anything else. It’s an eye-popping hybrid. And its aesthetic of natural psychedelia in hazy orange and yellow hues with Donny Darko-esque imaginary belies the dark, hard rocking core. Not that they don’t have fun with their music, there are spacey shots of wailing guitars and the occasional high vocal peeps (“Bit of Tongue”), it’s just far more realized a sound than one might expect based on the superficial. Listening yet? (Emily Savage)

With Electric Shepherd & Outlaw, Plastic Villians

8 p.m., $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

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The legacy of racism

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steve@sfbg.com

The legacy of brutal racism in this country, particularly against African Americans, shapes the events of today. That’s a notion that much of white America resists accepting, particularly conservatives. But actions create reactions, hatred begets hatred, and those cycles can roll forward endlessly and manifest in unpredictable ways.

That’s one of the most compelling lessons in local journalist Thomas Peele’s gripping and insightful new book, Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist (2012, Crown), which grew out of covering the aftermath of the 2007 murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey by members of Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Bailey was killed to prevent him from writing a story in the Oakland Post about the violence and financial crimes perpetrated by followers of the late Yusuf Bey and his sons, including Yusuf Bey IV (aka Fourth). Peele and other local journalists and media outlets (including the Bay Guardian) formed the Chauncey Bailey Project to build on the work Bailey began and investigate his murder, which Fourth was convicted last year of ordering.

“The free press on which the public depends to keep it informed had been attacked,” Peele wrote. While such murders are rare in the U.S. — the last was a Mafia hit on a reporter from Arizona in 1976 — Peele and his brethren considered it important to send the message that, “A story could not be killed by killing a journalist.”

But the story that emerges from Peele’s years-long investigation goes well beyond Bailey’s murder, its flawed investigation by the Oakland Police Department, the violence and hypocrisy of the Your Black Muslim Bakery “cult,” or its long and complex relationship with Oakland’s political and community leaders.

Peele delves deeply into the 80-plus-year history of the Nation of Islam and Black Muslim ideology, dissecting its turbulent evolution and belief system that white people are “devils,” created by a mad scientist named Big-Headed Yakub, who use “tricknology” to hide the truth that African Americans are superior beings who will be spared during a coming Armageddon inflicted by a spaceship that has long circled the earth — a belief system that Malcolm X rejected after taking a hajj to Mecca and shortly before his assassination.

Peele dismisses the entire religion — which has very little in common with true Islam — as a deceptive scam from its inception, devised by the “con man” W.D. Fard and promoted by Elijah Muhammad simply to enrich its leaders by manipulating poor African Americans. Similarly, Yusuf Bey spoke the language of black empowerment in founding his own breakaway Black Muslim sect in North Oakland then used it as cover for criminal enterprises and raping the women under his control over a period of decades.

But to understand the appeal of Black Muslims preaching hatred of white devils, you have to look at the African American experience and horrible racism and violence that black people have endured in this country, as Peele does. He starts in Depression-era Detroit, where Fard and Muhammad met amid the virulent racism against Southern blacks who migrated north to work in Henry Ford’s automobile factories.

“This is the question of the psychology of race,” legendary attorney Clarence Darrow said during the Detroit murder trial of blacks defending their home against an attacking white mob, which Peele uses to great effect. “Of how everything known to a race affects its actions. What we learn as children we remember — it gets fastened to the mind. I would not claim that the people outside the Sweet house were bad. But they would do to Negroes something they would not do to whites. It’s their race psychology.”

We see Joseph Stephens (who would later become Yusuf Bey) growing up with tales of brutal lynchings in his hometown of Greenville, Texas, and later as a Santa Barbara hairdresser who discovered the Nation of Islam in 1962 after the Los Angeles Police Department had shot up its mosque and Stephens found his calling in the resolute words of Malcolm X and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

African American history made Bailey want to become a journalist focused on covering and empowering his community. And this same legacy — mixed with hopelessness, poverty, and broken homes during an upbringing in San Francisco and Richmond — animated Devaughndre Broussard, who fired three shotgun blasts into Bailey on a sunny morning in downtown Oakland.

“His life was no accident. Neither was his faith,” Peele wrote of Fourth in the last chapter. “The society that now worked through its flawed laws and imperfect courts to put him in prison for life had only itself to blame for the terror that Fourth and his fellow believers had inflicted upon it. The backlash against centuries of enslavement of Africans and the subhuman treatment of their descendants had seen to that. The stick figure hanging from a loose that Elijah Muhammad had ordered displayed in all the Nation of Islam mosques, the symbol of the boyhood lynching of his friend Albert Hamilton, showed that some could never forget, or forgive. Neither could Yusef Bey forget the stories of cotton fields his parents brought west from East Texas along with the story of a Negro burned to death as white people gathered in the square of a horrible place called Greenville and cheered. Some wounds are too deep to heal.”

But Americans have short memories for even our recent history, coupled with a growing sense that society’s have-nots somehow deserve to be that way and a lack of understanding of the many ways that racism and its legacy still affects this country.

“I don’t think white America understands it at all. White America has this attitude of: get over it,” Peele told me when I asked about that “racism’s backlash” theme. “How long can you oppress people and treat them like utter garbage before there is a rebellion?”

Gauged by poverty or incarceration rates, or by the poor quality of many of its schools, much of black America still faces tough struggles. It wrestles with a lack of opportunities and an understandable sense of hopelessness that can easily breed resentment or even violence. One example that Peele includes were the Death Angels (aka the “Zebra murders”), in which a small group of militant black ex-convicts randomly shot dozens of white people in San Francisco and Oakland in the early 1970s.

Peele closes the book with a chilling suggestion that Broussard, who is serving a fixed 25-year prison sentence because of his cooperation in the prosecution of Fourth and co-defendant Antoine Mackey, is studying to become a spiritual leader and may follow familiar patterns. “Look at where he came from? Have things changed that much?” Peele said of the lack of opportunities that Broussard faced growing up, and will face again when he gets out of prison in his mid-40s.

Peele has long been an award-winning investigative reporter rooted in deep research, which he combines with a colorful and dramatic narrative style. Yet he sometimes oversimplifies and harshly judges events and people, even Bailey, who Peele deems a lazy journalist and bad writer.

“The truth speaks for itself,” Peele told me. But the truth is often a matter of perspective, and Peele can’t escape the fact that he’s a white guy who has worked out of Contra Costa and Alameda counties since 2000. Perhaps that’s why he’s so quick to label poor urban areas with substantial African American populations as “ghettos.” Or, sometimes even more dramatically, as a “sagging, blood-splattered ghetto,” a phrase that a Los Angeles Times reviewer singled out as an example of how “Peele’s prose occasionally overreaches.”

I was repeatedly struck by the same thought, almost physically cringing when Peele labeled San Francisco’s Western Addition, my old neighborhood, as a violent ghetto. Or when he wrote, “Richmond is one of the most hopeless and violent cities in America, an oil-refinery town of 103,000 people, littered with shanties where shipyard workers lived during World War II ,” as if it were a cross between an Appalachian coal town and Third World hovel rather than a clean, modern Bay Area city well-served by public transit and a Green Party mayor.

Peele got defensive when I asked him about the labels, telling me, ” I stand by characterizations,” although he admitted that maybe Western Addition isn’t really a ghetto. “I think you’re nitpicking,” he told me.

Perhaps, and I do think that Peele’s flair for the dramatic is one of the things that makes Killing the Messenger such a page-turner, in the tradition of great true-crime novels such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. But in a book that bravely takes on the complexities of racism and its backlash, I think this is more than a trivial “nit.”

It’s tempting for white America to dismiss such details, treat racism is a thing of the past, and malign racial sensitivity as political correctness. But as Peele and his book remind us, the wounds of not-so-distant indignities can run deep. And the collapsing opportunities for social and economic advancement in this country will create a backlash if we try to ignore it.

Entering the pixels at the Creators Project

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The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1963, and don’t get Jamie Zigelbaum wrong, because he thinks it was a great invention.

For its time.

But, surrounded by his and other feats of computational art at last weekend’s Creators Project at Fort Mason, Zigelbaum was understandably over the mouse.

“I don’t want to poke at things with a stick anymore. I want to form things with my hands. And touchscreens, that’s still like poking stuff behind glass,” he says.

I’ve had my share of psychedelic discussions at festivals, and this is actually not one of them. Zigelbaum and creative partner Marcelo Coelho created the epic-sized Lite-Brite behind us that allows Creators Project-goers the chance to manipulate pixels with their hands. Touch one of the palm-sized magnetic boxes and its oscillating light will change colors – touch one and then another and the second will swap hues to reflect that of the first. Your body becomes a conduit. We stayed far away from technical details in our interview, so don’t expect me to explain how this happens. 

His project is one of many lining the Herbst Pavilion hanger early in the afternoon on Saturday. Hours still lie between us and the festival’s musical headliner the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (check Guardian music editor Emily Savage’s report for the best of the day’s sounds), and the space is relatively calm, lacking lines, and resembles a museum more than part of a weekend-long affair of big ticket bands and hype organized and curated by VICE and Intel. 

Jamie Zigelbaum guards over his baby at Creators Project. Guardian photos by Caitlin Donohue

There is a constant, ambient hum. One side of the space is lined by Chris Milk’s “The Treachery of Sanctuary,” a massive three-panel interactive projection that allows users to be converted into a wing-flapping guardian angel or two other flight-related visual trip-outs. Outside in Fort Mason’s bitter winds stands the festival’s version of Mecca: a 40-feet by 40-feet cube made of scaffolding grid traversed by beams of light, perfectly calibrated to match the work’s haunting soundtrack of chords arranged by composer Scanner. 

Zigelbaum’s piece is situated in what he calls the “Media Lab triangle,” a triad of works by artists who studied at MIT’s Media Lab. The other two are Casey Reas, who has made a slow-doodling Technicolor algorithm and Sosolimited, with a Big Brother-skew of a live TV channel feed.

Compared to other places where Zigelbaum and Coelho have shown work (Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach comes to mind), Zigelbaum says the Creators Project has a less commercial focus, and is more dedicated to the kind of computational, gestural art that he does. 

Be the bird: Chris Milk’s “The Treachury of Sanctuary”

“These people are just really interested in this stuff,” he reflects. Zigelbaum’s primary interest lies in getting people to realize that “computing can be a much deeper and richer form,” than is typically employed by our hunt and peck iPhoning era. His Creators’ piece “Six-Forty by Four-Eighty” could be adapted for commercial use, he thinks, though the right offer hasn’t presented itself to himself and Coelho yet. 

But surely having his piece at a traveling festival that has been incarnated everywhere from Sao Paolo to Seoul gives him a wider perspective on the capabilities of the system he and his co-artist have built. Festival-goers constantly discover new features of the piece, like when one pushed all the pixels together, and left a human-shaped shadow on their surfaces after someone changed the color scheme with the piece’s remote behind their back. Zigelbaum is still surprised by what his creation is capable of.

Wandering through “Origin” by United Visual Artists

The human traffic is also a good reminder that not even computational, gestural interface art lasts forever – hence the three staff members positioned around the velvet ropes of “Six-Forty by Four-Eighty”. 

“Oh yeah, people will take the pixels,” Zigelbaum sighs. “It’s like, c’mon – that thing isn’t even going to be lighting up after a week! The pixel will end up in the garbage.”

On the Cheap Listings

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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Soojin Chang. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 7

San Francisco Green Film Festival closing night film and party San Francisco Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF. (415) 742-1394, www.sfgreenfilmfest.org. 5:30 p.m., $12 per film. Whether you’ve had the chance to check out the second annual Green Film Fest’s activist-making movie screenings, make sure to check out its final night celebrating sustainable living and the fight to save our environment. The closing film Just Do It is a tale of modern-day outlaws and illegal activism in England.

THURSDAY 8

International Women’s Day March sign-making party New Valencia Hall, 747 Polk, SF. (415) 864-1278, www.radicalwomen.org. 7 p.m., $7.50 suggested donation for dinner. Sisters United Front is having a rally on March 10 to oppose budget cuts that have hit poor women the hardest. In anticipation of the march, Radical Women is hosting this evening of food and sign-making.

FRIDAY 9

Make Do! recycling exhibit and fashion show K Gallery at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding, Alameda. (510) 865-5060, www.rhythmix.org. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., free. Recycling is not only something that happens when sorting out your garbage, but is also when finding creative ways to create functional treasures out of seemingly useless trash. The opening night of Make Do! will feature vintage vendors, delicious treats, and an upcycle-oriented fashion show.

SF Beer Olympics Impala Bar and Ultra Lounge, 501 Broadway, SF. (415) 982-5299, www.impalasf.com. 8:30 p.m., free to play; $10 to drink. Are you a lover of beer games with friends who hate them? Come make a mess with like-minded individuals who are more than ready to ditch the overpriced cocktails for a duel over brew.

Avant-garde sound and visual night with Edmund Campion Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Gallery B, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 7 p.m., $7. Edmund Campion is a pioneer of computer-enhanced performance practice and is the special guest for this week’s BAM/PFA Friday Late Night event. He promises to deliver a truly tripped-out experience through a mix of video projections, a choir scattered throughout Gallery B, and his unique take on electronic tunes.

SATURDAY 10

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Out of Chaos opening reception Kala Gallery, 2990 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 841-7000, www.kala.org. 4 p.m.-6 p.m., free. The friend and publisher of many Beat writers, Ferlinghetti drew from his well of experiences when working on his poetry and art. Come meet the one-time poet laureate of San Francisco as he launches Out of Chaos, a portfolio that showcases his original artwork and poetry.

“Sweeping of Giants” abstract ink artwork opening reception Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery, 362 Grand, Oakl. (510) 834-2769, www.oldcrowtattoo.com. Through April 9. 8 p.m., free. There are always samples of previously inked designs in the albums and on the walls of tattoo shops, but they’re usually small renderings or unsatisfying snapshots. Come see how visually orgasmic it is when detail-attentive ink artists really let loose in a surrealist painting, design-oriented composition, or a geometric field of color.

World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco edition Northeast corner of Justin Herman Plaza, 1 Market, SF. www.sfbikeride.org. 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Take a naked stance against our society’s global dependency on oil cartels in this mobile protest. Feel the liberating breeze as you ride as bare as you please through San Francisco’s favorite spots. Fingers are crossed for outstanding weather.

“Reflecting on his Politics, Music, Fighting Capitalism, and Cancer” jazz performance and panel discussion Multicultural Community Center in the Associated Student Union Center Building at UC Berkeley, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berkeley. (510) 548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com. 2 p.m., free. Fred Ho is a saxophonist and social activist who underwent intense surgery and chemotherapy and came out of the battle with a new understanding of what “true healing” means. Join Ho as he discusses health, sustainability, raw foodism, and of course, indulges us with a little jazz.

Kiteboarding party and benefit event Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com. 6 p.m.-9 p.m., $10 donation. San Francisco is kind of the perfect place for kiteboarding because of the ever-present wind and the beautiful scenery. Help keep our city beautiful by supporting nonprofit Baykeeper’s work in preventing pollution in the Bay Area — you might even win some cool kite gear in the process.

SUNDAY 11

“Lazy Sunday Shopping Day”: Opening weekend of Chronicle Books at the Metreon Chronicle Books, 165 4th St., SF. (415) 369-6271, www.chroniclebooks.com. 10:30 a.m., free. Sunday should be for strolling and snacking, and Chronicle Books is honoring this sacred ritual with coffee and Top Pot doughnuts at its shop opening in downtown’s Metreon.

MONDAY 12

Bargain Basement Concert Night Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com. 8:30 p.m., free. The weekend might have drained your pockets but there’s not reason you can still dance. Local bands and DJs totally understand — they are hosting a cover-free night of surprisingly eclectic music. Think how delicious your moves will feel when you’re rocking them to Arms and Legs, Jackal Fleece, Surf Shit, and Junkdrawer sans financial damage.