Mission neighborhood tension has never been higher. The tech fueled boom has predominantly white and Asian newcomers butting heads with Latino neighbors who are long-time residents.
The newest scuffle is over a small patch of green: Mission Playground’s soccer field, located on Valencia between 19th and 20th streets.
A video now making the rounds captures an argument between Dropbox employees and Mission neighborhood kids. The Dropbox employees, including designer Josh Pluckett, argue they’ve already paid for and reserved the field.
The Mission youth counter that the field historically has always been pick-up-and-play (first-come, first-serve), no reservations required.
The video has many startling moments, highlighting the divide between the two groups. Can we all just acknowledge the oddness of a Latino man asking a white tech dude to “show me your papers,” as he asks for his soccer field use permit? Later in the video, things really heat up.
“Just because you’ve got the money to book the field doesn’t mean you could book it for an hour,” one taller youth tells the Dropbox employees. When the dudes-in-Dropbox-shirts explain they paid $27 to rent the field, the kid replies “It doesn’t matter, this field has never been booked. How long have you been in the neighborhood bro?”
The Dropbox employee responds “over a year.”
Another one off camera says “Who gives a shit? Who cares about the neighborhood?”
“I’ve been born and raised here for my 20 years, and my whole life you could just play here,” the youth responds.
On the surface this is a gentrification argument: the kids may not be able to afford regular use of the field, wheras those with big dollars can pay up for use. But the incident also highlights the problem with privatization of our public spaces.
As Mission Local pointed out, the field used to be concrete pavement, but neighborhood folks still played soccer. And damn, they played soccer, injuring themselves frequently on the asphalt. That was then. Now, you’ve got to pay to play.
Suffice to say, less neighborhood folks play there now.
Renting out the field for only one night costs $27 per hour, but to rent the field regularly (like neighborhood kids playing weekly would have to) costs $5 to $10 per player per week. What kid has that kind of money on a weekly basis?
Connie Chan, a spokesperson for RPD, responded with this statement:
“Last year Mission Playfield was available for free, drop-in play 96% of the time. Like all parks and recreation facilities, Mission Playfield is open for both drop-in and permitted use. Users of Mission Playfield are guaranteed a minimum of 16 hours per week of free, drop-in play and last year were able to access 4021 hours of free, drop-in play. In 2013 the field was permitted for 734 hours of free youth permitted play, and 185 hours of paid adult permitted play. The Department has long recognized that our City has limited open space for recreation, and we definitely lack playfields for both adults and youth to play; we encourage all our park users to respect one another and share our parks.”
She also shared this image of Mission Playground signage:
It’s a matter of history that much of Golden Gate Park, including the arboretum, used to be free (or rather, paid by our tax dollars). In a movement that started over five years ago, San Franciscans now pay a premium to enjoy many park amenities throughout San Francisco.
“What a lot of us think the Recreation and Parks Department is actually doing is relinquishing the maintenance of park facilities to private entities,” Denis Mosgofian told the Guardian in 2011, when the park privatization battle heated up. Mosgofian founded Take Back Our Parks following his battles with the RPD over the closures and leases of rec centers. “They’re actually dismantling much of what the public has created.”
For the past six years, RPD has sought to build more astroturf soccer fields at the end of Golden Gate Park near the Beach Chalet. This November, Proposition H is poised to take down the project, if the measure passes. The Guardian endorsed No on Proposition H, because we felt that particular soccer field in Golden Gate Park often went unused as is. But Proposition I is shady ballot box politicking.
Proposition I would ease city rules and public democratic processes around park construction to allow the rapid creation of many more astroturf fields. If it passes this November, you can look forward to seeing many more arguments like the YouTube video above.
Welcome to the November 2014 edition of a decades-long Bay Guardian tradition. As usual, we did many hours of endorsement interviews with candidates and ballot measure proponents and opponents, along with additional research to arrive at our picks, some involving difficult decisions. We’ll be posting the audio from most of those endorsement interviews at SFBG.com/Politics, so come listen in if you want more information. And don’t forget to vote by Nov. 4.
CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 17
DAVID CAMPOS
We’ll keep this brief because we already endorsed David Campos in the June primary election, but our enthusiasm for his candidacy has only grown since then. San Francisco needs a strong, clear, passionate progressive advocate in Sacramento, particularly as we deal with growing pains and displacement challenges exacerbated by state housing, tax, and election laws and cutbacks in funding for transit and affordable housing.
His opponent, David Chiu, is a skilled lawmaker and he wouldn’t be a bad legislator. But Chiu’s neoliberal economic positions (from the Twitter tax break to a business tax reform that favored the tech industry) and willingness to cut deals with powerful interests rather than hold the progressive line in favor of vulnerable populations give us doubts about what he’d do in Sacramento. We have no such doubts about Campos, who has proven himself to be an effective and trustworthy advocate for renters, workers, consumers, and those who need support against powerful economic and political players. That’s why he won the support of outgoing Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and a wide array of progressive entities.
This was a surprisingly tough choice given how long we’ve been wanting someone to make a strong and well-funded challenge to entrenched incumbent James Fang, San Francisco’s only Republican elected office holder and the longest serving director at an agency that has been hostile to worker safety reforms and meaningful oversight of the BART Police Department. We got our wish this year when Nick Josefowitz, a solar energy entrepreneur, entered the race, did well in fundraising, and got lots of progressive political support. But SEIU Local 1021 strongly supported Fang, who walked the picket lines with striking BART workers last year. They and other Fang allies also highlighted Josefowitz’s opposition to CleanPowerSF and Prop. G, raising questions about his progressive credentials and political naïveté. Fang deserves credit for supporting BART workers last year and with advocating for a BART extension to Ocean Beach. But the BART board needs new blood, and we believe Josefowitz has the energy, ideas, and perspective to move the district in a more sustainable, accountable, and innovative direction.
Unlike in San Francisco, where it’s sometimes tough for our progressive-minded editorial team to get excited about most candidates running for local office, we’ve got legitimately high hopes for both of our picks for the Oakland mayor’s race. Both Rebecca Kaplan and Dan Siegel offer compelling visions for a diverse and dynamic Oakland at a time when the city is in need of strong leadership. Kaplan, a LGBT candidate who gets around the city by bicycle and has a keen interest in sustainability, has a decade of public service involvement, including holding the at-large seat on the Oakland City Council. She’s emphasizing tackling unemployment and expanding local hiring for the Police Department as a way to improve trust between police and residents. Dan Siegel, a civil rights attorney with a laudable track record in Bay Area social justice movements, is deeply focused on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, defending the city’s poor and working-class residents from displacement in the face of gentrification, advancing police reform, and tackling inequality in public education. Whether Oaklanders vote for Kaplan first and Siegel second, or Siegel first and Kaplan second, we think they will have cast a vote for strong progressive leadership in Oakland.
SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
DISTRICT 2
1. MARK FARRELL
2. JUAN-ANTONIO CARBALLO
We at the Bay Guardian will always have ideological differences with whoever represents District 2 (Marina, Pacific Heights, Sea Cliff), which is one of the wealthiest and most conservative districts in the city. And we’ve differed with incumbent Mark Farrell on many issues, from condo conversions to business tax policy. But Farrell has proven to be a smart, humble, and accessible legislator who often works cooperatively with his more progressive colleagues to do the city’s business. His business background and fiscal expertise made him a solid chair of the Budget Committee, even if we’d like to see more resources directed to social services. And we applaud his recent efforts to address homelessness in the city and to work on legislation to discourage homeowners from keeping vacant rooms out of the housing market. Challenger Juan-Antonio Carballo is more progressive and has some good ideas for encouraging innovation in city government, but he’s new to politics and could use a bit more seasoning before he’s ready for the Board of Supervisors.
Since being appointed by the Mayor’s Office to fill the seat that was vacated when Carmen Chu was named Assessor-Recorder, Katy Tang has mostly continued the role she played previously of competently tending to various concerns of her Sunset District constituents. But over the last year, as political tensions in the city have increased (such as between renters and landlords and supporters and opponents of CleanPowerSF), Tang has played an increasing vocal political role on behalf of the Mayor’s Office and vested economic interests, leading the attacks on the anti-speculation tax and other progressive reforms. We’d rather see her focus on her district, including the promising Sunset District Blueprint she introduced and its major political challenge of getting westside residents to finally accept more housing density. The eastern neighborhoods are growing rapidly and we’re hoping Tang and her neighbors will accept their share of the burden, and she has our support in that process. The Ocean Beach Master Plan that she’s been working on, something made more pressing by rising sea levels, also needs more political leadership to come to fruition, and we support that effort as well.
DISTRICT 6
1. JANE KIM
2. JAMIE WHITAKER
Jane Kim has sought to advance some laudable goals during her time in office, telling us her priorities have been to preserve affordable housing, improve pedestrian safety, and reform the homeless shelter system. Yet time and again, she’s demonstrated a willingness to support and compromise with Mayor Ed Lee, a tactic that has resulted in weaker outcomes than the city’s progressive ranks would hope for at a time when corporate influence in government has rendered City Hall out of touch with ordinary residents. For instance, Kim agreed to weaken a housing balance measure that would’ve created an enforcement mechanism to ensure a balance of affordable housing in San Francisco, and has questionable ties to lobbyist and former Mayor Willie Brown. Kim is a former Green Party member who comes from the progressive community and is a smart legislator, but she’s also an ambitious politician who’s been willing to divide and weaken the city’s progressive movement. It’s a careful balancing act that she doesn’t always pull off. She sponsored the Twitter tax break that fed the tech boom and hyper-gentrification, but now she is working to prevent that industry from gobbling up existing light industrial and office space. We grant her our endorsement in the hopes that she’ll use her influence to advance sound progressive policies. If you’d prefer to press the reset button and go with a candidate who’s less experienced and less well-known, but nevertheless critical of cutting deals for corporate interests and allowing rampant construction to continue apace in District 6, vote for Jamie Whitaker.
It’s not easy to endorse Scott Wiener after all the battles that we and our progressive allies have had with him. We’ve fought him on condo conversions, CEQA reform, outlawing public nudity, and with generally siding with property owners and the business community. He often takes strong, uncompromising stands on issues that can infuriate his political opponents. But just as often, that strong political leadership has been in the service of things we believe in and support. Wiener has been the board’s biggest champion for creating a sustainable transportation system and getting more resources (along with more scrutiny) for Muni. He has been a leader on supporting nightlife in San Francisco, the best ally that bar owners and event promoters have had in many years. Wiener has a strong, independent political perspective and courage to cast tough votes, as when he gave the CleanPowerSF program a critical veto-proof majority. We’ve also found him to be honest and accessible even when we don’t agree with him. George Davis is a single-issue candidate focused on nudity, and we’re offering him our second slot mostly for symbolic reasons.
Guardian photo by Matthew Reamer.
DISTRICT 10
1. TONY KELLY
2. MALIA COHEN
The Guardian enthusiastically endorses Tony Kelly for District 10. Incumbent Malia Cohen is someone we like and don’t have strong opposition to, but she has not provided the leadership this district needs, particularly as it rapidly grows and wrestles with high unemployment, gun violence, neglected units in public housing, and environmental hazards that pose a threat to public health. Kelly is a knowledgeable advocate who has presented a detailed and thoughtful plan for crafting solutions in this changing and challenging San Francisco district, while refusing money from developers and real estate interests to make the point that the city should prioritize stabilizing affordable rental stock and preventing displacement. We appreciate Cohen’s service over the past four years, including moving forward the Schlage Lock development site in Visitacion Valley and facilitating gun buyback programs to prevent street violence. But at the end of the day, Kelly’s ideas on how to tackle some of D10’s greatest challenges strike us as being more principled, well-researched, and closely aligned with progressive principles.
San Francisco’s transportation system has some serious needs, and this $500 million general obligation bond is an important first step in addressing more than $7 billion in desperately needed capital projects, including Muni’s long list of deferred maintenance needs. Almost a third of the money will go to safety, circulation, and streetscape projects through the city, including finally addressing the cluttered, confusing mess on Market Street. The projects will benefit motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. Although some critics of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency have begun to raise concerns about soft language in the list of projects, suggesting it will go to cost overruns on the Central Subway project, SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin categorically told us that isn’t true. Besides, there’s no denying SFMTA needs the money to upgrade a transportation system that is at the breaking point at many times and places. And given that this measure requires a two-thirds vote, it deserves everyone’s vote and it has our strong and unqualified support.
PROP. B: TYING MUNI FUNDING TO GROWTH
YES
There’s an undeniable logic to Prop. B, which would increase the city General Fund contribution to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency as the city’s population and workforce increase. That makes sense: Muni’s operating costs go up along with its ridership. Prop. B is retroactive to the last funding increase 10 years ago. Since then the population has jumped about 10 percent, immediately giving Muni about $22 million more per year. Ideally, Muni’s dire funding needs would be met with a new revenue source, and we share the concerns of advocates for social services and affordable housing that this measure will put more pressure on them during budget season. City leaders had promised to put a local increase in the vehicle license fee on this ballot, which we supported. But when Mayor Ed Lee balked, Scott Wiener and five of his colleagues responded with Prop. B. This measure contains a provision allowing the mayor to repeal this set-aside if and when voters approve the local VLF increase. Mayor Lee has pledged to do the VLF measure in 2016, so Prop. B is an important stopgap measure and leverage to make sure our flip-flopping mayor keeps his word this time.
This is a set-aside of city funds for children’s programs, in three parts. It renews the Children’s Fund, which provides youth services through a property tax assessment; the Public Education Enrichment Fund, a General Fund set-aside that goes mostly to the school district; and the Rainy Day Fund, another city set-aside during hard times at the school district. It would guarantee that youth programs — including preschool programs, art and music curriculum in schools, and violence prevention programs — continue receiving these dedicated funds for at least another 25 years. Prop. C is the culmination of the efforts of a grassroots coalition of youth service providers who worked for about two years on crafting this measure. The Guardian strongly supports this measure, which helps thousands of young people in vulnerable situations in San Francisco.
PROP. D: RETIREE HEALTH BENEFITS
YES
This measure was unanimously placed on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors to give most employees of the old San Francisco Redevelopment Agency — a locally based state agency that was disbanded by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature — and its Successor Agency the same retiree health benefits as other city employees. This covers less than 50 employees, so the Controller’s Office estimates it will cost about $75,000 spread over many years. These employees work mostly on facilitating affordable housing projects that the city desperately needs, and it’s a basic fairness issue that deserves voter support.
AP photo by Eric Risberg.
PROP. E: SODA TAX
YES
San Francisco and Berkeley have the chance to spark a national turning point against diabetes and obesity this election by instituting a 2-cents-per-ounce sugary beverage tax. Much like cigarettes were in a previous generation, sugary drinks are as ubiquitous as they are unhealthy. But unlike sugar-filled foods, the human body does not feel satiated after downing a Big Gulp: We just want more. Our city’s low-income neighborhoods have suffered the brunt of higher obesity and diabetes rates, which studies have linked to these sugary beverages. The science is clear and these mounting health care costs hurt all of us. The soda industry is pumping record-breaking dollars into this race because it fears this will start a national movement against soda. Do not believe the sky-is-falling cries from the industry, or its attempt to cast this as an affordability issue that hurts low-income communities of color, the very communities that the soda industry targets and this measure seeks to help. This is about discouraging unhealthy behaviors and raising tax revenue for health and fitness programs, which is why it needs a two-thirds vote. Fight big soda’s big money, ignore the lies, and vote for health.
Guess what? The Bay Guardian is endorsing a measure for a massive waterfront development project. No, this isn’t a love fest with the developers of tech offices and market-rate housing. There’s an important principle here: Forest City, the developer of Pier 70, has shown itself to be responsive to community stakeholders. It has committed to allocate 30 percent of the project’s units as affordable housing, which is sorely needed and more than most projects offer. The developers have spent years meeting with neighborhood groups, earning endorsements even from the Sierra Club. Prop. B, which passed in June, created a rule requiring voters to weigh in on new waterfront development proposals that would stand taller than existing height limits. That’s why the Pier 70 project is on the ballot — and that’s why the developers have maximized the project’s public benefits. Forest City’s measure can be read as a sign that Prop. B incentivized waterfront developers to present better projects.
PROP. G: ANTI-SPECULATION TAX
YES
Technically, this measure is a tax, but it’s a tax that its proponents say they hope never gets levied. The idea is to discourage a bad behavior that has been fueling the eviction epidemic and driving up housing costs in San Francisco: real estate speculators flipping homes for profit, often evicting longtime tenants in the process in order to maximize that profit. It would levy a 24 percent tax if a property was flipped with a year of purchase or 14 percent within five years. It exempts single-family homes and large apartment complexes, focusing on the units targeted by speculators. This measure revives legislation Harvey Milk introduced shortly before his assassination, and it was the top policy proposal to come out of a series of tenant conventions earlier this year. Opponents, led by Realtor associations that have dumped nearly $1.5 million into the race, call it a “housing tax,” claiming it will drive up rents. But such fear tactics have little basis in reality. The real threat to housing stability in San Francisco is from the rapacious speculators, often from out of town, that this measure is designed to rein in.
This measure — opposing replacing an underused grass field with artificial turf soccer fields at the edge of Golden Gate Park — was a tough call. On the one hand, studies are mixed on the ultimate safety of playing fields made from recycled rubber tires (plus the potential long-term environmental consequences of using this material), and the potential flood of stadium light so close to Ocean Beach concerns us. Viscerally, this project bothers us. On the other hand, the switch to an artificial turf field here has been approved by every political body that has considered it and it has the support of progressive Sup. Eric Mar, who often champions families. Opponents’ concerns have been vetted over six years, and lack of park access is an equity issue. Our city fights tooth and nail to keep every family as we watch our child population continue to dwindle. The grass field is now underused, and the city’s children need a revamped place to play. With some reservations, we urge you to vote no and allow this project to finally move forward.
This proposition represents a disturbing growing trend in local politics. Prop. I is a response to Prop. H, the measure which means to block the creation of an artificial turf field at the edge of Golden Gate Park. If approved with a greater majority than Prop H, Prop I would void it. This is known as a “poison pill” measure, hard bargaining by politicians trying to torpedo propositions they do not agree with. This (rightly) breeds the public’s distrust of politics and politicians. Also, it’s just bad governance. If approved, the Recreation and Park Department could construct turf fields and bright flood lighting over any children’s playground or existing grass field if it can prove that doing so would double the park’s attendance, preventing the normal discretionary review and appeal processes. Proponents are also cloaking this campaign in a “help our kids” message, which rings hollow. This is bad politics, bad policy, and just plain bad.
San Francisco bears the unfortunate distinction of having the fastest-growing income inequality in the country — that’s why it’s so important to raise the pay of the lowest-paid workers. San Francisco could alleviate its growing wealth gap and maintain its progressive distinction as having the highest nationwide minimum wage if voters approve Prop. J. This bid to raise the minimum wage, placed on the ballot following a consensus between Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors, would increase hourly earnings for the lowest-paid San Francisco employees to $15 an hour, up from $10.74, by 2018. To give you a sense of how much that’s needed, the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that a renter must earn $29.38 an hour in order to afford a one-bedroom, market-rate apartment in San Francisco. Prop. J poses an opportunity for San Franciscans to move toward greater economic equality. Vote yes and help turn the tide against the ugly wealth gap.
PROP. K: HOUSING POLICY STATEMENT
YES
When Sup. Jane Kim introduced this measure as the Housing Balance proposition, it was good legislation that might have helped balance the development of affordable and luxury housing, slowing down market-rate housing with additional studies and hearings when affordable units drop below 30 percent of total housing production. Then it got attacked by developers, political power brokers, and the Mayor’s Office and got turned into a fairly meaningless policy statement encouraging a housing boom and studies of how to reach 33 percent affordability. That is, 33 percent affordable by those making 120 percent of area median income and below and half by those making up to 150 percent AMI. We don’t like that upward creeping definition of “affordable housing” and we don’t think this measure should be needed to ask the Mayor’s Office to study how to meet its own stated housing policy goals, including the 30,000 units by 2020 goal that Mayor Ed Lee announced in January. He should have had a plan before making his pledge. But if this is what our elected officials require to start taking affordable housing development seriously, then fine, vote yes.
This measure is a shortsighted primal scream by motorists in a transit-first city that is rapidly growing and trying to address pedestrian and bike safety issues and chronic underfunding of Muni. It’s a difficult balancing act, and we understand that motorists feel frustrated by traffic jams and the fact that it’s not cheap or easy to park their cars (which is also the case in every major metropolis in the world). But this simplistic solution — which seeks to divert Muni funding to build more parking lots and give residents veto power over new parking controls in their neighborhoods — would only make things worse for everyone. With San Francisco rapidly adding jobs and homes within its finite road network, it’s more important than ever to encourage people to choose alternatives to the automobile, which also helps those who must drive. Good parking management policies also help drivers find parking spaces by encouraging turnover. But for motorists to act like some oppressed class is ridiculous, and voters should soundly reject this measure, which reeks of overentitlement and refusal to acknowledge the complex realities of urban living.
BERKELEY’S MEASURE D: SODA TAX
YES
Less ambitious than San Francisco’s beverage tax, Berkeley’s measure levies a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks (versus two in SF). And this measure only needs a majority to pass, as the taxes will go into the city’s General Fund, as opposed to funding specific health measures. While this may on the surface seem problematic, the ultimate goal for the tax is not to generate revenue, but to raise the price of soda to dissuade people from buying it. As diabetes rates soar in low-income communities of color, Berkeley residents have a clear opportunity to promote public health and raise a little money in the process.
SAN FRANCISCO CITYWIDE OFFICES
ASSESSOR-RECORDER
CARMEN CHU
This office is vitally important to San Francisco city government, assessing property for tax purposes and bringing in about one-third of the city’s General Fund revenue. So a willingness to hold firm with commercial property owners seeking reassessments is the key. Carmen Chu, who was appointed by the Mayor’s Office to the Board of Supervisors and then to this office, has always been a little cozy with downtown and landlords, so we would have liked to see someone challenge her and offer another option. But Chu is definitely smart and professional and she seems to be running this office well, so we’re happy to give her our endorsement.
AP photo by Jeff Chiu.
PUBLIC DEFENDER
JEFF ADACHI
The Bay Guardian enthusiastically endorses Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who has held office since 2003. Adachi hasn’t been shy about holding the San Francisco Police Department accountable for unfairly targeting the poor, and he’s worked to implement programs that go beyond upholding the basic right to legal counsel, co-founding the Reentry Council to help coordinate the delivery of employment, education, and substance abuse treatment to individuals who were recently released from prison or jail and face barriers to getting onto solid footing. We support Adachi for his demonstrated commitment to stand by his principles.
CCSF BOARD OF TRUSTEES
FOUR-YEAR SEAT (3 OPEN)
WENDOLYN ARAGON
City College of San Francisco’s board is now powerless, after being replaced last year by Special Trustee Bob Agrella as part of the district’s ongoing struggle to retain its accreditation. However, the clamor is rising for the democratically elected board to be revived, and the City Charter mandates a vote for this local board, responsible for setting policy for this embattled and vital institution. When that board convenes again, Wendy Aragon would make an excellent addition to it. She has support of progressive supervisors, the CCSF teacher’s union, and labor. As chair of the SFPUC Citizen Advisory Committee and president of the Richmond Democratic Club, Aragon championed progressive politics. Most importantly, she opposed the findings of the accrediting commission seeking to close City College long before such a view was popular. Vote for Wendolyn Aragon to help City College’s board find a new way forward.
BRIGITTE DAVILA
Brigitte Davila is one of the few candidates running for the college board with experience as a teacher. A San Francisco State University professor for over 20 years, Davila has experience with the needs of many City College students, as they often transfer to SFSU. She’s also laid solid groundwork in city politics by rallying for the Latino community, earning her the endorsement of the Latino Democratic Club. During a time where administrators seek major changes to the college, including class cuts and possible closure of campuses, the school needs an advocate for its disadvantaged communities. For Davila’s grassroots political work, her progressive values, and her education experience, we heartily recommend her.
THEA SELBY
Thea Selby is a neighborhood and small business advocate. While she’s not as leftist as we’d like, she was a solid candidate when she ran for District 5 supervisor in 2012, and she’s a solid candidate now. She chairs the San Francisco Transit Riders union, which has taken many progressive stances on transportation, and backed them up by going toe to toe with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors. With her business background comes endorsements from many moderates, including DCCC Chair Mary Jung, which worries us. But she has the experience necessary to navigate that difficult political landscape, earning our endorsement.
CCSF BOARD OF TRUSTEES
TWO-YEAR SEAT (1 OPEN)
WILLIAM WALKER
When William Walker first ran for the CCSF board, he was a student at City College himself. Balancing school, a full-time job, and a board seat, we felt then that Walker had too much on his plate to earn our endorsement, though we liked him. Times have changed, and Walker has too: We think he’s ready for the Board of Trustees. He’s a longtime active participant at City College, first as an advocate and later as a student trustee (a position without voting privileges). Walker has deep institutional knowledge, but isn’t beholden to the constituent groups at the campus. He’s ready, and has our endorsement.
SFUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION
SHAMANN WALTON
This is not Shamann Walton’s first time running for the Board of Education, and we’ve endorsed him before. The reasons are many: He’s a native San Franciscan who has long worked with the Bayview and other communities of color, and he has strong political bonafides. Walton has also worked directly with students through workforce and mentorship programs, giving him a uniquely intimate perspective on the needs of students. This insight already sparked his first plan as commissioner: to improve SFUSD facilities and leverage federal dollars to expand vocational opportunities for students. San Francisco’s public schools have made tremendous progress of late, instituting restorative justice programs and gaining more funding for communities of color, but those programs need a watchful eye from the community. Walton is a fine choice to ensure equity is maintained in the SFUSD.
STEVON COOK
It’s important for the school board to hear from the voices of families, and Stevon Cook is exactly that. A third-generation San Franciscan and resident of the Bayview, Cook has the perspective of a large segment of SFUSD students. This may be his first run for office, but Cook has shown his political acumen by racking up key endorsements, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, United Educators of San Francisco, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Importantly, Cook identifies teacher retention as a key part of his first term. The SFUSD often loses many qualified teachers in their first five years on the job, and the city’s housing crisis has only exacerbated this problem. Cook also aims to bolster support for restorative practices, a program that replaces suspensions with constructive dialogue. For his policy choices and his character, he has our strong support.
EMILY MURASE
We’ve endorsed two relative newcomers for the three open Board of Education seats, but the third choice is an incumbent. We must recognize the progress the board has made since its days as a fractious mess, even though it isn’t supportive enough of increasing salaries of district employees and has pushed teachers to the verge of striking. Fellow incumbent Hydra Mendoza’s close ties to the mayor made it easy to leave her off our list, leaving Murase as our sole choice for an incumbent on the school board. Murase is the executive director of the San Francisco Department of the Status of Women, bringing a perspective on equity that’s needed in the SFUSD. Murase is an ally, often voting with progressive measures, but doesn’t have a strong track record on proposing her own initiatives at the board. Hopefully though, her experience will help guide the board back to better relations with district teachers, who need a significant raise to live in this gentrifying city.
Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe.
CALIFORNIA MEASURES
PROP. 1 — WATER BOND
NO
At a whopping $7.5 billion, this water bond is considered to be the diet version of what was originally proposed by Sacramento lawmakers. Making a decision on this one was challenging, as there are mixed signals from the environmental community. The Sierra Club, whose perspective we often trust, went with no endorsement, while other big green environmental groups have backed it because it provides substantial funding for ecological restoration in rivers. Nevertheless, we tend to agree with Prop. 1 opponents, particularly the Center for Biological Diversity and Food and Water Watch, that point out that the $2.7 billion allocation in this bond for water storage — read: major, expensive dam projects — could have serious environmental consequences. “It will push the Sacramento–San Joaquin Bay Delta closer to collapse,” CBD wrote in a position statement, “leaving little chance for the imperiled Chinook salmon, smelt and steelhead.” The bottom line is that California’s water issues, now exacerbated by a severe drought, stem from a deep dysfunction that Prop. 1 does not adequately address. Try again, Sacramento.
PROP. 2: STATE BUDGET STABILIZATION
YES
Prop. 2 is a common sense fiscal reform for Sacramento, one the state’s public school system and other social services badly need. Prop. 2 would create a “rainy day fund,” tasking the state with setting aside money in boom periods to shield vital services in an economic bust. The boom and bust cycle holds millions of state K-12 and college students hostage every year, as well as social programs we all depend on. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano championed such a measure when he was supervisor of San Francisco, to great effect. The first 15 years, this new rainy day fund would be split in two, with half paying the state’s liabilities, like pensions and loans. The only potential downside of this measure is a provision which would require local school districts to cut their own reserves. It’s a real problem, but not enough to outweigh the potential gains of a statewide rainy day fund.
PROP. 45 — HEALTH CARE INSURANCE
YES
Endorsed by the California Nurses Association, Consumer Watchdog, and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, Prop. 45 seeks to place controls on rising health care insurance costs by making rate changes subject to approval by the California Insurance Commissioner. It also provides for public notice, disclosure, and hearings on rate changes, and requires insurers to submit sworn statements as to the accuracy of information submitted to justify rate changes. While health care reform has helped to improve access to health care across the board, it’s had little impact on rising costs. This is an important consumer protection measure.
PROP. 46 — DRUG TEST DOCTORS
NO
We at the Guardian have always opposed random drug testing as an invasion of privacy, and we see no reason why all medical doctors should be drug tested, as this measure would do. This hasn’t been shown to be a big problem, and it strikes us as unfair demonization of an entire profession, just as critics of public schools have tried to do to teachers. This measure would also support a statewide prescription drug database and increase medical malpractice damage limits, which may be fine ideas if they weren’t contained in a measure designed mostly to just beat up on doctors.
PROP. 47: SENTENCING REFORM
YES
Our state has a prison problem. We put too much of our funding toward jailing nonviolent offenders, leading to the decimation of low-income communities of color. Prop. 47, co-sponsored by District Attorney George Gascon, would reduce nonviolent and non-serious felonies to misdemeanors, and allow nearly 10,000 current prisoners to apply for resentencing. This is exactly the kind of thing California needs to address its overcrowded prison system. Shoplifting, theft, forgery, bad checks, and personal use of illegal drugs should not put someone in prison for untold years. The money the state saves from imprisonment will then be spent on recidivism programs and schools, to help newly released former convicts.
PROP. 48: INDIAN GAMING COMPACTS
YES
This proposal affirms compacts negotiated by Gov. Jerry Brown and ratified by all stakeholders to allow the North Fork Tribe to establish a casino in Madera County, with revenues split between the North Fork and the Wiyot tribes. It will create thousands of jobs, promote tribal self-sufficiency, avoid an alternative development plan in environmentally sensitive areas, and generate business opportunities and economic growth. While we acknowledge that gambling addiction is a sad byproduct of the gaming industry and that not everyone wants to see this kind of development pop up in their communities, we see little merit in opponents’ arguments that approving Prop. 48 would somehow open the door to the terrible threat of more casino construction off tribal lands.
[Editor’s Note: With the exception of Secretary of State, we also endorsed the following state and federal candidates in the June primary election, so read our rationales here]
Governor Jerry Brown
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom
SECRETARY OF STATE
ALEX PADILLA
Alex Padilla has been a strong liberal Democrat while serving the California Legislature, including being an important champion for renewable energy, and he has the knowledge and experience to make the Secretary of State’s Office run efficiently. He’s also pledged to restore the promise of the Voting Rights Act, which Republicans have sought to undermine in states around the country, and to work to expand the ranks of voters in California. He has our support.
Controller, Betty Yee
Treasurer, John Chiang
Attorney General Kamala Harris
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson
Follow Ai WeiWei on Instagram, and you’ll see many photographs of flowers. The internationally renowned Chinese artist has a morning ritual of placing a bouquet of flowers into the basket of a bicycle locked outside his Beijing studio. It’s a delicate protest, performed “every morning until I regain the right to travel freely,” he explained via Twitter in November 2013, when he began the practice.
On Sept. 24, when a literal boatload of journalists was granted free rein to photograph and explore “@Large: Ai WeiWei on Alcatraz” in advance of its highly anticipated Sept. 27 opening, a blitz of images from the show hit social media networks, stamped with the hashtag #AiWeiWeiAlcatraz. But a simultaneous meme is circulating among the artist’s band of social media followers: #AiCantBeHere.
Ai, an internationally renowned figure and superstar in the art world, remains unable to travel abroad, his passport revoked by Chinese authorities without explanation. Nevertheless, his artwork — seven new site-specific sculpture, mixed-media and sound installations set within the crumbling remains of a federal penitentiary — is now on view at one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations.
The concept of bringing Ai’s art to Alcatraz began with Cheryl Haines, the exhibition curator and executive director of the San Francisco-based FOR-SITE Foundation. Haines traveled to Beijing in 2011 and visited Ai, whom she described as a friend, at his studio.
Just before that visit, the artist had spent 81 days incarcerated following his arrest on purported tax fraud charges. His detainment was widely understood to be retaliation for his outspoken criticism of the Chinese government’s penchant for censorship and track record of human rights violations.
“Through his art, Ai WeiWei fearlessly speaks his truth to power,” wrote art critic and political cultural theorist Maya Kovskaya. In a nation where prominent dissidents have faced imprisonment before, as with the case of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil liberties advocate Liu Xiaobo, Ai’s art is infused with an unapologetic political edge.
It may run in the family. His father, Ai Qing, a renowned national poet who was exiled for his writings, wrote in 1946: “In as far as is possible the artist must be a revolutionary. As a revolutionary and as an artist he must represent his times.”
When Haines went to Beijing to visit Ai, “I asked him very simply, is there any small thing I can do?” the curator explained to the Bay Guardian when asked about the inception of “@Large.” He responded that he’d like help bringing his work to a broader audience.
By then, she already had an idea in mind. “I had been thinking for some time about how interesting a site Alcatraz would be to activate with contemporary art, so I raised the possibility of bringing his work to Alcatraz,” she explained in a follow-up email. “He said he would ‘like that very much.’ Thus it began.”
Once a military prison, then notorious federal penitentiary, the island receives about 1.5 million visitors annually. From now until mid-April 2015, tourists visiting San Francisco from every corner of the globe (including China, where online censorship often means information about Ai is hard to find) will have an opportunity to view it, for only the cost of a ferry ticket.
The project, a collaboration between the National Parks Service, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the FOR-SITE Foundation, was put together in nine months — there were hoops to jump through, including securing approval from the State Department — as well as hundreds of volunteer hours devoted to making it happen.
As Haines chatted with the Bay Guardian, we stood in the New Industries building on Alcatraz, a place where “privileged” inmates were once allowed to perform manual labor outside of their cells, under the surveillance of armed guards. Looming before us, suspended from the ceiling and snaking around the vast concrete space, was a colossal kite fashioned in the shape of a dragon, a mythical symbol of power in Chinese culture that’s also linked to the east and the rising sun. With Wind, the opening installation of “@Large,” incorporates this and other handmade kites made of paper, silk, and bamboo that will never touch the outside air, a metaphor for confinement. Painted onto them are birds and flowers, many of which are symbols of nations with poor human rights and civil liberties track records.
Quotes are interspersed throughout the body of the dragon, including a quote from Ai that reads, “Every one of us is a potential convict.” Then there’s a quote from another person who has had the experience of getting his passport revoked by his own government. “Privacy is a function of liberty,” reads a message from Edward Snowden.
Tucked into artwork amid a splash of color, this detail could be interpreted as a bold political statement: The young American whistleblower, who was granted asylum in Russia, is wanted by the US Justice Department for leaking information about the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance program. Through Ai’s art, however, his actions have nevertheless earned him a kind of temporary commemoration in a wildly hyped exhibition on display on an island prison now operated by the US National Park Service.
In the next room is the installation titled Trace, which blankets the entire room with Legos arranged to display portraits of nearly 200 prisoners of conscience. The panels were assembled by Ai’s team from Beijing, while a host of volunteers from the Bay Area posted up at the Palace of Fine Arts for several weeks to assemble panels, with guidance from a 2,300-page manual.
“This was the only portrait I was able to complete from start to finish,” explained Tim Hallman, one of the 90 volunteers to help assemble “Trace,” as he stood in front of a Lego portrait of Mohammed Al Roken, an attorney jailed after representing human rights activists in United Arab Emirates. “Spending 10 to 12 hours completing this, there was a connection. Who is this man? I feel a connection to this person, just because I worked on his portrait.”
In an artist’s statement, Ai wrote about the prisoners of conscience showcased in “Trace”: “These are all nonviolent people who have lost their freedom because they expressed their ideas, imprisoned for trying to improve their conditions through writing or peaceful protesting. Many of them might stay in jail for the rest of their lives or be forgotten by the general public, but in truth they are heroes of our time.”
While prominent names such as Nelson Mandela and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi appear in the Lego portraits, lesser known activists and journalists are also featured. They include Reeyot Alemu, an Ethiopian independent journalist in her early 30s who was jailed after writing critically about issues such as the root causes of poverty and gender equality, and Dashgin Melikov, a 22 year-old youth activist from Azerbaijan who was sent to prison after writing satirical and critical blogs about the government.
Chelsea Manning, the US Army whistleblower formerly known as Bradley Manning who is now serving out a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified military information, is also pictured, as is Snowden.
“One of the over-arching goals for the exhibition is to spur a dialogue on how we globally define liberty, justice, individual rights, and personal responsibility,” Haines wrote to us in an email. “All of the works aim to inspire individual reflection on some of the most pressing social issues of our time.”
Ai has never been to Alcatraz, but he and the design team relied upon architectural renderings, 3-D models, films, books, photographs, maps, and other digital proxies for the physical space on Alcatraz Island to virtually craft the exhibition.
As he began conducting research for the exhibit, “I was especially struck by events related to the Native Americans who once occupied the island to demand their rights to the land and to have their voices be heard,” Ai wrote in an artist’s statement. In the 1980s, when Ai lived in New York City, he hung out with famed poet Allen Ginsberg and took thousands of photographs, focusing on themes like gentrification and the city’s poor treatment of homeless people.
Alcatraz has historic significance not just as the site of a federal penitentiary — in many ways a symbol of cruelty embodied in the history of the justice system — but for the famous 19-month Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and 1970. Artifacts from that event are still visible on Alcatraz: look at the eagle statue mounted above the crumbling administration building, and you will see that the red and white stripes from an American flag were converted by Native American occupiers to read “Free.”
One of the “@Large” sound installations, called Illumination, highlights a darker chapter of Native American history. In 1895, 19 Hopi prisoners were incarcerated there for refusing to allow their children to be sent to boarding schools set up by the US government.
To hear it, visitors must enter psychiatric observation cells, small tiled chambers where inmates who had psychotic breaks were held for observation while in their most acute states. The musical chanting piped into one of the observation cells is Eagle Dance, a traditional song of the Hopi tribe, recorded in 1964.
Take a short walk into the penitentiary hospital from the psychiatric observation chambers and the theme of flowers emerges once again, in an installation titled Blossom. It features intricate carved porcelain sculptures of white flowers blooming out of bathtubs, sinks, and toilet bowls.
On the day of the public opening, Joe Meade, who was part of the installation team with the FOR-SITE Foundation, watched with his family as members of the public surveyed Blossom for the first time.
“I think we’re really lucky in the Bay Area to have this,” he said. “I think one of the things that you’re going to experience here is that moment when you encounter something, and it’s completely unexpected. That’s a unique opportunity in our lives. … We’ve already had people in the New Industries Building who were just here as tourists, and they saw someone that they actually knew, imprisoned,” when looking at the Trace exhibit.
The final installation, Yours Truly, is set in the dining hall. People are invited to send postcards, marked with the birds and flowers of nations where people are incarcerated, to political prisoners.
“Today the whole world is still struggling for freedom, and there is nothing ahead but more struggle,” Ai wrote. “Many of my friends are still in jail for utterly nonsensical reasons, and the power that put them there has no respect for the law. In such a situation, only art can reveal the deep inner voice of every individual with no concern for political borders, nationality, race, or religion. This exhibition could not come at a better time — though, when one is fighting for freedom, any time is the right time.”
THEATER Comedian Dhaya Lakshminarayanan was once accidentally lodged in former president Bill Clinton’s cleavage.
“I shook his hand and then someone behind me pushed me so I kind of ended up in his man boobs — this was big Bill Clinton — and I got sort of squished in there,” Lakshminarayanan explains. “I had to wriggle myself out.”
Her refreshing, hilarious outlook on life is clear in this tale, which she chose to share at one of the Moth’s StorySLAM events. Lakshminarayanan responded to the theme of “office” by delving into her neurotic obsession with Clinton and how she never had the chance to connect with him the three times they met. Each encounter was either too awkwardly close for comfort, too brief, or too embarrassing (and was further punctuated by the provocative bachelorette party outfit Lakshminarayanan was wearing).
The Clinton story is only a single aspect of Lakshminarayanan’s impressive résumé, which is generously dotted with storytelling emphasized by human connections, progressive standup comedy, and funny-yet-poignant explorations of the struggles of being a nerd. And yes, her two degrees from MIT and her stints in management consulting and the venture-capital world might have something to do with it as well.
One of Lakshminarayanan’s current projects, a show titled Nerd Nation (its next showing is Friday at Alameda’s Pacific Pinball Museum — an aptly geeky venue), explores the trials and tribulations of being nerdy in a country whose cultural values following the Kardashians rather than Neil deGrasse Tyson. “We’re like, ‘I don’t know that dude. Does he have women on his show? Are they hot?'” Lakshminarayanan described it as “self-imposed anti-intellectualism.”
Nerd Nation, a work in progress, examines what’s happening in nerd culture. First, by highlighting a phenomenon she calls “boobs and boys,” Lakshminarayanan explains how adolescents are bullied for being smart. “It’s really sad because girls stop being interested in math and science either for social reasons or for boy reasons or they’re getting boobs and they feel weird,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I see pictures of scientists and they look nerdy and stupid,’ and I’m like, ‘No, girl, we can have heels and wear lipstick!'”
At the same time, Lakshminarayanan has noticed how, in spite of the pervasive “anti-nerdism,” people embrace sartorial and tech aspects of nerd culture. “If you look at the Mission, everyone is wearing nerd clothes and hipster glasses,” Lakshminarayanan muses. “I’m like, ‘You don’t have the cred to be a nerd. You didn’t get bullied. You’re not studying some outdated language like German. You’re not a real nerd.'”
Tech-hipster nerds are also shaping culture — for better and worse — like never before. The words “gentrification” and “San Francisco” in the same sentence may sound like a broken record to some people, but Lakshminarayanan spices up the discussion by borrowing the mantra of “diversify your portfolio” from her former investor days. Lakshminarayanan thinks “a diverse portfolio for San Francisco keeps [it] a viable, vibrant, self-sufficient city.”
“You don’t just want tech people,” she says. “You want public policy people, nonprofit people. You want artists.” She emphasizes how important it is to avoid pitting tech nerds against artists. “I’m kind of both,” she admits. “I’d like people to come together and support each other. Tech nerds, come and watch comedy. Come and have conversations with people of color. Artists, go perform at Twitter. See what it’s like. Make fun of them.”
When Lakshminarayanan makes fun of someone or something in her stand-up act, she avoids profanity, figuring raunchy jokes might make audience members focus on how “a petite, kind of innocent-looking girl [has] a dirty mouth.”
“I almost feel like it forces me to talk about things that are maybe a little bit cerebral or a little bit intellectual or a little bit uncomfortable that women are not supposed to talk about,” she says. “I’m getting guys in the audience to laugh about feminism and I’m getting white people to laugh about immigration.”
Lakshminarayanan has heard far too many comedians punch down at women when they throw the phrase “bitch, please” into their acts for cheap laughs. “What if you took those two words out of your act? Would you still be as strong as a comedian? I would never want someone leaving my show thinking it’s okay to hurt people actively with humor. That’s why I try, as much as possible, to draw light to something and punch up rather than down.”
The Ku Klux Klan once rallied outside of the library in Birmingham, Ala. — Lakshminarayanan’s hometown — and she compared this to offensive jokes. “Sometimes comedians want to do material for the sake of being ‘edgy,'” she said. “Freedom of speech — do it, but what are you creating in society? Are you creating understanding, togetherness, and laughter?”
As for the Klan, Lakshminarayanan wasn’t fazed. “If you make it a big deal and you act afraid of them, you give them power,” she explained. “But think about it. They’re in weird costumes, they can’t really see. I’m surprised that they’re still able to walk in a straight line. If they’re going to impose racism on others, they should at least have their body free. I mean, do some kinesthetics!” *
FEAST: ITALY There are 22 Caravaggio paintings in southern mainland Italy, and we were determined to feast our eyes on every last one of them this past May. (We got up all the way up to 21: one was on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art.) As important: We would eat and drink a wide path to each painting, leaving no plate unlicked in that famously delicious part of the world. Here are some highlights.
ROME
While you’re basically tripping over ancient ruins and gorgeous people everywhere you turn, Rome’s chic bistro and cute street food scene will have your head in the culinary clouds. Several experiences really stood out: relaxing in the super old-school family feel of Trattoria di Carmine (squid casserole, insanely layered eggplant parmagiana, gorgeous citrusy anchovies); wandering through the Jewish ghetto devouring as many traditional fried artichokes as we could; scooping up all the gelato at Giolitti; dropping into the trendy spots of the Pigneto neighborhood (kind of like the Mission, gentrification woes and all); drinking and dancing all night at one of the best clubs I’ve been to, Frutta e Verdura.
But there are three I keep coming back to. One is the fantastic, kind-of-hidden lunch treasure Coso near the Spanish Steps, with its lovely takes on classics like hefty but somehow delicate polpette (meatballs) and cacio e vaniglia (a sweet twist on Rome’s eternal pasta dish, spaghetti with cheese and ground pepper). Another was the almost too-hip, yet still laid-back, scene at Barzilai — how those fashionable scruffy models could eat all that rich, irresistible sfumato de artichoke and asparagus flan, we couldn’t figure. But the top of it all was a trip out to the suburbs to visit the fabled Betto e Mary, which serves pretty much what the gladiators ate, but in a family atmosphere, its walls lined with socialist memorabilia. Here we had a vast assortment of interestingly prepared sweetbreads (thymus in lemon, fried pancreas), pasta sauce with more unfamiliar animal parts, and calf’s brain in a zingy orange tomato sauce. Those gladiators sure loved their organs!
NAPLES
Probably my favorite city in the world right now — brimming with chaotic energy, street art, and strange corners and ancient alleyways, which often overflow with music and partying until 4am. The city was bombed heavily in World War II, and it looks like instead of rebuilding all those Renaissance-era monastic buildings and 17th century armories, they just graffitied them with abandon. Pizza, pizza, pizza is what you’ll get here — who’s complaining? — and a lot of bold, full-bodied wines from the surrounding Campagnia region: Taurasi red and Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo whites. Fried balls of dough and zucchini make excellent street bites. Pasta with beans and pan-fried rabbit break up the pizza routine. But perfectly blistered thin-crust pies will make you weep with joy (especially if you’ve spent all day exploring the vast ruins of Pompeii. Hopping, affordable, late-night Pizzeria I Decumani is definitely a top choice.
AMALFI COAST
The thin, winding cliff roads of this region are terrifying — but you’ll gladly risk death (preferably on a motorbike) for stunning views of pastel-colored towns sprawling up mountains, imposing 1,000-year-old Saracen towers left over from the coast’s Arab occupiers, and fantastic seafood galore. Every town boasts quaint delights, but my husband and I were really taken with tiny Atrani, with its staircase streets, large clock tower, and main plaza lined with good restaurants. Here we dived into octopus, sardines, squid, every kind of fish imaginable, and bright chartreuse glasses of limoncello liquor alongside the sparkling Mediterranean.
MATERA
The sprawling, ancient cave city of Matera, in the central south, is a home base for cucina povera, peasant cooking that serves as some of the best comfort food in the world. Among the moonlit, picturesque stone buildings jutting from their original cave bases, warm dining spots serve orecchiette (ear-shaped pasta) or cavatelli (rolled up orecchiette) cooked with the region’s leafy species of broccoli rabe and sprinkled with lard-fried breadcrumbs. Sometimes they drown the whole plate in melted mozzarella. Paired with a local primitivo wine — the Basilicata region has been producing grapes since 1300 BC — it’s pure hog heaven. “You will never have orecchiette as good as this,” said our waiter at incredible neighborhood favorite Trattoria Due Sassi as he dropped off a giant bowl to share. Why? “Because my mother makes it.”
TRANI
Trani is a seaside resort town on the east coast with some serious maritime history, and a cathedral — Cattedrale di San Nicola Pellegrino — that dates back to the fourth century. When we were there, it was windy and cold. No beach weekend for us, but we took necessary solace in a magical little wine shop called Enoteca de Toma Mauro. Octogenarian owner Francesco was a perfect guide to the wines of Lucania, Salento, and Puglia (the heel of Italy’s boot) in general. He also carried some killer Amaro, the favored digestif of the region — herbal and bittersweet, but with an exceptionally smooth finish, I couldn’t get enough of it. *
STREET FIGHT San Francisco’s November ballot is crowded. With 12 local measures and seven state measures, sifting through them can be daunting. Three local measures, Propositions A, B, and L, involve transportation and have great bearing on the city’s future.
Not to belittle the other ballot measures, some of which address critical health and housing problems, these three transit-related measures say a lot of how the city is addressing — and failing to address — the need for a sustainable transportation system.
TRANSPORTATION BOND
Prop. A is the most important of the three transportation measures on the ballot, but also the most difficult to pass because it requires approval from two-thirds of voters.
It would provide $500 million for Muni, street repaving, and pedestrian and bicycle safety projects. That’s a modest sum compared to the $10 billion the city should really be spending, but it would help make 15 of the city’s busiest transit routes 20 percent faster and more reliable.
Portions of the funds would go to modernizing Muni’s maintenance shops, which need upgraded ventilation, fueling, and washing facilities and to new elevators and passenger platforms to make Muni more accessible to the elderly and disabled. Prop. A’s campaign also touts $142 million going towards pedestrian, bicycle, and motorist safety in corridors where the most death and injury have occurred.
Prop. A should really be thought of as two parts, one good, one not so good. The first part involves up to $55 million in annual revenue coming from property assessments. Since Prop. A simply replaces retiring city debt, it does not raise property taxes, but rather it sustains existing rates.
This links property values to what makes property valuable in the first place — public investment in infrastructure. As long as Prop. A is used for those 15 Muni corridors and safer streets, it is sound public policy.
The second part of Prop. A involves bonds, or borrowing money and paying interest to financiers. This is a long-used method of infrastructure finance, and was in fact how Muni got started in 1909 when voters approved creating public transit. The taxation will pay off the capital debt.
But bonds are a funding scheme that involves interest and fees that go to Wall Street — not the most progressive approach to infrastructure finance. While no one can say for sure, some critics suggest up to $350 million in debt would be incurred over the life of the bond scheme, which means Prop. A is really an $850 million package.
Ultimately, this is a regressive approach to transport finance and needs to be replaced by a more pay-as-you-go approach.
We are stuck between a rock and a hard place on Prop. A. Floating this bond now would bring in money very quickly, improving everyone’s commute, especially lower- and middle-income transit passengers. If approved it will also leverage state and federal matching funds, such as new cap-and-trade funding, hastening shovel-ready projects that many San Franciscans are clamoring to get done.
Getting transportation projects going now is less expensive than waiting while construction costs climb. Prop. A funds vitally important transportation infrastructure projects and it deserves support.
GROWTH AND MUNI
While Prop. A deals with streets and capital projects for Muni, it can’t be used to fund acquisition of new vehicles or Muni operations. This is where Prop. B comes in because it specifically involves an annual set-aside of about $22 million from the city’s General Fund to provide new vehicles and operating funds.
Prop. B is a well-intentioned linkage of population growth to transit capacity. The money goes towards Muni capacity expansion, based on population growth over the past decade, would increase with population growth in future years, about $1.5 million per year based on past trends.
There’s no doubt that transportation is failing to keep up with San Francisco’s boom. New housing and offices are coming into neighborhoods where buses are already jam-packed and streets saturated with traffic. But there are a couple of problems with Prop. B.
First, Prop. B is promised as a short-term measure because the mayor can end this general fund set-aside if a local increase in the vehicle license fee is approved by voters in 2016. The VLF, which was gutted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, would bring in about $75 million to the city annually.
That the mayor would voluntarily (and it is the mayor’s discretion) sunset B in two years is a big “if” and voters are notoriously forgetful.
In the meantime, Prop. B does not come with a revenue source to account for this increasing set-aside for Muni, so something else in the General Fund must give. What that would be, nobody can say, but advocates for social service and affordable housing fear more vulnerable San Franciscans will be hurt in the 2015 city budget.
Given the incredibly slow city response to the gentrification and displacement crisis, their fears may be warranted.
GLOOMY REALITY
My hesitation about Prop. B and tepid support for Prop. A stem from a gloomy reality in San Francisco’s politics of mobility. Today, it is easier for politicians to raise transit fares on the working poor, divert funds from social services and housing, or incur massive debt through bonds than it is to raise taxes on downtown commercial real estate and charge wealthier motorists for their detrimental impact to the city and society — both of which would be fairer ways to finance transportation.
Twenty years ago, it was estimated that a modest tax assessment on downtown offices and their impact to the transportation system would bring in $54 million a year. Today, that would likely be well over $100 million annually. But with land-owning elites and tech barons calling the shots in City Hall, there is a de facto gag order on what would be the most progressive approach to Muni finance.
Meanwhile, had Mayor Ed Lee not pandered to wealthier motorists, Sunday metering would be providing millions annually in Muni operating fees. Sup. Scott Wiener, the author of Prop. B, and his colleagues on the board, were shamefully silent about blowing that $10 million hole in Muni’s budget. They were also silent or complicit in stopping expansion of SF Park, which is smart management of our streets and would provide millions more in operations funding for Muni without needing to dip into the city General Fund to plug gaps.
Meanwhile, congestion pricing — or charging drivers to access the most traffic-snarled portions of the city during peak hours — could bring in up to $80 million annually. Together with a reestablished VLF, that would simultaneously erase the need to do Prop. B and reduce our need to incur more wasteful debt.
Instead of bonds, Prop. A’s $55 million could be coupled with an annual downtown property assessment, an annual VLF, a congestion charging zone, and revenue from an expanded SF Park, the city could borrow less, manage traffic wisely, and keep transit capacity at pace with population growth. We could avoid raiding the General Fund to subsidize Muni operations and could reduce debt simultaneously.
Transit advocates are right to cry foul when other revenue sources have been removed from consideration, mostly because of gutless reluctance to challenge wealthy landowners and motorists. This is the crux of why transit advocates, backed into a corner by Mayor Lee’s repeal of Sunday meters and the VLF, are supporting Prop. B. The “B” in Prop. B basically stands for backfilling broken promises.
But ultimately, all of the supervisors, including Wiener, are complicit in the mayor’s mess. Why didn’t the supervisors speak up when Sunday metering was repealed? Why didn’t the supervisors insist on placing the VLF on this year’s ballot? With a two-thirds vote of the board, it would be on the ballot now. And unlike Prop. A, the VLF only needs a simple majority to pass.
And now, because the mayor and supervisors have pandered to motorists to the umpteenth degree, a small group of them feel even more emboldened and entitled to grab more. That takes us to Prop. L.
TRANSIT-LAST
Prop. L, which seeks to reorder transportation priorities in San Francisco, is awful. It comes from an angry, spiteful, ill-informed, knee-jerk lack of understanding of the benefits of parking management (which makes parking easier and more sensible for drivers). It is a purely emotional backlash that seeks to tap into anyone angry about getting a parking ticket.
Although a nonbinding policy statement, the basic demand of Prop. L is that the city change transportation priorities to a regressive cars-first orientation. It calls for freezing parking meter rates for five years while also using parking revenue to build more parking garages. The costs of these garages would dwarf parking revenue, and these pro-car zealots don’t say where these garages would be built, or that it would ultimately siphon more money from Muni.
Prop. L demands “smoother flowing streets,” which is a deceitful way of saying that buses, bikes, and pedestrians need to get out of the way of speeding car drivers who believe they are entitled to cross the city fast as they want and park for free. It conjures up a fantasy orgy of cars and freeways long ago rejected as foolish and destructive to cities.
Proponents on this so-called Restore Transportation Balance initiative don’t really care about “transportation balance.” When you consider the origins and backers of Prop L, it’s mainly well-to-do motorists with a conservative ideology about the car. These are the very same people who have opposed bicycle lanes on Polk, Masonic, Oak, and Fell streets, and throughout the city.
These are the very same people who decried expansion of SF Park, thus making it harder, to find parking, not easier. These are the same people who complain about Muni but offer zero ideas about how to make it better. These disparate reactionaries have banded together around their animosity toward cyclists and Muni.
In the 1950s, when the love affair with cars was on the rise, San Francisco had about 5,000 motor vehicles per square mile. To accommodate more cars, planners required all new housing to have parking, made it easy to deface Victorians to insert garages, and proposed a massive freeway system that would have eviscerated much of the city.
Thankfully, neighborhood and environmental activists fended off most of the freeways, but San Franciscans failed to really take on the car. So by 1970, despite the freeway revolts and commitment to BART, automobile density rose to over 6,000 cars per square mile.
By 1990, San Francisco had almost 7,000 motor vehicles per square mile, even as population leveled off.
The current density of cars and trucks — now approaching 10,000 per square mile — is one of the highest in the nation and in the world. To put that into context, Los Angeles has less than 4,000 cars per square mile, and Houston less than 2,000 per square mile, but these are largely unwalkable cities with notorious environmental problems.
Do San Franciscans want to tear apart their beautiful city to be able to drive and park like Houstonians?
If proponents of Prop. L were truthful about “restoring balance” they would instead advocate a return to the car density of the 1950s, when San Francisco had just under 5,000 motor vehicles per square mile, Muni was more stable due to fairer taxes, and many of the streets in the city had yet to be widened, their sidewalks yet to be cut back.
Prop. L is tantamount to hammering square pegs into round holes. Jamming more cars into San Francisco would be a disaster for everyone. Don’t be misled, Prop. L would make the city too dumb to move. It would deepen and confuse already vitriolic political fissures on our streets and it would do nothing to make it easier to drive or park, despite its intention.
Prop. L must not only lose at the ballot, it must lose big, so that maybe our politicians will get the message that we want a sustainable, equitable, and transit-first city.
There’s been more than one Polly, the author and namesake of the new memoir Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. That may be true for each of us as we engage with different interests and identities during our sexual development, but Polly has distilled her psychosexual journey down to three distinct personas that she assumed along the way.
The Polly I’ve known for years is Polly Superstar, the fabulous hostess of Kinky Salon parties in her luscious and sprawling former Mission Control pad, community-minded sparkle pony in the Burning Man world, and a mindful feminist promoter of various sex-positive entrepreneurial ventures in San Francisco (including this independently published book, which took a massive Kickstarter campaign to get into print).
But the Polly I know passed through two previous Pollys — the Polly Whittaker she was born as in London in 1974 and the Polly Pandemonium that she became when she arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago on Folsom Street Fair weekend — on the way to becoming the woman she is today. And that woman was feeling very vulnerable as we met for lunch recently.
“I’m terrified,” she told me as she prepared to speak at Bawdy Storytelling that night and anticipated the general release of her book on Sept. 22. “I feel really exposed, I wonder what my motivation was to be so raw and open with this.”
A book that began four years ago as essentially a sassy guidebook for the Kinky Salon events that have now spread to another half-dozen cities around the world at some point turned far more serious and personal. Sure, we get to follow Polly through her crazy sexual antics, soaking in the sexy world of Mission Control.
“The crisp silhouettes of their bodies showed every detail: how the woman on all fours took his cock in her mouth, how the second guy traced his finger around his lover’s nipple, how the woman tucked underneath gently explored the body above her,” Polly wrote about a scene from Kinky Salon. “There were no wanted wandering hands, no staring eyes making me self-conscious. I became overwhelmed with a sense of pride. Fuck yes. This feels right. It feels good. These are my tribe — these crazy pleasure seekers. These brave pioneers of love.”
But those aren’t the “raw” bits that Polly referred to. No, as she wrote this book, Polly came to place her father’s slow and painful death from a brain tumor while she was a teenager at the center of the narrative, an event that propelled her subsequent sexual journey, for good or ill. She sought comfort and pleasure in the pain of the London BDSM scene, continuing that path here in San Francisco before morphing her fetish parties into sex parties that were more artsy and playful. Yet this sexual superstar still couldn’t achieve orgasms with her partners, a secret source of shame before she dealt with it more openly and honestly, helping other women along the way.
This memoir is less a wild tell-all by a high-profile libertine than intensely human story about a woman raised in a sexually liberated household (her mom was a sex therapist, her dad a hot-air balloonist, many of their friends swingers) who nonetheless struggles with her own sexual identity and ambitions against the backdrop of personal tragedy and smaller set-backs.
Polly relays and celebrates San Francisco’s storied history as the center of the American sexual revolution, from the old Barbary Coast days through the North Beach strips club, free love in the Haight-Ashbury, and gay liberation in the Castro, to the AIDS crisis, rise of BDSM, and creative ways of expressing sexuality.
But even for Polly and others who make their sexuality such a central part of their lives and personal identities, sexuality is still a nuanced, evolving continuum that regularly raises challenging questions and issues.
“It’s a complicated, really complicated, issue, and it’s at the core of the cultural shift that is happening around sexuality,” Polly said of the delicate balance between female sexual empowerment — which she’s all about — and sexual objectification, which this feminist strongly resists.
Growing up in the fetish scene and becoming a latex fashion designer, Polly can happily play the alluring sex kitten, as long as it feels playful and fun. But she’s quick to tear into scenes or situations that display women as sexual objects just to turn the boys on or sell products.
“I think one of the biggest problems on the planet is the sexual objectification of women,” she told us, noting the fine line she’s walking as she promotes a sex book with deeper themes. For example, at her book launch party, “We’re going to have a burlesque show, but you’re also going to get the lecture about sexual objectification.”
And even today, with her Kinky Salon community taking center-stage in her book, that community has been uprooted by the same forces of gentrification and displacement that are roiling the rest of the city (the monthly rent for their Mission Control space tripled after they got ousted).
“The sexual revolution didn’t happen in Oakland, it happened in San Francisco, and we are part of that lineage,” Polly tells us, noting that Kinky Salon, now rotating among temporary underground spaces, is still having a hard time finding a new home.
“If Kinky Salon has to move to Oakland, that will be telling of the state of San Francisco sex culture.”
UP THE REVOLUTION: LAUNCH PARTY FOR POLLY. With Porn Clown Posse, Trash Kan Marchink Band, DJ Fact50, and more Oct. 4, 9pm, Venue 550, 550 15th St., SF, www.pollysuperstar.com
A friend and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to hit the final TechCrunch Disrupt after-party last night. Because, sheer curiosity. So here comes one of those borderline journalistic essays where, no, I didn’t actually formally interview anyone. But a conversation we had offered a fascinating glimpse into attitudes held by folks working in the tech startup sector, so I’m blogging it.
My friend and I just went in (I was allowed in as press after being obnoxious about it; his borrowed badge had a girl’s name on it), drank free Coronas, and talked to people. Unsurprisingly, we soon found ourselves in a heated discussion as we sat in a booth on the top floor of Mezzanine, across from a young, well-dressed tech worker with ties to the venture capitalist world. I’m relaying what he said here without using his name. Is that disruptive or something? Well, fuck it, here goes.
As a San Francisco resident who works at a company at the heart of the tech startup world, he had very strong opinions about tech’s influence on the city’s housing market. He and others were in full agreement that rental prices in San Francisco are utterly ridiculous and out of hand.
But he dismissed critics who single out tech workers as agents of gentrification, calling them unrealistic and out-of-touch. The only way to respond to the crisis is to build taller buildings and increase density, he insisted. But those critics from the far left are just too stubbornly resistant to change, making it impossible to build anything. As he saw it, those shrill critics and their penchant for protesting everything were the reason the housing crisis is as bad as it is.
The techie we met was an impassioned speaker, his face muscles tightening and eyes fixed upon us with intensity as he informed us that change is inevitable. It’s just the way things go, he said. You can’t expect to stop it. For example, it’s unpopular to say that the Tenderloin should be made better, he told us – the critics would just howl about removing poor people – but that location is so critical, given where it is! And even if tech did make a concerted effort to find a solution to the housing crisis, he added, it would never be enough to satisfy those critics, who would only dismiss it. “They would just say, ‘oh look, now the techies are getting their way,’” he practically exploded. “‘Now the city is just going to be just like Manhattan.’”
I started to dig in, pointing out that the city was dotted with construction cranes building mostly market-rate housing that no one with an ordinary income could possibly afford. But my friend kept his cool. He calmly asked the techie if he really wanted to live in a city where everything resembled the Financial District.
Financial districts in nearly every city in America are practically identical to one another, my friend pointed out. “It’s like an algal bloom. It sucks the life out of everything.” The difference between living in a culturally diverse metropolis, and a “company town,” where just about everyone has some financial connection with the venture capitalists who are running the show, is the difference between living in a vibrant city and one where that dead-zone effect extends to every corner. Is that really what we want?
Upon hearing that, our techie softened, and grew a little more contemplative. And he made some remarkably candid remarks about tech culture, something he eats, sleeps, and breathes.
It’s all so “hyperactive,” he told us. He regularly sees people who come to San Francisco and try to accomplish as much as possible, with the greatest expediency, so they can cash in and get out. “It’s not like you’re going to stay here,” he said. Startups come and go literally in a matter of weeks, he added, so you never have a chance to get to know people. “It’s transient,” he acknowledged, but a common refrain is that that’s precisely what makes it so “dynamic.” Yet he acknowledged that at the end of the day, it all amounted to a situation where practically nobody has any lasting connection to the community.
No, a bland, boring, monocultural city isn’t what anybody wants, the techie told us, once we really got into it. To the contrary, he said, people in tech would rather be exposed to art and culture. “I’m an optimist,” he insisted. He’d like to believe that the tech community would never allow that sort of outcome, he added sincerely, that they’d come together to find some solution, for “the greater good.” But I pressed him on this point, asking if he was willing to advance that conversation. Would he warn people that something had to change? “In order to do that,” he said, “I’d have to grow a serious pair!”
I blurted out, “But you’re supposed to disrupt!”
It was the comic relief we all needed in what was becoming a seriously emotional exchange, and we all started cracking up. Soon after, we were interrupted by some performance on the main stage, where a guy wearing a gigantic yellow smiley face on his head – like a spherical, 3D emoticon – was lighting the globular thing ablaze. The cartoonish smiley face went sideways while sparks spewed out from it, while blaring techno music thumped along with the spectacle. Applause and hollers arose from the crowd.
Then, promptly at midnight, the lights came on, and any sexy veneer that might have exuded from a gathering of VCs and startup founders faded instantly. Suddenly it was all just tired conference-goers, mostly men, who’d been showered with free beer and wine while continuing to network late into the night, many of them still wearing enormous printed badges that said, “DISRUPT.” Many of the out-of-towners were probably starting to wonder where exactly in San Francisco they even were, and how long it would take for an Uber to show up and ferry them away.
In the wake of Urban Shield — the police training and trade show staged in Oakland last week, attracting attendees from 200 law-enforcement agencies — Mayor Jean Quan announced that it wouldn’t be welcome in Oakland again. To exactly nobody’s surprise, the event, timed on the heels of Ferguson in a city where cops are probably less popular than anywhere else on West Coast, drew protests. The police gear fest, which costs $1 million in federal funding, was started by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
OILY CARGO
On Sept. 4, environmental activists got up at the crack of dawn to sneak onto a railyard and stage a protest in Richmond. Using U-locks, they chained themselves to a fence where Kinder Morgan operates a shipping facility, where crude oil from North Dakota tar sands is unloaded from trains and sent to area refineries. The enviros said the trains are old and dangerous. But a lawsuit challenging the facility’s operating permit, issued by the air district without any environmental review, was thrown out in court the next day.
AHOY!
Multiple music stages (including a few that float) bring sea chanties, Irish ballads, folk songs about navy battles, and other shipshape styles to the shore at the annual Sea Music Festival, held Sat/13 on the Hyde Street Pier and aboard the historic vessels docked there. The festival also showcases Tahitian and Chinese traditional dancing, living-history performers (including a Victorian-style tea party, and model shipwrights). And yes, there will be sing-alongs, so make sure your “Spanish Ladies” is on point.
NO FREE LUNCH
We’ve heard about the “Twitter ten” — how free gourmet lunch offered by the tech employer can leave its workers with a bit of a paunch. But now that the Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at tax-exempt free lunch offered by the likes of Twitter and Google, as the Wall Street Journal reported, there may yet be a pound or two to pay for that perk.
SUNDANCIN’
Two awesome outdoor parties this Sunday prove that our summer is finally here. First up: a pool party? In the Tenderloin? You bet, as Summetime Radness (Sun/14, 1pm-6pm, $15–$20. Phoenix Hotel, 601 Eddy, SF. www.facebook.com/LightsDownLowCA) splashes into golden disco-funk waters with UK DJs Tiger and Woods and beloved groovemaster Dam Funk (pictured). Also that day, SF’s own crazy, lowdown bass kids from Dirtybird Records — Claude Vonstroke, J.Phlip, Justin and Christian Martin, and Worthy — rumble onto Treasure Island for the infamous Dirtybird BBQ (Sun/14, noon-8pm, $40. 401 California, Treasure Island. www.facebook.com/dirtybirdrecords) Free BBQ while supplies last! PHOTO BY JIMMY MOULD
NO BUENO
When the (non-Mexican) owners of Castro gay sports bar Hi Tops announced that they would be opening an upscale Mexican restaurant cross the street called Bandidos, many hackles were raised on those who know “bandido” has been used as a slur against Mexican people in the US. When the menu was unveiled — with items like $9 guacamole — familiar grumbling about high prices and gentrification took over. But the torta really hit the fan when chef Jamie Lauren was quoted on SFGate, saying, “I hate to call it white people Mexican food but it is. And I think the Castro needs a place like that.” Community rage and threats of a boycott ensued. The owners have agreed to meet with Latino and gay community representatives like comedian Marga Gomez to consider a name change and better outreach.
ROOM TO WRITE Kids at Mission High School will be getting a Writer’s Room, a beautifully designed space to inspire the process of writing, in partnership with the tutoring center 826 Valencia. As part of the project, ninth graders will produce a magazine about social justice issues, and San Franciscans can score a copy at the Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia.
EVICTION HALTED Benito Santiago, a 63-year-old San Francisco native, recently got word that he wouldn’t be evicted after all from his Duboce Ave. apartment, where he’s resided for 37 years. When he got the eviction notice last December, Santiago had no idea where else he could possibly live. “It was then that I realized, all that I could do, was fight back to stay in my home,” he said. “This is my life.” He got help from Eviction Free San Francisco, housing activists who staged marches, rallies, and even a real-estate office occupation to keep him housed.
EDITORIAL The San Francisco Board of Supervisors returned to work this week after a month-long summer recess. While it may be too much to expect the supervisors to seriously tackle the many pressing issues facing this city during the fall election season, that’s exactly what needs to happen.
The city has been cruising along on auto-pilot, propelled by inertia more than any coherent political leadership, its elected leaders content to throw political platitudes and miniscule policy remedies at huge problems that are fundamentally changing the city.
While the eastside of the city is being rapidly transformed by rampant development, with no real plan for the displacement and gentrification that it’s causing, the westside still has suburban levels of density and no plan for shouldering its share of this city’s growth pressures. It’s good to see Sup. Katy Tang take a small step toward addressing the problem with her recently introduced Sunset District Blueprint, which seeks to build up to 1,000 new homes there over the next 10 years, that conceptual framework will require political will and more concrete goals to become reality.
To serve the density that westside residents are going to have to accept, the city and its Transportation Authority also must fast-track the Geary Bus Rapid Transit program that has languished for far too long. And the city’s “Complete Streets” and “Vision Zero” transportation reforms need to become more than just slogans, instead backed by the funding and commitment they need to become reality.
Similarly, there’s no reason why the Mayor’s Office, Planning Department, and pro-growth supervisors should be waiting for voters to act on Proposition K, the watered-down housing advisory measure, before they create a plan for implementing Mayor Ed Lee’s long-stated goal of building 30,000 new housing units, more than 30 percent of them affordable. That should have already happened before the promise was made.
This week, while the Board of Supervisors was slated to approve master lease agreements with the US Navy to develop Treasure Island, the city still isn’t seriously addressing concerns about radioactive contamination on the island or the project’s half-baked transportation plan.
Another important issue facing this compassionate city is how to provide legal representation for the waves of child refugees from Central America facing deportation in immigrations courts here in San Francisco. Board President David Chiu proposed a $100,000 allocation for such legal representation, which is a joke, and the board should instead approve the something closer to the $1.2 million commitment that Sup. David Campos has proposed.
We could go on and on (for example, when will Airbnb make good on its past-due promise to pay city hotel taxes?), but the point is: Get to work!
“We used to call this Café High,” author Sean Wilsey says of Café International, our meeting spot, before letting out a hearty chortle. By “we” he means his late-80s classmates at the Urban School, the private prep school 10 blocks or so from the Haight and Fillmore coffee shop. By “high” I assume he’s alluding to marijuana in some form or another, but I’m too intrigued by Wilsey’s instant openness and nostalgia to probe. Despite four other high schools (he never graduated), myriad other cities (he doesn’t come back to San Francisco very often anymore), and 25 or so intervening years (he’s pushing 45), Wilsey still grasps the vibe of his native hood with the exactitude of a lifelong resident.
“A lot of places used to look like this …Café High only stands out now because it’s a relic.” The joint, which plays reggae tunes, has scuffed floors, and whose waiters delivered a gorgeous mango smoothie to Wilsey, is no longer the stereotypical SF hangout spot. Instead, the boutique and artisanal bars and coffee houses of the tech boom are the preferred haunts for most interviews and meetings of the literati. As he discussed his own evolution on gentrification, his wide and incisive eyes, usually full of exuberant twinkle, squinted in judgment. “When it first started happening, I said, ‘Shit, yeah!’” But then it loses its edge of interestingness,” Wilsey says. “The Haight used to feel totally wild and nuts. Now I wouldn’t think twice about bringing my grandmother here at any hour of the day.”
Wilsey’s ability to instantly contextualize San Francisco’s commercial shifts despite his absence is testament to the depth of his analytical mind. The writer has managed to become a magazine mainstay, wildly successful memoirist, and, most recently, author of the McSweeney’s essay collection More Curious, because of this uncanny observational ability. He’s had a prolific and varied career and is only picking up steam. Yet, like the stories of many artists, Wilsey’s journey is one built more on compulsion than pure bliss, calling than serendipity.
Given his background as the son of San Francisco socialites Al Wilsey and Pat Montandan, Wilsey is astonishingly self-made. “I have endured a certain amount of ridiculous preconception, especially in this town, out of the fact that I have a family that casts a shadow here,” he explains. “But I don’t feel like I have anything to do with it.” Despite his feelings of distance from his family’s legacy, Wilsey appears anything but bitter — he talks of his parents with a smile. Instead, he simply seems to have fought to find his own road.
After his tumultuous and often delinquent high school journey, he began honing his writing and eventually moved to New York City with the express desire to get a job at the New Yorker. “I said, ‘I’m not leaving until it happens.’ There was a lot of determination,” he says. Wilsey sent his portfolio to the New School, got in, and happened to find a professor who worked at the New Yorker. Wilsey had been at Newsweek organizing responses to letters, but eventually, after a year of calling the head of the messenger room, finagled a job as an in-house deliveryman at his dream publication.
“It had to be one of the favorite jobs that I ever had, because they would literally be like, ‘run this down to Norman Mailer’.” Despite the high-profile deliveries, Wilsey’s life was scrappily exhilarating as opposed to glamorous. He lived on a ferryboat that had docked at Pier 25, did restoration work in exchange for habitation, and got by on the $18,000 messenger salary.
I couldn’t help but think that the author’s early years in the industry were ripe for some sort of further artistic exploration, so it wasn’t surprising when Wilsey revealed that he is working on a new memoir that will incorporate his New York years. Our conversation began to transition from the biographical to the philosophical as we discussed his initial trepidation at the endeavor. “Until recently I’ve felt kind of intimidated about writing about New York, most notably because my editor — I love her, but she’s a badass — said, ‘Oh, you think you can write about New York?’”
While Wilsey delivered the quote with a hilariously sassy tone, he was clearly serious about the pressures of self-criticality and perfectionism in the writing world. He told me a bit about the plight of legendary New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, whom he got to meet while at the magazine and talked extensively about in the introduction to More Curious. At the height of his powers in 1964, Mitchell stopped writing and, until his death in 1996, still came to the New Yorker almost every day without ever publishing anything significant.
Relative mystery still exists about what exactly happened in Mitchell’s mind that led to his silence. Wilsey, however, has gleaned ideas from the memoirs of one of the writer’s secretaries. “They had these flirtatious lunch dates — she was a very good-looking woman — and eventually Mitchell would tell her about what he was working on and how hard it was.” The empathy that Wilsey felt for Mitchell was palpable in his voice as he recounted his literary idol’s struggles. “He tried to bring every piece he wrote to the next level and it became harder and harder for him to do it …a bit of it has come out and its not as amazing … there’s a kind of mania in it.”
Wilsey’s candor is so without pretense that I found it difficult to maintain a critical eye while we discussed. As he told the Mitchell story, I remembered to take in his appearance — a blue messenger cap (which appeared so poetic given his “in” at the New Yorker), a button-down, jeans. His dress and light, baritone voice both evoked a lasting youth — while he spoke with authority and maturity, his vigor and presence quelled all supposes that he is approaching some sort of Mitchell moment.
Wilsey battles the pitfalls of self-doubt through several writing strategies. While he was immensely appreciative of my review of More Curious, he called me out for suggesting that his immaculate fact checking was “of the Wikipedia age.” “I over-research to an incredible degree, but I actually try to avoid web research altogether.” The personalized investigative process, much of which he chronicles within his pieces, seemingly keeps Wilsey focused. The compressed timing of magazine writing also appears to help the writer keep energized in his detective work and retain perspective about the inevitable imperfection of his articles. “When you have an editor and a deadline it’s harder to get caught up in the potential craziness of working in a vacuum,” he says.
Wilsey also generates genuine interest in all of the subjects that he takes on and manages to imbue them with a philosophical depth that usually isn’t instantly obvious. While we discussed “Some of Them Can Read,” his frightening treatise on New York’s rat population, Wilsey recounted a surreal piece of information that, while not making it into the essay, buoyed its thesis. “Some explorers in South America entered a crater that no one had ever entered before. They found these huge dog-like rats, but they were like, pure love, extremely friendly, and vegetarian.” Using the rats as the uncorrupted variable against their more vicious and conniving New York equivalents, Wilsey came to a startlingly deep conclusion about the beasts. “Rats are reflections of us. They are our alter egos.”
While Wilsey can’t help but uncover facts and endlessly theorize about rats, NASA, World Cup soccer, and the other facets of contemporary society that he explores, he doesn’t necessarily want to. “You have to be called to do this thing. This is what I do. Otherwise it’s very lonely and frustrating to have a literary view of the world and not be able to set it down and stop analyzing.” The moxy that Wilsey showed in climbing the literary ladder and the attention he pays his focuses is not as much a desire so much as a necessity.
After discussing his powerful impulse to write for several minutes, Wilsey grabbed the copy of More Curious that I’d brought with me and flipped to its centerpiece, “Travels With Death.”
“I never wanted to write [this as] the main essay, but this dude we met went on this insane monologue.” The dude in question, an eccentric San Antonian interested in the architectural work of Wilsey’s traveling companion, the architect Michael Meredith, presented the duo with a multi-hour tirade about Texas history. Wilsey read his response to the surreal scene out loud: “It put me on alert. I started expecting I’d have to write about all of this, and there’s no surer impediment to a good time than knowing you have to write about it.”
Marfa, Texas, an artist enclave of around 2,000 people where Wilsey lives much of the time, offers the writer shelter from the emotional burden of his constant analysis. “Marfa, though overwhelming in its natural grandeur, allows me to step outside of my mind and just chill, and that’s almost a subversive act for me.” While Wilsey’s first and last essays in his collection focus on Marfa, he doesn’t feel the same internal expectation to chronicle its happenings.
That hasn’t stopped him from receiving a fair amount of derision in the local press. He explains a particularly damning piece: “It basically said, ‘Why does he get to write the book that is going to in some way define or advance the conversation about what this place gets to be?’” Thus, even when Wilsey manages to turn off his internal self-judgment in Marfa, his neighbors sometimes manage to pick up the slack. Despite the stress, however, Wilsey is still in love with the locale. “That’s not the Marfa that I know. Marfa can be edgy, but usually very kind.”
As we left Café High and walked up Haight Street to his reading at the Booksmith, I couldn’t help but think that Wilsey is like his home — full of sharp and often biting insight, but immensely generous and restrained, lacking almost entirely in cruelty. As he regaled me with stories of ’80s quasi-brothels on Haight that were frequented by Urban students and sighed at the sight of another steel-tinged bar with stylist mixologists, I could tell that the mania of Wilsey’s life and mind were all worth it — he’s doing what he has to do.
Check out David Kurlander’s review of Sean Wilsey’s More Curioushere.
FALL ARTS If you are a fan of hip-hop, you likely already know that 1993 was a very special year.
Call it coincidence, call it fate, call it a combination of social, economic, and political factors projected through the kaleidoscopic lens of American pop culture and write your thesis about it (you wouldn’t be the first). But something in the air in 1993 coalesced into a weather system of seminal albums from the best of the best: Tupac, Queen Latifah, Snoop Dogg, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang, De La Soul.
In Oakland, E-40 made his solo debut. Too $hort’s new album hit the top of the R&B/hip-hop charts. The Coup was selling records by rapping about the Communist Manifesto. And then there was Souls of Mischief.
Fresh out of Skyline High School, the sound of the four-piece’s debut was something else altogether: Over obscure jazz and funk samples, Souls of Mischief traded flows about weed, street violence, girls, teenage boredom — so no, not entirely unique in subject matter. But there was a sweet subtlety to the delivery, a charismatic, self-aware almost-wink to their bravado. These were Bay Area kids talking about how it felt to be Bay Area kids at that time, with a mission statement that charted a modest path for the future: This is how we chill/ from 93 ’til…
As of this writing, it’s been 20 years and 11 months since 93 ‘Til Infinity helped put the Bay on the hip-hop map. A lot’s changed, to put it lightly. The Internet happened, and the Internet’s effect on the music industry. The consolidation of thousands of smaller, regionally-influenced media channels into a few giant, similar-sounding ones.
And then there are things that haven’t changed. Twenty years and 11 months since that record first propelled them into the national spotlight, the four high school buddies who make up Souls of Mischief — that’s A-Plus, Opio, Phesto, and Tajai — are slouched on couches in their clubhouse in East Oakland on a warm Wednesday evening, ribbing each other about joint-rolling technique.
The Hiero compound, as the converted two-story warehouse is known, serves as the physical center of Hieroglyphics, the close-knit hip-hop collective/umbrella record label that’s home to rappers Del the Funkee Homosapien, Casual, and Pep Love, DJ Toure and producer Domino, in addition to Souls of Mischief. The exterior walls are covered with a mural done by teenagers in the neighborhood (it’d be tagged up by now, but everyone knows it’s Hiero so they leave it alone). Inside, the ground floor contains recording studios — Pep Love is working in one right now — and a big room that can be set up for video shoots. Upstairs, more recording space, a room with wall-to-wall shelves of vinyl, a mini-kitchen, an office.
A-Plus’s teenage son is here at the moment, recording something of his own. Stickers bearing the three-eyed Hiero logo adorn nearly every surface. An incoming mail pile is marked with a Post-it. Items on a nearby bookshelf: a stuffed alligator toy, Swisher blunt wraps. In one corner, a whiteboard reads “HIEROGLYPHICS CREW NEXT PROJECTS,” with members’ names down the left-hand side and updates about their records; as an afterthought: “THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOARD IS COORDINATED MARKETING STRATEGY.” In another corner, a chart titled “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme.”
In the two-plus decades since that momentous year, the members of Souls of Mischief have had kids. Hieroglyphics went from young upstart crew to real business venture to respected veterans of the hip-hop world who can still easily sell out amphitheaters (as they learned on their 20th anniversary tour last year). There are special edition box-sets of their 20th anniversary reissue waiting for autographs downstairs before being shipped. On Monday, Sept. 1 (Labor Day), Souls of Mischief will be the centerpiece of the third annual Hiero Day, a free, all-ages music festival/block party in downtown Oakland that gets bigger every year — and it’s not just about the music. But more on that later.
What the guys have been consumed by for a year makes its debut a few days earlier. On Aug. 26, Souls of Mischief will drop their sixth studio album, There Is Only Now, the group’s first full-length since 2009.
A richly orchestrated concept album set in 1994, based loosely on real events from the year following their breakout album (when they were dealing with newfound fame, as Oakland dealt with an increase in gun violence), the record serves as both a bookend to 93 ‘Til Infinity and as completely fresh territory. For one, it’s Souls of Mischief’s first collaboration with the LA-based producer of the moment, Adrian Younge (Jay Z, Delfonics, Ghostface Killah), who’s using the album to launch his new vinyl-centric label, Linear Labs.
“The name There Is Only Now comes in part from Buddhism, the idea of focusing on the moment and being present. But it’s also a period piece with a twist — it touches on issues that are still going on now: Street violence, love, drugs, the music business. It’s a universal story,” says Tajai, after ambling in the last of the four, asking who has rolling papers. (He’s just come from a panel at UC Berkeley’s architecture school, where he was judging undergraduates’ projects, he says, by way of explanation about his preppy sweater. He’s enrolled in the Master’s program there.)
Fittingly, the record is a study in contrasts and surprises. Its guest stars are folks you might have heard of — Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes — but in roles we’re not really used to. The story, which follows the crew on an adventure through Oakland after Tajai is kidnapped, is punctuated by interludes from A Tribe Called Quest‘s DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad as an animated radio DJ, narrating and addressing Oakland from a fictional radio station, K-NOW.
Even more appropriately: The record, which clocks in at a packed 40 minutes long, sounds slick as anything — and was created without the use of a single sample or computer. At 35, Younge is known for using only live instrumentation (most of it performed himself), and the resulting beats and backing tracks draw heavily from classic ’60s and ’70s soul; his affinity for the Blaxploitation era of cinema and experience scoring films lends an extra layer of cinematic feeling to the record’s narrative.
Maybe most importantly, Souls of Mischief sound like they’re having a damn good time.
“The fact that it was all analog took it back to the beginning for us,” adds Phesto, noting that in the high school days of Souls of Mischief, they wrote songs using three-way calling. “We’ve been messing with live instrumentation from the beginning. But with the storyline, [Younge] writing it like a score, and us being lyricists for that score — I think he brought out something in us that no other producer has.”
There’s a base level of social consciousness that Hiero fans will know to expect. During one radio interlude that prefaces the song “Ghetto Superhero,” callers into K-NOW voice concerns about violence in Oakland in a way that, unfortunately, is still highly relevant. (Ali Shaheed Muhammad, with an audible smile: “It’s almost like we need some kind of superhero…”).
But it’s never been the goal to hit listeners over the head with social commentary, says A-plus. If they were going to tackle something like gentrification in Oakland, they’d do it for real, “and it’d be an 18-hour song.”
Besides, adds Tajai, “We’re older rappers. When we preach, it comes off preachy.”
Which is not to say that they’re reluctant to get political. Ask, for example, what they make of current trends in mainstream, commercial rap (and what seems like the chasm between that and the independent hip-hop that’s always bubbling just underground), and you will hear some opinions about materialism. Particularly, hypothetically, if A-Plus and Phesto had to leave an hour ago, and the light outside is waning from the pink East Oakland sky, and Tajai and Opio have smoked a good amount over the last 90 minutes.
“Music is always a reflection of society, and rap is like a 40-year-old man. That motherfucker has kids and a 401k. That’s how it’s acting,” says Tajai. “It doesn’t have the idealism it used to. It’s about ‘get paper.’ And you’re hearing kids saying that.”
“I think you can talk about money and still be a real person and have some style and finesse — I always liked Run-D.M.C. with the big chain and whatever, that’s part of hip-hop,” offers Opio. “I don’t think standing in front of the car is horrible in and of itself. But when every single thing is that…”
“The problem is not the subject matter, it’s that access to shit that isn’t that isn’t equal. It’s always the lowest common denominator, scraping the bottom of the barrel,” says Tajai. “I’ll hear something these days that’s like — is this a parody? I can’t even tell if it’s a joke. And then it takes off!”
Opio: “That’s just advertising dollars. People are investing in that because it makes money.”
Tajai: “I’m not mad at that. I’m mad that the dollars that do come in don’t go toward building new power structures. Look, the materialism is across the board. ‘In God we trust’ is on the dollar. We’re a materialist, capitalist society that’s driven by consuming. We are the mall. We’re not even the manufacturer or the farm, America is just the mall, and we’re being fed these images that make us wanna go to the mall all the time. My thing is I just want there to be some kind of reinvestment. Like cool, make a million dollars, but then have 40 percent of it go to literacy programs. Because then at the very least, people will understand that you’re a human who thinks, and not just this caricature of a rapper you’re selling to everybody.”
The thing about Hieroglyphics, most fans will tell you, is that Hieroglyphics has never quite gotten their due. Souls of Mischief were notoriously underpromoted by Jive following their debut; as violence in Oakland increased in the ’90s, the city put an actual moratorium on hip-hop shows for a while. Ask hip-hop historian Davey D about it. There was literally no place in Oakland for rappers to get on a stage.
When Hieroglyphics threw the first Hiero Day in 2012 — prompted by a Facebook fan who wrote online that, in honor of ’93 Til Infinity, he wanted to introduce as many people as possible to Hieroglyphics on 9/3, Sept. 3 — something shifted. A roster of the Bay Area’s hip-hop stars came out and played a free show in the streets that weekend, and roughly 10,000 people showed up. In 2013, it grew bigger, gaining sponsors, with Mayor Jean Quan naming it an official city holiday and referring to Hieroglyphics as a “bright spot” for Oakland.
This was a big change in tone from a city that hadn’t formally done much to support hip-hop for 20 years.
But Souls of Mischief aren’t looking for a medal. They’re looking at fundraising models like Farm Aid. They want to be able to give away houses after Hiero Day. They talk all the time, they say, about buying a farm and building a commercial kitchen where Oakland kids can learn about agriculture and cooking, learn farm-to-table techniques.
“As far as hip-hop moving forward, my thing is that hip-hop used to give us what we needed intellectually. And if we can’t feed people with it that way anymore, let’s feed them physically,” says Tajai. “You throw a weekend festival with 200,000 people, it should be an imperative to then go ‘Where is this money going?’ or ‘We’re gonna create this farm or this school.’
“That’s the whole point of Hiero Day,” he continues. “Use music to bring people together, bring people to local businesses, and then pool our resources and invest in the community so there’s lasting effects beyond just a party.”
“That’s one of the most powerful tools for young people,” says Opio. “It’s ‘OK, we’re partying, this is fun,’ and then you realize you can come together and do more than just party. You’ve seen the effects of that in the ’60s. That leads to revolutions.”
There are 15-year-olds becoming adults knowing only this version of Souls of Mischief. There’s a whole subset of fans who were born in ’93, in particular, who take Souls of Mischief lyrics straight to the chest. What will “old school” mean to their kids? Think for a second on the difference between infinity and there is only now.
“We’re talking about how to turn hip-hop into a generator of what it used to generate for us,” says Tajai. “I mean, we’re here today because of rap music. Not dead, not strung out, because of rap music. As much as because of our parents, our homies, whatever. So we gotta give something back.”
“Oh, right, and buy the record,” he adds. A half-hearted laugh. “We are the worst fucking promoters.”
Souls of Mischief play Hiero Day (alongside Zion I and some 28 other artists) Monday, Sept. 1 at the Linden Street Brewery Stage, 95 Linden, Oakl. More info: www.hieroday.com
FALL ARTS I wish somebody could come up with a better word than the ugly “locavore,” particularly since it was originally used for cattle. But the idea of eating locally-grown food is fabulous: it’s good for the environment, the wallet, and the state of one’s psyche. The same approach also rings true for the way we feed our spirits. Local artists seed, tend, and harvest a crop that needs and deserves our attention. The sheer variety of Bay Area-cultivated dance offerings this fall could make gluttons out of many of us. Here is a baker’s dozen to whet your appetite. All but a few are world premieres.
For The Imperfect is Our Paradise, Liss Fain Dance’s Liss Fain fashioned her choreography from the cadences of William Faulkner’s prose in The Sound and the Fury. Imperfect promises to be another of her translucently intelligent dances, here performed in designer Matthew Antaky’s reconfigured ODC Theater. Sept. 11-14, ODC Theater, SF; www.lissfaindance.org.
In This is the Girl,Christy Funsch of Funsch Dance Experience reaches out — big time. Known for her exquisite solos, Funsch steps back into ensemble work, with seven dancers, six taiko drummers, and a chorus of singers. Never fear, the core of this look at womanhood is still that wondrous partnership between Funsch and Nol Simonse. Sept. 12-14, Dance Mission Theater, SF; www.funschdance.org.
The world premiere of Multiple Mary and Invisible Jane, by Jo Kreiter’s Flyaway Productions, takes place on the exterior wall of the UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. The work gives voice to the homeless women who live in the surrounding neighborhood, whose lives have become even more difficult because of San Francisco rapid gentrification. Multiple is another of Kreiter’s finely crafted, emotionally resonant choreographies that also serves the political and social aspirations so basic to her artistry. Sept. 12-20, 333 Golden Gate, SF; http://flyawayproductions.com.
Jose Navarrete and Debbie Kajiyama’s NAKA honors the late Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas with The Anastasio Project. Mexican citizen Hernandez-Rojas, a longtime US resident, died in 2010 after being taken into custody by the US Border Patrol after re-entering the country. For the multidisciplinary Anastasio, NAKA collaborated with the Oakland Eastside Arts Alliance, whose youth are subjected disproportionally to violence and discrimination — and sometimes lose their lives — in conflicts with authority. Two years in the making, NAKA’s project aimed to help these artists develop their own voices. Sept. 19-21, Eastside Arts Alliance, Oakl;http://nkdancetheater.com/anastasio.
Now with a permanent home at Kunst-Stoff, the Mark Foehringer Dance Project/SF has taken on its most ambitious project yet. Besides choreography, Dances of the Sacred and Profane inspired contributions from motion-capture and digital artists and electronic musicians. Dances offers a high-tech encounter with the French Impressionists — radicals in their own days. Sept. 13-14 and 19-21, Cowell Theater, SF; http://www.mfdpsf.org.
Besides being a choreographer for her own Push Dance Company, Raissa Simpson has also a well-defined entrepreneurial spirit. Following the adage that if you want something done, ask a busy person, Simpson put together a two-program “PUSHfest,” spotlighting artists she thought would mesh well together. The idea is to establish cross-cultural communication in a field where too often, you only go and see what you already know. Sept. 19-21, ODC Theater, SF; www.pushdance.org.
Joe Goode Performance Group is bringing back two radically different works that complement each other poignantly. What do they have in common? They speak of vulnerability, self-awareness, and longing. The 2008 Wonderboy, a collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist, is tender, poetic, and musical. Goode’s solo 29 Effeminate Gestures, now performed by Melecio Estrella, dates back to 1987; it is fierce, proud, and angry. Sept. 25-Oct. 4, Z Space, SF; http://joegoode.org.
A few years ago kathak master Chitresh Das teamed very successfully with tap virtuoso Jason Samuel Smith. Watching and listening to them, you felt dance approaching a state of pure music. Now, in Yatra: Masters of Kathak and Flamenco,Das has perhaps found an even closer spirit in Antonio Hidalgo Paz, whose flamenco ancestors came to Europe from northern India. Sept. 27-28, Palace of Fine Arts, SF; www.kathak.org.
With Jenny McAllister’s 13th Floor Dance Theater, you never know what you’ll get — except that it’ll be wacky, with a skewed sense of humor. For A Wake, the company’s latest excursion into absurdity, McAllister draws inspiration from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. I have always been told that the book is a comedy, and perhaps now we’ll find out why. Oct. 16-19, ODC Theater, SF; www.13thfloordance.org.
Dohee Lee is a phenomenon unto herself. Steeped in Korean shamanistic traditions, masked and contemporary dancing, Korean-style drumming, and extended vocal techniques, she brings all of these into play in MAGO, an installation piece in which she looks at the upheaval created by developer of her home island, Jeju. Nov. 14-15, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF; www.doheelee.com.
Both a scientist and a dancer, Katharine Hawthorne asks questions about time — via clocks geological, chronological, biological, and mythic — and the way it manifests itself in our physical bodies. For the intimate Pulse, she recorded her dancers’ heartbeats to explore how their internal senses of time related to external clock time. In The Escapement,she looks at the history of time-keeping, and the way it affects our sense of darkness and light. Nov. 20-23, ODC Theater, SF; www.khawthorne.net.
In its 40th year of teaching and performing, Diamano Coura West African Dance Company reminds us of Oakland’s importance as one of the country’s pre-eminent preservers of deeply held African and Pan-African cultural values. This year’s annual repertory concert includes a piece called M’Balsanney. Nov. 29-30, Laney College, Oakl; www.diamanocoura.org.
Former ODC dancer Private Freeman, who was a soldier and a dancer, inspired Deborah Slater Dance Theater’s world premiere, Private Life. Now in its 25th year, Slater’s company creates intelligently conceived and thoughtfully realized work that challenges established thinking on stage and off. Dec. 11-14, ODC Theater, SF; www.deborahslater.org. *
855 Treat, SF. www.sfmt.org. 6:30-7:30pm, suggested donation $20. The old commie, the tech newbie, and the flag-waving beautician, all trapped on a boat. It sounds like a reality show … or a performance by San Francisco’s Mime Troupe, called “Ripple Effect.” In case you’re tired of experiencing the struggles of SF’s rising rent in real time, here’s a theatre performance concerning just that.
Mission community meeting
Episcopal Church of Saint John the Evangelist, 1661 15th St., SF. plaza16.org. 6pm, free.
The focus of this Mission community meeting will be on seeking unity, as organizations and individuals face a crisis of displacement and gentrification. Organizers of the Plaza 16 Coalition will also provide updates regarding current and proposed development in the Mission, and in particular the proposed development at 1979 Mission Street.
FRIDAY 29
SF Tenants Union: Stop the Flip in the Richmond and Haight
The Panhandle, 267 Central Ave., SF. www.sftu.org. noon, free. Join the San Francisco Tenants Union in its campaign to stop real estate speculation and displacement in San Francisco. Come learn about Proposition G, the anti-speculation tax, which will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.
SUNDAY 31
35th Annual Xicano Moratorium Day
1701 E. 19th St., Oakl., tinyurl.com/xicanamoratorium. 11-4pm, free. It’s been nearly 44 years since the largest anti-war protest came out of the Chicano movement, and this daylong festival will commemorate that history while providing a space for dance, performance, and discussion about a Bay Area community movement against displacement.
MONDAY 1 Attack of the typewriters: Old School Letter Writing Party Make-out room, 3225 22nd St., SF. tinyurl.com/letterattack. 6-8pm, free. Letters tend to have a nostalgic and romantic feel to them, falling under genres like “love letters,” or “letters to grandma.” Then there’s letters to council members and politicians — the sort that might feel trivial, but deserve to be celebrated. At the Old School Letter Writing party, you’ll be provided with a typewriter, stamps, envelopes, paper, and the unusual feeling that you’re not the only one who cares enough to write to the president.
Editor’s Note: Aug. 19 marks the Bay Area Global Health Film Festival, hosted by the Institute for Global Orthopaedics and Traumatology. The theme of this year’s festival is “Road Traffic Safety Locally … and Globally,” and is geared toward raising awareness about the need for road traffic safety improvements. In this opinion piece, representatives from the University of California at San Francisco Orthopaedic Trauma Institute, at San Francisco General Hospital, describe how all-too-common accidents can permanently injure pedestrians and bicyclists. And they voice support for Proposition A, the San Francisco Transportation and Road Improvement Bond.
By Amber Caldwell and Nick Arlas
San Francisco is a transit-first city. Everyone shares the need to get safely from point A to point B, preferably quickly. And the various options for doing so span the full spectrum from driving, biking, and walking, to public transit like MUNI and Bart, rideshare programs, taxis, and companies like Uber and Lyft.
As we go about our daily lives, transportation is one of the most important public infrastructure systems that San Francisco relies upon. It encompasses many controversial issues and is linked to other social equity campaigns including housing advocacy and urban gentrification.
Yet the issue of pedestrian and bike safety in San Francisco has made disheartening headlines as of late. 2013 was an especially deadly year, with 21 pedestrian and four bicyclist fatalities. San Francisco General Hospital alone cared for over 1,000 road traffic injuries, with an estimated $60 million annual cost. Organizations like the SF Bicycle Coalition and WalkSF have made biking and walking leading issues in debates over transportation policy and traffic safety. Mayor Ed Lee and our city government have responded by introducing a $500 million transportation bond measure for the Nov. 4th ballot. If it passes, a portion of the funding will be allocated for improving pedestrian and cyclist safety.
Less often discussed, however, is what happens to the pedestrians and bicyclists who are hit while going about their daily routines and permanently affected by all-too-common accidents. At the UCSF SFGH Orthopaedic Trauma Institute (OTI), these patients fill our wards, the operating room schedule and our hearts as we help to heal them from these injuries. We struggle with the balance between doing what we can and what should be done to curb the growing volume of patients we see annually due to preventable accidents.
What is alarming is the socio-economic impact these accidents have, not only on the person affected, but on the hospital and our city as a whole. Even in cases where the driver is at fault, it is rare for them to even be cited for a traffic violation in most cases. More importantly, personal injury insurance and health coverage barely cover the emergency services needed for these accidents, and most services offered at the hospital are subsidized by taxpayer dollars, which means we are paying for this on all sides. This is unacceptable.
There is currently a wave of momentum to address these complex issues and attempt to tease through how we as a city can rebuild, redefine and reinforce the safety in our city. This movement is supported by a global platform addressing road traffic safety as a public health campaign, through the World Health Organization’s Decade of Road Traffic Safety. This campaign tackles the myriad polices and resource investments needed to address the enormous impact road traffic accidents have on the world.
Injuries, mainly those resulting from road traffic accidents, account for greater disability and death than HIV, TB and Malaria combined. An average 5.8 million die annually, and for every death caused by these accidents, eight to 10 more are permanently injured.
To bring collective awareness around this issue and to change the landscape, the community needs to stand together not only in San Francisco but also around the world, to demand safer streets. The city is doing its part to outline a roadmap to curbing these alarming statistics, and a greater global campaign is underway to promote awareness and inspire activism.
We must stand up for the injured and for ourselves as local citizens to demand safer streets and protection from when accidents occur. We may not be able to prevent every accident, but we can improve the choreography of their outcome if we work together.
Amber Caldwell and Nick Arlas are Director of Development and Community Outreach Coordiator, respectively, at the Institute for Global Orthopaedics and Traumatology, UCSF Orthopaedic Trauma Institute, San Francisco General Hospital.
The Bay Area Global Health Film Festival begins Tue/19 at 6 p.m. at Public Works, 161 Erie, in San Francisco.
The Guardian last week published an editorial on the outcome of the process around the Housing Balance measure. We offer here an alternative perspective from the field.
Since 1990, San Francisco has developed an incredible track record of building close to 30 percent affordable housing — but that ratio is quickly slipping away as new market-rate approvals far outstrip funding for affordable housing.
In many parts of our city, this imbalance in housing affordability is opening the door to displacement and gentrification at an unprecedented level, as long-term residents find they can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods.
The Housing Balance measure, developed as legislation for central city neighborhoods and introduced in April, and promoted by CCHO members TODCO and SOMCAN coming out of the West SoMa planning process, was intended to link market-rate development to affordable housing production by setting a goal of at least 30 percent affordable housing and establishing stricter conditions on approvals of market-rate housing whenever the city fell below this minimum balance. The Housing Balance measure was meant to compel all sides to work together to achieve a minimum of 30 percent affordability over time.
In June, Supervisor Jane Kim revised the Housing Balance to introduce it as a measure for the November 2014 ballot, extending the reach of the measure to not only establish a 30 percent affordable housing requirement for District 6, but across the neighborhoods of the city. Perceived as a threat by developers, this new proposal compelled the Mayor’s Office to put its own measure on the ballot — a so-called “poison pill” that would override the conditions placed on market-rate development by the Housing Balance. Since that time, the Mayor’s Office and Sup. Kim’s office engaged in extensive negotiations, which CCHO supported as a pathway to more substantive outcomes than simply a ballot “war.”
On July 29, negotiations produced a compromise measure — a policy statement that was introduced for the November ballot and agreed-upon terms for a work plan to take the policy statement into action. Though “compromise” is often considered a dirty word in politics, this measure represents a real potential win for affordable housing.
By putting the possibility of a housing linkage on the table, the negotiated outcome allowed Sup. Kim and housing advocates to up the ante to 33 percent affordable housing instead of the original 30 percent, and to get more immediate solutions for the housing crisis started immediately. The original Housing Balance was a tool to create leverage, but didn’t create ways to produce more affordable housing. This new measure establishes a package of policies and funding to set the conditions to reach the 33 percent minimum housing balance goal.
If approved by the voters, it will formalize the city’s commitment to maintain a one third affordable housing goal and set expectations on how to get there. While lacking the conditional use requirement “teeth” of the original Balance legislation, the policy and work plan sets up the conditions for a future Balance, compelling the city to do the following:
1) Establish a housing balance report and require public hearings to hold the city accountable to its goal of minimum 33 percent affordable housing;
2) Develop funding and site-acquisition strategies;
3) Develop a strategy to maintain one-third affordability citywide;
4) Make high-rise luxury developments pay their fair share of inclusionary obligations;
5) Establish a funded Neighborhood Stabilization Trust to acquire small-to-large buildings and take them out of the speculative market, preserving them in perpetuity as affordable housing;
6) Create immediate interim controls to protect PDR (production, distribution, repair/service) businesses and artists in SOMA from displacement.
The pieces of this agreement constitute a step towards addressing San Francisco’s ongoing affordability crisis and stabilizing neighborhoods facing rapid gentrification. It may seem less dramatic than the prospect of a ballot battle with developers. But it is a package to work with that was leveraged from the process. That said, we must keep an eye on the larger goal of real citywide affordability. Though 33 percent affordable housing production is higher than what we’ve achieved in the past, we must not forget this is only a floor — realistic given the funding goals of this measure, but an incremental step toward achieving the affordable housing we need to house all San Franciscans fairly.
Peter Cohen and Fernando Martí are co-directors of the Council of Community Housing Organizations.
Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.
WEDNESDAY 23
Mission Bay Hidden Water Walk Meet at CalTrain station (south side plaza), Fourth St at King, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10am, free. Walking tour of the rapidly-changing Mission Bay area. Part of LaborFest 2014.
James Nestor Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post, SF; www.milibrary.org. 6pm, $15. The author discusses Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves.
“Taxi, Tech, and Rideshare” Redstone Building, 2940 16th St, SF; www.laborfest.net. 7pm, donations accepted. Forum and video screening on the subject of Uber and similar companies that are affecting the taxi industry. Part of LaborFest 2014.
THURSDAY 24
Tom Barbash Hattery, 414 Brannan, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7pm, free. The author discusses his work and writing, including Stay Up With Me, his recent short-story collection.
State of the City Forum Modern Times Bookstore Collective, 2919 24th St, SF; www.mtbs.com. 7-9pm, free. Discussion of gentrification issues with SF poet laureate Alejandro Murguia and community guest panelists.
FRIDAY 25
“Bike Design Project Reveal Party SF” PCH Lime Lab, 135 Mississippi, SF; www.oregonmanifest.com. 6-9:30pm, free. Check out next-generation bikes created by top designers and bike craftspeople at this reveal party, featuring custom-brewed, “bike-inspired” beer from Deschutes Brewery.
Gilroy Garlic Festival Christmas Park, Gilroy; www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $10-20. Through Sun/27. Garlic is the pungent star of this annual food fair. Garlic ice cream gets all the press, but don’t sleep on the garlic fries, 2012’s most popular purchase (13,401 servings!)
Squeak Carnwath University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft, Berk; www.universitypressbooks.com. 6pm, free. The Oakland-based painter discusses her new book, Horizon on Fire: Squeak Carnwath Works on Paper, 1977-2013, containing over 90 images of her works from the past 35 years.
SATURDAY 26
Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar E. Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-6pm, free. Through Sun/27. Because where else are you gonna see the world’s largest octopus kite?
Oakland 1946 General Strike Walk Lathan Square (meet at fountain), Telegraph at Broadway, Oakl; www.laborfest.net. Noon, free. Revisit key sites of Oakland’s historic “Work Holiday,” the last general strike ever to occur in the US. Part of LaborFest 2014.
“Off the Wall” Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; www.missionculturalcenter.org. 7:30pm, free. Mission Grafica hosts this closing reception for its current screenprinting and woodcut exhibition, with a silent auction of pieces from the archives.
Ohtani Summer Bazaar Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 1524 Oregon, Berk; www.bombu.org. Today, 4-8pm; Sun/27, noon-5pm. Free. Japanese food is the focus of this two-day fest, with homemade Kushikatsu, sushi, teriyaki chicken, and other tasty treats. The temple is also known for its (American-style) chili.
Pedalfest Jack London Square, Broadway and Embarcadero, Oakl; www.pedalfestjacklondon.com. 11am-7pm, free. Celebrate biking at this festival, with bike-themed entertainment (“daredevils performing in a 30-foot Whiskeydrome”), “pedal-powered food,” a vintage bike show, bike demos, and more.
“Perverts Put Out! Dore Alley Edition” Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission, SF; www.sexandculture.org. 8pm, $10-25. Readings by Jen Cross, Princess Cream Pie, Philip Huang, and others; hosted by Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard as a benefit for the CSC.
Vintage Paper Fair Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, Ninth Ave at Lincoln, SF; www.vintagepaperfair.com. Today, 10am-6pm; Sun/26, 11am-5pm. Free. Huge vintage paper fair featuring antique postcards, prints, photography, Art Deco items, movie memorabilia, and more.
SUNDAY 27
LaborFest Book Fair Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; www.laborfest.net. 10:30am, free. Numerous authors share their labor- and union-themed books and this day of readings and discussions. Part of LaborFest 2014.
Up Your Alley Fair Dore between Howard and Folsom, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.com/alley. 11am-6pm, $7 suggested donation. Folsom Street Fair’s naughty little brother fills Dore Alley with leather-clad shenanigans.
TUESDAY 29
Christopher Pollock St. Philip’s Catholic Church, 725 Diamond, SF; www.sanfranciscohistory.org. 7:30pm, $5. San Francisco History Association hosts this talk by the author of Reel San Francisco Stories: An Annotated Filmography of the Bay Area. *
The tale of the threatened independent bookstore, quivering under the might of Amazon, is nothing new.
It’s only been two months since Marcus Books was evicted from its Fillmore District location. Both Adobe and Forest bookstores fled the Mission’s 16thh Street last year. But ebook sales growth is shrinking, and sales for many of San Francisco bookstores are up.
Instead, the tale of the struggling indie bookstore has become less about Amazon and more about a different monster: gentrification. San Francisco’s rising rents, demand for commercial space by deep-pocketed chains, and lack of commercial rent control are putting the squeeze on the city’s remaining bookstores.
Take Bibliohead, for instance. Its owner has recently been forced to relocate in spite of her bookstore’s success. Bibliohead is an easily navigable, highly curated, and tiny book jungle — more like a carefully manicured garden, really. The whole store can be explored in minutes, and there’s a gumball machine that dispenses poetry out in front once the book-happy are satisfied.
Its size has served it well. Sales at Bibliohead — Hayes Valley’s only bookstore — have risen solidly 7 percent each year since the store opened 10 years ago.
“We’re small, but mighty,” Melissa Richmond, Bibliohead’s owner, told the Guardian. “Although recently we haven’t been feeling so mighty. I’m kind of a wreck.”
In May, Richmond learned that she has until January 2015 to leave her store for four months while her building undergoes mandatory earthquake retrofitting. The landlord will double Richmond’s rent after the retrofitting, and has asked Richmond to pay for further renovations to the building when she returns.
“It’s off the table that I can stay here,” Richmond said. “I will not be offered a new lease. I don’t hate landlords, but I want a landlord who will contribute to the spirit and creativity of San Francisco.”
On June 22, Richmond launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the $60,000 she’ll need to move and attract new customers. So far, with a little less than a month to go, she’s raised almost $3,000.
“What really breaks my heart is when a new customer walks in,” Richmond said. “They ask you how you’re doing after they’ve fallen in love with the place a little bit. Then you have to break their hearts by saying you don’t know what’s in store for your future right now.”
DISPLACEMENT TREND
Richmond is not the only bookseller in San Francisco forced to relocate. Last year, Adobe Books and Forest Books were forced out of 16th Street within three months of each other when their rents increased. Forest Books slipped quietly off to Japantown, and has since experienced an increase in sales. Adobe Books’ anticipated closure was met with an invigorating Kickstarter campaign that raised $60,000. It was enough to keep the store alive, but not on gentrifying 16th Street.
Nowadays, Adobe is re-branded as Adobe Books and Art Cooperative at its 24th Street location. The original Adobe’s charming, lackadaisical, and no- structured structure has been traded for alphabetized and carefully curated books. There are only two staff members, and its used books are selling far faster than in the old location, despite its shrunken size.
“It’s strange. A lot of the times I was not sure if it would work at all, and now here we are in this shop,” Brett Lockspeiser, a member of the Adobe Books and Art Cooperative, told us. “Things are running differently, but it’s still Adobe.”
Adobe will soon be celebrating its first anniversary in the new spot. The store might not be making any profits, according to Lockspeiser, but the cause for celebration is that it’s survived.
There has been discussion among the collective members about whether or not Adobe should try to sell eReading devices, like Green Apple Books has done without much success for almost two years with the Kobo eReader. Adobe’s collective voted against Kobo, preferring not to use the same weapons as its competitor.
“I’m pretty technology positive, but I think some people in the group thought it was an ‘us or them’ kind of thing,” said Lockspeiser. “Like either you’re a book reader or you’re a techie who reads on a Kindle.”
Besides, it seems that ebooks’ incredible growth rate has finally simmered down. According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for 27 percent of all adult trade sales in 2013. While that was up from 23 percent in 2012, it marked the first year ebook growth was down to the single digits. In January, a Pew study reported that among adults who read at least one book in the past year, just 5 percent said they read only an ebook.
Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, reports that book sales throughout San Francisco bookstores have increased overall in the past two years. Green Apple Books, an expanding bookstore with an growing collection of books and records, is even poised to open another location in the Sunset below beloved video rental store Le Video on Aug. 1.
Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, said he recently got a call from Bibliohead’s owner asking for advice on potential neighborhoods and techniques for negotiating with landlords. But he can’t always explain his own store’s success.
“Some of it is just the economy. All that money floating around South of Market is maybe trickling over here,” he told us. “Or maybe the waiters are getting better tips. I don’t know what it is, but things have been better for us.”
The growth of bookstore sales, Landon said, is mainly because Barnes & Noble has been cast out of San Francisco. Last year, Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, reported that its revenue decreased by 8 percent in the final quarter. The company’s Nook division, meanwhile, slid down 32 percent.
Yet Joe Marchione, who owns Mission Street’s Valhalla Books, still places the blame for his diminishing foot traffic on Amazon, which has made his hard-to-find books pretty easy to locate online. In 1998, when his store opened, 90 percent of Valhalla’s business came from people browsing through his odd and unique assortment of rare and used books. Now, 95 percent of his business is online.
“People forgot the joy of browsing,” Marchione told us.
As soon as his landlord makes him commit to a lease, he says he’s going to have to leave the business. “When we first opened, we were smug. We said there was no way trendy was ever going to come to Mission between 17th and 18th [streets]. Get real!” he said. “But trendy creeps in closer by the week. There’s no problem with that, except it’s forcing us out.”
“TRENDY CREEPS IN”
It’s even forcing successful booksellers, like Bibliohead’s owner, to worry. Her faith in the printed word remains strong. “I find that there’s a whole core of people who are relieved to feel something in their hands, to flip the pages of really cool, beautiful books and kind of remember with their bodies what reading is like,” Richmond said.
When Kate Rosenberger opened a fourth bookstore in 2011 — Alleycat Books on 24th Street — many questioned her sanity, the owner said. The store has only recently been able to pay its own bills, having been relying on Rosenberger’s other store, Dog Eared Books, for survival. But the rent at Dog Eared Books is set to increase, and that means trouble.
“You can talk about e-readers, and people being distracted. You can talk about people slipping out since the Gutenberg press was invented, and all that’s true, sure,” Rosenberger told us. “But when you get hit with a huge increase in your rent, how do you deal with that? When the lease is up, you can pretty much figure you’re gone.”
These days, you deal with it by setting up a crowdsourcing campaign, and crossing your fingers that people with money like you. Or maybe you transform into an art cooperative. Or you just go somewhere else. But Richmond doesn’t want to leave San Francisco.
“I would like to preserve the culture of the city,” Richmond said. “I still think there’s something really special here.”
Barnes & Noble might be gone, ebook sales might have stabilized, and the printed word might just still be alive — but for San Francisco’s booksellers, that no longer means anyone in the book business is safe.
“Die techie scum.” Those words are sprayed ominously on sidewalks throughout San Francisco. They’re plastered on stickers stamped on lampposts. They’re even scrawled in the bathrooms of punk bars, the very establishments now populated by Google-Glass-wearing tech aficionados.
Journalists from San Francisco to New York have opined on the source of the hate: Is it the housing crisis? Tech-fueled gentrification? Rising inequality? Those same journalists later parachute into the tech industry to periodically peer at its soul: Is tech diverse enough? Is it sexist? Is it a true meritocracy?
Those issues are often looked at in a vacuum, but perhaps they shouldn’t be. Perhaps those problems are all interconnected, and solving tech’s diversity problem is also part of solving income inequality in San Francisco, giving longtime San Franciscans a chance to join the industry many now view as composed of outsiders and interlopers.
The average Silicon Valley tech worker makes about $100,000, according to Dice Holdings Inc., which conducts annual tech salary surveys. Opportunity in the tech sector may bolster San Francisco’s middle-income earners, vanishing like wayward sea lions from the city’s landscape. Statistics from the US Census Bureau show that 66 percent of the city is either very poor or very rich, showing a hollowing out of the middle class.
Some tech CEOs are addressing their employment needs with a foreign workforce. Mark Zuckerberg and a cadre of tech CEOs have lobbied Senate and House Republicans to reform immigration in their favor, hoping to lure out-of-country workers to fill tech’s employment vacancies. Politico reported Sean Parker gave upwards of $500,000 to Republicans in 2014, all for the cause of immigration reform.
Conversely, a movement is already underway to bring San Franciscans into tech’s fold, based on the idea of a win-win scenario: San Francisco’s public school students are overwhelmingly diverse and lower income, while the tech industry is not.
Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yahoo recently released their diversity numbers, showing the companies are mostly white and male. This accusation has long haunted Silicon Valley.
Two years ago, Businessweek heralded the “Rise of the Brogrammer.” The stereotype is as follows: He preens as he programs in his popped collar, his startup funds fuel the city as he hunts “the ladies,” and he is insensitive toward women in the workplace in the most fratboy-like way imaginable.
Biz dev VP of @path just cracked lame jokes re: “nudie calendars,” frat guys + “hottest girls,” “gangbang” at #swsx talk. Cue early exit.
But while outlier brogrammer douche-bros certainly exist, whose classist opinions ignite widespread ire (think Greg Gopman’s statement comparing homeless people to “hyenas”), the real brogrammer threat is more insidious, more systemic.
“The brogrammer is always someone else,” wrote Kate Losse, a freelance journalist, in an April blog post. “He is THOSE Facebook guys who yell too loudly at parties and wave bottles in the air, he is not the nice, shy guy who gets paid 30 percent more because of his race, gender and appeal to the boy-genius fetishes of [venture capitalists].”
The overarching point of Losse’s article was this: There is a subtle sexism, and also racism, in the tech sector, which shuts out women and people of color. The looming stereotype of a douchey brogrammer can obscure the smaller, more indirect ways in which minorities and women are shut out of the industry.
Tech’s disturbing (but unsurprising) lack of diversity is being highlighted amid an economic backdrop that has resulted in widespread displacement of San Francisco’s working class and minorities.
Some are seeking to create opportunities for Bay Area communities of color within tech, as a way to even the scales. A swell of new applicants with programming skills — including people of color and women — may soon come knocking. But in the time it will take school-age coders to cycle through the first generation of new computer science classes, Silicon Valley is going to have to take a hard look in the mirror.
Some of the Bay Area’s hate toward tech may be rooted in a perceived lack of access. Longtime residents see a sea of newcomers, often white, often male, who aren’t pulling up a seat for minorities to join the new gold rush.
The age of the brogrammer is now, and it’s as socially progressive as the paleolithic era, meaning: not at all.
FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT
Talk to anyone in the realm of new technology companies and startups, and they’ll surely tell you this: Tech is an inspiring, creative field, where pure skill is the key to unlocking any job you’d like. The dress style is casual (hoodies, of course) and the perks flow like wine (or energy drinks).
When the Guardian visited the CloudCamp social good hackathon, we saw video game arcade machines in the ground floor and beer flowing throughout. Another company, Hack Reactor, had desks attached to treadmills and a life coach on hand to mind employee health. These are accoutrements de rigeuer, stunningly standard. But tales of true Silicon Valley excess abound: One CEO offers employees free helicopter rides, many offer in-house chefs and extravagant travel.
Interns in Silicon Valley are enjoying huge perks like free meals, massages, swimming pools, nap pods: http://t.co/BdaaOdC95P
Skill and ability alone are the keys to unlocking this lifestyle, the tech industry says. Workers’ fervor can take on an almost cult-like zeal.
“I think the sharing economy is addictive,” said Rafael Martinez-Corina, a panelist at the Share2014 sharing economy conference in May, touting tech’s biggest stars like AirBNB, Lyft, and Uber. “Once you get it, you want more and more. You get into car sharing, you want to get into food sharing, time sharing.”
He asked the audience, “Who else is addicted to sharing?”
Almost every hand went in the room shot right up. Cheers immediately followed. Hallelujah!
Mars Jullian, an engineer at AdRoll, told the Guardian that employees of tech companies with name-brand apps tend to exhibit more ego. AdRoll is a big player, but more behind the scenes, she said, giving her perspective on the attitudes of her fellow tech workers.
“Sometimes it seems tech people feel like they own the city,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s the right attitude to have. Sometimes it’s more important to be humble.”
One might forgive the tech workers for their enthusiasm. The industry, after all, has ushered in widespread transformation in business and communications, resulting in dramatic economic shifts. But with such a high concentration of wealth and influence in the Bay Area, the question of who gets to participate is key.
Google’s diversity numbers rocked the world outside Silicon Valley, but surprised few in the Bay Area. The behemoth is 70 percent male and 60 percent white, with Asians making up 30 percent of the company’s ethnic representation.
Soon after Google’s numbers were revealed, Facebook, Yahoo, and LinkedIn followed suit with their own diversity reports. Their numbers differ a bit from Google, showing more Asian employees, and slightly more women. The numbers look worse, however, when only technology jobs are factored in. The tech worker population among these companies is about 15 percent female.
Hadi Partovi, an early Facebook investor, now adviser, and ex-chief of Microsoft’s MSN, told the Guardian that despite the industry’s challenges, tech’s doors are open to people with skills, regardless of background.
“The computer doesn’t know if it’s being programmed by someone rich or poor, black or brown,” he told us in a phone interview. “A lawyer, for instance, is looked at more explicitly. Tech has the opportunity to be more meritocratic.”
But the tech sector’s pious belief that it functions as a world-changing meritocracy ignores a host of factors that serve to hinder inclusion.
Many have touted the education pipeline as the root cause of tech’s lack of diversity. The number of women pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is stunningly low, 24 percent, according to the US Department of Commerce. African Americans and Latinos also lag far behind their white and Asian counterparts in completing their computer science degrees, according to studies by the East Bay nonprofit Level Playing Field Institute.
Considering Asian groups is important: the Level Playing Field Institute draws a distinction between represented and underrepresented minority groups, acknowledging that ethnicity, income and class intermingle in complex ways. It’s those underrepresented groups like women, Latinos and African Americans LPFI identifies as groups lacking in tech.
But the pipeline is only one part of the problem. Subtle (and not-so-subtle) misogyny and racism, often labeled micro-aggressions, pervade hiring.
Level Playing Field is focused on creating opportunity for people of color and women in STEM fields. In an extensive tech-industry study conducted in 2011, called “Hidden Bias in Information Technology Workplaces,” researchers concluded: “Despite widespread underrepresentation of women and people of color within the sector, diversity is not regarded as a priority.”
Surveying more than 645 engineers, the study’s authors found that white men were the most likely to believe that diversity was not a problem that needed addressing in the tech sector. The study also found that underrepresented people of color (Latinos and African Americans), and women were more likely to encounter exclusionary cliques, unwanted sexual teasing, bullying, and homophobic jokes.
Sometimes, these instances blow up for the world to see.
THE MIRROR-TOCRACY
The workday text messages between Tinder’s co-founder Justin Marteen and former VP Whitney Wolfe went public after Wolfe sued Tinder, revealing the ugly waters women must sometimes navigate in tech. Marteen was allegedly harassing Wolfe over her new love interest, and Wolfe asked him to stop.
“Stop justin [sic]. Were at work,” Wolfe asked of Marteen, to which he replied, “Ur heartless… go talk to ur 26 year old fucking accomplished nobody. I’ll shit on him in life.”
He should have ended there. But he continued his rage at his ex-girlfriend.
“Hagsgagahaha so pathetic I even imagined a life w u. I actually thought u would be a good mother and wife. I have horrible judgement. He can enjoy my left overs,” he allegedly wrote. “You’re effecting my work environment,” she replied, “and this is very out of control. Please don’t do this during work hours.”
Besides an awful command of rudimentary spelling, the squabble showed the very real harassment women in tech are exposed to every day. When Wolfe went to Tinder CEO Sean Rad for help, she found herself out of a job.
Tinder is not an outlier, according to studies by Level Playing Field. Nor is it the only company to see its harassment go public. Earlier this year, GitHub’s CEO Tom Preston-Werner resigned after a former employee, Julie Ann Horvath, alleged she was harassed by him, his wife, and engineers.
While Github denied the allegations, Horvath was defiant: “A company can never own you. They can’t tell you who to fuck and who not to fuck. And they can’t take away your voice.”
But for every example of outright sexism or racism, there are multitudes of more subtle biases in the workplace. Level Playing Field’s studies found these biases are pervasive. They start as early as the hiring process.
Carlos Bueno is a former Facebook engineer, now tinkering behind the scenes at memSQL. He is of mixed ethnicity, Irish and Mexican, among others. “My father called us ‘Leprechan-os’,” he told us.
Bueno trained interviewers at Facebook, and like many there, he also conducted interviews. He said Facebook’s interview process was probably one of the best in the industry for screening out biases of the interviewer, but other companies were not as aware of bias as a problem.
“Every startup wants to be a big dog,” he said, describing the process. “But the point of a startup is to grow very large, very quickly. They don’t have time to learn. Some people take rules of thumb or investor advice and run with it.”
Paypal co-founder Max Levchin is looked to as a thought leader in the startup world. He touts the idea that diversity of perspective in a startup’s early phases can actually hurt its chances of success, hindering its speed in “endless debates.”
Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel once famously put it this way: “Don’t fuck up the culture.”
Bueno pointed to a real estate startup, 42Floors, as an example of a company adopting Levchin’s philosophy. It looks for potential hires who are a “cultural fit,” i.e., making sure the candidate and employer think alike.
One 42Floors interviewer explained this on the company blog: “I asked her how she was doing in the interview process and she said, ‘I’m actually still trying to get an interview. Well, I grabbed coffee with the founder, and I had dinner with the team last night, and then we went to a bar together.’ I chuckled. She was clearly confused with the whole matter. I told her, ‘Look, you just made it to the third round.'”
So the interview process for tech may involve coffee dates or “beer with the guys,” and the onus is on the interviewee to figure all of this out. Similar blog posts from 42Floors go on to call out interviewees who wear suits, or act too stodgy for their liking.
We spoke to Bueno extensively over burgers, but he put it best in his blog.
“You are expected to conform to the rules of The Culture before you are allowed to demonstrate your actual worth,” he wrote. “What wearing a suit really indicates is — I am not making this up — non-conformity, one of the gravest of sins. For extra excitement, the rules are unwritten and ever-changing, and you will never be told how you screwed up.”
Founders back up their faulty hiring practices with faulty logic. “It’s so hard to get in, if you get in you must be good,” Bueno said. “But those two statements don’t support each other.”
Some students of color training to code have already caught a glimpse of how the mirror-tocracy functions.
OPENING THE DOOR
Eight years ago, Kimberly Bryant moved to San Francisco to work in biotech. She moved to the city because she believed it to be more racially and economically diverse. She worked adjacent to Bayview Hunters Point, and has since revised her view of the city as a welcoming multicultural environment.
Instead, she found a city with an African American population dwindling below six percent in a city of over 800,000, and a gutted middle class. Latinos are moving out in greater numbers too. Over the last decade, 1,400 Latinos left the Mission District, according to a recent report on displacement by Causa Justa / Just Cause. In the same time, 2,900 white residents flooded in.
The displacement data reveals a significant parallel: The diverse ethnic groups Silicon Valley lacks in its employed ranks are the very same ethnic groups being priced out of San Francisco.
Seeking to mitigate the ethnic and gender disparity in tech, Bryant formed Black Girls Code, a student mentor and workshop program. It first opened up shop in the Bayview, but has sinced moved on.
“I really saw and experienced the true diversity of the community in Oakland,” Bryant told the Guardian, of the nonprofit’s new home. “It’s just an amazingly incredibly diverse community in terms of race and economy. What San Francisco used to be,” she added, “but is no longer.”
Black Girls Code teaches K-12 students rudimentary coding skills, providing instruction in Ruby and Python. Although companies like Google and others have opened their doors with welcoming arms, she said, convincing her students that the tech world is ready for them has been challenging.
When she brought her young students to an industry event, TechCrunch Disrupt, she dodged a minefield of fratboy-like behavior that made her students feel unwelcome, she said. This is the same event that heralded a prank app called “titstare,” which invited users (presumably male) to upload photos of themselves staring at women’s breasts.
The app was displayed on a stage before some of the most influential players in the tech industry, but Bryant’s students were in the audience too.
“They were shocked, like everyone there. It was disconcerting for the parents and the girls,” she said. Though she’s careful not to overplay the damage done (the girls “laughed awkwardly,” she said), the takeaway of the conference was that women and girls were not the intended participants. “It’s like a frathouse. I thought, ‘oh my god, this is like college all over again. This sucks.'”
At Mission and 19th streets sits MEDA, a nonprofit that has long worked to help Mission residents gain a foothold in San Francisco workplaces. This begins even in the lobby, where a small kitchenette in the corner plays host to a chef who mixes up a mean ceviche, with spices admittedly leaving this reporter in tears. He aspires to open his own restaurant, and MEDA is helping him get there.
The upstairs houses a group of students called the Mission Techies. They seek support in their aspirations to enter the tech industry, but for them the dream may be further off than the chef’s.
Gabriel Medina, policy manager at MEDA, doesn’t mince words. These are the “challenge” kids, he said, but they’ve done him and program manager Leo Sosa proud.
The Mission Techies pull apart computers to learn about their innards.
Sosa described a visit from Google and Facebook engineers who taught his students rudimentary coding skills. One student, Jamar, was so engrossed in programming that one engineer asked: “Is he okay?!”
“Jamar is on the coding program, [and he’s] on fire,” Sosa told the Guardian, while sitting in a MEDA office.
But students like Jamar, an African American San Franciscan, face an uphill battle before they ever get to the step of applying for a job like one at Google.
After visiting some tech offices, the students felt less sure of themselves.
“They were like ‘I don’t see no black guys, I don’t see no Latinos. Leo, do you really think I can get a job here?'” Sosa told us. For them, the mirror-tocracy did not reflect an image they recognized.
By many measures, MEDA’s Mission Techies program is a success, taking kids of modest means and equipping them with digital skills that can aid their employment prospects. Mission Techies, Black Girls Code, and other programs such as Hack Reactor and Mission Bit all nip at the heels of the education pipeline leading to tech industry employment. They also share a common focus: They’re educating largely minority populations, often low-income, and located in the Bay Area.
The solution to tech’s diversity problem and to San Francisco’s displacement may spring from the same well: educate the people who live here to work in the local industry. But in order to do that effectively, afterschool and summer programs alone won’t do the trick.
The schools themselves need disruption.
WORKING TOGETHER
In the midst of the tech hub, the San Francisco Unified School District finds itself surrounded by tech allies. Still, change comes slowly.
Only five of SFUSD’s 17 high schools have computer science courses. Ben Chun, an MIT graduate and former computer science teacher at Galileo High School, told us the outlook is bleak without digital training in schools. Though kids sometimes teach themselves programming at home, most low-income students don’t have that opportunity.
“It’s a privilege thing,” he told us. If you have access to computers at home, you’re more likely to tinker and teach yourself. Those kids are more likely to be the Bill Gates of the future, he said, the self-starters and early computer prodigies.
“If you don’t have those things in place,” he said, “there’s a zero chance it will be you.”
When he first got to Galileo, his computer teacher predecessor taught word processing. But a lot has changed since 2006.
Partovi took his successes at Facebook and Microsoft and parlayed his money into a nonprofit called Code.org. The organization created its own coding classes for kids as young as 6, and compelled 30 school districts nationwide to create computer science courses based on its work.
Code.org’s tutorials have been played by millions of students.
Now it has its sights set on SFUSD’s 52,000 students, potentially solving tech and the school’s problems at once.
“It would for sure level that diversity gap,” Partovi told the Guardian. “All of the data released from Google, Yahoo, and others show a male-dominated industry. The pipeline of educated kids is actually much more diverse.”
But integrating tech in the district is slow, and likely years away. The district needs state standards to require computer science, something SFUSD Superintendent Richard Carranza has already lobbied Gov. Jerry Brown to change.
“The demand [for computer science classes] is coming from everywhere,” Carranza told us, including parents, students, the tech industry, and city leaders.
“What makes it a game changer is the partnership with our tech partners,” he said. “It gives our students the opportunity to interact elbow to elbow with people doing computer science out in the real world.”
But the tech workers those students are interacting with, though well meaning, remain the domain of the brogrammers. Will they hire SFUSD graduates with computer science skills when and if they’re ready? Will they be the right “culture fit?”
“There’s definitely a libertarian thread, a free market, red-toothed nature of things [in tech],” Bueno told us. “Talking to people in unguarded moments, that definitely leaks out. You’re not going to convince anyone by singing kumbaya and holding hands.”
But logical tech workers need look no further than the current numbers facing Silicon Valley to see the need to reach beyond their in-groups: 1.2 million new tech jobs will be created by 2020, studies from the US Department of Labor show. At the same time, 40 percent of the United States will be Latino and black by 2040.
When the minority is the majority, the brogrammers may become a dying species.
Hey there, lovers and haters of the World Cup, if you missed out on the protest of Google and FIFA at Pride, there’s still time on the clock to score that goal: there will be another protest tomorrow [Thu/3] to support Brazilian transit workers and their quest for higher wages.
In solidarity with Brazilian protestors, a group of queer anarchists blocked the joint Google/FIFA float in the SF Pride Parade on Sunday. The group saw the float protest as an opportunity to draw together two issues linking San Francisco and Brazil: gentrification in the Bay Area and the displacement of Brazilians in order to make this year’s World Cup possible.
As the protestors said, “We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to connect issues of gentrification and evictions in the Bay Area with the violent displacement of Brazilians who live in the Favelas. The Google/FIFA float was a perfect target for direct action to raise awareness about these issues!”
According to Al Jazeera and Solidar Suisse, more than 150,000 people were evicted from their homes to create the World Cup arenas, including parking lots. Following the Brazilian government’s pacification initiative, Brazilian police occupied multiple favelas, or slums, housing around 1.5 million people total, near the airport and roads leading to the World Cup stadiums in order to make the communities more presentable. Besides minimizing gang activity temporarily, there are no programs implemented to help favela residents in the long run.
Brazilian transit workers also felt cheated by World Cup preparations. Despite Brazil’s underfunded transit system and low wages for workers, Brazil’s government poured $11.5 billion into World Cup preparations. Protestors with the Subway Workers Union of Sao Paulo were beaten and attacked with tear gas by police during a five-day strike for higher wages.
Brazilian Justice Ministry declared the strike illegal and implemented a $250,000 per day fee, and allowed the Brazilian government to fire employees that continue to strike. The workers suspended the strike before the Cup, but the 42 transit workers fired during the strike have not been reinstated.
The SF protest joins the Subway Workers Union in asking for the 42 fired workers to be reinstated. You can root for that goal Thu/3 outside the Brazilian Consulate, 300 Montgomery, SF. 4-5pm.
OPINION This week, San Franciscans learned that they will not be able to rely on Sacramento to fix the housing crisis. State lawmakers voted down Senate Bill 1439, which would have stopped speculators from using the Ellis Act to evict and convert buildings to upscale offices and TICs. One Assembly Democrat said that San Franciscans were “exaggerating the problem.” That same day, my office received Ellis Act eviction notices for 21 tenants from an artist building at 16th and Mission streets. The building has a new buyer, and it will soon be a high-end commercial space.
I was a tenant rights attorney during the first dot-com boom, and without question, this new housing crisis is much worse. The gentrification is more widespread and permanent. This time around, the evicted teachers, musicians, and artists are not simply moving down the street to smaller units, they are being priced out of San Francisco altogether.
We need to decide now, as San Franciscans, what we want our city to feel like in a decade. Here are five things I believe we need to do now to address the crisis:
1. Collaborate with tech leaders, rather than vilify them. I have been as guilty as the next person in blaming and berating big tech, ignoring the fact that many of my neighbors, clients, and friends are long-time San Franciscans who work in the tech industry. Enough blaming. We need to somehow bring tech to the table to help create large-scale solutions to the housing crisis. It may not be easy to do.
Earlier this year, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, criticized tech companies for being “stingy” in giving to their communities, and I have heard nonprofit fundraisers echo this. If true, we need to find out why. On the other side, our healthy anti-corporate, ‘us and them’ mindset, which is deeply rooted in San Francisco’s political tradition, is not serving us in collaboratively addressing the housing crisis.
While there are a handful of high-profile examples of tech workers wrongfully displacing tenants, tech workers are not the real problem. It is true that tech money drives up prices, but the real villains are the predatory speculators who are profiting from our shared crisis. The bottom line is, like it or not, tech is here to stay, and tech leaders have the resources to fund the arts, help our schools, and yes, help us address the housing crisis.
2. Stop illegal mergers of multi-unit buildings into single-family mansions. It is not enough to have regulations in place to prevent mergers. Real estate speculators are merging units surreptitiously, without permits. The Department of Building Inspection needs to actively police projects. And all San Francisco residents need to share in the responsibility of ensuring that speculators are not doing major construction without permits in our neighborhoods.
3. Support legislation to stop landlords from renting their units as hotel rooms. It is estimated that more than a 1,000 units in San Francisco are being rented out full-time for short-term corporate or tourist use. We need a law to get these units back into the permanent housing stock.
4. Donate to the Community Land Trust and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust. Community land trusts are buying property to permanently preserve residential housing and art space. We need to do more to support these organizations. Other cities do a much better job than San Francisco in partnering with corporations to preserve culture.
5. Support an anti-speculation tax. Tenant activists have introduced an anti-speculation tax designed to stop real estate flipping. Our office sees the same LLCs flip properties time and time again.
Ultimately it is up to all San Franciscans to embrace this cause if we hope to preserve the diverse and complex character of our city. One thing is sure: We cannot wait to add our voices, or it will be too late.
Is San Francisco doomed? The legendary SF punk band Crime said so 35 years ago on their album San Francisco’s Doomed. Yet with tech money flowing into San Francisco and musicians being priced out of the city, the phrase has taken on a new resonance among those musicians who have stayed in town.
There’s been no shortage of music and other art forms lamenting the sea change in our dear city: Earlier this month, Katie Day drew accolades and vitriol with “San Francisco (Before the West Falls),” and tonight [Wed/25], cabaret singer-songwriter Candace Roberts will celebrate the debut of her theatrical “Not My City Anymore” with a party at the Gold Dust Lounge (where the music video was shot).
Stepping up to the plate for the indie/garage/punk kids is Hannah Lew, currently of Cold Beat, formerly of Grass Widow, and most recently the curator of a compilation whose name differs from Crime’s album by one contraction: San Francisco Is Doomed. Released on Lew’s Crime On The Moon label, the compilation features 13 songs by either former or current San Francisco bands and artists, from Thee Oh Sees to Erase Errata to Violent Change, all of them dealing with the tech boom’s effect on the city and its music scene.
Lew has lived in the city since 1989, and was a first-hand witness to the ascent of the city’s garage-rock scene to international prominence as a member of Grass Widow. Though she plans to stay in the city, it’s increasingly difficult for musicians in San Francisco to keep up with increased prices. Most of the artists on the compilation have since moved.
“People are moving here to make money now,” Lew said. “It’s never really been like that before — not since the Gold Rush. Because of that there’s a lot of foodie culture…things catered to people with a lot of money. I think that creates a cultural divide.”
The compilation isn’t an act of war against the “techies,” though; according to Lew, some of the artists on the compilation actually work in the tech industry. It’s not a benefit album either. It’s simply a snapshot of the time and place in which SF musicians currently exist.
For now, Lew and Cold Beat are still headquartered and playing shows in the city — the compilation seems timed nicely to coincide with the release of the band’s latest, Over Me, which will be out July 8 (a music video for the first single just premiered over at NPR). But it’s hard to say the band is part of a “scene” anymore. Bay Area scenes have come and gone, of course, from psychedelic rock to ’80s thrash metal, and, as others have noted, it’s increasingly apparent that the garage-rock movement is at the end of its lifespan. The question of whether or not San Francisco’s music scene is truly doomed relies on a different equation — whether musicians are willing to move into San Francisco. And according to Lew, it’s not exactly an attractive option for most.
“I can’t really imagine people moving here for a thriving music scene without the rent prices going way down,” she said. “Usually the towns with a thriving music scenes are affordable to live in. But it’s hard to even find an affordable practice space in San Francisco these days.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” she added. “[San Francisco] is becoming more of a fancy town. But we just want to talk about it and hopefully provide another voice in that conversation.” San Francisco Is Doomed Record Release
With Cold Beat, Synethic ID, Violent Change, Caged Animal
“What’s the matter with San Francisco?” asks the Summer 2014 issue of the Boom: A Journal of California, a quarterly magazine produced by the University of California Press, tapping an amazing array of writers to explore the struggle for the soul of San Francisco that has captured such widespread media attention in the last year.
The question on its cover, which all of the articles in this beautifully produced 114-page magazine explore from varying perspectives, is a nod to Thomas Frank’s insightful 2004 book, What’s the matter with Kansas? And the answer in both cases, argue writers Eve Bachrach and Jon Christensen in their cover story article, is the people.
“Specifically, the people who act time and again against their own interests, people who adhere to a narrow political line, whether it’s antipopulist in the nineteenth century or antiprogressive in the twentieth. By focusing on one set of values, this analysis asserts, the people don’t notice what they’re really losing until it’s too late — and San Francisco is no different,” they write.
At this important moment in time, San Francisco is fighting to retain the last significant remnants of the cultural and economic diversity that have made this such a world-class city, with today’s hyper-gentrification building off of previous waves of displacement to change the city in fundamental ways.
Sure, this struggle between capital and community has been part of San Francisco since its founding, a dynamic that animates our civic life and feeds important political movements that trickle out across the country. And local writer/historian Chris Carlsson has a great article documenting those movements, from the Freeway Revolt of the 1960s to the pro-tenant and anti-displacement activism around the last dot.com boom.
“Read one way, this short history demonstrates the relentless power of money in defining who is a San Franciscan and who can stay and who must go. But read another way, this history shows that there is historic precedent for optimism that the worst consequences of today’s creative destruction of the city can be averted if we know and use our history,” Carlsson wrote.
But in a Q&A interview with author Rebecca Solnit, both celebrates that dynamic and explains why things are different this time: “You can image San Francisco as full of dynamic struggle that’s been pretty evenly matched between the opposing sides since the Gold Rush. There have always been idealists and populists and people who believe in mutual aid in the City of San Francisco. And there have also been ruthless businessmen and greedy people: the ‘come in and get everything and be accountable to nobody and hoard your pile of glittering stuff’ mentality has been here since the city was founded. But it has not been so powerful that it has rubbed out the other side.
“Now, however, it feel like Silicon Valley is turning San Francisco into its bedroom community. There’s so much money and so much power and so little ability to resist that it is pushing out huge numbers of people directly, but it is also re-creating San Francisco as a place that is so damn expensive that nobody but people who make huge amounts of money will be able to live here.”
After building off of previous gains, the capitalists of today, those who refuse to even acknowledge the political landscape and dynamics that have been developed over generations, seem to be moving in for the kill, armed with more powerful weapons of accumulation and displacement than their predecessors had or were willing to deploy.
“So what’s the matter with San Francisco? It’s becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley, while Silicon Valley becomes a global power center for information control run by a bunch of crazy libertarian megalomaniacs. And a lot of what’s made San Francisco really generative for the environmental movement and a lot of other movements gets squeezed out. And it feels like the place is being killed in some way,” Solnit said.
Yet the issue pointedly avoids falling into us-vs.-them traps or trite demonization of techies, ultimately seeking to provide a more nuanced look at the city’s current cultural and economic clashes than the various East Coast publications have brought to the task. And the best of it is “The Death of the City? Reports of San Francisco’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
Written by Rachel Brahinsky, a former Bay Guardian staff writer who is now a professor at the University of San Francisco, the article echoes other concerns about the threats and challenges facing San Francisco, but she finds a potential “seed of the solution” in the city’s current zeitgeist.
For one thing, she challenges the convenient blaming of “techies” for the problems facing San Francisco, noting that some of the city’s best progressive organizing has been done by those with skills and/or jobs in the technology sector, often by people who despise the corporate managers and investors who run the industry as much as outsiders do.
“The problem isn’t tech, but corporate tech,” she writes.
Brahinsky also urges readers to broaden their lenses to consider San Francisco as part of the broader Bay Area, which now much confront the growing challenges of rising economic inequality and gentrification as a region, using the clashes here as a catalyst to finally pursue what she calls “ethical urbanism.”
“What is to be done? There is no lone policy shift that will salve these corporate tech wounds. There are many good solutions under debate now; with continued pressure they may become law in the same way that rent control moved from impossible to mainstream in 1978,” she writes.
The prescription she then offers includes fostering greater community engagement, developing regional policies that promote “community development without displacement,” not blaming techies for the sins of landlords, finding ways to increase the density of development without displacing or sapping vital public services, using open source tech tools to increase awareness and broaden the progressive movement, and “you need to fight like hell for the kind of city you want.”
Finally, in closing, she writes, “The San Francisco region’s most potent dreams are made of the kinds of struggles that refuse the sweeping change brought by the economistic forces of urbanism. What we witnessed in the winter of 2014 was a reawakening of this side of ‘San Francisco,’ a part of the city as mythic and real as the Gold Rush. The ongoing cacophony of protests, corporate tech-activist happy hours, housing lectures and forums, and the ballast of anti-eviction committees brought together by two months of tenants conventions are all signs of this legacy regathering steam. What happens next?”
Sometimes visuals paint a picture in a visceral way that mere numbers can’t, and that was the case when the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project recently released a graph highlighting the magnitude of San Francisco’s high rate of income inequality growth and how it compares to other major cities around the country. San Francisco’s purple bubble is floating way up, all alone, above Atlanta, Georgia’s orange bubble and everyone else closely grouped together.
The graph’s findings reveal the sad but well-known fact that San Francisco is widely unequal, and it comes as little surprise that from 2007 to 2012, SF saw its income gap grow faster than any other major city in the United States.
The visualization cited a Brookings Institute report on income inequality released in February, which found the income of San Francisco’s low-earning residents (more specifically, those in the 20th percentile of yearly income) dropped by an average of $4,000 during that timespan, while the highest-earning residents (the 95th percentile) saw their income jump by an average of $28,000 over the same period. The latter figure was the largest gain in any American city, and it affirms what’s already clear to city residents: The rich are getting richer while the poor continue to get poorer.
That message might seem like old news to those familiar with San Francisco’s income inequality issues, but the truly alarming part of the study is the rate at which the trend is occurring. Though it provides further confirmation of an unpleasant fact that has plagued San Francisco residents for years, the unprecedented speed of the income gap’s increase is especially startling given the efforts to rectify the issue. As the mapping project pointed out, “trickle-down economics does not appear to be working” in San Francisco.
The gap has become so pronounced that the city’s 2012 GINI Coefficient (which measures income distribution) of .523 would make it the 14th-most economically unequal country in the world if San Francisco were its own nation. That’s right in line with countries that are widely known for their income inequality, like Paraguay and Chile, and more than twice as unequal as top-ranked Sweden.
Perhaps the best indication of this growing division has been the drastic increase in evictions throughout the city. The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project has worked to shed light on the issue, releasing time lapses showing the evictions while making it clear that seniors and disabled people aren’t immune to the trend either.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project is probably best known for protesting the Google tech buses, whose effects on local communities they’ve researched extensively. The organizations’ maps showlinks between the location of bus stops and a large number of evictions in the same areas.
Developing nations with income gaps akin to San Francisco’s don’t have tech buses driving around their streets, so it’s no surprise that the buses’ unpaid use of public bus stops hasn’t left residents of lower income areas particularly thrilled, especially with the tech sector pushing up the price of housing in those areas while contributing heavily to the results of the Brookings Institute report.
