Gavin Newsom

Tourk for mayor

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By Steven T. Jones
After an uncomfortable exchange with Mayor Gavin Newsom at the Project Homeless Connect event earlier in the day, Alex Tourk was out with friends (including a long list of prominent people, many still in Newsom’s camp) at Finnegan’s Wake last night celebrating his birthday and I happened to run into him. This guy’s a class act, standing tall and trying to do what’s right even after being so viciously betrayed by Newsom. We chatted a bit and he said that he appreciated how the Guardian has covered this episode. I asked how his job search was going and I emphasized my earlier published point that I hope he’s taking his sweet time given the fact that Newsom is paying his high salary until he finds one. But rather than soaking Newsom, Tourk said he was actively looking for work and eager to sever ties with his former mentor. I had just come from a dinner party where it was only half-jokingly suggested that Tourk run for mayor and I passed that along. And you know what? I sensed a twinkle in his eye and an openness to the idea. Wouldn’t that be something? Tourk was the guy who actually executed the things that Newsom will be claiming credit for this year, a genuine policy pro who has a sterling reputation and increasing name recognition to boot, not to mention the beautifully poetic narrative. If Jack Davis or any other political consultants are reading this, please, give Tourk a call.

Sorta, maybe an alcoholic

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

To read about Delancey’s finances, click here.

What exactly is Gavin Newsom doing at Delancey Street?

It’s not counseling, we’re told. It’s not rehab. It’s not detox. It’s not a typical course of treatment at the storied $20 million nonprofit. So what is it beyond a reprieve from the otherwise ugly headlines?

Newsom isn’t talking much about his program. But some mental-health professionals are raising serious questions about his regimen.

San Francisco’s chief executive declared several weeks ago in a public announcement to all the city’s department heads that he was seeking a diluted version of rehab at Delancey Street.

That struck more than a few people as odd. Delancey Street doesn’t do part-time or outpatient treatment. It only takes clients who agree to a long-term, full-time residential program geared entirely toward hardcore alcoholics, drug addicts, and criminals.

It’s not, in other words, a place where someone in Newsom’s condition would typically seek help. And it’s not a place designed to alleviate a comparatively minor thirst for white wine.

The news certainly appalled Dee-Dee Stout.

Stout is a City College of San Francisco professor and an adjunct faculty member at San Francisco State University. It’s her job to train city employees working in any major capacity that involves medically treating alcohol and drug abuse, from San Francisco General Hospital to Community Behavioral Health Services to the Adult Probation Department.

Stout, a certified drug and alcohol counselor, told us friends who’d seen the headlines said, " ‘Oh god, Dee-Dee’s going to hit the roof on this one.’ And they were right."

She struggled to figure out how she could broach the subject to one of her classes at City College — but a student beat her to it, quickly pointing out that it was unethical for credentialed treatment specialists to counsel their close friends. The two-year recertification required of caseworkers in the city includes an ethics update, Stout said.

Delancey Street’s executive director, Mimi Silbert, has been Newsom’s friend since he was a child and knows his father well. Silbert, in fact, has openly discussed Newsom’s progress with the press, including the Guardian, while the mayor’s own ear-piercing silence on the matter enables him to appear repentant.

Stout decided to offer the student extra credit if he drafted a letter outlining the concerns of the class, which she had colleagues review before sending it along to the entire Board of Supervisors, the Mayor’s Office, and pretty much every major newspaper in town.

"This relationship is not acceptable under any applicable code of professional ethics," the letter states. Hardly anyone bothered to write back, save for the auto-response letters Stout received from Sophie Maxwell and the Mayor’s Office, plus a letter from Bevan Dufty urging Stout and her students to empathize with Gavin during this difficult time.

Silbert, for her part, told the Guardian that ethics weren’t a concern for her because Newsom wasn’t a full-tilt drunk and hadn’t submitted completely to a detailed treatment plan when he approached her for help.

"The mayor is not a drug addict," Silbert said. "That’s not what he was looking for…. Having stopped drinking, he wanted to take a look at himself. He drank what people would call ‘socially.’ I’ve seen other people when they stopped drinking — even people who didn’t need detox — and there were physical signs of problems. That’s not the shape the mayor was in."

The mayor is attending both group and solo counseling sessions after work each day, a schedule that Silbert told us is still ongoing.

Dannie Lee, a former Delancey Street resident we interviewed, said that during his own stay he attended group therapy three days a week and they were generally no-holds-barred sessions. Lee lived at Delancey Street for three and a half years after spending much of his adult life in California’s prison system. While the program ultimately worked for him, he insists, he’s skeptical that it could benefit anyone who’s trying to attend as an outpatient.

"Maybe it would be great if [Newsom] was actually there as a client or whatever to really sit in a circle and really share his stuff and listen to the group and let the group really attack," said the 49-year-old Lee, who today is one of Stout’s students. "That probably would be fine. But I don’t see that happening…. I think he would really have to tell things I don’t think he wants to tell."

Press accounts have depicted Delancey Street as an abrasive scrub brush for Newsom’s sinful indulgences. "No Nonsense: Toughness Key to Delancey Street, Silbert’s Success," a Chronicle headline announced Feb. 7. Silbert herself told the Guardian, "No one would come near us if they weren’t serious. I’m old, crotchety, and very direct. I have no time to waste."

That may be true — and it’s clear Delancey Street has had some remarkable success in treating people with severe self-destructive impulses.

San Francisco, on the other hand, years ago eschewed the sort of harsh treatment techniques that have made Delancey Street famous.

H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and a one-time clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco, told us that federal mental-health bureaucrats are less inclined today to fund groups that use confrontational methods for treating clients.

Any local nonprofit agency that wants to provide help to substance abusers using city money must comply with San Francisco’s harm reduction policy, which discourages hostile interview techniques and was set in stone by the San Francisco Health Commission seven years ago.

The letter from Stout’s class points out that treatment professionals are moving away from tough-love verbal upbraids such as those employed by the Delancey Street model.

" ‘Attack therapy’ often involves yelling at patients who have, in our view, a medical condition…. While we realize that some patients are helped by strong, confrontational methods, we believe that an evidence-based approach offers more consistent successful results."

Silbert’s techniques may be controversial, but she does move easily among Democratic Party rainmakers and philanthropists. Delancey Street enjoys wide popularity with the likes of Robert Redford, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Washington-based Eisenhower Foundation, and executives at the Gap, Pottery Barn, and Bank of America.

Silbert said the mayor deserves credit for whatever help he chooses to pursue. Other prominent friends of Delancey Street have called her before when they needed to "tune themselves up."

"I would never choose to criticize other people’s approaches, so I’m sorry if people are criticizing ours," she said. "We work hard. We do our best…. I’m glad these people feel they have a definitive answer. I don’t, and I’ve been doing it for 35 years."

If Newsom, as Silbert says, isn’t a serious alcoholic, Delancey Street is a peculiar place for him to seek help.

Most people entering the program have hit rock bottom, a step away from death or lifelong incarceration. They’re one-time prostitutes, drug pushers, robbers, and ruthless bangers. Since the organization was formed in the 1970s, it claims to have transformed the lives of 14,000 people through vocational and education assistance in addition to group counseling.

Very few of those people come in for the sort of casual treatment Newsom is seeking. In fact, Delancey Street typically doesn’t accept anyone who isn’t planning on spending a couple years in residence.

Residents living at the Embarcadero Triangle provide labor for several businesses that buoy the nonprofit financially, from its famous Delancey Street Restaurant to a national moving and trucking service.

Newsom for the most part is refusing to answer questions about his now-public battle with booze.

But Stout suggests that Newsom, by allowing the entirety of his treatment to appear on a marquee, has brought the publicity on himself. "Frankly, I don’t think it’s any of our business if he goes to treatment," Stout said. "I wish he would have just quietly gone and did what he needed to do and said he just had some medical things he needed to take care of, period." *

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s funny: the transcontinental railroad was born in San Francisco, and it transformed California. But the West Coast has pretty much lost the train thing. You want to go from here to Los Angeles, there are pretty much two choices: you can fly or you can drive. In theory, you can ride Amtrak, and I’ve done it, but it doesn’t run very often and takes about 12 hours. Fun, if you like that sort of thing, but not at all practical.

But on an early Sunday morning last week, I was traveling from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia, and between 8 a.m. and noon there were about half a dozen trains running on that route. The high-speed Acela got me to Philly in 90 minutes, downtown to downtown, way faster than I could drive. Another hour or so, and I could have been in Manhattan.

There are flights from Washington, DC, to New York, but these days it seems kind of silly to fly: by the time you arrive at the airport, get through security, go up, go down, deplane, and get from the airport to the city, you’re well beyond three hours. The train’s way cheaper too.

Yeah, I love trains (actual legroom, no seat belt signs, scenery, bar cars), so I’m biased, but it seems silly that California is spending billions of dollars on highway projects (including a new bore for the Caldecott Tunnel, a colossal waste if there ever were one), and we still aren’t talking seriously about high-speed rail to Los Angeles, which would probably bring more environmental and economic benefits than all of the other transportation projects in the state put together.

There are plenty of reasons to wring your hands over Assemblymember Mark Leno’s decision to challenge incumbent state senator Carole Migden in 2008. The race will almost certainly be bitter and ugly; both sides have an incentive to go negative. It could split the queer community, leave progressives wondering whom to support, and turn political allies into enemies.

Or maybe it won’t: I wonder if San Francisco’s progressive community is mature enough today to handle this without any bad long-term impacts. Some of the city’s left leaders will back Leno, and some will back Migden, but in the end, neither one of these candidates is the enemy, and if everyone keeps a sense of perspective (the way we were able to do in the District 5 race in 2004), it doesn’t have to be a bloodbath.

I realize that Leno is running in part because of term limits, which might not be the most noble of motivations. And I’m against term limits. But there’s actually a reason to be happy about this race: it’s a demonstration that old-style machine politics is dead in San Francisco.

Ten years ago this race would never have happened. Willie Brown was in charge — really in charge — and no local Democrat would have dared to defy his will. Brown didn’t like contested races between Democrats, and he would have told one of the two candidates to back off, and that would have been that.

We live in a different political world now. Mayor Gavin Newsom will probably support Leno, but he has way too much on his mind right now to be involved in any kind of backroom deal. Neither Migden nor Leno has the kind of clout to scare the other away, and nobody else in this town does either.

Democracy isn’t always pretty, but after living under the machine for a couple of decades, I find this almost refreshing. *

Newsom needs to come clean

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EDITORIAL It’s no surprise that Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to answer any more questions about his affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk. The polls suggest that most of the voters have either forgiven him or never really cared in the first place, so it’s in his interest to move on and try to keep this from becoming a campaign issue.

And if it were just about sex, that would be fine with us too.

But from the start this sordid episode had some bad elements that are every bit a matter of public interest. Rippey-Tourk wasn’t just the wife of one of Newsom’s friends; she was an employee of the city, and in a not so indirect way, Newsom was her boss. And with the evidence that has surfaced that Rippey-Tourk was paid $21,755 for work she didn’t do, including paid leave for the time she was in rehab (something other city employees don’t get), there are real questions that the mayor needs to answer.

Let’s run down the situation, as far as we can establish it:

• Rippey-Tourk and Newsom had an affair in 2005. That year she had 7 1/2 weeks of unpaid leave — a benefit that is not part of the standard package offered to city employees and not in any union contract.

• In May 2006, Rippey-Tourk went into substance abuse rehab and was out of work until July. She was still listed on the city payroll until Sept. 1, when she was cut a check for $10,155. Ultimately, she was paid for 13 1/2 weeks (or 67 1/2 days) of unpaid leave. She was entitled to 10 vacation days and 13 sick days. That leaves 44 1/2 days that she didn’t work and technically shouldn’t have been paid for.

• The Mayor’s Office says other city employees donated their unused vacation and sick time to her. It’s perfectly legal under city policy for employees to donate their paid time to a colleague who has to take a leave for a catastrophic, life-threatening illness. But alcohol and drug rehab don’t typically fall into that category.

• The law says the Department of Public Health must certify that a city employee faces an actual life-threatening illness before the catastrophic leave policy comes into play. And the employee’s supervisor has to sign off on the decision.

So somebody at the DPH must have approved a leave for a worker who almost certainly didn’t qualify, and Rippey-Tourk’s immediate supervisor at the time, then–chief of staff Steve Kava, had to have gone along.

It doesn’t take much speculation to figure out what likely went on here: Newsom had his chief of staff give an employee who had slept with the mayor a benefit that other city employees don’t get, and the director of public health, who (more or less) reports to the mayor, went along with it. And a bunch of city money was involved.

So far nobody at City Hall will answer questions about how this happened, saying that it’s a matter of employee privacy. We agree that Rippey-Tourk (the real victim in all this) has been through plenty, and the public has no business examining her medical records. But the mayor has made a nasty mess of the situation, and he can’t be allowed to just skate away without explaining whether his office in effect paid hush money out of the public till to someone he had treated shabbily — and who had strong legal grounds to sue the city and deeply embarrass the mayor in an election year.

If Newsom would show up at a Board of Supervisors meeting, the way he’s supposed to, and answer questions, the public might glean a bit more information. But he’s refusing — and while the City Attorney’s Office is conducting a confidential investigation, that’s not good enough.

The supervisors should launch their own investigation — and they need to demand to see the key documents, talk to the key players (starting with Newsom, Kava, and Public Health Director Mitch Katz), and determine if the mayor violated city law and then tried to cover it up. The budget analyst, Harvey Rose, should be directed to investigate the use of city money here — and whether this practice is going on anywhere else in the city. It won’t be easy — but the supervisors have the legal authority to issue subpoenas, and while that power is rarely used, this might be an occasion that justifies it.

The cover-up is almost always worse than the crime — and if Newsom and his senior aides won’t tell the truth about what happened, there is going to be serious fallout. *

Leno’s running against Migden

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By Tim Redmond

It’s official: I just spoke with Assemblymember Mark Leno, and he is, indeed, running for state Senate against incumbent Carole Migden. Leno will formally announce at a March 2 campaign kickoff fundraiser at Yerba Buena Gardens. But he’s in the race — and he told me very clearly that he’s in the race for good, even if the the voters overturn term limits for state legislators.

“I want to allow the voters of this senate district to have a choice,” Leno said. “My record of nine years in elected office demonstrates a very different style of inclusivity and respect.”

And that’s really what this race is going to be about: political style. There aren’t a whole lot of major issue on which Leno and Migden disagree, so while Leno told me he would “really be focussing on what I’m going to do positively,” there’s no doubt that the campaign will turn negative. Leno has to point to some of the problems Migden’s had in Sacramento — and Migden, who is a scrapper, will fight back.

The first big sign of how this race will play out will be who shows up to support Leno March 2. My bet: Mayor Gavin Newsom will be there (Leno is a big Newsom backer). Another guess: Sup. Chris Daly, who has been more friendly with Migden, will take a pass. So will Sup. Aaron Peskin.

In the end, this is going to be a bitter, ugly fight with San Francisco progressives on both sides (and caught in the middle). On the positive side, it’s a clear sign that the days of machine politics in San Francisco are over, dead, done for. Can you imagine Willie Brown letting an actual contested election happen on his watch?

And who knows; maybe Migden will decide she’d rather run for mayor.

I haven’t been able to get Migden on the phone directly, but she relayed this comment to me:

“I have not heard a credible justification for [Leno’s] candidadacy other than the fact that he’s out of a job.”

And so it begins.

The other shoe

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› steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom has never answered questions about his illicit affair with his appointments secretary Ruby Rippey-Tourk — and even now, with city money involved, he’s sticking to the stonewall.

The Guardian on Feb. 15 broke the story that the city had paid Rippey-Tourk more than $10,000 months after she left her job (see "Newsom Aide Got Paid," www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics).

But the mayor refused to even acknowledge questions I directly put to him earlier that day, just as he has since he confirmed media reports of the affair Feb. 1, when he issued a short statement and took no questions.

"We are confident that this matter was handled appropriately and humanely," he said in the prepared comments his Office of Communications put out.

But there are lots of legitimate questions that arise from payroll records we’ve obtained, which show Rippey-Tourk received more public money than she was entitled to during 2005, when the affair occurred, and 2006. Were public funds converted into hush money? Who was involved? What pressure was applied?

City Attorney Dennis Herrera offered some hope of accountability Feb. 15 when, in response to questions from the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other media outlets about the payments, he announced an investigation.

"With the full cooperation of the city officials involved, the City Attorney has already begun the process of reviewing the paid leave to Ms. Rippey-Tourk to assure that it was done properly under City laws and procedures," Herrera’s office wrote in a statement as he left for vacation.

The payroll records show that she received $21,755 in paid leave last year for 534 hours of work that she didn’t do. That amounts to about 13 1/2 weeks of paid time off, well more than the 10 days vacation time and 13 days of sick leave to which she was entitled. And it includes a lump $10,155 payment that she received in September.

City law allows employees with "a life threatening illness or injury" to receive paid leave if coworkers are willing to donate their vacation and sick days to the cause. And Sam Singer, a spokesperson for Rippey-Tourk and her husband, Alex Tourk (who worked as Newsom’s deputy chief of staff and later as his campaign manager before resigning last month when he learned of the affair), said that’s what happened.

While Rippey-Tourk was in substance abuse treatment from May through July 2006, Singer told the Guardian, Tourk — who says he was unaware at the time that his wife had been having sex with the mayor — asked city officials whether there was a way to get paid for what began as a period of unpaid leave.

"Several of her coworkers donated their sick time to Ruby during this time of personal crisis," Singer told us.

Asked why Rippey-Tourk didn’t return to her good city job after leaving rehab in July, Singer said, "She just felt it was a chapter in her life that was over, and she wanted to move on." Asked whether Rippey-Tourk may have felt uncomfortable returning to work for a boss who had bedded her during a time when she was having problems with alcohol, Singer refused to comment.

But Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who has called for Newsom’s resignation, said the entire episode was unseemly and the mayor showed poor judgment for someone in a position of authority whom Rippey-Tourk trusted. "I think he took advantage of someone who was in a very vulnerable position," McGoldrick told us.

There are other questions about Rippey-Tourk’s tenure at the city. Payroll records show she never worked a full week in 2006. And her 7 1/2 weeks of unpaid leave in 2005 also appear to be more than she was entitled to. She received $80,195 in compensation in 2005, up from $63,522 the previous year, which was her first in the Newsom administration. The Chronicle also reports that more than half of Rippey-Tourk’s time sheets weren’t signed by her supervisor, as required.

And the Mayor’s Office has refused to answer questions about who donated their leave time to Rippey-Tourk, whether they were asked to and if they knew about the affair, and whether the city has been exposed to a sexual harassment suit by her or employment discrimination suit by other employees. *

Car-free support

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› steve@sfbg.com

Sup. Jake McGoldrick plans to reintroduce his Healthy Saturdays legislation this week and told the Guardian he’s confident that a new city study paves the way for its implementation by this summer.

Healthy Saturdays — which would create a six-month trial Saturday closure to cars on the same streets in the eastern portion of Golden Gate Park that are now closed Sundays — was approved by the Board of Supervisors last May but vetoed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered a study of the impacts of the Sunday closure.

That study by the Transportation Authority and Department of Parking and Traffic brought great news for Healthy Saturday supporters, concluding that road closure is extremely popular with park users and has no significant negative impact to attendance at the park’s museums, access by those with disabilities, availability of adequate parking, or traffic congestion at the intersections around the park.

"It spells out a very positive picture," McGoldrick told us. "Anecdotally, we knew all this, but now we have the empirical data laid out."

The study found that closing the roads encourages 40 percent more nonvehicular trips to the park. Almost 40 percent of those surveyed said the road closure makes them more likely to visit the park, while 10 percent said it made them less likely, and the rest said it had no impact.

"I see no good reason why this shouldn’t fly through the board and Mayor’s Office," Leah Shabum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told us. "The report shows without a doubt there are no negative impacts to creating car-free spaces in the park."

Yet the proposal last year drew strong visceral reactions from opponents in adjacent neighborhoods, some representatives for those with disabilities, and those affiliated with the de Young Museum and other cultural institutions in the park — some of whom say they still aren’t satisfied with the report’s conclusions.

A group called Park Access for All sent out a press release urging the city to reject closure. Member Ron Miguel of the Planning Association for the Richmond said the city shouldn’t do anything until the Academy of Sciences reopens late next year. And disabilities advocate Tim Hornbecker said he was concerned that the city still hasn’t put in place a tram and other improvements that were approved along with Healthy Saturdays last year.

Those improvements have stalled at the Recreation and Park Department, which answers to the Mayor’s Office. The Guardian asked Newsom about the report Feb. 15, and he said, "I haven’t seen that," and ignored further questions. Newsom spokesperson Peter Ragone told us, "We’re in the process of digesting it and deciding how to move forward."

But Healthy Saturdays advocates point to statements Newsom made after the veto, noting that the study seems to satisfy all the concerns he expressed. Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, told us, "It should be a no-brainer. All the original objections cited by the mayor are addressed…. At this point, holding it up would be obstreperous." *

The Healthy Saturdays report is available at www.goldengatepark.org.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I made it through the week without anyone calling to complain about my analysis of the mayor’s race, so maybe for once I got it right: unless Gavin Newsom drops out or a third strike drops and it’s pretty bad, we already know what things are going to look like in the fall.

So we might as well get on with it: Matt Gonzalez and Ross Mirkarimi should get together and talk it out, then one of them should just go ahead and announce.

For a long list of reasons, there has to be a real mayor’s race this fall — and Tony Hall plus a few nutcases against Mayor Newsom doesn’t count. The progressives need someone to rally around, to get the old troops out and in the streets and some new ones trained and energized. We need to keep Newsom on the defensive, to keep our issues out there, to hold him accountable not just to his donors but to the rest of the city.

Never discount what a good challenge can do: there are a lot of reasons why Sup. Bevan Dufty has moved a few steps to the left over the past few months, but one of them is absolutely the fact that he had a progressive candidate running against him in the fall.

Besides, I actually think Newsom can be defeated.

Just look at his record. Since he hasn’t accomplished much of anything, he’s vulnerable on almost everything. Other than same-sex marriage, his major legacy at this point seems to be trying to hand out the city’s information technology infrastructure to Google and EarthLink. Go team.

And the city’s two leading Greens both have a distinct advantage at this point — nobody is going to accuse them of jumping into the race to take advantage of Newsom’s personal problems. Long before city hall got all steamed up, Mirkarimi and Gonzalez were talking about running — on the issues.

Gonzalez can raise a lot of money. Mirkarimi has done something few progressives ever pull off: turning public safety into one of our top issues. Like almost all candidates, they both have strengths and weaknesses, but in the end, it looks like one of them is going to be our contender this fall, and that’s not at all a bad thing.

We went after District Attorney Kamala Harris a couple weeks ago when she tried to make some changes in the pretrial diversion program that would have cut back on its effectiveness. Harris did the right thing; she and Public Defender Jeff Adachi reached an agreement that preserved the best of the program, which tries to steer first-time misdemeanor offenders into counseling and out of the criminal justice system.

Harris didn’t have to do that; the program is entirely under her control, and she could have told Adachi (and us) to take a hike and done it her way. But she showed that she’s a reasonable DA who is willing to listen.

Now, however, the thugs at the Police Officers Association are attacking her for her willingness to include misdemeanor noninjury assaults on cops as crimes that are eligible for diversion. (This is typically stuff like someone spitting at an officer or brushing against him or her during an arrest. We’re not talking about serious assaults here.)

Harris is standing up to the POA, but the rest of the city, including the mayor, needs to get behind her. *

Newsom aide got paid

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By Steven T. Jones
The Bay Guardian has learned that Ruby Rippey-Tourk, who left her job as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s appointments secretary last year after having a secret affair with the mayor, received $21,755 in paid leave last year for 534 hours of work that she didn’t do. That amounts to about 13.5 weeks of paid time off, well more than the 10 days vacation time and 13 days of sick leave to which she was entitled. There are provisions in city law whereby other employees may donate some of their vacation and sick time to fellow employees who go out on some form of medical leave, and Rippey-Tourk reportedly left her city job sometime before last May to enter treatment for substance abuse, although city officials may not comment on why an employee took leave for privacy reasons. But the arrangement raises questions about whether Newsom forced Rippey-Tourk from her job and/or pressured employees to give up their paid time off to help buy her silence, questions that Newsom and his administration have refused to address. In fact, they have never answered any questions about the affair or Newsom’s own substance problems from any media outlet. Newsom ignored Guardian questions on the subject earlier today and his spokesperson Jennifer Petrucione told us, “The mayor has spoken on this issue and he has said what’s he’s going to say.” The City Attorney’s Office has put out a statement on the matter, saying they can’t comment on the details for privacy reasons but, “With the full cooperation of the city officials involved, the City Attorney has already begun the process of reviewing the paid leave to Ms. Rippey-Tourk to assure that it was done properly under City laws and procedures.”

Newsom aide got paid

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By Steven T. Jones
The Bay Guardian has learned that Ruby Rippey-Tourk, who left her job as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s appointments secretary last year after having a secret affair with the mayor, received $21,755 in paid leave last year for 534 hours of work that she didn’t do. That amounts to about 13.5 weeks of paid time off, well more than the 10 days vacation time and 13 days of sick leave to which she was entitled. There are provisions in city law whereby other employees may donate some of their vacation and sick time to fellow employees who go out on some form of medical leave, and Rippey-Tourk reportedly left her city job sometime before last May to enter treatment for substance abuse, although city officials may not comment on why an employee took leave for privacy reasons. But the arrangement raises questions about whether Newsom forced Rippey-Tourk from her job and/or pressured employees to give up their paid time off to help buy her silence, questions that Newsom and his administration have refused to address. In fact, they have never answered any questions about the affair or Newsom’s own substance problems from any media outlet. Newsom ignored Guardian questions on the subject earlier today and his spokesperson Jennifer Petrucione told us, “The mayor has spoken on this issue and he has said what’s he’s going to say.” The City Attorney’s Office has put out a statement on the matter, saying they can’t comment on the details for privacy reasons but, “With the full cooperation of the city officials involved, the City Attorney has already begun the process of reviewing the paid leave to Ms. Rippey-Tourk to assure that it was done properly under City laws and procedures.”

Return of Healthy Saturdays

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By Steven T. Jones
The city’s long-awaited study of road closures in Golden Gate Park was released yesterday, offering clear evidence that closing JFK Drive to cars on weekends is extremely popular and has no significant negative impacts to attendance at the park’s museums, access by those with disabilities, or traffic congestion in the intersections around the park. Mayor Gavin Newsom last summer vetoed the Healthy Saturdays six-month trial closure after a deceptive opposition campaign that was waged by De Young Museum directors and advocates of unfettered automobile access to the park. At the time, Newsom pledged to study the issue and support it if there was empirical evidence supporting closure, which there now seems to be. Asked about the report today by the Guardian, Newsom said “I haven’t seen that” and ignored further questions on that and other topics. Newsom communications director Peter Ragone told us, “We’re in the process of digesting it and deciding how to move forward.”
Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who sponsored the legislation last spring, said he will reintroduce it at the board meeting this Tuesday and was confident that we’ll see Golden Gate Park partially closed to cars this summer. “It spells out a very positive picture,” McGoldrick told us. “Anecdotally, we knew all this, but now we have the empirical data laid out.”

More than clean

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› amanda@sfbg.com

Cleaner streets, crack-free sidewalks, an urban landscape unmarred by graffiti and made greener by leafy trees: that was the improved "quality of life" espoused by Mayor Gavin Newsom in his State of the City speech Oct. 26, 2006. And he’s put resources into delivering that pretty picture, with increases to the Department of Public Works (DPW) budget and funds allocated for sidewalk revitalization and the citywide Clean Corridors campaign.

But the city’s top-down approach to realizing the mayor’s goals — and the apparent lack of consideration for the implications of those priorities among ordinary people — has created a backlash from affluent District 7 (where Sup. Sean Elsbernd is upset over the fines being doled out to property owners for cracked sidewalks) to the working-class Mission District (where an aggressive new street cleaning regime has been proposed).

"This is something that just dropped out of the blue, and I think it’s unacceptable," Mission resident Peter Turner said at a Jan. 31 public hearing on the proposal to clean many streets in his neighborhood every weekday. "The city has shown a vast amount of disrespect to the Mission."

Others think there are more pressing problems.

"What is quality of life?" asked Vicki Rega, who lives at 21st and Bryant streets and spoke to the Guardian on her way out of the hearing. "Some trash on your street or a dead kid on your sidewalk?"

The signs started appearing a few weeks ago, posted on trees and lamp poles in the Mission. The type is a tiny 10-point font, often difficult to read through the plastic wrap that holds the paper to the pole. Even if you can make out the words, it’s still pretty unclear that they announce a proposal to ramp up mechanical street cleaning — from as little as one day a week to as many as five.

"The signs were very, very confusing," said Eric Noble, a Shotwell Street resident who was further insulted that postings weren’t made in Spanish and Chinese. "That’s really unconscionable in the Mission."

Beyond warning residents of the radical change to their daily lives, the signs invited them to two public hearings to discuss the issue, on Jan. 31 and Feb. 5. The first hearing drew about 150 residents and frustration that the only sign of officialdom present was DPW representative Chris McDaniels, who was sitting alone behind a vast empty desk, taking notes.

"Who is deciding this issue, and why aren’t they here to hear us?" Judith Berkowitz asked.

Attendees expressed anger at the process and annoyance that car-owning residents on dozens of city blocks east of Valencia Street and north of Cesar Chavez Street will face steep fines and be forced to scramble for new parking spots on a daily basis.

At the beginning of the meeting, the reasons for the change were introduced: illegal dumping in the area had doubled in one year, calls to the city’s trash hotline 28-CLEAN had increased 18 percent from 2005 to 2006, and the sweeper truck in the Mission had been collecting huge amounts of trash.

"It’s the sidewalks, not the streets," several speakers said. They pointed out that the trucks are more successful blowing trash around than sucking it up. Many offered numerous suggestions for how to better clean the streets: have more trash cans and volunteers, employ the homeless, coordinate with other city services, educate the merchants, bring back people with brooms and dustpans — but don’t just run trucks through the streets.

One Alabama Street resident said she’s committed to using public transportation to get to her job in Richmond, but like many others at the meeting, she pointed out that if cars need to be moved five days a week for street cleaning, why not move them all the way to work?

"It’s a disincentive for people to use public transit," she said.

And if they don’t get moved, does the city really mind?

"Is it really trash, or is it revenue?" Shotwell Street resident Eric Noble asked, citing the added opportunities for writing parking tickets. "If revenue enhancement is behind this project, you’re going to see it all over the city."

DPW spokesperson Christine Falvey denied money was the motive and said parking fine revenue goes to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which has recently revealed an $11 million budget shortfall. Falvey also said changes in street cleaning schedules are usually prompted by complaints from residents, but in this case the proposal was sparked by recommendations from city staff who work in the area.

Street cleaning trucks have been in use since 1976 and currently clean about 90 percent of city streets, but according to Falvey, the DPW has never done an analysis of their efficiency and effectiveness. A consultant was recently hired to make that determination.

"Every time some city agency comes up with an improvement, it does more to inconvenience," David Jayne, a Potrero Avenue resident, told us. "I’m really worried this is another one-size-fits-all cure."

But Newsom has made clean streets a top priority for his reelection year.

"How do we dare to dream big — while not forgetting to fill potholes, clean our streets and parks, and address the small problems of urban life that make such a big difference to our quality of life?" Newsom asked in his State of the City speech.

And how do we do it without pissing off the neighbors?

"You’re not going to find anyone who says, ‘Yeah, I think the neighborhood should be dirtier,’ " Florida Street resident Scott Adams told us. "Things should be done to improve the hygiene of the streets."

But he and others who live on these streets and have watched them for years said they were prepared to push brooms and pick up trash if the city were willing to work on other qualities of life such as rising violence, slipping public schools, and the truly ill transportation system.

The DPW’s stated mission is "improving the quality of life in San Francisco." And that’s been a popular pastime of recent mayors. Frank Jordan had One Neat City Week and the Litter Strike Force. Willie Brown promoted his Spring Cleanings and Great Sweeps. Gavin Newsom touts a goal to make this the "cleanest and greenest city in the country."

So his proposed 2006–7 budget for the DPW’s Street Environmental Services hovers around $33 million, an 11 percent boost over last year. That’s more than the 7 percent increase the patrol unit of the San Francisco Police Department received, the 4 percent Muni Services and Operations received, the 1 percent that went to Child Support Services, and almost two times more than the rise for the housing and homeless budget line in the Human Services Agency.

Street Environmental Services is a fancy-pants term for picking up trash, spraying off pee, and painting over graffiti. The mayor’s most recent plan to achieve this is called Clean Corridors and was unveiled in November 2006 with a $1.67 million allocation from Newsom for targeting the filthy faces of 100 specific blocks throughout the city. (Although this project focuses on the same areas in the Mission, the increased street cleaning is a separate proposal.)

The essence of Clean Corridors is to get residents and business owners to feel more responsible for their property, using both education and fines for things such as cracked sidewalks and dirty facades.

The program also pays for 20 neighborhood ambassadors who each patrol designated areas, picking up trash, reporting graffiti and areas needing repair, issuing litter citations, and educating the public. They’re essentially litter cops.

"He wanted specific people responsible for areas," Falvey said of the mayor’s ambassador program. "He wants that person to own their block."

Yet some residents bristle at Newsom placing such a high priority on litter as the murder rate is spiking, Muni is failing, housing is becoming less affordable, and city hall is mired in dysfunction.

"The war in Iraq. The violence in the streets — that’s probably my number one concern. Public schools. Transportation," Noble said when we asked about his quality-of-life concerns.

"Quality of life means being able to meet the basic necessities of your life," Myrna Lim said. The Excelsior resident is so frustrated with the parking situation in her neighborhood she organized a protest Feb. 24 against any new fine increases. "If you’re on a very tight budget, $40 for a ticket is a lot. When people talk about San Francisco being a very expensive city, that’s part of it. It makes day-to-day living very difficult. Over what? Parking?"

Yet the Mission parking proposal has prompted some community organizing. E-mail sign-up lists were passed around the hearing room, and a healthy chat about the issue now exists at a Yahoo! group. Several residents who aren’t currently members of neighborhood organizations told us they’re thinking about joining or starting one.

"I was quite amazed to see all the people," Noble said of the first hearing and the conversation it sparked. "Maybe one thing that will come out of this is more neighborhood discussions."

The DPW has also been chastened and scheduled an evening meeting in March. "We’ve heard overwhelming support that something needs to be done but overwhelming response that it’s not mechanical street cleaning," Falvey said.

"The city should really be a conduit for people to organize themselves," she added. "For any kind of long-term, sustained effort, it’s got to come from the neighbors." *

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

If the Matier and Ross report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 11 is to believed, then Mayor Gavin Newsom is actually taking his alcohol problem seriously. Mimi Silbert, who runs Delancey Street, told the dynamic duo that Newsom has been showing up every night for three or four hours of intense counseling and therapy. Good for him. If his problem is bad enough that he needs that much help, he’d probably be better off taking some time away from work, but I’m not him, and at least he’s trying.

Or so they say.

Of course, if the whole "treatment" thing is just an attempt to gain sympathy from the public and take the story away from his sordid affair, I suspect Newsom’s visits to Delancey Street will start to taper off fast — in which case a lot of people who have friends and family who truly have struggled with alcoholism will be properly pissed at his honor the mayor.

It’s going to sound like a cliché at this point, but I kinda think it’s true enough to make it our mantra for the fall: Newsom has been doing a rotten job of late, and if his personal problems are to blame for that, then he needs to get the hell out of politics until he’s a lot stabler, and if his personal problems aren’t to blame, then he’s just a weak and lame mayor. Either way, four more years doesn’t work.

Which brings us to the real question that was on everyone’s mind at the Guardian‘s 40th anniversary party last week: who?

Let me throw out some thoughts.

I’ll start with the wild card. There isn’t one. I see nobody hiding in the bushes who can run as a progressive and mount a serious campaign. We’ve got what we see. (Don’t talk to me about Art Agnos; the guy would have to enter a political 12-step, make a lot of amends, and admit all the things he did wrong as mayor last time around, and it ain’t happening.)

So here’s Scenario One: Newsom toughs it out, nothing else awful drops, and he stays in the race. Honestly, very few people are going to challenge him. Not Mark Leno, not Carole Migden, not Dennis Herrera, not Aaron Peskin. They don’t want to look like they’re exploiting Newsom’s personal problems, so they all wait four years.

So the left candidate is Ross Mirkarimi or Matt Gonzalez. If Gonzalez wants it, Mirkarimi steps out of the way. That could set up Matt vs. Gavin, round two, with Gonzalez as the candidate of the left and the Residential Builders Association, leaving people like me (who think land use is supremely important) tearing our hair out. And let’s remember that Jack Davis, the political mastermind, is going to be a player this time, and it won’t be with a loser like Tony Hall.

Scenario Two: Newsom decides, for whatever reason, to withdraw — and it’s a free-for-all. Gonzalez is suddenly not the leading candidate; that’s probably Leno, Herrera, or, on the outside, Kamala Harris. Which leaves the progressives with a sticky choice: stay with Gonzalez or accept someone who on paper (and on the record) is more centrist but will promise a whole lot to get our support and could be the odds-on favorite.

Throw in public financing and ranked-choice voting, and the election’s going to be like nothing there ever was in this town. I can’t wait. *

Will 49er tailgating burn the Alice Griffith Housing Project?

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By Sarah Phelan

Residents of the Alice Griffith Housing project were a tad upset when they learned that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s retooled effort to stop the 49ers from dumping San Francisco could involve their homes being demolished. A resolution that came before the Board the day before the Mayor’s Sex scandal hit, included the surprising news that over the past 18 months developer Lennar, working in cooperation with the 49ers and the City, had created a preliminary plan that would provide a world-class stadium 49ers stadium and related mixed-use development. This development would consist of about 6,500 housing units, including affordable units and the replacement of the Alice Griffith Public Housing Development.
According to a letter from Newsom that was included with the Feb. 6 Board of Supes package, “The city and the Bayview in particular will benefit from extensive jobs and economic development opportunities, over one thousand units of affordable housing–including replacing the Alice Griffith housing project for the benefit of Alice Griffith residents.”
The problem was that Newsom hadn’t share this vision with the Alice Griffith residents and the few that showed up to the Feb. 6 Board meeting, which took place during the workday, expressed outrage at being left out of the loop.
As one lady said, waving a copy of the resolution in one hand, as she pounded the public comment lectern with the other “It’s not OK to have this in here without my input.”
Another, a single mother with four kids, recalled having to fight for four years to get into the project, in the first place. “I don’t want you guys to knock it down,” she said.
As Lavelle Shaw of the Alice Griffith Tenants Association told the Guardian, ” a lot of things seem to be going in through the back door. We want to be at the table for the replacement housing. And it can’t just be affordable. We want it to be low-income.”
As a result of all this uproar, Sup. Sophie Maxwell demanded a hearing, during which the resolution was reworded, reports Shaw, to give AG residents greater input. That said, Shaw urges folks to show up at the Feb. 13 Board of Supervisors meeting, to express their feelings, fears and desires.

Don’t know about you, but i sure wouldn’t want to be roasting hot dogs when displaced folks descend

Peter principle

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By Steven T. Jones
How has Mayor Gavin Newsom reacted to his press secretary being exposed as a liar who then accuses Newsom of being a liar? By promoting him to the newly created “director of communications and planning.” Amazing. Simply amazing.

Newsom’s Right Hand Man

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By Sarah Phelan

The Right Hand Man

If Shakespeare were alive, he’d be penning The Right Hand Man , a three-act play exploring the potent mix of narcissism, self-doubt, control freakishness and horniness that led Mayor Gavin Newsom to roundly betray himself and former campaign manager Alex Tourk, by sleeping with Tourk’s wife, Ruby Rippey Tourk.
At least that way, folks would get some kind of analysis of what Newsom was thinking during that secretive, backstabbing time, something they won’t get as long as Newsom refuses to talk to the press. Newsom’s silence only makes the rumor mills spin faster, as people are reduced to browsing back copies of San Francisco magazine, in which the topic of why Gavin isn’t smiling is explored, including Newsom answers on what dating was like post-divorce. (“It’s impossible. It’s very hard. It’s awkward at best…it’s been very unsuccessful,” Newsom replies.)
Then there’s “The Right Hand Man” profile of Alex Tourk in 7×7 magazine, in which Tourk is revealed to have been on call 24/7 during his three years as Newsom’s deputy chief of staff, which was period that the affair ocurred and before Tourk raised $600, 000 for Newsom as his 2007 campaign manager. Nor should gossip mongers forget Benefit magazine ,where Tourk and former Newsom flame Brittanie Mountz now both work (Wow, wonder what people talk about in the women’s bathroom there.)
Honestly, wouldn’t it be better for Newsom to come clean with the details of what was going on, why and where, so we won’t have to listen to people bitching on about whether the affair happened on tax-payers’ dollars. Speaking of which, it’ll take about three months before that $15,000 a month allowance that Newsom has agreed to pay Alex Tourk cancels out the pay rise that voters awarded Newsom last November, a vote that bumped up Newsom’s pay by about $44,000 from $188,816 to $233,000 in one fell swoop.

Daly Cleans Up Dirt

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By Sarah Phelan

No wonder District 6 Sup. Chris Daly wants to clean up election finance dirt.
Last November, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the Police Officers Association, the Building Owners and Managers Association and San Francisco SOS participated in massive independent expenditure campaigns in a dirty and ultimately unsuccessful effort to unseat District 6 Sup. Chris Daly.
These dirty tricks included push polls that planted nastily negative ideas about Daly, such as he hates the police–smears hat were then followed by what Daly’s aide John Avalos describes as “robocalls from Mayor Gavin Newsom,” plus mailers featuring pictures of Daly that make him look like he’s crazily shouting at the police. Nice.
These kinds of hit jobs were financed by money that originated from GGRA, POA, BOMA, and SFSOS.

Don’t cry for Newsom

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By Steven T. Jones
So the Examiner thinks we should all just back off of Mayor Gavin Newsom, in the process contradicting its own reporter’s story a few pages earlier on how brittle and unaccountable Newsom has been behaving. If the mayor had announced he was taking some time off to deal with his problems, then the Ex editorial might have a point. After all, Newsom clearly has some problems and it can’t be easy dealing with a pack of reporters who have questions that he’s not willing to answer. But Newsom wants to stay on the job, and that job is a difficult one that entails dealing with the media and the Board of Supervisors. Newsom refuses to answer legitimate questions, but its the job of journalists to keep asking them until he does, and the job of supervisors to help lead this city. While the Ex editorial got it embarrassingly wrong, the Chron editorial was right on. This mayor has an obligation to engage with supervisors and the media, and his scripted and controlled town hall meetings, like the one planned for this Saturday in Bayview, don’t count. We deserve an honest, engaged, and accountable mayor. He chose the job, and now he chose to remain in that job without taking any time off and to run for reelection. Newsom’s problems are of his own making, and he’s making them worse by behaving as if he deserves a free pass.

San Francisco lovin’

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› culture@sfbg.com

Oh! What a web of tangled flesh we postbohemian, rapidly gentrifying, pandemic-aware, pre-spray-on-condom and mint-flavored chewable RU-486 San Francitizens weave! Folks still trot out the ol’ misty-eyed cynicisms: romance is dead, sex is boring, love is impossible, "I’m too fat"…. But that doesn’t stop ’em from doing it until their knees ache when they get the winky come-on (or hoping for Mr. or Ms. Right to ease the tax burden). Sure, in the age of the Internetz, sex is now a shopping trip — just log on for huge fake tits (aisle four), smart-mouthed ghettosexuals (aisle six), muffin tops gon’ wild (aisle nine), or guys who inject a gallon of saline into their shaved balls (clean up, aisle five). No need to be a bitch or a ho — you’re already both on the webcam, dude. Don’t forget your password.

But still. Love exists, right? Christina Aguilera tells us so. And love leads to sex. Or to real sex. Or the other way around. Something. And don’t even ask about the whole monogamy thing! Can’t it all be easier? Aren’t we robots yet? No, not yet. For good or ill we live in a magical place where impulse meets emotion in technology’s dark corner and heads upstairs with it to a small room marked "free love" ($29 an hour) — leaving behind a trail of used rubbers, hopefully. Below we delve into the sex-and-romance pros and cons of some especially San Franciscan things. Maybe it’ll help make things a little clearer. Maybe!

BEING A STRAIGHT GIRL


Carrie Bradshaw, Marissa Cooper, and Dr. Meredith Grey have their trumped-up Trumps, Shin-die schlubs, and Doc McDreamys, but what do so many straight, single women get in the Bay bohemia otherwise known as America’s gay mecca? Commitmentphobic Peter Pan–ders, crusty granola cronies who only cruise twentysomethings, workaholic geeks who seldom see the light of day (apart from the blazing orbs of Burning Man), and windburned adventurers with a never-ending thirst to mountain bike, lick that downward dog, and hike the closest REI. Face it: single straight sistahs have the toughest lot in this town. A 2004 San Francisco magazine story estimated that unmarried straight 20- to 44-year-old SF men outnumbered their female counterparts by about 12,000. But I bet most eligible gals feel — nay, know — that the ratio is weighted in the dudes’ favor. It doesn’t help that years of STD- and AIDS-inspired social conservatism seem to have spurred peeps and perps to hook up early and less often — despite our fair city’s freewheeling rep when it comes to sex roles, relationships, and gender politics. San Francisco’s single chicks sometimes find themselves wondering, "Whatever happened to dating? Where did everyone go? Is it my breath?" When one male friend told me his ex’s claim that she’s dating multiple fellahs in various NorCal cities, my bullshit detector started honking. Tell it to all the attractive, smart, independent, and nubile femme singletons I know who are sitting home Saturday nights.

Pros: Never having to worry about getting macked on at guycentric sports events, shows, and construction sites. Women are always free at the Power Exchange. There’s sisterhood in desperation. You can always join a girl gang and accost hapless men walking alone in dark parking lots. That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec.

Cons: Dating. Shooting down poseurs who are into shopping for the pick of the litter. Resigning yourself to your anemic online-dating shopping options. And how depressing is it to go to a sex club by yourself? That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec. (Kimberly Chun)

BEING A STRAIGHT GUY


I worked security at the Endup for four years. As a straight guy, I found myself jealous of my gay compatriots out there on the dance floor, nuts to butts, letting it all hang out. Obviously, gay men have committed, complicated, and drama-filled relationships too. But boys will be boys, and it seemed things were so much simpler and, pardon the pun, more straightforward for gay guys in San Francisco. Less of a mating ritual and more mating. It’s the classic straight guy’s lament: if women acted like dudes, I’d be getting laid right now. Or, as Michael Dean once said in a Bomb song, "The girl that I miss is just me in a dress." Still, after 15 years in San Francisco, I’m starting to see the bonuses of being single, straight, and not so young in a city known worldwide for Rice-a-Roni, sourdough bread, and buffed-out, hunky young gay guys.

Pros: At 35, I may actually be starting to enjoy dating. No one’s lugging around that "my heart was broken, and I can’t go through that again" cross anymore. We’re all adults here, and like the young, restless, and gay, we’ve gotten in touch with our biological needs. Thirtysomething Bay City rollers know they need to get off and they don’t have to meet their soul mate to do it. Sure, the roller coaster of love is one hell of a ride, but sometimes it’s enough to get Indian food, hit a bar with a good jukebox, rent a movie, go home, and fuck.

Cons: People really do get married. Which means the thirtysomething dating pool shrinks and you can end up dating someone younger. This might seem like a pro, until you try to make a pop culture reference on a date and hear crickets chirp. There’s not a lot of eye-to-eye going on when your love interest ejects Mania, by the Vibrators, to put on Green Day. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

BEING A QUEER


Oh, the burden! Straight guys think you get laid more than them. Straight girls think you get laid more than them. Both of them think you like turtlenecks and cologne. It’s horrifying! And history! Here you are over the rainbow, in the fiercely romantic-looking burg all those haters in high school screeched at you to move to, and you’re scrounging for any bit of affection you can find among the forest of online profiles and the coral reef of lopsided haircuts. Plus you’ve got billboards screaming "AIDS!" in your face on every corner. It’s enough to drive a lonely fag to the gym or a dyke to the (one) bar, if that weren’t just as fucked-up a defense mechanism as huddling with your old Smiths EPs and a tankard of Merlot in your cubby. But c’mon, at least you can walk home from your trick’s house….

Pros: Be all you can be! Journey of discovery! There’s a new opportunity around every corner. The hottest FTMs on the face of the planet. Boys aren’t wearing so much product as in 2002. Being the envy of the gay world. Invisible lipstick lesbians. Trash drag. Crystal meth played out (pretty much). Domestic partnership laws (if only …). Gay love is real (ask your serial monogamous friends). Hey, at least it’s not Chelsea!

Cons: Too many to choose from. No need to grow up. Too many bottoms. Ever-present feeling you should get more tattoos — or is that trying too hard? Everyone wants to be your fag hag. Monogamous or "negotiated"? Holier-than-thou activists, hotter-than-thou street life. "What if I’m really straight?" Knowing everyone’s as shy as you but not being able to do anything about it. (Marke B.)

OUR PLAYBOY MAYOR


What a difference a few screaming headlines make. Throw in a Scientology siren, underage cocktail gulpers, and a couple plowed society babes with fiercely straightened fright wigs and outta-hand cheekbones — and ya got yerself a mayor! All we need are some flesh-eating pigs and anesthesia-free surgery to dub this the return of the wild, wild, perhaps very wild, especially when tanked, west — a Deadwood of sorts, if that didn’t imply a kind of flaccid fumbling. Nonetheless, let’s call it the latest in a grand tradition of San Francisco’s romantic and sexual politico-explorers from days of yore — from Harvey Milk to Willie Brown — that we have Mayor Gavin Newsom finally unchained from his legal-eagle Victoria’s Secret model missus and free to allegedly cruise Cow Hollow’s finer drinking establishments after hours, as rumor has long had it. Oh, the list is long and ever growing: encompassing the CSI: Miami starlet and the city mag editor eager to vet her boy’s cover pic alike. Now comes the real test of testosterone: whether Newsom can summon that ironclad Clintonesque charm to weather the latest scandal. My question for the Gavinator: what are you doing for Valentine’s Day?

Pros: The ever-changing cast of hotties at parties and photo ops sure dresses up society pages. No more tacky Harper’s Bazaar fashion spreads. Plenty of heavily gelled, aerodynamic-looking helmet hair. The notion of a Scientologist mayor clears rooms. We can now use that hallowed line, "Is that your Plump Jack — or are you just excited to see me?" Feeling privy to the secret life of frat boys. He’s never boring.

Cons: Kennedy comparisons are starting to grate. Clinton comparisons are starting to chafe. And there’s too much chafing in general. The ever-changing cast of hotties is starting to resemble a sale crowd riding the revolving door at Neiman. Paris Hilton?! And we won’t be shocked to see Britney Spears stumbling out of a mayoral Four Seasons suite next. He’s so predictably not boring that it’s starting to get tiresome. (Kimberly Chun)

OLD HIPPIES


You see them everywhere but mainly on the Muni and at medical marijuana rallies. Some of them look saintly but a little crazed, as if they see a spaceship in your hair. Others resemble your sexy-yet-matronly high school French teacher, smiling indulgently but always ready to rap your knuckles with a day-old baguette if you get your future perfects wrong. Still others seem like they can’t wait to explode with rage at … well, anything, really. All of them are lovable in a historical light. When they’re off their meds — not so much. They’re living monuments to the golden age of free love, and, as medical science advances and rent-control laws stand, they’re not going away anytime soon. (Can young people afford to move here anymore anyway?) They also have a world of sensual knowledge to impart.

Pros: Mother figures, father figures, lusty lovers, spiritual guides — these Baudelairean kickers against the pricks can do it all — and they bake a mean hash brownie to get it all started. Plus: years of experimentation have made them freaky. You may have to crank up the solar defibrillator, but they’re experts in how to "get your motor running."

Cons: Occasional bad-trip flashbacks. Always slightly wary. Strawberry-scented oxygen tanks. Pillow talk = Allen Ginsberg stories. Hairy. Half tantric. Forgot if they put out candles. Ponytail or braid can get caught in teeth. (Marke B.)

BURNING MAN FLINGS


Burning Man is a sexual and emotional cauldron. Liberally mix together a world of sensory delights, a spirit of reckless abandon, beautiful exposed bodies everywhere, sudden sandstorms that send you scurrying into the nearest tent or trailer, countless peak experiences, exposure to a myriad of lifestyles and communities, and 40,000 people with time on their hands, goodwill in their hearts, and lust in their loins, and it’s no surprise that people end up hooking up left and right. This place oozes sexual energy while stripping away our emotional defenses and leaving us exposed to Cupid’s arrows.

Pros: Whatever you want, it’s here, often with no strings attached. When people come back from the playa all blissed-out and saying how it changed their lives, that’s usually not just the drugs talking. People do things they wouldn’t do in the everyday world — and then they do it again and again. And if you follow the sound advice of veteran burners to leave your expectations at home and just be open to the experience, then you’re also in the ideal place to not just get laid but truly find love. Believe it or not, I know of lots of lasting, loving marriages between people who met on the playa.

Cons: All the things that make Burning Man so conducive to sex and romance can also create problems. People get emotionally splayed by the often overwhelming nature of daily life on the playa. They’re vulnerable to everything from small slights that get exaggerated to the predators who invariably exist in any town. Couples get tested. Singles can at times feel lonely and desperate. Everybody has a few hard mornings after. And as a practical matter, dust gets everywhere — and I mean everywhere. (Steven T. Jones)

LUSTY LADIES


The Bay has a long and luxuriously twisted history of female sexual empowerment, full of Brights, Queens, Dodas, Califias, Blanks, Chos, and other sparkling heroines of don’t-do-it-and-die philosophy — some of whom have gone on to become heroes, even. The two major, classic phalanxes of gyno-horno-positivism to have arisen from the mists of all that groundwork are the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations. The Lady, currently a worker-owned stripper co-op, has been baring a broad variety of intelligent, worldly-wise physical types for almost 30 years, and Good Vibrations, a women-centered chain of erotica shops that offer a plethora of workshops and training sessions for both women and men, has helped make vibrators the Tupperware of the new millennium. Despite the ubiquity of silicone enhancements and Girls Gone Wild antics in today’s culture, the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations try to keep it real by focusing on the pleasures inherent in strong, natural femininity. In an era when guys are being forced like never before to question their physical attributes and sexual virility, thanks to size-queen porn and erectile dysfunction spam, the gals — who’ve had to deal with that kind of shit forever — may have a bit of an upper hand, self-image-wise, thanks in part to these two affirming San Francisco institutions. Not that it’s a competition.

Pros: Lusty Lady’s the best place to take your gay friends for a fabulous girls’ night out. Everything I know about labias I learned from Good Vibrations.

Cons: I have to hand-wash all my plates because my dishwasher’s usually full of Good Vibrations dildos. I have to hand-wash all my clothes because I spend all my quarters in the booths at the Lusty Lady. (Marke B.)

PORN AND TECHNOLOGY


Right up the Peninsula from Silicon Valley, we find ourselves in techie heaven. Most of the global advances in online technology burst first and foremost from our fertile area. The bust and boom that locked the Bay in a violent coital grasp in the early ’00s exhausted us, but Web 2.0’s got us all atingle again. This time we’re sure we won’t make the same mistakes. We’ll keep it social, we’ll keep it personal. Most of all, we’ll keep it sexual. Thanks to advances in digital production and online distribution — and our wondrously pervy nature (not to mention our desirable market) — the porn industry in San Francisco has exploded. The city is now home to a majority of the biggest gay porn companies and quite a few straight and fetish ones.

The most barefaced manifestation of the lucrative intersection of porn and technology is the purchase of the ginormous Armory in the Mission by fetish header Kink.com to house its offices, studios, and online operations. (Personally, I can’t wait for them to open a Kink Café in there as well. St. Andrew’s croissandwich, anyone?) This may be a harbinger of things to come. We’re not exactly holding our collective breath for Bang Bus to take over the LucasArts HQ in the Presidio or for the former Candlestick Park to be rechristened Naked Sword Arena — but hey, it could happen. Alas, the fortuitous marriage of porn and technology may be about to hit the skids. Hi-def can reveal a whole lot of ass pimples and nipple lifts — Blu-ray killed the porn star? Then again, it might just provide more employment opportunities for digital touch-up artists. "Hey, man, what’s your new gig?" "I’m rastarizing Busty Fillips’s underarm stretch marks — full-time, plus benefits." Local HMOs are lining up.

The ever-rising tide of digital wonders raises more sensual — and sensitive — boats than porn, however. While no one’s yet perfected the vibrator–cell phone (what ringtone would I put on that? Oh yeah, Beyoncé), rest assured that some little tech elf is working fiendishly away in his or her bright pink laboratory to bring that dream to fruition. Which brings us to the new iPhone. It may not be dildo-ready, exactly — watch that touch screen! — but some of its romantic applications were immediately apparent on its unveiling here in January. What other piece of handheld technology allows a person to be rejected in so many different medias at once? Now when you want to break up with someone, you can call them, text them, and e-mail them all at the same time. Plus, you can share a break-up song on iTunes with them and even throw in a YouTube clip of yourself gently weeping to show how torn up you are inside (clip must be less than 10 minutes in duration and not imitative of copyrighted material). Send a slide show! Skype an e-card! Use PayPal to buy them a "Just Got iDumped" mug on eBay! The possibilities are infinite.

Now if only there were software that could mend a broken heart. Sigh.

Pros: Online hookups? No problem: anywhere, anytime. You don’t have to be physically present to enjoy an entire relationship. Everyone’s a winner: people unable to afford the latest gadget or upgrade get to feel more real. Soon everyone in the city will have a job at Kink.com.

Cons: Much of the Bay population is more interested in staying up all night with a two-liter of Coke, a cold pizza, and a roomful of servers than a warm body. Web 2.0 has brought a horny flood of freshly flush Googlers, Tubers, Diggers, ‘Spacers, and Mac heads on the make to already packed and overpriced Mission bars (watch for those hybrid Tundras parked on the median). You will literally go blind if you jack off to video iPod porn in the bathroom stall at work — that screen’s so small! Soon everyone in San Francisco will have a job at Kink.com. (Marke B.)

The benefits of fiber

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Amsterdam is building a citywide fiber-to-the-premises system. So are Hong Kong, Milan, and Zurich. If San Francisco follows suit, it would be making a far-sighted, multifaceted investment: FTTP would boost our economy, attracting software companies, video production houses, and digital media shops. It would enhance public health, allowing surgeons to review the same materials from different locations. Municipal fiber would improve public safety, facilitating the mirroring and backup of vital data at remote, earthquake-safe locations. It would enable unlimited and open communications — breaking ongoing communication monopolies — and save buckets of cash within a couple of decades.

These futuristic findings are laid out in the fiber feasibility report Sup. Tom Ammiano commissioned two years ago, but the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services didn’t green-light it until last fall. As a result of this delay, the city’s Maryland-based consultant, Columbia Telecommunications Corp. (CTC), couldn’t complete its fiber study until after Mayor Gavin Newsom said he’d struck a wi-fi deal with the Google-EarthLink partnership that still requires the Board of Supervisors’ approval.

Newsom’s plan was threatened even before his recent scandals. City budget analyst Harvey Rose’s report on municipal wi-fi offered a scathing assessment of the Google-EarthLink deal. Board members will now weigh the two new reports — and the opinions of a growing number of critics of the deal — before deciding on the mayor’s wi-fi proposal.

"So far I have more questions than answers," Sup. Aaron Peskin said of trying to digest the budget analyst’s report. "Questions about free service and quality of service. Questions about the environmental and aesthetic impacts of installing antennas citywide. I’ve got questions about Google’s cooperation with a totalitarian government overseas. I’ve got questions reutf8g to the shitty service I’ve personally gotten from EarthLink. Questions about the municipalization of services and questions about other technologies, including fiber."

Peskin admitted he’s yet to read the fiber report, which lauds FTTP as "the holy grail of broadband" while explaining that wi-fi isn’t a competitor but a complement to fiber, since wi-fi’s key advantage is its "mobility and connectivity during movement."

That said, the report recommends building citywide fiber, which it describes as a "fat pipe all the way into the home or business." In the face of the public sector’s lack of interest in building fiber networks that would meet growing demands for bandwidth and speed in an equitable and affordable manner, the CTC report concludes that municipal fiber would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities "by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives."

With fiber allowing numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access, the report recommends a wholesale open-access model to facilitate "democratic and free market values" and enhance the city’s reputation "for visionary and pioneering projects."

The report estimates a citywide open-access wholesale model will cost $563 million but predicts it will spark economic investment and jobs. It recommends building a pilot network in a 12-square-mile economic development area that includes Bayview, Hunters Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, the Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, SoMa, the Tenderloin, and the Western Addition.

The study also observes that aside from supporting safety and communications systems (thereby saving the city huge and unending costs of leasing circuits from telephone companies) and providing higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, securer service, fiber is the best backbone for wi-fi systems.

Or as communications activist Bruce Wolfe recently told the Guardian, "Wi-fi is a parasite looking for a wire."

Speaking to us, along with United Layer’s Tim Pozar, SFLan’s Ralf Muehlen, and Our City’s Eric Brooks, Wolfe stated that far from being "the naysayers, as we were accused after critiquing the Google-EarthLink deal, we’re actually the truthsayers."

The foursome, who are supporters and providers of current wi-fi services in San Francisco, said although wi-fi rocks when you’re at an outdoor café or checking bus schedules with a cell phone, fiber rules when you’re in a basement, on a fourth floor, or in need of reliable and efficient service or massive capacity.

"That’s why it makes more sense to roll out a joint fiber-cable-wi-fi system, because all the interference and bog downs would be solved by hooking antennas into fiber," Pozar says. "Putting a bunch of antennas up as a cloud over the city supposedly gives free users speeds of 300 kbps, but anyone making a phone call or downloading a video will drain everyone else’s speeds, and blanketing the city with transmitters will make the spectrum unusable by others."

Muehlen expects the wi-fi service his business provides to get "blown out of the ether, technically, or be severely compromised," by the proposed Google-EarthLink deal. "But I wouldn’t mind if I got a network that didn’t suck," he says. "I just want something that works."

Brooks said many people who can’t afford the Internet are "compartmentalized in lower-income areas. Why not begin by addressing those areas instead of giving away the whole 49 square miles to Google-EarthLink?"

He noted that it will cost Google-EarthLink an estimated $300,000 to pay into the city-run Digital Inclusionary Fund. "That’s a drop in the bucket in terms of providing residents with gear, training, and support that truly bridge the digital divide." *

Editor’s Notes

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It’s been almost a week. The Guardian has moved on — to our annual sex issue.

And now Gavin Newsom is seeking "treatment" (which sounds like a lot more than it apparently is) for alcohol abuse, and he wants everything to go back to normal. But as we report in "More Than the Affair," this page, normal at Newsom’s City Hall isn’t much to be proud of. And in the meantime, a lot of damage is done — and not just (or even primarily) to the mayor’s career.

When it comes to the sex scandal, Newsom made his own bed. And I wish him well in his battle with alcohol — I know how tough that can be. But there’s another point here. Newsom is more than just a politician. He’s more than the mayor of San Francisco. He’s become a national symbol, particularly for same-sex marriage, and his reputation as an honest, ethical guy, a young rising star in the Democratic Party — and yeah, an Irish Catholic — has helped that cause.

The Ruby Tourk affair may well have been consensual, and if so, we can let it lie. But it undermines the one really good thing Newsom has done. Predictably, the right wing is having a field day: the mayor of San Francisco loves gay marriage, but he doesn’t respect traditional marriage. It’s a stupid line, but it hurts. And Newsom’s weak, simpering apology doesn’t help San Francisco or any of our shared causes either. He just looks like a loser.

I have to say: drinking or no drinking, the guy just isn’t mature enough to be in room 200.

Yeah, Willie Brown went out with younger women and impregnated a campaign fundraiser, and nobody cared. That was in part because he didn’t screw city employees who reported to him and in part because he knew how to handle the press, but it was also in part because, by the time he was mayor, Brown didn’t stand for anything. He was a political wheeler and dealer; there weren’t many people who had invested hopes and dreams in him.

Newsom took on that role a few years ago, and when you do that, the disappointments are that much bitterer. *

More than the affair

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EDITORIAL OK: let’s put this all in perspective.

Gavin Newsom did something almost unbelievably, incalculably stupid. He’s in a lot of political and possibly legal trouble.

He has just admitted to having a drinking problem and is going to seek "treatment" — although it’s not clear at all what that means, except that he won’t be entering a residential center.

The heart of the scandal was just an affair — yes, an affair with a subordinate, which is a real problem (and something most of corporate America put an end to 20 years ago) — but nobody’s dead, he hasn’t started a war, the city isn’t about to collapse, and the world will keep turning. It seemed silly to us to call on Newsom to resign over that, just as it was silly for the Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton over an Oval Office blow job.

But there’s a much bigger problem here.

For months, long before this tawdry story made the front pages, it’s been clear that the mayor of San Francisco isn’t focused on the job. For whatever reason (and there may be many), Newsom has been checked out for quite some time now. As we reported in "Mayor Chicken" (1/10/07), he never attends public events that haven’t been carefully scripted. His relations with the Board of Supervisors are damaged beyond repair. He’s offering absolutely nothing in the way of leadership on the murder epidemic, the housing crisis, Muni’s meltdown, or much of anything else. He’s had plenty of time for glamour and glitz, movie stars, rides on the Google corporate jet, and the glitterati at Davos, Switzerland — but not much energy for the gritty reality on the streets of his city.

He is, we noted in our Jan. 10 cover story, "the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites, and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t established in advance."

And whether we like it or not, this latest "lapse in judgment" — and Newsom’s embarrassing failure to deal with it properly — is only going to make things worse.

To be blunt, for a lot of reasons that have little to do with this tabloid sensation, we don’t see how Newsom can effectively run San Francisco for another four years. The mayor’s latest mess isn’t a scandal as much as a symptom of his shaky grip on the frighteningly tricky world of high-stakes politics. He’s acting like a dizzy kid at a rock star party who doesn’t have the maturity to handle what’s coming at him. Even his close allies have warned us that the wheels are coming off his administration. It’s not even clear that he wants to be mayor.

We wish Newsom well in his battle with alcoholism. But for the good of the city (and the causes he claims to care about), he’d be better off announcing he isn’t going to run for reelection now.

That wouldn’t be the end of his political career — plenty of people (John Burton comes to mind) have taken some time off from politics to deal with their personal lives and come back much stronger. It might be the best thing Newsom could do for himself.

Newsom says right now that he’s staying in the race, but he’s clearly wounded; that air of political invulnerability has taken a hit. When a local politician is looking bloodied, the sharks typically start to circle. That hasn’t happened yet; if anything, over the past few days, the highest-profile potential contenders have been pretty quiet about taking Newsom on.

But somebody has to do it. That’s never been clearer.

Running for mayor is serious business, and if there’s going to be a strong candidate challenging Newsom on the issues, the left needs to think about who it ought to be. Who has the experience and skills to take on the campaign? Who can appeal to a wide enough group of voters to win? Who has the sort of record and platform that progressives can support and unite around?

Those discussions need to start soon. But they need to be deliberate and thoughtful. Newsom’s political (and yes, personal) failures have given progressives an opening. There’s a chance to elect a mayor who really represents San Francisco values in deeds as well as words. Let’s take it seriously. *

Newsom’s dodge

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By Chris Albon
Mayor Gavin Newsom is still dodging questions about his affair with his campaign manager’s wife and his alcohol problem, even as masses of reporters show up at his public appearances, such as today’s event touting a PG&E program.
The small press conference at the Academy of Art University on San Francisco’s new $11.5 million Energy Watch program, sponsored primarily by PG&E, was Newsom’s first event since he announced yesterday that he was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse at Delancey Street Foundation.
Newsom was 15 minutes late and a small crowd of reporters were anxiously loitering and watcing every Lincoln Town car that crept through lunchtime traffic. When the limo finally arrived, Newsom locked in a smile, looked forward, and walked in the building to PG&E’s display table of high-tech light bulbs.
The mood was tense and the event’s organizers and the mayor’s staff seemed skeptical that the media was there to get information on the plan to distribute more energy efficient light bulbs to small businesses.
“I know many of you are here because you care so deeply about climate change,” was how Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San Francisco department of the environment, expressed his cynicism.
When Blumenfeld introduced Newsom to speak, the room was awkwardly quiet. No one applauded.
“Thank you everyone, for the applause,” Newsom said. Only then did the small crowd applaud.
After his speech on the new plan, the mayor did take questions, but he was not going to dive into the affair or his alcohol problem.
“Any more questions,” Newsom asked adding, “on this issue?” before it was too late.
As the mayor walked out, I thought it a perfectly appropriate and respectful question to ask the mayor “if there was going to be a time when he would take questions on his alcoholism or his affair,” but apparently he didn’t agree.
“You’ve taken liberty with the question,” he said.
I took that as a “no.” Maybe I should have asked why a mayor who purports to support public power was helping to prop up PG&E’s aggressive greenwashing efforts. Next time.

Into the void

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By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom has refused to take any questions about his affair or drinking problem — and we don’t intend to turn to his press secretary for answers anymore — so I called his campaign spokesperson Eric Jaye this afternoon to pose a couple questions and let him know that we expect to pose a few more directly to Newsom, whether or not he wants to answer them. Luckily, we’re patient and we buy our ink by the barrel, so we’re in no hurry.
Jaye said the reports that Alex Tourk is still being paid by the campaign (potentially a violation of campaign finance laws) is not accurate. And he said Ruby Tourk never received any payments either. “There have been no payments whatsoever to anyone (connected to the scandals) for anything. We won’t do anything until three attorneys sign off on it,” he told us. “We don’t want to compound an error in judgment by making a campaign finance error.” But Jaye did say the campaign feels an obligation to help Tourk make ends meet until he can find a new job, a task that he expects to have good legal advice on in the next day or two. “He’s a great guy who doesn’t deserve any of this…We don’t right now know how to pay him or if we can through the campaign.”
The other big question was how Newsom can expect to seriously deal with his alcohol and other personal problems while reengaging with his job as mayor and standing for reelection. No surprise that Jaye feels like Newsom is up to it, but he did say the campaign comes last on that list: “The priority is for Gavin Newsom to do what he has to do to be a better mayor and be a better person…In the scheme of things, the campaign comes after that.”
Does that mean that the campaign could get squeezed out once Newsom learns about what kind of program he’ll face at Delancey Street Foundation and if the job of being mayor is made all the tougher by his recent scandals and his handling of them? Might Newsom not run? Jaye categorically rejected the idea that Newsom might not run, noting that he might have less time to personally campaign, but the campaign will move forward anyway. “Absolutely he’s running to reelection and he’s going to run a successful campaign.”

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