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Massage therapists hope for a happy ending

Michael Redmond
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Massage therapists hope for a happy ending

The California Massage Therapy Council, a statewide body that licenses massage practitioners, may expire at the end of this year unless extended by the California Legislature. Some anti-prostitution crusaders say reverting to local control will make it easier to shut down covert brothels, but the practitioners fear a return to the bad old days, when stigmas and stereotypes overcomplicated their lives.

On one side of the debate are the massage therapists, who say that the council protects them from unfair discrimination, replaces a patchwork of local ordinances, and provides a greater level of respectability to their profession. However, an array of city officials, police departments, and powerful groups such as the League of California Cities argue that the CAMTC makes it easier for illicit massage parlors to get away with prostitution and human trafficking.

“I receive complaints from neighbors all the time about certain establishments,” said Sup. Katy Tang about her supervisorial district in San Francisco’s Sunset District. “We can inspect, but we have no ability to enforce any of our regulations. If there are any penalties, we can’t enforce them.”

Tang’s frustration stems from Senate Bill 731, legislation that was signed into law in 2008. That bill created the CAMTC, a nonprofit organization that has the authority to certify massage practitioners and therapists in California. Prior to the creation of this body, each city and county enacted its own certification procedures, leading to a messy patchwork of rules all over the state.

Before the CAMTC, “there were 550 different kinds of regulations from city to city,” said Ahmos Netanel, CEO of the organization. “Within a radius of one mile, you can have a situation where different cities have their own standards. One city may require no training, and another right next door may require 1,000 hours.”

A massage provider working in California pre-2009 not only had to be savvy with the medley of laws, but also needed to purchase expensive licenses for each city he or she planned to practice in. The CAMTC creates a universal—though voluntary—system, where licensed practitioners can travel and work freely around the state.

The contentious part of the law comes from the protection that it offers to licensed practitioners. Any establishment that employs all CAMTC-certified massage providers is exempt from city ordinances that target massage businesses. Law enforcement agencies claim that these restrictions impede their ability to crack down on illegal parlors, but the massage therapists say that they are necessary to fight off discriminatory laws.

Some of these unfair regulations targeted entire establishments, such as zoning rules that forced all massage businesses into run-down or dangerous parts of town, with the assumption that they were brothels. Massage providers argued that this was neither fair nor safe for, say, a 75-year-old woman seeking out massage for arthritis, or a soon-to-be mom trying to obtain a pre-natal massage.

Other laws targeted the therapists themselves. Stacey DeGooyer, a certified massage therapist in the Bay Area, remembers times when practicing massage meant mandatory STD testing and reminders from police to not wear undergarments as exterior clothing.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is for my profession?'” DeGooyer said, decrying being subjected to “archaic prostitution laws.” Most massage providers aren’t looking to be on par with physicians, but they also don’t want to be on par with prostitutes.

Currently, San Francisco has its own certification program that is regulated by the Department of Public Health. To practice massage in the city, the provider must have a license from either the city or the CAMTC. However, only those who have the state CAMTC license can legally call themselves a “licensed massage” therapist or practitioner.

Tang has been one of the most outspoken critics of the CAMTC in San Francisco, urging the Legislature to let the body sunset at the end of the year.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m against [the CAMTC], but there are structural flaws in how it was designed,” Tang said. “It was created for good reasons, since there were so many jurisdictions and they wanted to standardize it and create a cohesive process. But there are jurisdictions like San Francisco where we have our own robust process.”

The number of massage establishments have surged since the adoption of the CAMTC, which critics use as evidence for a growing number of illicit parlors. But Netanel said his group’s worked to prevent prostitutes from getting licensed in the first place. Out of over 63,000 applicants, Netanel said, the group has never certified a single person who has been convicted of illicit activities. It also utilizes an online complaint form to report questionable behavior, and respond to all complaints within 24 hours.

“Even with those who criticize [the CAMTC], we share the same goals,” Netanel said. “We want a safe, healthy, and reliable certification process, so consumers can trust their therapists. Even more, we want to put an end to illegal massage parlors so they are no longer categorized with honest providers.” (Brian McMahon)

HOT MAIL

Last week’s Bay Guardian featured a cover story on homelessness in San Francisco (“San Francisco’s untouchables”), including communications between local residents and the city’s Homeless Outreach Team, which we obtained in a public records request. So we thought we’d share a few message from the more than 100 we received.

“I don’t know where to begin,” one resident wrote. “I feel between mad, disgusted, and frustrated. This homeless encampment keeps growing. … The city has put up wire fencing only to be cut through by the homeless. … It is within 100 yards of my $1.2M condo.”

Another said: “Something is deeply wrong with San Francisco policy. Cultivating the Bohemian San Francisco style is nice but … it is as if we were in a deteriorated undeveloped country. We live in downtown San Francisco, not in the favelas, which is what it feels like.”

Still another complainant wrote: “Bags distributors are installed in the parks in order to help dog lovers clean up after their dogs, which is completely normal, but nothing is done for all the human beings who stroll, do drugs, eat, sleep, urinate, defecate and so on, on the sidewalks.”

Sometimes these complaints result in HOT visits to homeless encampments. But the emails suggest that while the HOT does approach homeless folks to try and persuade them to access services or go to a shelter, the service workers don’t always have full services to direct them to if the homeless individuals agree to do so.

Psychiatric social worker Jason Albertson, who is part of the HOT, explained this dilemma in an email sent in mid-January. His email noted that the HOT had encountered some homeless people in the vicinity of Harriet Alley and Manolo Draves Park, in response to a neighbor’s urging.

They’re “primarily in transit, meaning that they camp in different places each night and are not regulars,” he explained. “So far, nobody has wanted to enter into shelter or discuss other access to treatment or services.” But even if they had, he said, there wouldn’t be too many options for moving forward with recovery.

“At this time, our case management support is limited with identified clients waiting,” he wrote. “So capacity for full service is limited.” (Rebecca Bowe)

WHITHER GOOGLE BUSES

As the Board of Supervisors prepared for an April 1 hearing to consider an environmental appeal of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s program for regulating Google buses and other private shuttles to the Silicon Valley, which charges them one dollar per stop, both sides marshaled their troops.

The pro-business Bay Area Council released a poll of San Franciscans claiming that most of us love tech, we’re totally cool with the Google buses, and we care more about job creation than the cost of living. The group wrote: “Despite what it may look like from recent media coverage, a majority of voters have a positive opinion of the shuttle buses and support allowing buses to use Muni stops.”

SF.citi, an alliance of San Francisco tech companies, touted the poll as it sent out an email blast that reads like a call to arms: “Divisive shuttle opponents are now suing the City to challenge this pilot program before it has the chance to get off the ground. We need YOU to tell the Board of Supervisors in person that you want them reject this lawsuit and let the pilot program go forward.”

Progressive activists countered in a similar tone: “Please join us to support the appeal and to tell the city to hold Big Tech accountable for the actual impact they have on our communities and neighborhoods.”

The hearing was scheduled after Guardian press time, so check www.sfbg.com/politics to find out what happened. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Alerts: April 2 – 8, 2014

Michael Redmond
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WEDNESDAY 2

 

Anti-eviction march

24th and Mission BART Station, SF. evictionfreesf.org. 11:30am, free. Eviction Free San Francisco will lead “a spirited lunchtime march and picket” to the Mission offices of Vanguard Properties, in response to an Ellis Act eviction that has been filed against longtime tenant Benito Santiago, a Duboce Triangle resident who was born and raised in San Francisco.

THURSDAY 3

 

Public meeting on tech shuttle plan

City Hall, 1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett, SF. 3pm, free. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a controversial pilot program that will allow private shuttles, such as Google buses, to use Muni bus stops for a fee of $1 per stop per day. The program, approved by the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency in January, has been appealed on the grounds that it should undergo a full environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. The Board will vote on whether the appeal should move forward.

 

FRIDAY 4

 

IMPACT

Laney College, 900 Fallon, Oakl. www.destinyarts.org. 7:30pm, $20. This is the opening night of IMPACT, a full-length work featuring a cast of 42 talented youth ages 9 to 18 performing a combination of hip-hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, spoken word, rap and song. This group has chosen to take a stand around issues that have powerful impact on themselves, their communities and their world: Environmental destruction, unhealthy food and water, negative attitudes about their bodies, and violence of all kinds.

 

 

Talk: Robots and new media

Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley. 2594 Hearst, Berk. robotsandnewmedia.com. 9am-5pm, free. The Center for New Media at UC Berkeley will host this daylong symposium to explore “a new range of more social, personal, expressive, nurturing, and emotional robotic platforms and applications.” Featuring talks by philosopher Hubert Dreyfus of UC Berkeley, Mark Pauline of Survival Research Labs, UC Berkeley robotics professor Ken Goldberg and more.

 

SATURDAY 5

 

SF LGBT Center’s Annual Soiree

City View at Metreon, 135 4th St, SF. tinyurl.com/lgbtsoiree. 6:30-8pm VIP reception; party admission 8pm-midnight; $150 or $95 respectively. Come out in support of San Francisco’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Community Center, which offers free services like career counseling, job fairs, social activities, mentorships, youth meals, daycare and a space for LGBT people to organize and secure equal rights. With a hosted bar, gourmet morsels, silent auction, music, dancing and live entertainment it promises to be a fancy affair.

SUNDAY 6

Ending Solitary Confinement Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Bonita, Berk. www.bfuu.org. 2pm, $5-10 suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee will be speaking on Solitary Confinement in California prisons, and what we can do to work to abolish it or promote its more limited use. She will be joined by Marie Levin, sister of a prisoner who has organized and participated in prisoner hunger strikes in the past few years.

April Fools Day in San Francisco: Acrobats block Google bus

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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April Fools Day in San Francisco: Acrobats block Google bus

“Everyone say, GMuni!”

Activist “Judith Hart,” clad in corporate attire and donning thick glasses without lenses, called into a microphone as she stood on the sidewalk next to a stationary Google bus. She was there as part of a tech bus blockade staged near 24th and Valencia streets this morning (Tue/1), around 9am.

“GMuni!” The crowd chanted.

“GMuni!” Hart repeated.

“GMuni!!!” Came the enthusiastic response.

Some acrobats stood in the street nearby, blocking the bus with dance-like motions. Occasionally leaning on the front of the bus for support, they lifted yoga balls high into the air while the Google shuttle remained parked with passengers aboard, awaiting departure.

The April Fools Day bus blockade – staged by Heart of the City, a group that has blocked corporate tech shuttles several times now – was more absurdist street theatre than protest.

The prank was to hand out “GMuni” bus passes to anyone wishing to board the Google bus. Hart posed as a Google executive launching a new program to provide free transit to all. But when one of the activists tried to climb aboard, waving the pass issued by the activists, the bus driver blocked him from entering, saying it was a private bus and nobody had informed him of this new program.

Eventually, a police officer arrived and asked activists to move to the sidewalk. They complied, but when the bus drove off, it had some signs affixed to the front that activists had placed there.

The street theatre protest was meant to draw attention to today’s scheduled Board of Supervisors vote to determine whether to approve an appeal of a Metropolitan Transportation Agency pilot program to allow private shuttles to stop in Muni bus zones for a fee of $1 per stop.

The Board is scheduled to vote at 3pm this afternoon. To have your say, go to San Francisco City Hall.

Feel free to borrow these arguments in the Google Bus CEQA appeal

Sasha Cuttler
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Feel free to borrow these arguments in the Google Bus CEQA appeal

Speaking of gun-running, how about that Google Bus?*

The $1/stop SFMTA deal to allow Google Buses to use city bus stops is being appealed to the Board of Supervisors, to be heard on tomorrow [Tues/1]. The $1/stop deal replaced the “handshake agreement” where the tech buses could do whatever they wanted while the SFMTA gazed vacantly into space, which is its forte.

The appeal is a technical invocation of the California Environmental Quality Act, aka CEQA, aka Chief CEQA, aka CEQABACCA. (Full disclosure: I am a consultant for SEIU Local 1021, one of the appellants, on something unrelated to this.) The appeal argues that in Mayor Ed Lee’s heroic pre-emptive capitulation to the $1/stop deal (for the price of a third of a cup of single-origin estate-grown coffee on Valencia!), the Planning Department should have analyzed potential environmental impacts of the Google Buses, and considered alternatives and mitigations. The relevant authorities probably did not want to know the results of a review because data-driven analysis is not outside-the-box disruptive thinking that makes Frisco the World Capital of Innovation.**

Notably, nothing in the deliberations of the MTA or CEQA asked if there should be a bus program at all. Determining whether something is good or bad for the City is apparently beyond the scope of government. I don’t understand it, but I’m not a lawyer. The big criticism of the buses is less the environmental one than the displacement and gentrification they cause. Round peg, meet square hole.

Fortunately, there are legitimate CEQA questions. The full Board of Supervisors will hear the appeal, and for the duration of public comment will transmogrify from a legislative body into a quasi-judicial body to decide the environmental claims. And the supervisors are totally qualified to rule on particulate levels caused by idling buses. Expect them to seek a compromise with science about how many people will get cancer because of the buses.

Since the appeal legally has to link any objections to the buses to environmental impacts, I have some suggestions of new CEQA arguments. The Supervisors should consider significant cumulative unmitigated impacts such as:

  • Influx of toxic concentrations of assholes into affected neighborhoods.
  • Pollution from all the new tinted window factories required to supply the buses.
  • Soaring rates of testicular cancer related to all the Google Bus-related cases of the medical condition known as “Hot Laptop Nuts.”
  • Property destruction during riots in the streets after the last taqueria closes and is replaced by an adorable farm-to-table small plates restaurant.
  • Urban blight and decay in Sunnyvale as tech people abandon Silicon Valley entirely, causing Sunnyvale to lose its coveted title “All-America City.”

I also have two elegant project alternatives to $1/stop: The buses cause displacement on their routes because people riding them make a lot of money. Clearly, the solution is to cut their pay. We just need a maximum wage for tech people. Any income over the maximum would go directly to fund public goods like schools, transit, and healthcare. The program could be called “Wealthy San Francisco.”

Alternatively, the City could use the buses as a positive tool, and move bus routes to areas that need and could support more economic development, like the Outer Sunset, Visitacion Valley, and Stockton.

Finally, I have a pilot program of my own to propose, in which we “accidentally” swap a Google Bus with an Immigration & Customs Enforcement Deportation Bus, delivering undocumented migrants to take charge of Silicon Valley and programmers to Northern Mexico. They can hackathon some apps for the Zetas Cartel.

Gentrification solved. Consensus built. You’re welcome, San Francisco.

*“Google Bus” becoming the generic term for tech colonist commuter shuttles must be an epic migraine for the beleaguered lawyers in the Google Intellectual Property Legal Department. Talk about brand dilution.

**Admittedly, innovation involving a short list of things. Amazing innovation at inventing technology to enhance our capacity to spend money and/or waste time. Innovative ways to house the houseless or feed the hungry—not so much.

 

Nato Green is a San Francisco-based standup comedian. His podcast is called The Nato Sessions and he can be seen with The Business every Wednesday at the Dark Room Theatre.

Opposing sides rally troops for tech bus throw-down

Erica Hanna
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Opposing sides rally troops for tech bus throw-down

Tomorrow’s (Tue/1) San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting will feature a hearing on the environmental impact of commuter shuttles, including Google buses. In what promises to be a telling moment in a polarizing controversy that started in late 2013, supervisors will be forced to pick a side.

This past January, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) voted to approve a pilot program that would allow private shuttle operators, including a host of tech companies, to stop in designated Muni bus areas for a fee of $1 per stop, per day.

The narrative is by now well-worn, with the well-connected, deep-pocketed tech industry on one side and seasoned local activists concerned about gentrification and private use of public bus stops on the other. 

While tomorrow’s hearing comes amid a larger debate about the tech sector’s role in fueling displacement through rising housing prices, it will focus on whether or not to sanction an appeal of the pilot program under the California Environmental Quality Act. 

The proponents of the shuttles — Google, Genentech, Apple and others — maintain they take cars off the road. Many workers commuting to the South Bay, for instance, would drive were it not for the existence of the shuttles.

The CEQA appeal was filed by the SEIU 1021, the League of Pissed Off Voters, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. The groups contend that the private shuttle system is helping to push long-time residents out of the city. Studies show that in areas around the shuttle stops, rents fly high and displacement is rampant. 

A key argument in favor of conducting an environmental review is that those displaced workers then have to drive into SF to get to work from places like the East Bay, negating any environmental benefits. By calling for a CEQA study, appellants hope to city will study how shuttles are linked to displacement and its associated environmental impacts. 

Tomorrow, the Board must decide whether to allow the 18-month pilot program to move ahead, or to delay it until after an Environmental Impact Review has been completed.

In preparation for tomorrow’s hearing, both sides are drumming up support from their ranks.

SF.citi, an alliance of San Francisco tech companies, sent out an email blast (and web post) that reads like a call to arms: “Divisive shuttle opponents are now suing the City to challenge this pilot program before it has the chance to get off the ground. We need YOU to tell the Board of Supervisors in person that you want them reject this lawsuit and let the pilot program go forward.”

The activists’ call to action takes a similar tone, with liberal use of caps lock: “PLEASE JOIN US TO SUPPORT THE APPEAL AND TO TELL THE CITY TO HOLD BIG TECH ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ACTUAL IMPACT THEY HAVE ON OUR COMMUNITIES AND NEIGHBORHOODS! 

“We can not do this without a thorough review, which includes robust research and study of what the actual broad impact is. Without it, we can not be assured that tech is paying the fair price for their use of our streets and our transit infrastructure.”

To have your say, go to San Francisco City Hall tomorrow afternoon for the Board meeting. 

Poll says SF loves tech buses, doesn’t ask Spanish speakers

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Poll says SF loves tech buses, doesn’t ask Spanish speakers

San Franciscans love tech, they’re totally cool with the Google buses, and care more about job creation than the cost of living, according to a newly released poll of San Franciscans by the Bay Area Council.

But though the poll asked respondents these questions in English and Cantonese, the pollsters left out one pretty important group of people in this debate: Spanish speakers. Yes, a poll about tech buses and the tech industry, and tangentially gentrification — which is now hitting the Mission District hard — failed to ask Spanish speaking voters any questions in their native tongue.

“Considering the tech industry’s impact on the Mission district, that’s a little suspcious,” Cynthia Crews, of the League of Pissed Off Voters told us. That’s an understatement. The “Our Mission: No Eviction” protest last October turned out hundreds of Mission residents, many Latino, against the gentrification of the neighborhood (and the lax regulations of the Google buses). The first Google bus protest took place on 24th and Valencia, in the Mission district.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said it was especially important to include Spanish-speaking voters. “San Francisco is a very multicultural city,” he said. “Even if the [polling] results were the same,” by polling Spanish speakers, “it would be a truer picture.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced a pilot program to study the use of commuter shuttles, including tech buses (known commonly as Google buses), but also shuttles from hospitals and universities. The pilot program came to a halt when a coalition of advocates filed an appeal of the pilot program under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA. Those concerns will be heard at City Hall next Tuesday. The shuttles impacted Latino populations in the Mission particularly hard, leading advocates to say question why their voices were not heard in the poll.

Rufus Jeffris, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Council, who commissioned the poll, told us they just wanted answers on how to move the conversation around tech forward. “Clearly we’re in a time of economic growth, but we want to make sure we’re focused ont he right solutions,” he said.

And the number of Spanish-speaking likely voters was not significant enough to warrant the expense of including them in that conversation, Jeffris told us.

The poll said San Francisco voters’ opinions differed from news coverage of the shuttles: “Despite what it may look like from recent media coverage, a majority of voters have a positive opinion of the shuttle buses and support allowing buses to use Muni stops.”

Of course you’ll find a lot of voters in favor of the Google buses if you fail to interview a major voting bloc of the city that actually lives near them. Latinos make up 15 percent of the city’s population, according to 2012 US Census data. But Jeffris said that may not matter.

“The universe of likely voters does not always mirror [the population],” he said. “Not everyone in the city’s population votes.” Ruth Bernstein, a principal of EMC Research, the pollsters, said the Cantonese speakers usually comprise 9 percent of likely voters.

The poll found that “Tech workers are viewed unfavorably by only a minority.” Just 17 percent of respondents were unfavorable of the tech industry to some degree, while 70 percent were favorable in some fashion. 

pollshuttle

An excerpt from the poll saying most San Franciscans view Google buses favorably.

 But the methodology of the poll may have been flawed regardless of who they talked to. Bernstein told the Guardian that the questions were crafted in sessions between the EMC Research and the Bay Area Council.

“We did a draft,” she said, “and then worked with the Bay Area Council until they were satisfied with what we did.”

The Bay Area Council is a noted pro-business organization, casting a particular narrative behind the questions it asks. Notably, it didn’t ask about the shuttles’ direct ties to displacement in neighborhoods. It did, however, ask many questions about the Google buses, or “shuttles.”

“All I can tell you is what we saw,” Berstein told us, of her company’s methodology. “There are certainly people not happy about [the shuttles]. The voters aren’t opposed to them, but they want regulations.” 

SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly was more plain spoken about the business interests behind this poll. “Well it looks like Jim Wunderman seeking a paycheck!” Daly said, referring to the Bay Area Council’s CEO and President. “Get the nice folks at EMC to do a poll for you, probably costs you close to 20 grand. They’ll get a good day of press out of it tomorrow.”

But even if the poll turned out to be the same, or similar, if it included voices of Spanish speakers, Daly said it still wouldn’t get to the heart of the issue.

“Even if the public does like tech shuttles, it has no bearing on the CEQA hearing Tuesday to determine if the City followed categorical law on this ridiculous policy,” he said. “They claim [the shuttles have] no significant environmental impact. “When it comes to displacement, when it comes to air quality and cancer rates, clearly these things are having a huge impact on San Francisco’s environment.”

And though the corporate shuttles do take cars off the road, if those same shuttles displace low-income workers into the suburbs, those low-income workers will then have to drive into San Francisco for work.

The tech workers get to ditch their cars, and the low-income workers will be forced to drive. Sounds just about as equitable as this poll.

If you’d like to see the poll for yourself, we’ve embedded the slides showing the results below.

San Francisco Shuttle Survey by FitztheReporter

Youth immigration activists cross the border to protest deportations

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Youth immigration activists cross the border to protest deportations

Last November, the Guardian profiled Alex Aldana, a queer immigration activist who was born in Mexico but came to Pomona, California with his mother and sister on a visa at the age of 16.

Yesterday [Tue/18], Aldana joined a group of undocumented immigrants in a protest at the U.S. border crossing at Otay Mesa in San Diego.

Chanting together as a group, they marched over the border and presented themselves to U.S. Immigration and Customs and Border protection agents, whom they asked for asylum.

Among the immigrants who surrendered to immigration agents were women, children, and teens. Some are separated from their husbands, children, and families in the US and, like my own mother, wish to be reunited.

The youth protesters were brought to the U.S. earlier in childhood, but deported to Mexico after being taken into custody and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some would have qualified for the Dream Act, but were forced to leave the country before it was signed into law.

The protesters marched toward the turnstiles that separate Mexico and the U.S., chanting “Yes we can,” and “No human is illegal.”

A few feet from the gates, the group paused to listen to a final pep talk from Aldana.

The action was captured and recorded in real time on U-Stream. About 16 minutes into the video, he can be seen addressing the crowd, fist raised. “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” Aldana told the group. Then, in Spanish, he said, “Without papers [documents],” to which his fellow protesters responded, “without fear.”

They made their way to the turnstiles and one by one they walked through, straight into custody of U.S. border protection agents. As they crossed the border, they told a cameraperson where they hoped to go. They named cities, such as Phoenix and Tucson, and states, such as Alabama, Oregon, and North Carolina. But each one said, in English or Spanish, “we’re going home.”

It was part of a series of organized border crossings, organized by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, to highlight the experiences of young people who lived for years in the United States but were deported due to their immigration status.

In Aldana’s case, he traveled to Mexico voluntarily, due to a family emergency.

“After ten years in California, Alex traveled to Mexico three months ago to care for his ill grandmother,” notes an online petition addressed to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, circulated by the Dream Activist network in support of allowing Aldana to return.

The Gay-Straight Alliance network has also voiced support, saying LGBT deportees are in especially precarious situations because they are more likely to be targeted with violence.

“Over these past few months, [Aldana] has been shocked to discover how crime and corruption make life particularly difficult for the LGBTQ community in Mexico,” the Dream Activist petition notes. “In Guadalajara alone, 128 gay and lesbian people have been killed, and none were reported as hate crimes. Now he wants to return to La Quinta because his mother and siblings need him.”

Activist Yordy Cancino Mendez, who also participated in an organized border crossing, become a target of violence in Mexico due to his sexual orientation. “He has been followed from the metro to his house trying to be kidnapped. He fears daily for his life,” according to the petition written in his support.

Here’s a video of him speaking about what life has been like in Mexico, uploaded by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance.

As a teenager in the U.S., Aldana and his family faced severe domestic violence at home at the hands of their father, who harassed him for being gay and tried to stop him from going to school. For a time, he lived in shelters to escape that abusive situation.

Now Aldana wishes to return to the U.S., to continue his education and support his sister, who qualifies for the California Dream Act. As an activist, he’s widely admired as a “courageous and visionary leader in both the LGBT and immigrant rights communities,” said Jon Rodney of the California Immigrant Policy Center.

A birds’ eye view of the Otay Detention Facility, from Google maps.

Media representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment. Officials at the Otay Detention Facility, where Aldana was reportedly being held as of Tue/18, declined to comment.  

Bicycling and equity: Heed the call, expand the movement

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Bicycling and equity: Heed the call, expand the movement

STREET FIGHT In the face of increased gasoline prices and congestion, more public awareness of the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and driving, and interest in physical activity, bicycling has experienced a mini-boom throughout the US. Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Pittsburgh, Portland, Seattle, Washington, DC, and many smaller university cities, such as Boulder and Madison, have seen impressive increases in utilitarian bicycling.

In San Francisco, 3.5 to 6 percent of all trips are made by bicycle, amounting to roughly 150,000 bicycle trips in the city each day, a jump from around 1 percent of trips in the 1990s. The majority of these trips are for utilitarian purposes such as shopping and commuting, not recreation. Stand on Market and 10th streets on any weekday and you’ll see that bicycling has surged in San Francisco. In parts of Hayes Valley, the Mission, and Upper Market, over 10 percent of commuting is by bicycle. The city’s official goal — 9 percent of all citywide trips by 2018 and 20 percent in the next decade — is important for making San Francisco more livable.

But it’s also fundamental for making San Francisco more equitable. That’s right, equitable.

In many respects, bicycling is among the most equitable forms of urban transportation because it is affordable and accessible to almost everyone. Bicycling is far cheaper, safer, healthier, and cleaner than driving, and when considering global equity, far saner for a national climate policy. And for many low income workers, bicycling is also an affordable conveyance that enables not just physical mobility but also financial stability.

Indeed, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx points out that nationally, a third of all bike trips are made by adults making under $30,000 and that the bicycle can have a substantial role in reducing the overall cost of living for the working class. But unfortunately lower class, non-white cyclists are also more likely to be in fatal collisions.

Speaking at the annual National Bicycle Summit in Washington, DC, earlier this month, Foxx, an African American former mayor of Charlotte, N.C., said that the federal government needs to devote more attention to making bicycling part of everyday life for the working class. Emphasizing the need for safety and convenience, Foxx was especially enthused about cycletracks — bikeways that are fully separated from automobiles and offer space for women, children, and older Americans to safely navigate cities by bike.

Foxx’s address followed a day of equity-themed panels and plenaries attended by more than 700 people. The League of American Bicyclists, focused on lobbying Congress and the White House, announced a new equity agenda to reach out to women, people of color, and to focus on reinvigorating a more progressive and egalitarian tone for bicycle advocacy.

Social justice advocates and community organizers had a strong presence at the summit, which has historically reflected a whiter, upper-middle-class male constituency. One presenter discussed bicycling and women’s prison rehabilitation, sharing how women who suffered from abuse, drug addiction, and imprisonment found bicycle riding to be normalizing and helpful for personal growth and for managing depression and anxiety.

A panel session titled “Learning from Los Angeles” showed how advocacy for bicycling can also come from community-based organizations, not just bicycle groups. Social justice issues are fundamental to LA’s inner city bicycle movement; over a third of South Central Los Angeles households are car free, and community organizers there have made a clearer connection between economic inequity and environmental problems.

Advocates from New York City chimed in that it was time for a “minority bicycle coalition” to advocate for women, minorities, and immigrant bicycle delivery workers. They pointed out that New York’s new and much-vaunted bike infrastructure has mainly spread in more affluent, white parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, while Queens is overlooked. A speaker from the NAACP put obesity and public health at the center of the civil rights agenda and remarked on how the bike lifestyle should be brought to African American neighborhoods.

A discussion of emerging bike share systems asked how to expand to minority populations, and provided examples of how Boston subsidizes bike share membership for low income members. Boston also relaxes the charges for exceeding 30-minute rides and is figuring out ways to enable those without credit cards to participate.

Once a cynic about bike share, I experienced firsthand the benefits of a truly extensive, practical bike share system in Washington, DC (note to San Francisco — it was NOT covered in Wells Fargo or Google corporate logos). If bike share is extended to the Excelsior, Bayview, Balboa Park, Daly City, and SF State, it will work for the working class and students.

One of the most inspiring personas at the Bike Summit was Terry O’Neill, director of the National Organization for Women, who asked that bicycle advocates get beyond simply advocating for bikes. O’Neill prodded cyclists to ask: What do we need to do to make bicycling useful to women? And then she laid it out eloquently. Build affordable housing — lots of it — in areas where it is most needed, such as affluent Montgomery County, a suburb of DC, or in places like Hayes Valley and Silicon Valley. By creating the spatial proximity that makes cycling practical, women (and men) can incorporate cycling while balancing jobs, household chores, and children. This would do more to increase bicycling (and equity) than simply striping new bike lanes.

Her point is that for cycling to be logical for women, especially in complex metropolitan areas like DC or the Bay Area, well-planned and centrally located affordable housing is key. Perhaps it is time for the San Francisco Bike Coalition and Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, with their wealth of talent and donors, to create staff positions focusing on the bicycle-housing nexus and build strong partnerships with those who are fighting to build and preserve affordable housing in job- and amenity-rich areas.

Dovetailing from that, the newly elected mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, himself a convert to bicycling, urged bicycle advocates to be an active partner in local progressive political coalitions and to work with non-bike groups such as labor unions and housing advocates. Peduto was among a handful of prominent politicians, mostly mayors and members of Congress, espousing the wisdom of linking bicycling and equity as part of the urban agenda.

The overall message is clear. Cities need to move beyond the neoliberal creative class storyline about bicycling, which says that a successful city is one that has a youthful, fit, but affluent stratum for bicycles. We need to be careful about praising the bicycle as a profitable economic development strategy for Realtors who up the rent as part of a commodified package of livability.

Sure, it’s great to see a bike lane on mid-Market, and there should definitely be more. But a successful city is not one where developers and Realtors see bike lanes and gentrify the neighborhood. A successful city is one where working class women feel safe to bike, where teachers, construction workers, and nurses can use the bicycle for many local trips, where African Americans and Latinos feel included in the bicycling movement, and where service workers and immigrants can safely maneuver the city and region by bicycle without fear of being hit by a car or truck. And the true mark of success is when all of these people can afford to live in the city and travel by bicycle.

On the Rise

Steven T. Jones
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1
On the Rise

>> MEKLIT HADERO
>> CATHEDRALS
>> USELESS EATERS
>> ANNIE GIRL & THE FLIGHT
>> TONY MOLINA
>> NU DEKADES
>> ASTRONAUTS, ETC.
>> FRICTION QUARTET
>> MAJOR POWERS & THE LO-FI SYMPHONY
>> AVALON EMERSON
>> ROCKY RIVERA

Have you heard the news? Bohemia is dying. All the musicians are leaving San Francisco. Our favorite venues and dingy little clubs are all closing up shop, and being replaced by artisan cocktail bars filled with Google Glasses and reclaimed wood toilet seats.

OK, so some of that is true. The music scene is changing, to be sure; how could it not, with the influx of wealth over the past few years? Yes, we’re sad about Cafe du Nord. Yes, we’re worried about the Elbo Room.

What’s also true: We still have one of the richest musical histories anywhere in the world, and artists aren’t going to stop flocking here anytime soon. One glance at our listings section will tell you there’s live music to be found every single night of the week, and San Francisco’s small size relative to its population — a major factor in the current wave of gentrification and the state of the real estate market — also means that the vast array of genres here, and the communities that exist around different music scenes, all hum along pretty much on top of each other.

In one night, you could take in a jazz jam session in the Haight, a hardcore band in the outer Mission, an Irish folk quartet in North Beach, a synthwave producer in SoMa, a hip-hop show in the Western Addition, and, um, Macaulay Culkin’s pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band in the Richmond. (I’ve done all of these recently, and I only regret that last one.) That’s not even touching on the East Bay, which — despite being pronounced almost like an epithet in the city lately, as in “Everyone’s having to move to the East Bay” — is arguably fostering some of the most interesting, nascent micro-scenes in music right now.

With that in mind, we at the Guardian set out to pick 10 artists that we thought deserved our attention in the coming year. We couldn’t narrow it past 11. (Click that first photo up there for a slideshow.) This year’s On the Rise acts come from so many different worlds, have been inspired by so many different artists — Freddie Mercury, MC Lyte, and the 19th century composer Hector Berlioz all make appearances, to give you a taste — and, unsurprisingly, they all make incredibly different kinds of music. Some of these artists are Bay Area natives; some were born on other continents. What they have in common (aside from talent) is a love of this place, its people, its weirdness, and yes, its challenges.

We love them back. And we don’t plan on letting them go anywhere else anytime soon.

Housing round-up: LGBT tenants, a singing protest, and a very sad mural

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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108
Housing round-up: LGBT tenants, a singing protest, and a very sad mural

At today’s (Tue/11) Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. David Campos is introducing legislation to encourage large-scale developers to protect the housing rights of the LGBT community.

Same-sex couples nationwide are more likely to experience discrimination in their search for senior housing, a study by the Washington, D.C. based Equal Rights Center found.

To investigate, testers posed as gay or straight couples with otherwise nearly identical credentials, then submitted inquiries on senior housing in 10 different states. They discovered that in 96 out of 200 tests, those posing as lesbian, gay or bisexual residents experienced at least one type of adverse, differential treatment.

Meanwhile, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality, one in five transgender U.S. residents has been refused a home or apartment, and more than one in ten has been evicted, because of their gender identity.

Federal law does not expressly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. California law does, as do laws in 19 other states. Given these gaps in legal protection, real-estate providers can adopt their own policies to prohibit LGBT discrimination.

Campos’ proposal would require large-scale developers who wish to build in San Francisco to prove their commitment to equal housing opportunities.

“We want to know whether a developer hoping to build in San Francisco is protecting LGBT housing rights when they own or manage housing in states where legal protections don’t exist,” Campos explained. “By collecting this information, we can highlight best practices and urge those who do not have these policies to do the right thing.”

Under the legislation, developers would indicate whether they have national policies prohibiting LGBT discrimination. The Human Rights Commission would compile those policies and present it annually to the Board of Supervisors.

Elsewhere on the housing front, POOR Magazine founder Lisa Gray-Garcia (aka “Tiny”) led a group of anti-eviction activists into City Hall this morning, where they broke into song to call attention to the eviction of a family from a public-housing unit in the Fillmore neighborhood. They linked the eviction with a broader trend of African American out-migration from San Francisco, and sang spirituals.

Gray-Garcia reported that the group, which she estimates at roughly 30 people, encountered resistance from the Sheriff’s deputies who provide security in City Hall. “They said we were an unlawful assembly because we were singing,” she said. So the protesters proceeded upstairs, whispering, to stand outside Mayor Ed Lee’s office. Then they broke into song again, she said.

“We’re talking about a family about to be evicted tomorrow, that’s how serious this is,” Gray-Garcia told us. She said she’d spoken to someone from the mayor’s office, Carl Nicita, who “to his credit, he listened to us and he said ‘I’m going to tell the mayor.’” (We’re working on finding out more about the eviction and how the city will respond.) 

As a final housing-related tidbit, head over to the Mission to check out the new Clarion Alley “Wall of Shame” mural, featuring a list of what the artists perceive to be the root forces of gentrification (Both Google buses and corporate giveaways to tech companies made the list).

Inscribed on some tombstones near the bottom: “So long San Francisco, As We Knew It. (Historic Counter-Culture & All.)”

On the flip side, the artists also included a list of solutions.

Bryan Augustus contributed to this report.

Wired measures tech bus trips in a day

Erica Hanna
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34
Wired measures tech bus trips in a day

The vaunted Google Bus pilot program is now in legal limbo as local activists appeal the deal to regulate the shiny behomoths, on environmental grounds. As we wait and see what the next step will be, one technology journalist decided to figure out for himself what the SFMTA says the pilot program aims to do: track the number of tech buses running around San Francisco.

Well, to be fair, Kevin Poulsen, investigations editor at Wired magazine, only tracked the buses flying by his home. But the process doesn’t seem too tough to replicate.

As he writes in his Wired post: 

“Last week, it occurred to me that I might start monitoring the local Wi-Fi environment to determine how often the Apple Bus really comes by. My wife guessed 10 times a day. I’d have said 20.”

So essentially, he used the Apple bus’ Wi-Fi, provided for their employees, to track movements of the bus. He didn’t make any bets on it, but if he had, it seems his wife would’ve lost. 

“After a week of reverse-wardriving, it appears the Apple Bus passes my house an average of 36 times a day, and is uncannily punctual, especially in the a.m., when the first bus reliably pops up on my Wi-Fi radar between 6:23:33 and 6:23:56 every morning.

The second bus passes four or five minutes later, the third 25-minutes after that, another at 6:58, give or take a minute. By 10 a.m. as many as 15 more Apple buses have passed. After that they become infrequent, and die out entirely a few minutes after 2:00 p.m., before they return in force at 5:00 p.m. — presumably taking Apple workers home. The last bus registers at about 10:15 at night.”

macadresses

The wifi trail shows how many times particular tech buses drove by this Wired journalist’s house.

Why care about tracking them in the first place? It’s about the impact of livability in the surrounding area, an idea that so far hasn’t been factored in to the $1 per stop, per day argument made by Mayor Ed Lee and the city.  Poulsen writes:

These buses are huge, intimidating, Greyhound-sized affairs, many of them double-deckers, that feel outsized on a relatively quiet street of single-family homes. I haven’t stockpiled much umbrage over them, but some of my neighbors who’ve lived here longer hate the buses. There’s something disconcerting about having your street turn into a major artery in the transportation infrastructure of a company 45 miles away, without so much as a mailer (“Hi! We’re Apple. We’ll be using your street for a while.”).

When the outrage over the $1 per stop, per day number spiked recently, a Google spokesperson said in a release, “San Francisco residents are rightly frustrated that we don’t pay more to use city bus stops. So we’ll continue to work with The City on these fees, and in the meantime will fund Muni passes for low-income students for the next two years.”

Until the SFMTA figures out ways to mitigate the impact of these buses, let’s hope more tech-inclined people track their impacts on the city. You can see the original Wired story here. 

Three upcoming events on housing in San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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25
Three upcoming events on housing in San Francisco

There are a few upcoming opportunities to have your say in the ongoing dialogue about the San Francisco tenants’ struggle as long-term renters grapple with rising rents and the threat of displacement.

Amid the housing pressure, a thriving tenants’ rights movement has unfolded in the city to spur multiple legislative pushes for reform. These conversations (and the art exhibit to piece these issues together on a deeper level) are timely.

Wed/12: San Francisco Neighborhoods on the Brink: A Panel Discussion on Displacement, Gentrification, Rising Rents & the Loss of Affordable Housing

Hosted by San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, this panel discussion will feature comments by District 11 Sup. John Avalos, Public Policy Director of the Chinatown Community Development Center Gen Fujioka, and SFUSD teacher and Ellis Act target Sarah Brant.

An announcement description says the discussion will focus on the “dilemma facing long-time residents and renters of modest means — and the gutting and gentrification of San Francisco — as real estate speculation and a quickly widening income gap drive rents to dizzying heights while the rental supply dwindles.”

Details here.

“There’s a difference between a neighborhood changing—which is natural and organic—versus the destruction of a neighborhood, its history and legacy, which is what is happening right now in the Mission District.” —Alejandro Murguía

Wed/12: “Sólo Mujeres: HOME / inside out” – An interdisciplinary exhibit at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

Curated by Susana Aragón and Indira Urrutia, this exhibition features 24 women artists in exploring the symbolic space of home through a variety of mediums, including installation, painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, video and mixed media. Artists include Yolanda Lopez, Xuchi Eggleton, Ximena Sosa, Windsong, Susana Aragón, Sofía Elías, Tina Escaja, Tanya Marie Vlach, Rebeca García Gonzales, Solange Bonilla Leahy, Natalia Anciso, Melanie Lacy Kusters, Marta R, Zabaleta, Mariella Zevallos, Indira Urrutia, Gabriela Luz Sierra, Flor Khan, Fan Warren, Cristina Ibarra, Clara Cheeves, Carmen Lang, Camila Perez-Goddard, Anna Simson, Alejandra Rassvetaieff, Adriana Camarena.

From the announcement: “A home is a place that is close to our heart, it triggers self-reflection, thoughts about who someone is or used to be or who they might become. Each room or space is connected to memories, feelings, ideas, dreams, etc. As part of the exhibit, the gallery will be transformed into a house which rooms will be delimited by see through fabric to show the fragility of housing in The San Francisco’s Mission District.

It opens at 7pm with a live performance by María José Montijo and Diana Gameros. Details here.

Wed/19: Affordable housing from multiple perspectives

The Noe Valley Democratic Club is hosting what it calls “a distinguished and authoritative panel of experts” who will speak about affordable housing in the Bay Area. What’s interesting about this event is that it will bring together folks who are leading a citywide push at the grassroots level to strengthen tenants’ rights, as well as people from more developer-friendly entities such as SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and   Research Association) and the San Francisco Housing Action Committee.

The panelists will include:

Sarah Karlinsky, (panel moderator), Deputy Director of SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and   Research Association)

Douglas Shoemaker, President of Mercy Housing California, a non-profit dedicated to affordable      housing development, fundraising and services.

Teresa Yanga, Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing

Tim Colen , Executive Director of San Francisco Housing Action Committee

Fernando Martí, Co-Director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO)

Sara Shortt, Executive Director of the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee 

Details here.

One final tidbit, tangentially related at best. Salon has a great article, Gentrifying the dharma” How the 1 percent is hijacking mindfulness, which thoughtfully examines a trend that has led Buddhists to fear that “their religion is turning into a designer drug for the elite.”

(A few weeks ago activists with Eviction Free San Francisco disrupted a Google panel about mindfulness, triggering a decidedly unenlightened onstage tug-of-war over a banner.)

Best quote is from the Dalai Lama, who sees things this way: “Capitalism only takes the money. Then, exploitation.”

Hacker pranks San Francisco FBI using Google Maps exploit

Erica Hanna
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11
Hacker pranks San Francisco FBI using Google Maps exploit

An ex-Marine turned hacker used his powers for good last week, exploiting a flaw in Google Maps to tap into phone calls from the FBI’s San Francisco field office and the Secret Service. 

The news of hacker Bryan Seely’s exploit was broken by local Seattle broadcast news with a more detailed follow up by tech blog Valleywag, which obtained phone calls to the FBI recorded by Seely. The exploit allowed the former Microsoft employee to modify the phone numbers for businesses listed on Google Maps. He changed the listed phone numbers to fake ones, which would intercept and record the call before being rerouted to the FBI, allowing him to record everything said between the two parties.

 

Seely told Valleywag:

Who is gonna think twice about what Google publishes on their maps? Everyone trusts Google implicitly and it’s completely unwarranted and it’s completely unsafe. I could make a duplicate of the White House and take every inbound phone call from the White House. I could do it for every Senator, every Congressman, every mayor, every governor—every Democratic, every Republican candidate. Every office.

Seely tried time and again to warn Google, he told Valleywag, but when they didn’t listen he decided to show them just how vulnerable this system was. 

Seely’s recording of an FBI phone call posted on SoundCloud airs the automated message system the San Francisco FBI plays. Afterwards, we’re able to listen in to the caller’s every word.

“Yes ma’am, I need to ask a question about an email I received, it’s concerning that y’all, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, claim I won a lottery through my email through another country,” the caller says to the FBI. He’s asking about a common Internet scam, phishing, and the second call Seely recorded from the Secret Service was just as innocent. 

Listen to the FBI call Seely recorded in the player above.

But not every call to the Secret Service or FBI is so innocuous. After the Secret Service took Seely into custody for his actions, they apparently called him a “hero.” 

The San Francisco FBI bureau’s spokesperson, Peter Lee, told the Guardian that he wasn’t aware of the scam, and could neither confirm or deny it. Sounds like super secret spy stuff to us. We directed him to the link, but he couldn’t confirm or deny that we sent him the link, either.

The national FBI spokesperson wasn’t aware of the issue, or at least, said she wasn’t. But the response from Google seems to be more telling — it contacted Seely to find a way around the exploits. But he didn’t appreciate their “attitude,” he told Valleywag.

In the meantime, Google’s map vulnerabilities apparently are lures for “entrepreneurs” who redirect calls from one small businesses to another, garnering millions in profits for the digital scammers in what amount to extortion fees, a tech consultant told Valleywag. 

While Google works on a fix, if you have to call the San Francisco bureau of the FBI, try looking up the number using the Yellow Pages. 

Read more at Valleywag, here. 

Google Glass Explorer opens up on bar fight, privacy

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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47
Google Glass Explorer opens up on bar fight, privacy

Last week, I interviewed a Google Glass “Explorer” for an article about Glass and privacy. It wasn’t Sarah Slocum.

“Explorer” is a Google term for people enrolled in a program to beta-test Glass, a wearable computer that can surf the Internet, livestream, geo-locate, and record through a computerized prism affixed to a set of eyeglasses.

There are at least 10,000 Explorers currently giving the $1,500 prototypes a test run, and more than 27,000 participating in a Google+ community about it. The Silicon Valley tech giant views its Explorers as inhabiting a “living laboratory,” and is actively seeking feedback on the gadgets’ use and functionality.

The Explorer I spoke with is Matt Hunt, and his recent removal from Oakland bar Telegraph for wearing Glass is chronicled in detail in this Medium story by journalist Susie Cagle. The writer discloses that her partner, Billy Agan, told Hunt to remove the Glass before he was kicked out.

Not yet available for retail, Glass has proven to be a lightning rod – particularly in bars, where people are more apt to feel that it is invasive. Some bar owners are concluding that the best approach is to ban Glass altogether, to avoid headaches. 

Unlike most new technology, this particular device has quickly come to be associated with class tension in the Bay Area, a region that is being radically altered by an economic shift fueled by an influx of tech workers. Glass has also caused people to fear surreptitious surveillance in an era when new revelations about secretive government spying programs are surfacing with every passing week. 

There are conflicting accounts of what unfolded when Hunt was booted from Telegraph after his confrontation with Agan. Hunt says he refused to remove the Glass because he didn’t think Agan had the authority to tell him to stop wearing it; bar owner John Mardikian says Hunt responded by defaming the bar on social media, which Hunt refutes (Hunt had previously been helping Mardikian with social media and IT work). Agan wasn’t available for comment. All told, the conflict appears to have produced two major outcomes: hurt feelings all around, and a ban on Glass at Telegraph.

“I don’t want it here, because it’s anti-community,” said Mardikian, who imposed the ban. “I want people to feel comfortable when they are here.”

Other bars have proactively banned glass too.

Conflict aside, Hunt did share a perspective on wearing Glass that might interest anyone who has wondered about it – whether from a standpoint of curiosity or suspicion. Because while some people are viscerally repelled by the gadget and may assume that it is recording (it might be, but you can tell by checking to see if the user’s eye is lit up), there’s also a low level of understanding about what the thing actually does.

Hunt told us he was excited about Glass before it came out, and saved up the $1,500 required to get it. “I’ve always been a techie,” he said. “I’m always about smart everything.” 

To wear Glass is to be an attention a magnet, he said. “There are some people who approach me about it who are very calm, and they are curious, and they ask me about it.”

But as evidenced by the drama that unfolded at Telegraph, wearing Glass can stir up trouble when people feel that their personal boundaries are being violated. “Something I hear all the time is, there’s a camera on your face, and therefore it’s in my face.” But he said that since he rarely ever uses the camera, that fear is unfounded – at least as it pertains to people who are encountering him wearing Glass.

Constant recording and even live streaming through Glass is technically possible. It’s also problematic with the current model, due to battery drain.

“If you were out and about, it would have to be tethered to your phone’s Internet connection,” he explained. “It uses a lot of data.” When content is captured through Glass, it is automatically backed up to the cloud, meaning it’s copied onto a server somewhere. That means people who are photographed can’t control what happens to their image, but it doesn’t mean it will be viewed publically or by anyone at all.

So, if he’s not constantly recording, what is Hunt doing when he’s looking at that little computerized prism?

As with a smartphone, he’ll read the news, and check email. There are other functions. “You can have things translated,” he said, like a menu or sign in a foreign language. “Based on your location, it will tell you what’s around you,” such as attractions. But a lot of times it just sits on his face, not doing anything in particular. “Just because you’re wearing it, doesn’t mean you’re using it.”

People who wear Glass can also take advantage of some bizarre “Glassware” apps, like this one, which can feed users hints on people they are encountering in real time.

Taking a picture with Glass involves either tapping the side of the device, or speaking “take a picture” out loud, Hunt explained. There is also an optional feature of winking to take a snapshot.

That may sound like a smooth spy maneuver, but Hunt said it’s actually rather awkward. “I don’t like it,” he said, “because you have to wink like ten times to make it work. It’s very dramatic winking.” Wearing a computer on your face and winking dramatically? Talk about socially awkward.

As for the privacy issue, Hunt said he thought bar owners had a right to ban Glass but believed it was short-sighted, because he thinks Glass will catch on. “Wearable technology is the technology of the future,” he told us with confidence. “What will you do when everyone is wearing it?”

And ironically given what happened at Telegraph, Hunt insisted during our phone interview that Glass users should not wear the device in places where it causes others to feel uncomfortable.

“I want privacy as much as you do,” he said. “And I feel terrible sometimes that people think the NSA is watching them through my eyes.”

Bar none

Michael Redmond
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2
Bar none

SUPER EGO So a toothy blonde pretend social media exec, a blindingly sequined Latina drag queen, a huge rack of elk antlers with hot-pink panties on them, and a pair of Google Glasses walk into a “punk bar” …

What the holy highballs is happening on our bar scene lately? Rowdy Mission hangout Pop’s Bar closed over the weekend. (Who got all those panties, I wonder?) Last week, 40-year-old Mission gay hangout Esta Noche announced it was shutting down (new owners and a hetero-craft cocktail concept). And then there was that oddball Google Glass kerfuffle at Molotov’s, wherein a social media starlet claims she was the victim of a tech hate crime when the patrons allegedly got in her privacy-violating face.

The Esta Noche situation hits close to my floppy liver’s home most, though. With the recent closures of Marlena’s, Deco, and Ginger’s Trois (and the Transfer, Mister Leeona’s, and practically every gay watering hole on Polk Street shuttering in the past decade), there are hardly any queer bars outside the Castro and SoMa left. Lady, can you pour a fierce cosmo out those Google Glasses of yours? Until then, I won’t have what she’s having. I need my queer space to get sozzled!

 

JAY TRIPWIRE

There are DJs to love, and then there are DJs to love. Fiercely intelligent yet laidback, shaggy in that classic rave-dude way, Vancouverite Jay Tripwire has been honing his deep, deep techno sound for more than two decades and 200 releases. Like every great DJ wizard, he transforms the records on his tables into other beasts entirely. You just hear differently after his masterly sets. At the Housepitality weekly, he’ll get a warm reception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n7ahLdh8yM

Wed/5, 9pm, free before 11 with RSVP at www.housepitalitysf.com/rsvp, $10 after. F8, 1192 Folsom, SF.

 

BAREM

The splendid Direct to Earth and Public Works crews bring in Buenos Aires- and Berlin-based Mauricio Barembuem, aka Barem of Minus Records, for some good old fashioned Germano-Latin post-minimal techno swing. Bring a couple pairs of (cute) shoes, because he’ll wear your kitten heels right out.

Fri/7, 9pm-4am, $13–$20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

HOUND SCALES

It’s a great weekend for hard-driving and esoteric techno in the Bay. It’s even getting into our more melodic parties, like the monthly Play It Cool, which is showcasing wiggy Brooklyn-based, SF-native “junta rave” purveyor Hound Scales of the Fifth Wall label. The speaker bins, they will explode I think. Jolly good show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEr-zgTrh7Y

Fri/7, 10pm-3am, $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

DRINK

Hey, $35 all you can drink from dozens of local spirits concocters, brew houses, and wineries? Plus: cosmic tunes from Cosmic Amanda (she’s cosmic), tarot readings by the zebra-leotarded Dr. Zebrowski, and one last time to party in the glorious Old Mint building before it gets renovated into the SF History Museum? Why am I still asking questions? Our sister-paper SF Weekly’s Drink event is sloshy, superb.

Sat/8, 2pm-5pm, $35 advance. Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF. drink2014.strangertickets.com

 

FOUR TET

Please immediately check out the fantastic new Neneh Cherry album, produced by this wide-eared, super-innovative UK genius, who can jet from bright, ecstatic jazziness to haunting bass apocalypse in the blink of a strobe. A trippy treat in store, indeed.

Sat/8, 9pm, $30. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

POUND PUPPY

Go-go boys are probably my least favorite things at clubs. (We were mercifully mostly free of them until a few years ago: They were “an LA thing” then. Sock’s on the other cock now!). But apparently, once a month, if they are dressed up like leather-fetish puppies, dancing to cutting-edge tunes in cages at the gay biker bar, and being petted by the sexiest characters of the SF queer underground, I’m totally down. I still refuse to say “woof,” though. With DJs Taco Tuesday and Chip Mint, hosted by Blake and Jorge.

Sat/8, 9pm, $7. SF Eagle, 398 12th St, SF. www.sf-eagle.com

 

VOICES FROM THE LAKE

Hyper-atmospheric ambient techno delight from this duo, composed of acclaimed Italian players Donato Dozzy and Neel. Don’t worry, you’ll still end up dancing. With Jason Kendig, Christina Chartfield, Carlos Souffront, and MossMoss at the As You Like It party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooxO0VaZt9M

Sat/8, 9pm-4am, $20–$25. Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF. www.monarchsf.com

 

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