History

I hope Greg Mankiw stops working

Zelda Bronstein
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I hope Greg Mankiw stops working

The eminent and distinguished N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard and former White House aide (under GW Bush) presented one of the most convoluted and misleading antitax arguments in the history of the dismal science Oct. 10. His New York Times piece argues that the effective tax rate on his marginal income is 90 percent, and because of that, if the Bush tax cuts on the rich expire, he isn’t likely to write any more articles.


That’s yet another wonderful reason to raise his taxes. The less of this crap the world has to deal with the better.


Kevin Drum has a nice takedown in Mojo, but the biggest problem with Mankiw isn’t that he compounds his tax liability over 30 years to make things look worse. It’s that he starts his article with the assumption that he should pay zero taxes — and so should corporations — and there should be no estate tax (which it’s highly unlikely Mankiw will have to pay anyway).


Yes: The difference between paying zero taxes and paying 39.5 percent is significant. The money the profressor would earn 30 years from now on a $1,000 investment if there were no corporate taxes would indeed be higher. But there would also be no streets for him to drive on, no police and fire departments to protect his house, no unemployment benefits to keep the people who aren’t as fortunate as him from breaking down his door to get food for their kids, no social security, no medical care for indigent sick people, no federal funding for the scientific research he and his colleagues do at Harvard … in other words, not much of a country. I don’t think even Mankiw wants to live there.


So what’s the difference in his life if his taxes go up — as proposed — from 35 percent to 39.6 percent? Well, on the $1,000 article, he’d pay an extra $46 in taxes. Big fucking whoop. He probably spends more than that on lunch at the Harvard Club. Even if he invested that $46 for 30 years — AND there were no corporate taxes, AND he got 8 percent a year in the stock market (which remained stable despite the massive social upheaval caused by a society with inadequate tax revenue to provide basic public services), we’re talking $462.88. That’s less than he’d get by putting $4 a year — yes, four dollars a year — into the same account.


In other words, he’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to decide not to write a $1,000 article entirely on the basis of a modest increase in taxes on someone with his level of income.


On the other hand, he clearly is pretty fucking stupid. Or else he’s smart and he’s intentionally skewing the facts to protect his own economic interest. Either way, the world will be a better place if he doesn’t write any more articles.  So let’s raise his taxes.

Appetite: 3 recent food books pique our palates

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 3 recent food books pique our palates

These three books (one factual journey, one memoir, one cookbook) have two things in common: they’re all new this year and centered around food.

TWAIN’S FEAST by Andrew Beahrs — Andrew Beahrs, an East Bay local, displays his affection for the great Mark Twain in this thoroughly researched book. Twain’s Feast explores the history of foods Twain waxed eloquent about that are either gone entirely or slowly making their way back into the American landscape.  Experiencing food and coffee in his European travels “as tasteless as paper”, Twain found American cooking of his time “generous”, “genuine”, “real”. Of course, the prairie hens he grew up with, fresh possum and raccoon, New Orleans’ sheep-head and croakers, and the “heaven on the half shell” of San Francisco’s own oysters and mussels, are largely extinct or rare nowadays.

The book is, yes, a poignant ode to the pre-mass-produced, homogenized, dangerously grown American “food” we now know. It’s also a hopeful challenge to the reader, worded gently in the epilogue: “… choices about what we eat help to determine which American landscapes survive and thrive.”

There are many worthy stories here, both for the Twain aficionado and food historian. What I came away with, besides a reminder to support the craftswomen and men making food and growing animals with care (which we’re heavily blessed with in the Bay Area), was Twain’s insataible passion for robust flavor, a hunger to drink life to the dregs. I relate to the way he eats… and heartily writes about it.

As Beahrs says, “… Twain’s love for a dish was inseparable from his love of life.” Amen.

HUNGRY TOWN by Tom Fitzmorris — Make no bones about it, I have a mad love affair with New Orleans, a city you hear me go on about often enough. Naturally, I ate up (no pun intended) Tom Fitzmorris‘ new Hungry Town, a leading Nola restaurant reviewer both in print and on the radio for decades.

He knows the city’s food scene intimately: its history, key players, essential recipes (included in the book), and the post-Katrina struggle that has brought the culinary magic of the ultimate Southern city back to even greater heights (and more restaurants) than before the storm. His post-Katrina assessments are honest insights into just how torn apart families and businesses were, including his own. But he unabashedly claims: “Food Saves New Orleans”.

I value his commitment to Creole and Cajun as the “default” styles of cooking in New Orleans, essential to the city’s future. He states: “The genius of New Orleans cooking is not that we cook better than anyone else. It’s that nobody in the world cooks our local specialties – except when they consciously imitate us (usually badly, I’ve found). The day that our food fails to be flagrantly distinctive… is the day we become Anywhere, USA. That’s also the day I’m leaving town.”

THE SUNSET COOKBOOK — Cooks take note: 10/19 is the release date of the massive, 1000+ recipe tome that is the latest edition of the Sunset Cookbook. It’s a fine one. Not only are the clean, bright photos dangerous to peruse on an empty stomach, but the book manages to be both approachable and widely comprehensive, with sections on every aspect of a meal you can think of from bread to cocktails to preserves and pickles.

Sunset magazine‘s food editor, Margo True, is also the book’s editor and she maintains a cohesive standard of ‘farmers-market-fresh’ ingredients with regional Western foods. Yes, Sunset magazine is based in the Bay Area, so California ethos displays prominently with international influences married to a rich range of produce. But the styles of cooking cover the world, showcasing food of the West as what it truly is: global.

Many recipes tempt me here, including this snack and shake:

Avocado Fries
SERVES 6 | TIME 30 minutes

Canola oil for frying
1⁄4 cup flour
1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 eggs, beaten to blend
11⁄4 cups panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs)
2 firm-ripe medium Hass avocados, pitted, peeled, sliced into 1⁄2-in. wedges

1. Preheat oven to 200°. In a medium saucepan, heat 11⁄2 in. oil until it registers 375° on a deep-fry thermometer.

2. Meanwhile, mix flour with salt in a shallow plate. Put eggs and panko in separate shallow plates. Dip avocado wedges in flour, shaking off excess. Dip in egg, then panko to coat. Set on two plates in a single layer.

3. Fry a quarter of the avocado wedges at a time until deep golden, 30 to 60 seconds. Transfer wedges to a plate lined with paper towels. Keep warm in oven while cooking remainder. Sprinkle with salt to taste.

California Date Shake
One of the great foods of the Sunshine State, the date shake is exactly what you want to be slurping while visiting baking-hot date country near Palm Springs. Our favorite shake is the one at Shields Date Gardens, in Indio. Shields uses its own date “crystals”—dehydrated Deglet Noor and Blonde dates (the latter is one of its signature varieties). You can order these online or substitute fresh, as we’ve done here. This shake is sensational with a shot of rum stirred in.

Makes 1 shake (11⁄3 cups) | TIME 10 minutes

4 pitted Medjool dates (about 3 oz.), coarsely chopped
1⁄4 cup very cold milk
11⁄4 cups high-quality vanilla ice cream

In a blender, blend dates and milk until smooth and super-frothy. Add ice cream and pulse a few times, until just blended.

— Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

A trio of great Hispanic leaders

David Talbot
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Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, an excellent time to remember three of the most important Hispanic labor leaders in U.S. history. All three were engaged in the much needed and very tough job of organizing and improving the generally poor conditions of the nation’s largely Latino farm labor force.

Cesar Chavez, of course, is one of the farm worker leaders we should particularly honor. Another is Dolores Huerta, who joined Chavez in founding the United Farm Workers union – and who, in fact, is still organizing and otherwise helping Latino workers, particularly women.

The third leader who’s especially deserving of honor is the lesser known but no less important t pioneer farm labor organizer, Ernesto Galarza. Despite his important work, Galarza has been largely forgotten – though certainly not by me.  He’s been dead now for a quarter-century, but I recall him well from my days as a reporter covering farm labor:

His shining, black hair and fierce, penetrating gaze. His angry, intense words and slashing speeches against those who resisted demands for reform. His scholarly writing and novels and poetry – and his teaching.

Galarza was one of the loudest and most unusual of the voices that have been raised for the farm worker. He had a Ph. D., wrote a half-dozen books and numerous pamphlets and articles , and taught at all levels, from elementary school to university.

Yet Galarza was also an active union organizer – a key leader in laying the groundwork for the farm labor movement led by Cesar Chavez.

Galarza came to California’s fields in 1948, as an officer of the American Federation of Labor’s now long gone National Farm Labor Union. He had grown up in California, and had worked on farms as a teenager.

But Galarza had left that behind to head off to college on a scholarship and, eventually, to Columbia University for a doctorate in Latin American affairs.

After that, Galarza worked for the Pan American Union in Washington – until, characteristically, he became enraged over what he felt was the organization’s overlooking the exploitation of Latin American workers by US business interests. He resigned to take the job with the National Farm Labor Union.

Galarza led several strikes, but he was completely thwarted by the federal Bracero program that allowed growers to import penniless, undemanding Mexican workers to replace US workers who dared to strike or otherwise seek better treatment. So Galarza shifted his efforts into trying to abolish the Bracero program.

For more than a dozen years he fought a frustrating and often lonely battle. He spoke out endlessly before legislative committees and elsewhere, He issued hundreds of reports documenting the abuses of U.S. and Mexican workers under the Bracero program,. But the program remained untouched, and by 1960, Galarza’s union was gone. Near exhaustion, he turned mainly to writing and teaching.

But finally, in 1964, the public pressure that Galarza had a key role in generating led Congress to kill the Bracero program. It’s no coincidence that year, 1964, was the same year in which Cesar Chavez began his organizing drive. For Galarza was correct: The existence of the Bracero program had made farm labor organizing impossible.

By the time of Galarza’s death at 78 in 1984, the Chavez-led United Farm Workers had become an effective, nationally supported union.

The farm labor system still relies heavily on desperately poor immigrant workers, But thanks to the farm workers union that Ernesto Galarza helped bring about, many workers have had the chance to seek – and many have won – the right to the decent lives that Ernesto Galarza spent so much of his life seeking for them.

I was fortunate enough to also get to know Cesar Chavez.  I first met him when I was covering labor for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was on a hot summer night 45 years ago in the little farm town of Delano in southern California.

“Si se puede . . . It can be done . . . Si se puede.” He said it repeatedly as we talked deep into the early morning hours.

Si se puede . . . But I would not be persuaded. Too many others, over too many years, had tried and had failed to win for farm workers the union rights they had to have if they were to escape their severe economic and social deprivation. The Industrial Workers of the World who stormed across western fields early in the 20th century, had first tried organizing farm workers – and failed. Failing, too, were Communist organizers, socialists, and AFL and CIO organizers.

I was certain Chavez’ effort would be no different from theirs. Boy, was I wrong.  I had not accounted for the tactical brilliance, creativity, courage and just plain stubbornness of Cesar Chavez.

He understood that farm workers had to organize themselves, not depend on outsiders to do it. Chavez led the workers in creating a union of their own, which then sought out – and won – widespread support  from influential outsiders through boycotts and other tactics of non-violence patterned after those of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Chavez proved beyond doubt that the poor and oppressed can prevail against even the most powerful of opponents – if they can effectively organize themselves and adopt non-violence as their principal tactics. As Chavez explained, “We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.”

The results of the Chavez-led organizing drives were impressive – the first farm union contracts in U.S. history, and the California law, also a first, that requires growers to bargain collectively with workers who vote for unionization.

Chavez worked closely with Dolores Huerta in creating and leading the United Farm Workers union. Huerta was, for instance, one of the principal leaders of the worldwide grape boycott that forced growers to agree to those first farm labor contracts  – which Huerta negotiated despite her lack of experience in contract bargaining.

Huerta’s work with the UFW was just a part of her lifelong and extraordinarily successful and courageous fight for economic and social justice that she waged while also raising 11 children.

Huerta’s traveled the country, speaking out and joining demonstrations for a wide variety of causes and successfully lobbying legislators for important gains for Hispanic immigrants and others.

Huerta started out as an elementary school teacher in northern California in 1955, but soon tired of seeing the children of farm workers regularly come to school hungry. That, and her anger over the injustices suffered by the local farm workers, led Huerta to quit teaching and join the Community Services Organization – the CSO – an organization founded by community organizer Saul Alinsky, with Chavez eventually serving as its General Director.

The CSO helped local Chicanos wage voter registration drives and take other actions to win a strong political and economic voice. But when the CSO’s other directors refused to agree to a union organizing drive among local farm workers, Chavez and Huerta quit to organize on their own. Like so many others, the CSO directors said it couldn’t be done. Thankfully, they were wrong and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were right.

But being right is just the first step, essential as it is. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of poorly treated farm workers badly need to be organized, badly need the decent treatment that unionization can bring them, as it did to many others that the extraordinary efforts of Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Ernesto Galarza helped bring to many others.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Civil Sidewalks, Lewis Lapham, and the struggle for the soul of cities

Sasha Cuttler
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Civil Sidewalks, Lewis Lapham, and the struggle for the soul of cities

Cities often get vilified as the cauldrons of all that’s wrong in the world – greed, vice, pollution, and all manner of social ills – but they are also the incubators of ideas that are humankind’s last best shot at solving the social and environmental problems that threaten our long-term stability and prosperity. So ruminating on the indispensable role of cities, as Lapham’s Quarterly does with its fall issue, is more than just an academic exercise or interesting read.

“The Census Bureau counts 232,581,397 Americans, 82.6 percent of the population, living in the nation’s cities, but if our moralists and intelligence services are to be believed, they do so at no small risk to the safety of their persons and the security of their souls,” editor Lewis Lapham, who ran the venerable Harper’s Magazine before stepping down to start LQ, writes in the opening essay of an issue entitled simply “The City.”

Lapham goes on to note the contradiction of how rural areas and suburbs get celebrated as somehow housing the more noble values of the common folk, raising the questions, “If the city is the sewer of vice and a slough of despond, why do so many people choose to live there? On what toxic landfill does the city stand as the embodiment of its ennobling cognate, civilization?”

In an interview with the Bay Guardian, Lapham puts the increasingly important role of cities even more succinctly: “The future is urban.” As the population grows and natural resources become more scarce – and as sea levels rise – the population of cities will swell and the imperative of solving our long neglected problems will grow. And where else but the cities will new ideas find their laboratories?

But in San Francisco and other big cities, many still struggle with what it means to be a city, with all the tolerance for messy urban realities that entails. Witness Prop. L on SF’s fall ballot, which actually seeks to outlaw the simple act of sitting on a sidewalk, or as its proponents call it (in an ironic testament to their desire for order above all things), the Civil Sidewalks Law.

Lapham told me this fear of the great unwashed masses (“The rich are afraid of the poor”), an emotion that has fueled the growth of the suburbs and the massive waste of resources that entailed, has hindered the ability and willingness of city leaders to advocate for common values and define the lead role that cities should be playing in this troubled country.

“We don’t have an idea of the city as a great, good place, and we have to start with that,” Lapham told us. “We have to decide what is a city, what work does it do, what is the value, and how do we promote that value.”

This issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is a good place to start that debate. As always, the journal includes the writings of great thinkers throughout time, from Thucydides writing about Athens in 430 BC to Frederick Kaufman writing about New York City in 2008. Celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs does a great job of capturing the allure of cities – that special something that seems to escape the fearful promoters of Civil Sidewalks – in an essay she wrote about NYC in 1961.

“Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and having passed a judgment, the gist of which is, ‘This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn’t be on the street!’ This judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home,” she writes. “The point of both the testimonial banquet and the social life of city sidewalks is precisely that they are public. They bring people together who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion – and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion. Nobody can keep an open house in a great city. Nobody wants to. And yet if interesting, useful, and significant contacts among people are confined to acquaintances suitable for private life, the city becomes stultified.”

Indeed, that was the observation that journalist H.L Mencken wrote about many East Coast as he penned an essay in 1920 celebrating San Francisco as “an American city that somehow managed to hold itself above pollution by the national philistinism and craze for standardization, the appalling progress of 100 percent Americanism, the sordid and pathetic dream of unimaginative, timorous, and inferior men.”

Mencken says he can’t quite put a finger on what makes San Francisco so special, touching on our international influences and the fortitude developed by braving fog, steep hills, and messy urban realities, which he says have given us a unique appreciation for life. “The San Franciscans have learned how to bear it. They are stupendously alive while they are in motion, but they knock off betimes. The town is rich in loafing places: restaurants, theaters, parks. No one seems to work very hard. The desperate, consuming industry of the East is quite unknown. One could not imagine a sweatshop in the town. Puffs of Oriental air come with the fog. There is nothing European about the way life is lived; the color is all Asiatic.”

A decidedly different portrait of San Francisco comes in the journal’s only other entry on this city, written in 1849 by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who helped establish an important military base in a city that had only recently changed its name from Yerba Buena and which was about the explode with the discovery of gold in the Sierras.

“All the town lay along Montgomery Street, from Sacramento to Jackson, and about the plaza. Gambling was the chief occupation of the people. While they were waiting for the cessation of the rainy season, and the beginning of spring, all sorts of house were being put up, but of the most flimsy kind, and all were stores, restaurants, or gambling saloons,” wrote the military man, who didn’t much care for the city.

Yet for those who appreciate the role of cities as generators of culture and incubators of ideas, there’s no question that our future is urban, although even Lapham has his doubts that the great solutions will come from the cities, preferring to see the Internet and its virtual communities as usurping from cities the role of intellectual hubs.

“The intellectual engine of the Bay Area is centered in the Silicon Valley world rather than on Montgomery Street in San Francisco,” he told us, noting how little the financial firms that dominate downtown San Francisco or Wall Street in his home city of New York have to do with addressing the real problems the world faces.

He’s right, of course, but that’s also why the struggles for the soul of cities are so important and consequential, and why the the Bay Guardian has spilled so much ink fighting downtown over our 44-year history. Because to give in to the bankers and Civil Sidewalks crowd is to give up on the city.

It’s not a new struggle, as Friedrich Engels wrote about London in 1844: “Everywhere one finds on the one hand the most barbarous indifference and selfish egotism and on the other the most distressing scenes of misery and poverty. Signs of social conflict are to be found everywhere. Everyone turns his house into a fortress to defend himself – under the protection of the law – form the depredations of his neighbors. Class warfare is so open and shameless that is has to be seen to be believed. The observer of such as appalling state of affairs must shudder at the consequences of such feverish activity and can only marvel that so crazy a social and economic structure should survive at all.”

Four years later, Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto” with Karl Marx, diagnosing the problems of capitalism and laying out solutions that came awfully close to taking root around the world before they were defeated by Western military and economic powers. Yet the problems persist to this day, manifested most visibly in cities around the world.

Lapham does admit that cities will be the laboratories and incubators of the ideas that are developed. Given the political dysfunction on the state and federal levels, he also agrees with the contention of Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond that the age of he Nation-State as the preeminent political authority is passing, and that its likely replacement is the City-State.

“To make democracy work, it needs to be relatively small,” Lapham said, agreeing that localism is the model that is being widely discussed as the answer to many of our political, environmental, and economic problems. And that all comes back to the cities, provided we can seize the opportunity to define ourselves, or as Lapham said, “One of the things we’re missing is the idea of a glorious future of some kind.”

Hot sexy events Oct 6-12

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events Oct 6-12

It’s about that time, cats and kittens. Time to start fantasizing — Halloween is just around the corner. And though everyone and their mother is going to be Stephen Colbert’s Muslim vampire this year, many will seize the autumnal juncture as an opportunity to whore it up and out – in a good way! 

After all, who doesn’t love the sexy nurses, kitties, police officers, and Snookies that stalk the city bars each year on the 31st? Look, the point is that on this day of days society indulges those that follow their dreams. May as well make it a wet dream, no? Sexy Muslim vampire it is! Oh, and here are some sexy events that’ll wet your whistle this week, with an emphasis on finding that alluring inner equilibrium.

Bawdy Storytelling

Two events this week to get you hooked into what’s happening in Dixie De La Tour’s recurring sexcapade storytelling series: one, a best-of edition featuring writers and comedians from around town (Wed/6) and two, a back alley Lit Crawl edition of Bawdy that’ll have Clarion Alley echoing with the retelling of disastrous dates and tales of unconventional canoodling.  

Bawdy Storytelling: Graphic Confessions

Wed/6 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Bawdy in the Alley

Sat/9 8:30-9:30 p.m., free

Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th St., SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Declaring Our Erotic

Jen Cross knows that erotic writing isn’t just a pleasure to read – for some, the act of writing down passions can be a cathartic, even therapeutic event. That’s why she’s offering this eight-week class for survivors of LGBT sexual trauma. The syllabus promises a safe space to reconnect with your body’s desires and memories. And of course, a chance to write some hot, dirty smut. 

First class Thu/7 6:30-9 p.m., $225-250

email jennifer@writingourselveswhole.com for details


Urge

Put the Citadel’s 5,400 square feet of devious dungeon to use to use for the whipping, slapping, burning, and loving of young loins – hot young male whippersnappers will be the only ones invited to this get together of BDSM blowout. 

Fri/8 9 p.m.- 1:30 a.m., $25

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-1746

www.sfcitadel.org


Steven Saylor

Love, sex, and intrigue in the palace! But this ain’t no corset-buster. No, Steven Saylor’s new book Empire is a males-only play space – the plotline follows Emperor Nero’s eunuch lover Sporus, who becomes the hottest piece of tranny ass on the Forum. Let Saylor woo you into a new love of history at this talk about his latest historical tome of carnal knowledge.

Mon/11 7:30 p.m., free

A Different Light Bookstore

489 Castro, SF

(415) 431 0891 

www.adl-books.blogspot.com


Grizzly’s Bullwhips by the Bay

Don’t worry baby, they got loaner whips. Put your lusted one’s mind at ease by polishing up your whipping skills at this bimonthly peer skill share class by the sea. It’s about safety, kids! After all, when the singletails start flying, you can’t always guarantee that Grizzly, the organizer of the get-togethers, will be there with spare protective goggles to guard those bedroom eyes.

Sun/10 11:30 a.m.- 1 p.m., free

Southeast of the Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, SF

www.laughingbear.org

 

Body Love for Better Sex

How would you spread your legs if you weren’t worried about chunky inner thighs? Body anxiety can be the nemesis of good sex –  but Virgie Tovar, fat positive sex educator, is here to help you titter about Miss Body Anxiety until she drops out of school due to social anxiety. Which is to say, help you feel as pretty as you are. Aww. No more naked nervousness, bam.

Mon/11 6-8 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com

 

 

D8 debate: “Filling Harvey’s Shoes”

Zelda Bronstein
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D8 debate: “Filling Harvey’s Shoes”

Editors note: I ran out of space for opinion pieces this week (endorsements just ran too long) so I’m posting this timely oped here.

By Jeff Sheehy

Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, a public elementary school in the heart of the Castro, is hosting a debate between the four candidates for District 8 Supervisor on Friday, October 8 at 7 pm.   The school, formerly Douglass Elementary, was named for Milk in 1996. 

The community that comprises the school has adopted an unique mission to honor Milk’s life: to empower student learning by teaching tolerance and non-violence, celebrating our diversity, achieving academic excellence, and fostering strong family-school-community connections.
 
The theme of the debate—“Filling Harvey’s Shoes”— centers on the values inspired by Harvey Milk’s life that have now been enshrined in the mission of the school named after him. Cynthia Laird, the editor of the Bay Area Reporter, and Christina Velasco, principal of Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, will moderate, asking questions themselves, taking questions from the audience and reading questions submitted by Harvey Milk students.

One of the candidates was quoted in this paper a couple of weeks ago saying about the race: “It’s a definitional fight about what the queer community is about in 2010.”  This debate offers the candidates the opportunity to directly address this “definitional” question.

In many ways, the LGBT community is at a crossroads. For those with good jobs and good incomes and the means to rent or own a house in District 8, much of the struggle for LGBT civil rights in San Francisco must feel more like history than a critically important issue for someone who seeks election in his former district.

However, I wonder if Harvey’s oft-referenced kid from Altoona hopping a bus to San Francisco in search of freedom would feel the same way. The kids arriving here are much more likely to be kids of color, transgender or undocumented. To what degree does District 8 or even San Francisco offer a place to live or real economic opportunity? Is Harvey’s legacy a gentrified Oz, great for those who can afford it, but little solace to those desperately seeking haven?

Plus, what is Harvey’s larger legacy?  Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy defines one vision. Kids from under-resourced areas and under-represented communities are actively recruited to the school as part of its commitment to teaching tolerance and diversity. The LGBT experience is presented as one among the many struggles that communities of color, women, the undocumented and working people have fought in America to create a more just and tolerant society. Consciousness of shared struggle and the necessity of creating community amongst the disenfranchised and marginalized are crucial values inculcated at the school. The school’s pledge sums up this vision of Harvey’s legacy:  “I pledge allegiance to the world, to cherish every living thing, to care for earth and sea and air with peace and freedom everywhere.”

My husband and I thought deeply about community and values when we were deciding where to send our daughter to school. We felt that our daughter should begin to understand the world and how to act in it in the context of struggles for civil rights and social justice.  

I hope others in the LGBT community will take a moment and think about their values, hopefully attend the debate on Friday, and recognize that the election for this seat is about the future direction of the community.

Indeed, next May would have been Harvey’s 80th birthday and one wonders which candidate he would have endorsed and in what direction he would have advised the LGBT community to take had he lived.

Sheehy is the parent of a kindergartener at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy 

The debate will be held in the auditorium at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy at the corner of 19th and Collingwood, in the Castro.

Slim’s Presents: Lo Cura, Manicato & DJ Funk – C

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Slim’s Presents: Lo Cura, Manicato & DJ Funk – C

Direct from San Francisco’s fertile music scene, LoCura taps into the diverse sounds that have a rich history in the Bay Area, weaving them together in an uncanny way to reveal their common roots. Mixing Flamenco with Reggae and weaving Cumbia with Ska through contagious rhythms and multiple languages, their music transports you through a day in the life of the modern metropolis experience across the globe where the movement of people and ideas are constantly flowing. Reflecting lead vocalist Kata’s own experience of growing up in Spain, Italy, and the U.S., LoCura’s music rides the borders of identity and migration piecing together a mosaic of myriad cultures and experiences. In Spain the expression “Ida y Vuelta” is used to describe styles of music that made a “round-trip” from Spain to Latin America while mixing with music from the African slave and Indigenous populations. Using the idea of music traveling and acting as creative resistance, LoCura mixes it up with their own Califas Flamenkito, Reggae, and Cuban Son styles. Moved by the music that crosses borders and takes root in new lands, LoCura draws on the creative ‘rebelde’ spirit to cultivate the cures passed on from our ancestors.
$16. Doors 8, Show 9
Saturday, October 9th at 8PM @ Slim’s

Our Weekly Picks: October 6-12, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

WEDNESDAY 6

MUSIC

Caribou

Electronic music whiz Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, has a spirited stage show. In contrast to the solo job of the albums, Caribou gigs include a full live band and have been known to feature multiple drummers and percussionists (including Snaith himself), plus trippy, projected visuals. For a taste of his knack for polishing 1960s psych and ’70s krautrock weirdness with a modern dance club sheen, check out this year’s Polaris Music Prize runner-up, Swim, or 2003’s excellent Up In Flames. (Landon Moblad)

With Emeralds

9:30 p.m., $18

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

THURSDAY 7

PERFORMANCE

Ralph Lemon

Early in his career Ralph Lemon made intimate, highly formal, nonnarrative dances. Then he engaged in huge, multiyear, multidisciplinary enterprises that took him from Abidjan to Beijing and Kyoto. Now he has come home — sort of. Lemon was raised in Minnesota, but in researching his family he encountered a now 102-year old Mississippian with whom he has worked for the last eight years on How Can you Stay in the House and Not Go Anywhere? The work consists of a performance, film, and visual arts installation — all on one ticket. Lemon’s work has always been well considered and choreographically cogent. No reason to think How Can You? will diverge from the norm. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/9

8 p.m., $25–$30

Novellus Theater

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

MUSIC

Glass Candy

The music industry is a fickle mistress, and when bands take a long time to release material it becomes really easy to forget their past accomplishments. Take Glass Candy: it’s been a minute since the band made any significant waves, instead laying low the past few years and releasing 12-inch singles on trusty record label Italians Do It Better. The band’s style is a mash of disco and contemporary electronics that recall the best John Carpenter scores if they had blasé vocals by Nico. Candy’s singer Ida No remains the group’s greatest asset, and her delivery manages to be silly and sexy at the same time. This show proves that Italians Do It Better understands how to properly conduct a comeback, casting Candy, the label’s biggest successes, as headliners on an all-star bill that includes spin-off outfit Chromatics and, most surprisingly, label owner Mike Simonetti with a DJ set. (Peter Galvin)

With Chromatics, DJ Mike Simonetti, Soft Metals, and DJ Omar

9 p.m., $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

Tera Melos

Roseville three-piece Tera Melos storms Bottom of the Hill for a night of loud, mathy, prog-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. With new album Patagonian Rats fresh off the presses, Tera Melos seems poised to make some noise in indie-rock circles all over the country. Guitarist Nick Reinhart possesses a bottomless bag of wildly frantic riffs and finger taps, while the rhythm section thrashes along with shifting time signatures and complex song structures. Tera Melos isn’t the first or only band to make this kind of music these days, but it’s certainly one of the best. (Moblad)

With Skinwalker and Glaciers

9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

DANCE

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company

If you are at all interested in seeing out how mature artists — let’s say, with a track record of more than 35 years — keep turning out good work, there is probably no better way than to keep watching the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Jenkins’ MO — she suggests ideas; the dancers come up with responses; she edits the responses — has worked remarkably well, even for San Francisco Ballet dancers, who certainly are not trained along the lines of individual responsibility. This one-night stand offers a return of the wondrous first section of last year’s Other Suns I and a preview peek at Light Moves. Jenkins works for the first time with multimedia artist Naomie Kremer, who creates moving images based on her own paintings. (Felciano)

8 p.m., $18–$26

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California, SF

(415) 292-1200

www.jccsf.org/arts

 

FRIDAY 8

MUSIC

Fool’s Gold

Drag rock is very big right now. Who needs authenticity when you can see a band like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros being all folk, as if everyone just forgot about Ima Robot? (Oh wait, we did.) Well, same deal with Fool’s Gold and afropop. Of course, Vampire Weekend tries to do the same thing (it’s also known as Graceland-ing), but Fool’s Gold doesn’t have that annoying ka-ching of a cash register in every one of its songs. With a pair of ’60s throwbacks opening, it should make for a musical voyage through time and space. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Bitter Honeys and Soft White Sixties

8:30 p.m., $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

MUSIC

“Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze”

Tankcrimes is a resolutely underground Oakland record label, kicking out small-scale, mostly vinyl releases of criminally overlooked punk and metal bands. Focusing on breakneck tempos, DIY values, and that delicious intersection between punk’s manic energy and metal’s lumbering power, the label has nurtured a small stable of unimpeachable acts. “Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze” is a two-day festival celebrating these crossover crusaders, headlined by Richmond, Va., party animals Municipal Waste and Oakland’s own splattercore dungeon masters Ghoul. Hard-punning death metallers Cannabis Corpse will also appear. Look forward to 48 hours of demented double-time, disemboweled corpses, and decimated beer supplies. (Ben Richardson)

With Vitamin X, Toxic Holocaust, Direct Control, A.N.S., Voetsek, Ramming Speed, and more

Fri/8, 7:30 p.m.; Sat/9, 7 p.m., $15–$17 (two-day pass, $30)

Oakland Metro

630 Third St., Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org

 

MUSIC

Davy Jones

As a member of the Monkees, Davy Jones was one of the original teen idols — he sang lead on some of their biggest hits, including “Daydream Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.” Unlike many of the other early pop heartthrobs, however, he has since gone on to a highly successful four-decade (and counting) career in show biz. His many other memorable performances and appearances over the years include a variety of acclaimed stage roles, television cameos (think The Brady Bunch) and solo albums. Expect a little bit of everything at these intimate shows. (Sean McCourt)

Fri/8, 8 p.m.; Sat/9-Sun/10, 7 p.m.

(also Sat/9, 9:30 p.m.), $45–$47.50

Rrazz Room

Hotel Nikko

222 Mason, SF

(415) 866-3399

www.therrazzroom.com

 

SATURDAY 9

EVENT

“Behind the Scenes on Treasure Island with Harrison Ellenshaw”

Now considered a swashbuckling classic, Disney’s Treasure Island (1950) was the first entirely live-action film that the studio produced. And one of the people who helped bring the tale of Long John Silver to life was the immensely talented Peter Ellenshaw, who created a series of matte paintings that provided the wondrous sense and grand scope of the various background scenes. His son Harrison, an equally accomplished artist in his own right (having worked on projects such as The Empire Strikes Back (1980)) will be on hand today to discuss his father’s work on the perennial pirate favorite, sharing some of his family’s history and the secrets that went into creating the magic for Walt Disney. (McCourt)

3 p.m., $9–$12;

Screenings, 1 and 4 p.m. daily through Oct. (except today), $5–$7

Walt Disney Family Museum Theater

104 Montgomery, Presidio, SF

(415) 345-6800

www.waltdisney.org

 

MONDAY 11

DANCE

WestWave Dance Festival

Monday nights are livening up this fall during WestWave Dance’s 19th annual contemporary choreography festival. Designed to allow new and established choreographers to develop and present work without the hassles of self-production, the festival presents 20 choreographers from the Bay Area and beyond in four showcases through December. Evening two of the series is an eclectic mix of choreographers hailing from various backgrounds and aesthetics: Viktor Kabaniaev, Tammy Cheney, Rachel Barnett, Annie Rosenthal Parr, and Kara Davis’ project-agora deliver to audiences a sampling of what our rich and unique contemporary dance scene has to offer. (Emmaly Wiederholt)

8 p.m., $22

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.westwavedancefestival.org

 

MUSIC

Valient Thorr

Chapel Hill, N.C’.s Southern rocking punks Valient Thorr may sound good on record, but they have to be seen to be believed. Frontperson “Valient Himself” is a bearded lunatic, flying around the stage and spreading the rock gospel with the verbose alacrity of a storefront preacher. The band behind him provides no-holds-barred punk-rock rave-ups with a hefty dose of Southern rock filigree and a dash of unhinged weirdness. New platter The Stranger was produced by knob-god Jack Endino, who thickened the sound without diluting the band’s digressive tendencies. The Thorriors will be cranking it out from atop Bottom of the Hill’s lofty stage, raining down sweat while they do it. (Richardson)

With Red Fang and FlexXBronco

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

TUESDAY 12

MUSIC

PS I Love You

Sure, the White Stripes blew the doors open for guitar drum duos to rock and have mainstream success, but the Black Keys proved that it wasn’t all just a quasi-incestuous fluke. Now all the boys feel comfortable doing it together. We’re not going to try and claim that Ontario, Canada’s PS I Love You is the only stripped down, sticks and picks outfit in town tonight, but if the spiraling, echoing post-pop songs off their just released first album (the single “Facelove” in particular) are any indication, you’d be hard up to find one that gives it to you like this. (Prendiville)

With Gold Medalists and Downer Party

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk St., SF

www.hemlocktavern.com 


The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

 

Endorsements 2010: San Francisco candidates

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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53
Endorsements 2010: San Francisco candidates

SUPERVISOR, DISTRICT 2


JANET REILLY


Frankly, we were a little surprised by the Janet Reilly who came in to give us her pitch as a District 2 supervisorial candidate. The last time we met with her, she was a strong progressive running for state Assembly as an advocate of single-payer health care. She was challenging Fiona Ma from the left, and easily won our endorsement.


Now she’s become a fiscal conservative — somewhat more in synch with her district, perhaps, but not an encouraging sign. Reilly seems to realize that there’s a $500 million budget deficit looming, but she won’t support any of the tax measures on the ballot. She’s against the hotel tax. She’s against the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties. She’s against the local car tax. She opposed Sup. David Chiu’s business tax plan that would have shifted the burden from small to larger businesses (even though it was clear from our interview that she didn’t understand it).


She talked about merging some of the nonprofits that get city money, about consolidating departments, and better management — solutions that might stem a tiny fraction of the red ink. But she wouldn’t even admit that the limited tax burden on the very rich was part of San Francisco’s budget problem.


Her main proposal for creating jobs is more tax credits for biotech, life sciences, and digital media and more public-private partnerships.


It’s too bad, because Reilly’s smart, and she’s far, far better than Mark Farrell, the candidate that the current incumbent, Michela Alioto-Pier, is backing. We wish she’d be realistic about the fiscal nightmare she would inherit as a supervisor.


On the positive side, she’s a strong supporter of public power and she has good connections to the progressive community. Unlike Alioto-Pier, she’d be accessible, open-minded, and willing to work with the progressive majority on the board. That would be a dramatic change, so we’ll give her the nod.


We were also impressed with Abraham Simmons, a federal prosecutor who has spent time researching city finance on the Civil Grand Jury. But he supports sit-lie, Prop. B and Prop. S, and opposes most new tax proposals and needs more political seasoning.


 


DISTRICT 4


NO ENDORSEMENT


We’ve always wanted to like Carmen Chu. She’s friendly, personable, intelligent, and well-spoken. But on the issues, she’s just awful. Indeed, we can’t think of a single significant vote on which she’s been anything but a call-up loyalist for Mayor Newsom. She even opposed the public power measure, Prop. H, that had the support of just about everyone in town except hardcore PG&E allies.


She’s running unopposed, and will be reelected. But we can’t endorse her.


 


DISTRICT 6


1. DEBRA WALKER


2. JANE KIM


3. GLENDON “ANNA CONDA” HYDE


CORRECTION: In our original version of this endorsement, we said that Jim Meko supports the sit-lie ordinance. That was an error, and it’s corrected below.


A year ago, this race was artist and activist Debra Walker’s to lose. Most of the progressive community was united behind her candidacy; she’d been working on district issues for a couple of decades, fighting the loft developers during the dot-com boom years and serving on the Building Inspection Commission. Then School Board member Jane Kim decided to enter the race, leaving the left divided, splitting resources that might have gone to other critical district races — and potentially helping to put the most pro-business downtown candidate, Theresa Sparks, in a better position to win.


Now we’ve got something of a mess — a fragmented and sometimes needlessly divisive progressive base in a district that’s key to holding progressive control of the board. And while neither of the two top progressive candidates is actively pursuing a credible ranked-choice voting strategy (Kim has, unbelievably, endorsed James Keys instead of Walker, and Walker has declined to endorse anyone else), we’re setting aside our concern over Kim’s ill-advised move and suggesting a strategy that is most likely to keep the seat Chris Daly has held for the past 10 years from falling to downtown control.


Walker is far and away our first choice. She understands land use and housing — the clear central issues in the district — and has well thought-out positions and proposals. She says that the current system of inclusionary housing — pressing market-rate developers to include a few units of below-market-rate housing with their high-end condos — simply doesn’t work. She supports an immediate affordable housing bond act and a long-term real estate transfer tax high enough to fund a steady supply of housing for the city’s workforce. She told us the city ought to be looking at planning issues from the perspective of what San Francisco needs, not what developers want to build. She’s in favor of progressive taxes and a push for local hiring. We’re happy to give her our first-place ranking.


Jane Kim has been a great SF School Board member and has always been part of the progressive community. But she only moved into District 6 a year and a half ago — about when she started talking about running for supervisor (and she told us in her endorsement interview that “D6 is a district you can run in without having lived there a long time.”) She still hasn’t been able to explain why she parachuted in to challenge an experienced progressive leader she has no substantive policy disagreements with.


That said, on the issues, Kim is consistently good. She is in favor of indexing affordable housing to market-rate housing and halting new condo development if the mix gets out of line. She’s for an affordable housing bond. She supports all the tax measures on this ballot. She’s a little softer on congestion pricing and extending parking-meter hours, but she’s open to the ideas. She supports police foot patrols not just as a law-enforcement strategy, but to encourage small businesses. She’d be a fine vote on the board. And while we’re sympathetic to the Walker supporters who would prefer that we not give Kim the credibility and exposure of an endorsement, the reality is that she’s one of two leading progressives and would be better on the board than the remaining candidates.


Hyde, a dynamic young drag queen performer, isn’t going to win. But he’s offered some great ideas and injected some fun and energy into the race. Hyde talks about creating safe injection sites for IV drug users to reduce the risk of overdoses and the spread of disease. He points out that a lot of young people age out of the foster-care system and wind up on the streets, and he’s for continuum housing that would let these young people transition to jobs or higher education. He talks about starting a co-op grocery in the Tenderloin. He proposes bus-only lanes throughout the district and wants to charge large vehicles a fee to come into the city. He’s a big advocate of nightlife and the arts. He lacks experience and needs more political seasoning, but we’re giving him the third-place nod to encourage his future involvement.


Progressives are concerned about Theresa Sparks, a transgender activist and former business executive who now runs the city’s Human Rights Commission. She did a (mostly) good job on the Police Commission. She’s experienced in city government and has good financial sense. But she’s just too conservative for what remains a very progressive district. Sparks isn’t a big fan of seeking new revenue for the city telling us that “I disagree that we’ve made all the cuts that we can” — even after four years of brutal, bloody, all-cuts budgets. She doesn’t support the hotel tax and said she couldn’t support Sup. David Chiu’s progressive business tax because it would lead to “replacing private sector jobs with public sector jobs” — even though the city’s own economic analysis shows that’s just not true. She supports Newsom’s sit-lie law.


Sparks is the candidate of the mayor and downtown, and would substantially shift the balance of power on the board. She’s also going to have huge amounts of money behind her. It’s important she be defeated.


Jim Meko, a longtime neighborhood and community activist, has good credentials and some solid ideas. He was a key player in the western SoMa planning project and helped come up with a truly progressive land-use program for the neighborhood. But he supports Prop. B and is awfully cranky about local bars and nightlife.


James Keys, who has the support of Sup. Chris Daly and was an intern in Daly’s office, has some intriguing (if not terribly practical) ideas, like combining the Sheriff’s Department and the Police Department and making Muni free). But in his interview, he demonstrated a lack of understanding of the issues facing the district and the city.


So we’re going with a ranked-choice strategy: Walker first, Kim second, Hyde third. And we hope Kim’s supporters ignore their candidate’s endorsement of Keys, put Walker as their second choice, and ensure that they don’t help elect Sparks.


 


DISTRICT 8


RAFAEL MANDELMAN


This is by far the clearest and most obvious choice on the local ballot. And it’s a critical one, a chance for progressives to reclaim the seat that once belonged to Harvey Milk and Harry Britt.


Mandelman, a former president of the Milk Club, is running as more than a queer candidate. He’s a supporter of tenants rights, immigrants’ rights, and economic and social justice. He also told us he believes “local government matters” — and that there are a lot of problems San Francisco can (and has to) solve on its own, without simply ducking and blaming Sacramento and Washington.


Mandelman argues that the public sector has been starved for years and needs more money. He agrees that there’s still a fair amount of bloat in the city budget — particularly management positions — but that even after cleaning out the waste, the city will still be far short of the money it needs to continue providing pubic services. He’s calling for a top-to-bottom review of how the city gets revenue, with the idea of creating a more progressive tax structure.


He’s an opponent of sit-lie and a supporter of the sanctuary city ordinance. He supports tenants rights and eviction protection. He’s had considerable experience (as a member of the Building Inspection Commission and Board of Appeals and as a lawyer who advises local government agencies) and would make an excellent supervisor.


Neither of the other two contenders make our endorsement cut. Rebecca Prozan is a deputy city attorney who told us she would be able to bring the warring factions on the board together. She has some interesting ideas — she’d like to see the city take over foreclosed properties and turn them into housing for teachers, cops, and firefighters — and she’s opposed to sit-lie. But she’s weak on tenant issues (she told us there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the conversion of rental housing into tenancies-in-common), doesn’t seem to grasp the need for substantial new revenues to prevent service cuts, and doesn’t support splitting the appointments to key commissions between the mayor and the supervisors.


Scott Wiener, a deputy city attorney, is a personable guy who always takes our phone calls and is honest and responsive. He’s done a lot of good work in the district. But he’s on the wrong side of many issues, and on some things would be to the right of the incumbent, Sup. Bevan Dufty.


He doesn’t support public power (which Dufty does). He says that a lot of the city’s budget problems can’t be solved until the state gets its own house in order (“we can’t tax our way out of this”) and favors a budget balanced largely by further cuts. In direct contrast to Mandelman, Wiener said San Franciscans “need to lower our expectations for government.” He wants broad-based reductions in almost all city agencies except Muni, “core” public health services, and public safety. He doesn’t support any further restrictions on condo conversions or TICs. And he has the support of the Small Property Owners Association — perhaps the most virulently anti-tenant and anti-rent control group in town.


This district once gave rise to queer political leaders who saw themselves and their struggles as part of a larger progressive movement. That’s drifted away of late — and with Mandelman, there’s a chance to bring it back.


 


DISTRICT 10


1. TONY KELLY


2. DEWITT LACY


3. CHRIS JACKSON


District 10 is the epicenter of new development in San Francisco, the place where city planners want to site as many as 40,000 new housing units, most of them high-end condos, at a cost of thousands of blue-collar jobs. The developers are salivating at the land-rush opportunities here — and the next supervisor not only needs to be an expert in land-use and development politics, but someone with the background and experience to thwart the bad ideas and direct and encourage the good ones.


There’s no shortage of candidates — 22 people are on the ballot, and at least half a dozen are serious contenders. Two — Steve Moss and Lynette Sweet — are very bad news. And one of the key priorities for progressives is defeating the big-money effort that downtown, the police, and the forces behind the Van Ness Avenue megahospital proposal are dumping into the district to elect Moss.


Our first choice is Tony Kelly, who operates Thick Description Theater and who for more than a decade has been directly involved in all the major neighborhood issues. He has a deep understanding of what the district is facing: 4,100 of the 5,300 acres in D10 have been rezoned or put under the Redevelopment Agency in the past 10 years. Planners envision as many as 100,000 new residents in the next 10 years. And the fees paid by developers will not even begin to cover the cost of the infrastructure and services needed to handle that growth.


And Kelly has solutions: The public sector will have to play a huge role in affordable housing and infrastructure, and that money should come from higher development fees — and from places like the University of California, which has a huge operation in the district and pays no property taxes. Kelly wants to set up a trigger so that if goals for affordable housing aren’t met by a set date, the market-rate development stops. He supports the revenue measures on the ballot but thinks we should go further. He opposes the pension-reform measure, Prop. B, but notes that 75 percent of the city’s pension problems come from police, fire, and management employees. He wants the supervisors to take over the Redevelopment Agency. He’s calling for a major expansion of open space and parkland in the district. And he thinks the city should direct some of the $3 billion in short-term accounts (now all with the Bank of America) to local credit unions or new municipal bank that could invest in affordable housing and small business. He’s a perfect fit for the job.


DeWitt Lacy is a civil-rights lawyer and a relative newcomer to neighborhood politics. He speaks passionately about the need for D10 to get its fair share of the city’s services and about a commitment to working-class people.


Lacy is calling for an immediate pilot program with police foot patrols in the high-crime areas of the district. He’s for increasing the requirements for developers to build affordable housing and wants to cut the payroll tax for local businesses that hire district residents.


Lacy’s vision for the future includes development that has mixed-use commuter hubs with shopping and grocery stores as well as housing. He supports the tax measures on the ballot and would be willing to extend parking meter hours — but not parking fines, which he calls an undue burden on low-income people.


He’s an outspoken foe of sit-lie and of gang injunctions, and with his background handling police abuse lawsuits, he would have a clear understanding of how to approach better law-enforcement without intimidating the community. He lacks Kelly’s history, experience, and knowledge in neighborhood issues, but he’s eminently qualified and would make a fine supervisor.


Chris Jackson, who worked at the San Francisco Labor Council and serves on the Community College Board, is our third choice. While it’s a bit unfortunate that Jackson is running for higher office only two years after getting elected to the college board, he’s got a track record and good positions on the issues. He talks of making sure that blue-collar jobs don’t get pushed out by housing, and suggested that the shipyard be used for ship repair. He wants to see the city mandate that landlords rent to people with Section 8 housing vouchers. He supports the tax measures on the ballot, but also argues that the city has 60 percent more managers than it had in 2000 and wants to bring that number down. He thinks the supervisors should take over Redevelopment, which should become “just a financing agency for affordable housing.” He wants to relocate the stinky sewage treatment plant near Third Street and Evans Avenue onto one of the piers and use the area for a transit hub. He’s still relatively unseasoned, but he has a bright political future.


Eric Smith, a biodiesel activist, is an impressive candidate too. But while his environmental credentials are good, he lacks the breadth of knowledge that our top three choices offer. But we’re glad he’s in the race and hope he stays active in community politics.


Malia Cohen has raised a lot of money and (to our astonishment) was endorsed No. 2 by the Democratic Party, but she’s by no means a progressive, particularly on tenant issues — she told us that limiting condo conversions is an infringement of property rights. And she’s way too vague on other issues.


Moss is the candidate of the big developers and the landlords, and the Chamber of Commerce is dumping tens of thousands of dollars into getting him elected. He’s got some good environmental and energy ideas — he argues that all major new developments should have their own energy distribution systems — but on the major issues, he’s either on the wrong side or (more often) can’t seem to take a stand. He said he is “still mulling over” his stand on sit-lie. He supports Sanctuary City in theory, but not the actual measure Sup. David Campos was pushing to make the policy work. He’s not sure if he likes gang injunctions or not. He only moved back to the district when he decided to run for supervisor. He’s way too conservative for the district and would be terrible on the board.


Lynette Sweet, a BART Board member, has tax problems (and problems explaining them) and wouldn’t even come to our office for an endorsement interview. The last thing D10 needs is a supervisor who’s not accountable and unwilling to talk to constituents and the press.


So we’re going with Kelly, Lacy, and Jackson as the best hope to keep D10 from becoming a district represented by a downtown landlord candidate.


 


SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF EDUCATION


MARGARET BRODKIN


KIM-SHREE MAUFAS


HYDRA MENDOZA


Three seats are up on the School Board, and three people will get elected. And it’s a contested race, and in situations like that, we always try to endorse a full slate.


This fall, it was, to put it mildly, a challenge.


It’s disturbing that we don’t have three strong progressive candidates with experience and qualifications to oversee the San Francisco Unified School District. But it seems to be increasingly difficult to find people who want to — and can afford to — devote the time to what’s really a 40-hour-a-week position that pays $500 a month. The part-time school board is an anachronism, a creature of a very different economic and social era. With the future of the next generation of San Franciscans at stake, it’s time to make the School Board a full-time job and pay the members a decent salary so that more parents and progressive education advocates can get involved in one of the most important political jobs in the city.


That said, we’ve chosen the best of the available candidates. It’s a mixed group, made up of people who don’t support each other and aren’t part of anyone’s slate. But on balance, they offer the best choices for the job.


This is not a time when the board needs radical change. Under Superintendent Carlos Garcia, the local public schools are making huge strides. Test scores are up, enrollment is increasing, and San Francisco is, by any rational measure, the best big-city public school district in California. We give considerable credit for that to the progressives on the board who got rid of the irascible, secretive, and hostile former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and replaced her with Garcia. He’s brought stability and improvement to the district, and is implementing a long-term plan to bring all the schools up to the highest levels and go after the stubborn achievement gap.


Yet any superintendent and any public agency needs effective oversight. One of the problems with the district under Ackerman was the blind support she got from school board members who hired her; it was almost as if her allies on the board were unable to see the damage she was doing and unable to hold her accountable.


Our choices reflect the need for stability — and independence. We are under no illusions — none of our candidates are perfect. But as a group, we believe they can work to preserve what the district is doing right and improve on policies that aren’t working.


Kim-Shree Maufas has been a staunch progressive on the board. She got into a little trouble last year when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that she’d been using a school district credit card for personal expenses. That’s not a great move, but she never actually took public money since she paid back the district. Maufas said she thought she could use the card as long as she reimbursed the district for her own expenses; the rules are now clear and she’s had no problems since. We don’t consider this a significant enough failure in judgment to prevent her from continuing to do what she’s been doing: serving as an advocate on the board for low-income kids and teachers.


Maufas is a big supporter of restorative justice and is working for ways to reduce suspensions and expulsions. She wants to make sure advanced placement and honors classes are open to anyone who can handle the coursework. She supports the new school assignment process (as do all the major candidates), although she acknowledges that there are some potential problems. She told us she thinks the district should go back to the voters for a parcel tax to supplement existing funding for the schools.


Margaret Brodkin is a lightening rod. In fact, much of the discussion around this election seems to focus on Brodkin. Since she entered the race, she’s eclipsed all the other issues, and there’s been a nasty whisper campaign designed to keep her off the board.


We’ve had our issues with Brodkin. When she worked for Mayor Newsom, she was part of a project that brought private nonprofits into city recreation centers to provide services — at a time when unionized public employees of the Recreation and Parks Department were losing their jobs. It struck us as a clear privatization effort by the Newsom administration, and it raised a flag that’s going to become increasingly important in the school district: there’s a coming clash between people who think private nonprofits can provide more services to the schools and union leaders who fear that low-paid nonprofit workers will wind up doing jobs now performed by unionized district staff. And Brodkin’s role in the Newsom administration — and her background in the nonprofit world — is certainly ground for some concern.


But Brodkin is also by far the most qualified person to run for San Francisco school board in years, maybe decades. She’s a political legend in the city, the person who is most responsible for making issues of children and youth a centerpiece of the progressive agenda. In her years as director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, she tirelessly worked to make sure children weren’t overlooked in the budget process and was one of the authors of the initiative that created the Children’s Fund. She’s run a nonprofit, run a city department, and is now working on education issues.


She’s a feisty person who can be brusque and isn’t always conciliatory — but those characteristics aren’t always bad. Sup. Chris Daly used his anger and passion to push for social justice on the Board of Supervisors and, despite some drawbacks, he’s been an effective public official.


And Brodkin is full of good ideas. She talks about framing what a 21st century education looks like, about creating community schools, about aligning after-school and summer programs with the academic curriculum. She wants the next school bond act to include a central kitchen, so local kids can get locally produced meals (the current lunch fare is shipped in frozen from out of state).


Brodkin needs to remember that there’s a difference between being a bare-knuckles advocate and a member of a functioning school board. But given her skills, experience, and lifetime in progressive causes, we’re willing to give her a chance.


We also struggled over endorsing Hydra Mendoza. She works for Mayor Newsom as an education advisor — and that’s an out-front conflict of interest. She’s a fan of Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, whose policies are regressive and dangerous.


On the other hand, she cares deeply about kids and public education. She’s not a big supporter of charter schools (“I’ve yet to see a charter school that offers anything we can’t do ourselves,” she told us) and while she was on the wrong side of a lot of issues (like JROTC) early in her tenure, over the past two years she’s been a good School Board member.


There are several other candidates worth mentioning. Bill Barnes, an aide to Michela Alioto-Pier, is a good guy, a decent progressive — but has no experience in or direct connection to the public schools. Natasha Hoehn is in the education nonprofit world and speaks with all the jargon of the educrat, but her proposals and her stands on issues are vague. Emily Murase is a strong parent advocate with some good ideas, but she struck us as a bit too conservative (particularly on JROTC and charter schools.) Jamie Wolfe teaches at a private school but lacks any real constituency or experience in local politics and the education community.


So given a weak field with limited alternatives, we’re going with Maufas, Brodkin and Mendoza.


 


SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD


JOHN RIZZO


The San Francisco Community College District has been a mess for years, and it’s only now starting to get back on track. That’s the result of the election of a few progressive reformers — Milton Marks, Chris Jackson, and John Rizzo, who now have enough clout on the seven-member board to drag along a fourth vote when they need it.


But the litany of disasters they’ve had to clean up is almost endless. A chancellor (who other incumbent board members supported until the end) is now under indictment. Public money that was supposed to go to the district wound up in a political campaign. An out-of-control semiprivate college foundation has been hiding its finances from the public. The college shifted bond money earmarked for an arts center into a gigantic, expensive gym with a pool that the college can’t even pay to operate, so it’s leased out to a private high school across the street.


And the tragedy is that all three incumbents — two of whom should have stepped down years ago — are running unopposed.


With all the attention on the School Board and district elections, not one progressive — in fact, not one candidate of any sort — has stepped forward to challenge Anita Grier and Lawrence Wong. So they’ll get another term, and the reformers will have to continue to struggle.


We’re endorsing only Rizzo, a Sierra Club staffer who has been in the lead in the reform bloc. He needs to end up as the top vote-getter, which would put him in position to be the board president. Rizzo has worked to get the district’s finances and foundation under control and he richly deserves reelection.


 


BART BOARD OF DIRECTORS, DISTRICT 8


BERT HILL


It’s about time somebody mounted a serious challenge to James Fang, the only elected Republican in San Francisco and a member of one of the most dysfunctional public agencies in California. The BART Board is a mess, spending a fortune on lines that are hardly ever used and unable to work effectively with other transit agencies or control a police force that has a history of brutality and senseless killing.


Fang supports the suburban extensions and Oakland Airport connector, which make no fiscal or transportation sense. He’s ignored problems with the BART Police for 20 years. It’s time for him to leave office.


Bert Hill is a strong challenger. A professional cost-management executive, he understands that BART is operating on an old paradigm of carrying people from the suburbs into the city. “Before we go on building any more extensions,” he told us, “we should take care of San Francisco.” He wants the agency to work closely with Muni and agrees there’s a need for a BART sunshine policy to make the notoriously secretive agency more open to public scrutiny. We strongly endorse him.


 


ASSESSOR-RECORDER


PHIL TING


San Francisco needs an aggressive assessor who looks for every last penny that big corporations are trying to duck paying — but this is also a job that presents an opportunity for challenging the current property tax laws. Phil Ting’s doing pretty well with the first part — and unlike past assessors, is actually stepping up to the plate on the second. He’s been pushing a statewide coalition to reform Prop. 13 — and while it’s an uphill battle, it’s good to see a tax assessor taking it on. Ting has little opposition and will be reelected easily.


 


PUBLIC DEFENDER


JEFF ADACHI


Adachi’s done a great job of running the office that represents indigent criminal defendants. He’s been outspoken on criminal justice issues. Until this year, he was often mentioned as a potential progressive candidate for mayor.


That’s over now. Because Adachi decided (for reasons we still can’t comprehend) to join the national attack on public employees and put Prop. B on the ballot, he’s lost any hope of getting support for higher office from the left. And since the moderate and conservative forces will never be comfortable with a public defender moving up in the political world, Adachi’s not going anywhere anytime soon.


Which is fine. He’s doing well at his day job. We wish he’d stuck to it and not taken on a divisive, expensive, and ill-conceived crusade to cut health care benefits for city employees.


 


SAN FRANCISCO SUPERIOR COURT


SEAT 15


MICHAEL NAVA


To hear some of the brahmins of the local bench and bar tell it, the stakes in this election are immense — the independence of the judiciary hangs in the balance. If a sitting judge who is considered eminently qualified for the job and has committed no ethical or legal breaches can be challenged by an outsider who is seeking more diversity on the bench, it will open the floodgates to partisan hacks taking on good judges — and force judicial candidates to raise money from lawyers and special interests, thus undermining the credibility of the judiciary.


We are well aware of the problems of judicial elections around the country. In some states, big corporations that want to influence judges raise and spend vast sums on trial and appellate court races — and typically get their way. In Iowa, three judges who were willing to stand on principle and Constitutional law and declare same-sex marriage legal are facing what amounts to a well-funded recall effort. California is not immune — in more conservative counties, liberal judges face getting knocked off the bench by law-and-order types.


It’s a serious issue. It’s worth a series of hearings in the state Legislature, and it might be worth Constitutional change. Maybe trial-court elections should be eliminated. Maybe all judicial elections should have public campaign financing. But right now, it’s an elected office — at least in theory.


In practice, the vast majority of the judicial slots in California are filled by appointment. Judges serve for four-year terms but tend to retire or step down in midterm, allowing the governor to fill the vacancy. Unless someone files specifically to challenge an incumbent, typically appointed judge, that race never even appears on the ballot.


The electoral process is messy and political, and raising money is unseemly for a judicial officer. But the appointment process is hardly pure, either — and governors in California have, over the past 30 years, appointed the vast majority of the judges from the ranks of big corporate law firms and district attorney’s offices.


There are, of course, exceptions, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been better than his predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis. But overall, public interest lawyers, public defenders, and people with small community practices (and, of course, people who have no political strings to pull in Sacramento) have been frustrated. And it’s no surprise that some have sought to run against incumbents.


That’s what’s happening here. Michael Nava, a gay Latino who has been working as a research attorney for California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, was going to run for a rare open seat this year, but the field quickly got crowded. So Nava challenged Richard Ulmer, a corporate lawyer appointed by Schwarzenegger who has been on the bench a little more than a year.


We will stipulate, as the lawyers say: Ulmer has done nothing wrong. From all accounts, he’s a fine judge (and before taking the bench, he did some stellar pro bono work fighting for reforms in the juvenile detention system). So there are two questions here: Should Nava have even filed to run against Ulmer? And since he did, who is the better candidate?


It’s important to understand this isn’t a case of special interests and that big money wanting to oust a judge because of his politics or rulings. Nava isn’t backed by any wealthy interest. There’s no clear parallel to the situations in other areas and other states where the judiciary is being compromised by electoral politics. Nava had every right to run — and has mounted an honest campaign that discusses the need for diversity on the bench.


Ulmer’s supporters note — correctly — that the San Francisco courts have more ethnic and gender diversity than any county in the state. And we’re not going to try to come to a conclusion here about how much diversity is enough.


But we will say that life experience matters, and judges bring to the bench what they’ve lived. Nava, who is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and the first person in his family to go to college, may have a different perspective on how low-income people of color are treated in the courts than a former Republican who spent his professional career in big law firms.


We were impressed by Nava’s background and knowledge — and by his interest in opening up the courts. He supports cameras in the courtrooms and allowing reporters to record court proceedings. He told us the meetings judges hold on court administration should be open to the public.


We’re willing to discuss whether judicial elections make sense. Meanwhile, judges who don’t like the idea of challenges should encourage their colleagues not to retire in midterm. If all the judges left at the end of a four-year term, there would be plenty of open seats and fewer challenges. But for now, there’s nothing in this particular election that makes us fear for the independence of the courts. Vote for Nava.


 


>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Endorsements 2010: State races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Endorsements 2010: State races

GOVERNOR

EDMUND G. BROWN

We have issues with Jerry Brown. The one-time environmental leader who left an admirable progressive legacy his first time in the governor’s office (including the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the California Conservation Corps, and the liberal Rose Bird Supreme Court) and who is willing to stand up and oppose the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant has become a centrist, tough-on-crime, no-new-taxes candidate. And his only solution to the state budget problems is to bring all the players together early and start talking.

But at least since he’s started to debate Republican Meg Whitman face to face, he’s showing some signs of life — and flashes of the old Jerry. He’s strongly denouncing Whitman’s proposal to wipe out capital gains taxes, reminding voters of the huge hole that would blow in the state budget — and the $5 billion windfall it would give to the rich. He’s talking about suing Wall Street financial firms that cheated Californians. He’s promoting green jobs and standing firm in support of the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions limits.

For all his drawbacks (his insistence, for example, that the Legislature shouldn’t raise any taxes without a statewide vote of the people), Brown is at least part of the reality-based community. He understands that further tax cuts for the rich won’t solve California’s problems. He knows that climate change is real. He’s not great on immigration issues, but at least he’s cognizant that 2 million undocumented immigrants live in California — and the state can’t just arrest and deport them all.

Whitman is more than a conservative Republican. She’s scary. The centerpiece of her economic platform calls for laying off 40,000 state employees — thereby greatly increasing the state’s unemployment rate. Her tax plan would increase the state’s deficit by another $5 billion just so that a tiny number of the richest taxpayers (including her) can keep more of their money. She’s part of the nativist movement that wants to close the borders.

She’s also one of the growing number of candidates who think personal wealth and private-sector business success translate to an ability to run a complex state government. That’s a dangerous trend — Whitman has no political experience or background (until recently she didn’t even vote) and will be overcome by the lobbyists in Sacramento.

This is a critically important election for California. Vote for Jerry Brown.

 

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

 

GAVIN NEWSOM

Why is the mayor of San Francisco running for a job he once dismissed as worthless? Simple: he couldn’t get elected governor, and he wants a place to perch for a while until he figures out what higher office he can seek. It’s almost embarrassing in its cold political calculus, but that’s something we’ve come to expect from Newsom.

We endorsed Newsom’s opponent, Janice Hahn, in the Democratic primary. It was hard to make a case for advancing the political career of someone who has taken what amounts to a Republican approach to running the city’s finances — he’s addressed every budget problem entirely with cuts, pushed a “no-new-taxes” line, and given the wealthy everything they wanted. His immigration policies have broken up families and promoted deporting kids. He’s done Pacific Gas and Electric Co. a nice favor by doing nothing to help the community choice aggregation program move forward.

Nevertheless, we’re endorsing Newsom over his Republican opponent, Abel Maldonado, because there really isn’t any choice. Maldonado is a big supporter of the death penalty (which Newsom opposes). He’s pledged never to raise taxes (and Newsom is at least open to discussion on the issue). He used budget blackmail to force the awful open-primaries law onto the ballot. He’s a supporter of big water projects like the peripheral canal. In the Legislature, he earned a 100 percent rating from the California Chamber of Commerce.

Newsom’s a supporter of more funding for higher education (and the lieutenant governor sits on the University of California Board of Regents). He’d be at least a moderate environmentalist on the state Lands Commission. And he, like Brown, is devoting a lot of attention to improving the state’s economy with green jobs.

We could do much worse than Newsom in the lieutenant governor’s office. We could have Maldonado. Vote for Newsom.

 

SECRETARY OF STATE

 

DEBRA BOWEN

California has had some problems with the office that runs elections and keeps corporate filings. Kevin Shelley had to resign from the job in 2005 in the face of allegations that a state grant of $125,000 was illegally diverted into his campaign account. But Bowen, by all accounts, has run a clean office. Her Republican opponent, Damon Dunn, a former professional football player and real estate agent, doesn’t even have much support within his own party and is calling for mandatory ID checks at the ballot. This one’s easy; vote for Bowen.

 

CONTROLLER

 

JOHN CHIANG

Chiang’s been a perfectly decent controller, and at times has shown some political courage: When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to cut the pay of state employees to minimum-wage level, Chiang refused to go along — and forced the governor to back down. His opponent, state Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Los Angeles), wants to use to office to promote cuts in government spending. Vote for Chiang.

 

TREASURER

 

BILL LOCKYER

Lockyer’s almost certain to win reelection as treasurer against a weak Republican, Mimi Walters. He’s done an adequate job and pushed a few progressive things like using state bonds to promote alternative energy. Mostly, though, he seems to be waiting for his chance to run for governor — and if Jerry Brown loses, or wins and decides not to seek a second term, look for Lockyer to step up.

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL

 

KAMALA HARRIS

This is going to be close, and it’s another clear choice. We’ve had our differences with Harris — she’s trying too hard to be a tough-on-crime type, pushing some really dumb bills in Sacramento (like a measure that would bar sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet). And while she shouldn’t take all the blame for the problems in the San Francisco crime lab, she should have known about the situation earlier and made more of a fuss. She’s also been slow to respond to serious problem of prosecutors and the cops hiding information about police misconduct from defense lawyers that could be relevant to a case.

But her opponent, Los Angeles D.A. Steve Cooley, is bad news. He’s a big proponent of the death penalty, and the ACLU last year described L.A. as the leading “killer county in the country.” Cooley has proudly sent 50 people to death row since he became district attorney in 2001, and he vows to make it easier and more efficient for the state to kill people.

He’s also a friend of big business who has vowed, even as attorney general, to make the state more friendly to employers — presumably by slowing prosecutions of corporate wrongdoing.

Harris, to her credit, has refused to seek the death penalty in San Francisco, and would bring the perspective of a woman of color to the AG’s office. For all her flaws, she would be far better in the AG’s office than Cooley. Vote for Harris.

 

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER

 

DAVE JONES

Jones, currently a state Assemblymember from Sacramento, won a contested primary against his Los Angeles colleague Hector de la Torre and is now fighting Republican Mike Villines of Fresno, also a member of the Assembly. Jones is widely known as a consumer advocate and was a foe of Prop. 17, the insurance industry scam on the June ballot. A former Legal Aid lawyer, he has extensive experience in health-care reform, supports single-payer health coverage, and would make an excellent insurance commissioner.

Villines pretty much follows right-wing orthodoxy down the line. He wants to replace employer-based insurance with health savings accounts. He argues that the solution to the cost of health insurance is to limit malpractice lawsuits. He wants to limit workers compensation claims. And he supports “alternatives to litigation,” which means eliminating the rights of consumers to sue insurance companies.

Not much question here. Vote for Jones.

 

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1

 

BETTY YEE

The Board of Equalization isn’t well known, but it plays a sizable role in setting and enforcing California tax policy. Yee’s a strong progressive who has done well in the office, supporting progressive financial measures. She’s spoken out — as a top tax official — in favor of legalizing and taxing marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

 

TOM TORLAKSON

We fully expected a November runoff between Torlakson and state Sen. Gloria Romero. Both Democrats had strong fundraising and political bases — and very different philosophies. Romero’s a big charter school and privatization fan; Torlakson has the support of the teachers unions. But to the surprise of nearly everyone, a wild-card candidate, retired Los Angeles educator Larry Aceves, came in first, with Torlakson second and Romero third. Now Aceves and Torlakson are in the runoff for this nonpartisan post.

Aceves is an interesting candidate, a former principal and school superintendent who has the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Green Party. But he’s too quick to take the easy line that the teachers’ unions are the biggest problem in public education, and he wants the unilateral right to suspend labor contracts.

Torlakson wants more charter-school accountability and more funding for primary education. He’s the far better candidate.

 

STATE SENATE

 

DISTRICT 8

Leland Yee

Yee’s got no opposition to speak of, and will easily be re-elected. So why is he spending money on a series of slick television ads that have been airing all over San Francisco, talking about education and sending people to his website? It’s pretty obvious: The Yee for state Senate campaign is the opening act of the Yee for San Francisco mayor campaign, which should kick into high gear sometime next spring. In other words, if Yee has his way, he’ll serve only a year of his next four-year term.

Yee infuriates his colleagues at times, particularly when he refuses to vote for a budget that nobody likes but everyone knows is necessary to keep the state afloat. He’s done some ridiculous things, like pushing to sell the Cow Palace as surplus state property and turn the land over to private real estate developers. But he’s always good on open-government issues, is pushing for greater accountability for companies that take tax breaks and then send jobs out of state, has pushed for accountability at the University of California, and made great progress in opening the records at semiprivate university foundations when he busted Stanislaus State University for its secret speaking-fees deal with Sarah Palin.

With a few strong reservations, we’ll endorse Yee for another term.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12

 

FIONA MA

A clear hold-your-nose endorsement. Ma has done some truly bad things in Sacramento, like pushing a bill that would force the San Francisco Unified School District to allow military recruiters in the high schools and fronting for landlords on a bill to limit rent control in trailer parks. But she’s good on public power and highly critical of PG&E, and she has no opposition to speak of.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13

 

TOM AMMIANO

Ammiano’s a part of San Francisco history, and without his leadership as a supervisor, we might not have a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors. Ammiano was one of the architects of the return to district elections, and his 1999 mayoral campaign (against Willie Brown) marked a turning point in the organization, sophistication, and ultimate success of the city’s left. He was the author of the rainy day fund (which has kept the public schools from massive layoffs over the past couple of years) and the Healthy San Francisco plan.

In Sacramento, he’s been a leader in the effort to legalize (and tax) marijuana and to demand accountability for the BART Police. He’s taken on the unpleasant but critical task of chairing the Public Safety Committee and killing the worst of the right-wing crime bills before they get to the floor. He has four more years in Sacramento, and we expect to see a lot more solid progressive legislation coming out of his office. We enthusiastically endorse him for reelection.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14

 

NANCY SKINNER

Skinner’s a good progressive, a good ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee, and a friend of small business and fair taxation. Her efforts to make out-of-state companies that sell products in California pay state sales tax would not only bring millions into the state coffers but protect local merchants from the likes of Amazon. We don’t get why she’s joined with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates to try to get rid of Kriss Worthington, the most progressive member of the Berkeley City Council, but we’ll endorse her for re-election.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16

 

SANDRE SWANSON

Swanson’s a good vote most of the time in Sacramento, but he’s not yet the leader he could be — particularly on police accountability. The BART Police murdered Oscar Grant in Swanson’s district, yet it fell to a San Franciscan, Tom Ammiano, to introduce strong state legislation to force BART to have civilian oversight of the transit cops. Still, he’s done some positive things (like protecting state workers who blow the whistle on fraud) and deserves another term.

 

>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Endorsements 2010: National races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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10
Endorsements 2010: National races

 U.S. SENATE

BARBARA BOXER

The San Francisco Chronicle made a stunning — and utterly irresponsible — statement when it refused to endorse either candidate in this race, saying that neither Boxer, the three-term incumbent, nor challenger Carly Fiornia, was qualified for the job. That’s insane — this one’s as clear and obvious a choice as you could ask for in American politics.

Boxer’s one of the leading voices for the progressives in the U.S. Senate. She was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq; she’s been good on immigration (even when other Democrats have been ducking); and she’s a leading voice for accountability in financial companies. She’s finally come around on same-sex marriage and has a perfect record on reproductive rights and labor issues.

Fiornia’s chief claim to fame is that she ran one of the nation’s top companies, screwed up its history of excellent labor relations, outsourced 30,000 jobs, orchestrated a train wreck of a merger, and was fired. She left with enough of a golden parachute to help finance her campaign for Senate.

Fiorina’s anti-choice. She strongly supported Prop. 8 and opposes marriage equality. She’s so rabidly seeking the support of the gun nuts that she actually said that people on the federal “no-fly” list should be able to buy handguns. She supports the Arizona anti-immigration law. She’s for tax cuts for the rich and can’t even figure out if she’s supporting or opposing Prop. 23.

This one is a no-brainer. Vote for Boxer.

 

CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT

LYNN WOOLSEY

Woolsey was against the war when her colleague to the south, Nancy Pelosi, was still waffling. She’s a consistent voice against cuts in the safety net (and has the distinction of being the only member of Congress who was once on welfare). We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT

GEORGE MILLER

Miller’s an East Bay institution, now seeking his 18th term. He’s been good and bad on issues — weak at first on the war, bad on education (he supported No Child Left Behind), but generally sound on environmental issues. And this spring, he was willing to publicly challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on a terrible water bill.

 

CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT

NANCY PELOSI

It’s odd that Pelosi’s become such a symbol of liberal Democrats and fodder for the right-wing attack machine. When you look at her record, she’s hardly a San Francisco liberal and certainly no progressive. She’s not even a strong supporter of same-sex marriage. She was bad on the war for too long and seems far more interested in raising money than representing her constituents. But she did salvage the health care bill, and she’s held up as Obama’s chief Capitol Hill ally under enormous pressure, and if the Democrats survive with control of the House, she’ll stay speaker. If not, she should think about retiring.

 

CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT

BARBARA LEE

Lee became a hero to the peace movement worldwide when she refused after 9/11 to vote to authorize then-President Bush to go to war. She was the only member of either house willing to stand up against what would become the costly and bloody invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But she’s also been a strong supporter of HIV funding, is one of the few members of Congress to show much leadership on poverty issues, and has been elected to chair the Progressive Caucus. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT

PETE STARK

Stark is the Sup. Chris Daly of Congress, a fearless progressive who’s not afraid to ruffle feathers — or even insult the president — when he thinks it’s necessary. At 78, he’s an outspoken atheist (the only one in Congress), a staunch foe of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a progressive on all the major issues. He’s not terribly popular among his colleagues, who allowed him to serve for only one day as chair of the Ways and Means Committee before dethroning him for his inflammatory statements. But on balance, we’re glad he’s around.

 

>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Stage listings

David Talbot
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0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Christian Cagigal’s Obscura: A Magic Show EXIT Cafe, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-25. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 18. Magician Christian Cagigal presents a mix of magic, fairy tales, and dark fables.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Previews Wed/6, 7pm; Thurs/7-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Oct 16, 1pm). Through Oct 24. 42nd Street Moon presents the Sondheim musical farce, starring Megan Cavanagh.

Love Song Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 3 and 8pm. Through Oct 23. An offbeat comedy by John Kolvenbach, directed by Loretta Janca.

Zombie Town Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.stagewerx.org. $24. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Opens Thurs/7, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 31, 5pm). Through Oct 31. Catharsis Theatre Collective presents a documentary play about zombie attacks in Texas.

BAY AREA

Mary Stuart The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $15-30. Previews Wed/6-Thurs/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. (also Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 3; 7pm). Through Nov 7. Shotgun Players presents Friedrich Schiller’s historical drama, directed by Mark Jackson.

Superior Donuts TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks presents Tracy Letts’ tale of friendship and redemption in a Chicago donut dispensary.


ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Aida War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, 864-1330, www.sfopera.com. $25-320. Wed/6, 7:30pm. San Francisco Opera presents Verdi’s classic, a co-production with English National Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. Call for reservations. Mon-Thurs, 10 and 11:45am.; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/10. YouthAware Educational Theatre presents a multimedia play by James Still, directed by Sara Staley.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

*The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

Disoriented Off-Market Theater, 960 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Sun/10 and Oct 17, 7pm (also Wed/6 at CounterPULSE). Through Oct 17. A trio of solo performances by Asian-American women.

*Faux Real Climate Theater at TJT, 470 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/9, 10pm). Through Sat/9. A drag queen stripped bare? Not on your life. But in baring some soul and some truth ("two lies" per), Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson; aka a woman as a man as a woman&ldots;) does some productive and fascinating (re)working of this sly semi-confessional form. In a show that begins by asking, via David Bowie, "whatchya gonna say to the real me?", Fauxnique undresses drag by singing (very ably) as often as syncing and otherwise playing knowingly with the "reveals" inherent in the drag tradition, taking audiences back with her to high school in Denver in the 1980s for a herstory lesson like few others. Questions about identity and art mingle with hip, hilarious, wonderfully "haute," and seriously hardworking solo cabaret (assisted by transgresser-dresser and prop boy Kegan Marling). Originally unveiled in 2009, and fresh from a London debut, Faux Real returns for an extended but still too-brief run courtesy of the mighty little Climate Theater, currently ensconced in the Jewish Theatre’s luxurious little space. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. As part of an artistic residency, We Players presents an island-wide interactive performance of the Shakespeare play.

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

*Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 16. Highbrow meets low in one big, boisterous mono-brow middle as one of the baser of daytime talk-show hosts meets his audience and maker—or anyway Jesus and Satan—in a TV show purgatory that really is purgatory. The form is operatic, the subject matter the stuff of soap, and the resulting tawdry spectacle all but irresistible in Ray of Light Theatre’s production of the 2003 British musical by Richard Thomas (music, book and lyrics) and Stewart Lee (book and lyrics). If the conceit feels a bit one-note, it’s a note taken very cleverly and ably for all its worth. A smart, smarmy and dyspeptic Patrick Michael Dukeman excels in the title role, as the chorus, meanwhile, comprised of Jerry’s rabid studio audience, puts the unbridled hooligan glee in glee club, lending Wagnerian weight to such key phrases as "step-dad" or "chick with a dick." The grand and just slightly sleazy Victoria Theatre makes the perfect venue for this fine irreverence, filling it charmingly with rafter-shaking vulgarity and mayhem.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers presents its signature Halloween show, with three one-act Grand Guignol terror plays.

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre presents Stephen Adly Guirgis’ meditation on the meaning of forgiveness.

Olive Kitteridge Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.zspace.org. $20-40. Wed-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Sun/10. Page-to-stage company Word for Word takes on two chapters’ worth of Elizabeth Strout’s celebrated 2008 novel, comprised of a loosely connected set of stories surrounding the title character (played with cunning subtlety by Patricia Silver) and her immediate circle in a coastal town in Maine. In "Tulips," we find the thorny but shrewd Olive, a former math teacher, and her patient husband Henry (Paul Finocchiaro), the town’s longtime pharmacist, transitioning not so smoothly into their retirement years. Olive—itchy, cantankerous and vaguely at a loss despite her sharp wit—resents her grown son’s (Patrick Alparone) happily distant life in New York and battles with the neighbors until her husband’s stroke leaves her at sea, unexpectedly vulnerable and open to the kindness of neighbors and strangers alike (played by an ensemble that includes Jeri Lynn Cohen, Nancy Shelby, and Michelle Belaver). In "River," Olive, now a widow, begins a gradual, unlikely and bumpy romance with a recently widowed former academic (Warren David Keith). Director Joel Mullennix grabs hold of colorful details along the way—like the summer influx of rollerbladers and bicyclists—to further enliven the verbatim staging of these stories, but the effort can feel a little forced at times, as if betraying a sense that these well-acted, gently poetical and thoughtful stories and their complex protagonist do not always make for the most stimulating drama. (Avila)

A Picasso Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111, www.apicassoonstage.com. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/9. Expression Productions presents Jeffery Hatcher’s drama about the authenticity of three Picasso paintings.

Pinocchio Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat-Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Sun/10. Young Performers Theatre presents a new production of Carlo Collodi’s puppet tale.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely "virgin" Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Judd Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Secretaries Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 255-7846, www.crowdedfire.org. $15-25 (pay what you can previews). Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/9. Crowded Fire revives the 1994 black comedy by New York’s Five Lesbian Brothers, a gleefully inappropriate bit of feminist satire that feels like the love child of John Waters and Valerie Solanas. Set in the front offices of the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon (delightfully rendered in Nick A. Olivero’s scenic design with New Yorker-like illustrations of the surrounding environs), the story follows narrator Patty (Elissa Beth Stebbins) as she recounts her initiation into a snappy coven of office ladies who not-so-secretly fell (rather than fall for) the town’s lumberjacks as if they were so much old growth forest. The mayhem and humor amuse, but probably seemed a lot fresher 16 years ago, making the simple plot seem thinly stretched. Nevertheless, the play’s details are nicely taken care of in artistic director Marissa Wolf’s fluid staging, featuring lots of play with fluids and a robust ensemble. In addition to Stebbins’s well-wrought and raunchy innocent, Leticia Duarte rocks her power-suit commandingly as no-nonsense supervisor and pack/pact-leader Susan; Eleanor Mason Reinholdt proves scarily endearing as the deceptively mincing, food-obsessed Peaches; Khamara Pettus has Norma Desmond eyes as Susan’s jealous onetime favorite Ashley; and Marilee Talkington approaches comic perfection in lovingly crafted twin roles: the boundingly predatory butch Dawn; and Patty’s hetero love interest and sexual-harassment-workshop–graduate, Buzz. (Avila)

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall "Americana" program with the Tony Kushner play.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Red and Brown Water Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues, 8pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 10. Marin Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play.

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

She Loves Me Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (825) 943-7469, www.CenterREP.org. $36-45. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Sun/10. Center REPertory company presents a musical choreographed and directed by Robert Barry fleming.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Bijou Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; 241-0205, www.dragatmartunis.com. $5. Sun/10, 7pm. The live cabaret showcase celebrates Oktoberfest.

"Blue Room Comedy" Club 93, 93 9th St; 264-5489. Free. Tues/12, 10pm. A weekly series that takes comedy to new lows.

Dancing on Glass CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission. 626-2060, www.counterpulse.org. $20-25. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 7pm. A dark comedy about outsourcing, by Ram Ganesh Kamathan.

Drag Queens of Comedy Castro Theatre, 429 Castro. 254-3362, www.comedyinthecastro.com. $35-45. Sat/9, 10:30pm. A riotous extravaganza with performances by Miss Coco Peru, Jackie Beat, Lady Bunny, Heklina, and others.

Echo: A Poetic Journey Into Justice City of Refuge United Church of Christ, 1025 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Sat/9, 7pm (also Oct 16, 7pm). Progeny Theater Project presents a drama about sex trafficking by Regina Y. Evans.

Fifi and Fanny Live at the Texas Whorehouse The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm. Fifi and Fanny take on the queers of Texas with music and comedy.

Filipino Comedy Improv The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Wed/6, 8pm. The Garage and Bindlestiff Studio present sketch comedy.

A Funny Night for Comedy Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. Sun/10, 7pm. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host a standup program with interviews.

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $25-30. Thurs/7-Sat/9, 8pm. A new interdisciplinary performance work by Ralph Lemon.

Margaret Jenkins Dance Comedy Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center, 3200 California; 292-1233, www.jccsf.org. $18-26. Thurs/7, 8pm. The company celebrates its 37th anniversary with a preview of its latest work.

Standup Comedy Cafe Royale, 800 Post; 641-6033, www.caferoyale-sf.com. Free. Mon/11, 7pm. Cara Tramontano hosts a night of comedy.

Zaccho Dance Theatre Market Street (between Powell and First); 252-4638, www.sfartscommission.org. Free. Thurs/7-Sun/10, 1-5pm. The company presents a site-specific performance devoted to African-American contributions to SF.

BAY AREA

Circus Oz Zellerbach Hall, UC campus; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.com. $22-52. Thurs/7-Fri/8, 8pm; Sat/9, 2 and 8pm; Sun/10, 3pm. A new production by the Aussie steampunk group.

Drumline Live Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael; www.marincenter.org. $25-45. Fri/8, 8pm. A 40-member stage performance created by the team behind the movie of the same name.

Freeland Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Stage, Berk; (510) 601-0182, www.speakoutnow.org. Call for price. Fri/8, 8pm. A hip-hop journey from the streets of Oakland to the wild west, written and performed by Ariel Luckey and directed by Margo Hall.

Pilobolus Dance Company Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the flags, San Rafael; www.marincenter.org. $20-75. Sat/9, 8pm. A performance by the 40-year-old dance and performance company.

Hotel plan revives old question: Can the Presidio Trust be trusted?

Sasha Cuttler
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Hotel plan revives old question: Can the Presidio Trust be trusted?

In San Francisco’s Presidio, one of the few national parks that is mandated to pay for its operations with the proceeds from development, historic preservation is often undermined by commercial concerns. And critics contend the proposal for a big new hotel at the Main Post is a prime example of that model’s shortcomings.

The Presidio Trust, a seven-member board that presides over the historically significant park, is considering a proposal by the Larkspur Hotel Group to build an 88,000-square-foot luxury hotel complex of 12 new buildings and another two current and historic buildings that would be remodeled as part of the project. Opponents say the project runs counter to the Trust’s mandate of protecting the historical and environmental character of the Presidio’s Main Post.

Originally, the Trust set out a management plan that allows for only minor construction projects at the Main Post, but the body is now seeking to amend the plan to include the massive new hotel development. When it announced its plans at a recent public meeting, it was met with overwhelming opposition from neighborhood and local preservation groups

Gary Widman, president of the Presidio Historical Association, sees the move to amend the plan as emblematic of the Trust’s refusal to work collaboratively with the community. “People are frustrated by what they see as the Trust trying to put this amendment into place in a ‘stealth’ move. The Trust is not holding hearings explicitly on its proposed amendments,” he said.

Widman was also concerned with the impact that the hotel and the changes to the Presidio would have on the environment, calling the changes “consumptive, anti-sustainable and not in line with them claiming to be a green organization.”

Another opponent of the plans for the hotel is Boyd de Larios, a representative of Descendants of the Anza and Portola Expeditions (DAPE), who expressed concerns about local heritage being lost forever if the trust went ahead with its plans.

“Presidio doesn’t need a hotel. People aren’t looking for another Coney Island,” he said. “They do some wonderful things but no one trusts the trust anymore.”

After the base closure in 1994, the Trust was set up to make the park self sustainable by 2013 through the use of real estate leasing and renovations to the post buildings to make the park more desirable for the private sector. Among the projects added to the park in recent years is the Walt Disney Family Museum.

Trust officials did not responded to repeated Guardian calls for comment on the issue and any additional future plans. Similarly, others have been unable to get the answers they are searching for from the trust. One community member, Richard Hanlin has been questioning the future of the Presidio for years but has still not found answers to his questions. Hanlon said he worries about the Presidio’s future.

“As it stands [the Trust] is in a very weak position,” Hanlin said, focusing on the ability of the trust to maintain and protect its valuable assets. Hanlin went on to predict the barracks buildings will be ensconced by fences and without any renovations by the end of 2013 when the federal subsidies of the Trust runs out. The lack of renovation and preservation of the old barracks buildings are particularly troubling to Hanlon, especially since they represent the roots of the Presidio as a strategically important military installation.

“History matters,” Hanlin said. “Lots of young men spent their last night there and never came back.”

 

Appetite: The green fairy transforms

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: The green fairy transforms

Absinthe is on the move from its initial novelty phase once finally legalized in the US in 2007 into an era where appreciators of fine drink are gaining greater education and refinement on the subject. No, it is not a hallucinogen (more on that in a minute), and no, it’s not the artificially sweetened and colored liqueurs flooding the market (but labeled as absinthe). When made as it has been historically, it’s a natural, herbal spirit with a rich culture surrounding it. 

We owe increasing knowledge to artisan producers of absinthe near and far. Some are local guys, like Lance Winters of St. George Spirits, the first producer in the US when the ban was lifted, or more recently, Davorin Kuchan of Old World Spirits, producing green (verte) and bleue (white) absinthes. Then there’s absinthe historians and experts like Peter Schaf and John Troia of Tempus Fugit Spirits who import some of the best absinthes from France and Switzerland, such as Duplais’ brilliant verte and blanche (white) versions. Schaf also created Vieux Pontarlier, a classic-style absinthe made in Pontarlier, France, from local wormwood, long considered the finest grown in the world (where most wormwood was sourced over 100 years ago). Schaf, Winters and Ted Breaux of Lucid, formed a recent panel during SF Cocktail Week, a two hour session (and tasting) on the green fairy (read about it here).

Another source for absinthe education is books, the latest being A Taste for Absinthe, by R. Winston Guthrie with James F. Thompson. Though predominantly a cocktail recipe source, this elegant new book, with photography by Liza Gershman, offers an encompassing summary of the history and culture surrounding absinthe, from its poster art, to the spoons, glasses, fountains and accouterments used to serve it. It’s an artful drink requiring leisure and attention, not a hallucinogen, a myth still falsely promoted around the world (thujone is the fragrant chemical found in wormwood and other plants, such as sage, believed to be a neurotoxoin in extremely high doses – governments have strict regulations on the levels of thujone allowed in the making of absinthe so it is not remotely dangerous yet qualifies as actual absinthe). Kudos for film anecdotes throughout the book on movies where absinthe is imbibed, classic films I grew up watching that are rare to run across now like Lust for Life and Madame X. 

On the recipe side, the book is broken down into five sections: classics, fruit and citrus, whiskey and gin, liqueurs and bitters, and modern classics. The recipes are compiled from some of our country’s best bartenders, including many SF locals. While straightforward classics like Death in the Afternoon (absinthe and champagne) and a bright Brunelle (lemon, absinthe, citrus) are all here, there are also modern takes such as Neyah White’s Green Goddess: absinthe, Square One cucumber vodka, simple syrup, lime fresh basil and thyme. There’s even dessert-like recipes… try an Absinthe & Old Lace: gin, absinthe, creme de menthe, cream, egg white and chocolate mole bitters. 

A Taste for Absinthe is clearly well-researched, with many of the sources above tapped to bring together a comprehensive book worthy of a place on the shelves of absinthe aficionados as well as novices. This Monday at Book Passage (6pm) is a book release event with the author, photographer, and an all-star line-up of bartenders at neighboring Slanted Door serving four cocktails from the book: 

The event is free… well, purchased drinks and the book are on your own dime, but that’s a small price to pay for a little education.
 

Monday, 10/4 – 6pm

 Book Passage

1 Ferry Building # 42


www.atasteforabsinthe.com

 

NSFR(estaurant): My dinner with Dixie

Andrew Lam
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All photos by Benjy Feen

I had a blind date with Dixie De La Tour, but I wasn’t nervous. If all else failed, at least she would bring stories to tell. And how – De La Tour is the founder and emcee of Bawdy Storytelling, a randy live series with two events next week (Wed/6 and Sat/9) that will bring writers, comedians, and normal folk-like to the stage to share corset-busting sexcapades with an audience of vicarious pervs.

“I don’t know how this got to be my life,” says Dixie, now installed across the restaurant table from me behind a glass of sweet tea, wearing a dashing fedora and magnetic waves of dyed red hair. Her blue eyes have the intent gaze in them that you can see on people that know how to hold the attention of the room. “I don’t have a degree in it like every other pervert in this town.”

It is true that De La Tour seems to have lucked out on the manner in which she makes her money. By day, she scouts scammers at Fling.com, a national dating site for casual hookups. Perhaps she’s a natural fraud-finder – the woman’s spent a life facilitating honest, fun sexual encounters. She’s also a contributor at She Loves Sex, a collection of blogs about all things sexual related to women, told in a knowledgeable women’s voice. For the site, De La Tour recently interviewed Rebecca, a soccer mom from Florida who has started a successful chain of swinger’s parties in between PTA meetings and classes towards her master’s in public relations. 

Bawdy Storytelling, started four years ago, runs through a different theme each month. Adderall Diaries writer Stephen Elliott and that webmaster savior of the perpetually broke gadabout, Johnny Funcheap will be spinning yarns at next week’s Litquake edition of Bawdy (Wed/6), which actually is not themed at all, but rather a collection of the all-star lineup’s “best true stories.”

Maybe she’s got no degree, but Dixie does have a history in the psychology of human sexual relations. Over her rum cake — and to the passing interest of our server — De La Tour tells me that she got the party started at the first Kinky Salon XXX edition. Well c’mon Dixie, story time. She obliges. 

Dixie De La Tour fires up the Bawdy crowd

Having transplanted from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and an unsatisfying heterosexual monogamous relationship with a bookie, De La Tour was in her element in late ’90s San Francisco. “You know that girl whose always down for the sex party? People would call me up and I’d be like, I’m there!” She became the doorperson for the original Kinky Salon parties at Mission Control, back in the days when the get-togethers were more “salon” and less “kinky” – there hadn’t been sex, at least as acknowledged by the party planners, for the first few Kinkys.

But one month, founders Polly and Scott decided to change the nature of their get-together. De La Tour recalls a woman arriving at the party who told her “I’m from New Hampshire and this is my first San Francisco sex party!” Well, by the time De La Tour had gotten off her shift and into the mix at Kinky, there was talking, there was certainly drinking, but at least explictly, no sex. 

“There was a bullhorn by the stage,” she remembers, fully in the swing of her tale. 

It is at this time that I should explain that Dixie has explained that she is herself, “not that big of an exhibitionist.” De La Tour is a facilitator, the person at the swinger’s party who loves nothing more to make introductions and get the fucking going… for others. That’s what she likes.

So back to the bullhorn. Having made the most of her time off door duty, she is a bit inebriated at this point. She takes the bullhorn and, having installed herself on stage in front of the party, booms to New Hampshire woman “Connecticut! Go have sex with that guy!” — or some such thing (having told me she is “much more interesting after two beers,” I am obliging her and my notes are a bit sparse from this point in the evening). She remembers them immediately going to have sex, although others from the night remember it differently. Good storytelling is all about the broad strokes.

But regardless, the rest is undisputed. Dixie soldiers on with the bullhorn, roaming about the club until she actually does encounter a couple copulating in the Pink Room and begins to shout very, very dirty things into the bullhorn at them. “Say my name, say you like my big dick” she shouts (“really, things that were not making very much sense,” she tells me, looking through that deadly scope of hindsight). Suddenly, couples rush into the Pink Room, and Dixie has officially started the orgy. Er, party. 

Later, she runs into the original fuckers in another room utilizing a fucking machine. She is stripped of her bullhorn, installed on said machine, and is chagrined (remember, not a big exhibitionist) when the tables are turned and the woman from this couple begins to yell her name into the bullhorn. “Yeah, you like my big dick, Dixie?” Partygoers rush into the room to see the performance, and aid in her enjoyment of machine. She is eventually brought to climax when a woman Eskimo kisses her. 

This is told with a smile, and by the end of it, we notice our server is frozen in her rounds of filling water glasses. “What on earth are you two talking about?” she says, giggling. But this is San Francisco, and as she is clearly intrigued, Dixie hands her a card that has all the Bawdy Storytelling events inscribed on its back. 

After our (professionally inclined) date, I feel as though I have met someone very special, someone who has the cojones to nurture a community that often stays behind closed doors. De La Tour tells me you can learn a lot from hearing a person talk for ten minutes, perhaps more than you can learn having a good time with them at a swinger’s party. 

And the connection is contagious. De La Tour started Bawdy Storytelling as a “coffee klatch for pervs,” where people would gather about the table and talk about how last night’s Kinky Salon went for them. Soon others wanted to sit in on the talks around the table, which led to Bawdy’s current public incarnation. And then everyone wanted to share a story, which led to Bawdy’s set program of four to six speakers a night, “so that people could see there was a set lineup and they weren’t on it,” De La Tour tells me. “Somebody’s always walking up to me and saying hey I got one for you!” This last line enunciated with a pointed finger and an intensification of that blue-eyed stare.

How nice to get sexuality out into the open. How nice to find meaning and simpatico in our sex. How nice to be Dixie De La Tour.

 

Bawdy Storytelling Graphic Confessions

Wed/6 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org


Lit Crawl: Bawdy in the Alley

Sat/9 8:30-9:30 p.m., free

Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th St., SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com

www.litquake.org

 

Flagging in the Park: the whirl story

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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“This is the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life!” laughed my friend Ricky Strawberry as he twirled around and around, unfurling lengths of tie-dyed cloth to Hi-NRG dance tracks from a live DJ in the sunshine. If you know Ricky Strawberry, that’s pretty damn sparkly pink unicorn in a rainbow thong bathing under a Splenda waterfall gay. In fact, it was the gayest thing anyone in my pinko posse had ever done, as well, and we had a ball. It was gay, it was amazing, it was gaymazing, and you should do it too.

It? Flagging in the Park, the summertime monthly gathering of fluttering human butterflies in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. I wrote about it in this week’s Super Ego nightlife column — and it happens for the final time this year on Sat/2, 1 p.m.- 4p.m. 

Flagging — or flag dancing, wherein the dancer whirls around waving psychedelic-patterned, weighted pieces of fabric — has been around for several decades. I remember the first time I saw it was in the ’80s at a giant outdoor picnic in Detroit organized by Metra magazine, but it really took hold inside gay clubs during the ’90s, when circuit parties were on the rise. (Flag dancing of a non-gay-specific kind, using actual flags with poles, is an ancient art still practiced especially in Italy and New Orleans — and in Midwestern marching bands.) The exact gay origins are fuzzy — men dancing with giant fans at disco clubs were a common sight, and you will see lots of flaggers at the disco-celebrating Remember the Party event next weekend, for instance, which acts as a reunion for patrons of the classic Trocadero Transfer venue in the ’70s and ’80s.

Like many alternaqueers of my generation, flagging was a turnoff in the ’90s — it was too associated with annoyingly relentless circuit music, mainstream gym culture, and bad drugs in my mind. But that was a long time ago, and like a lot of things from that time, a rediscovery after old conflicts have died out puts things into a totally different perspective. (You don’t see much flagging in mainstream gay clubs these days, and the music at Flagging in the Park is a bit more fun and interesting than I thought it would be. For the October installment, the DJ is Steve Sherwood.) I was able to appreciate the art in a different context, and without prejudice. Flagging in the Park is a beautiful event, full of rich historical meaning. It welcomes everyone — there are also large contingents of hula-hoopers, poi-twirlers, and other talents — and has taken on a more spiritual aspect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me3rZ99ArbU

When I went in August (I had heard about it for months, and was encouraged to finally attend by my friend Steven Satyricon’s lovely writeup over at The Juice Box site) I was lucky enough to see the organizer, Xavier Caylor, be sainted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for his community work. And Flagging in the Park (FITP) really does bring in a bunch of donations for community organizations, as well as provide community healing. “Without grief, you can’t have joy,” said Xavier, referencing the spirits around us in the AIDS Grove. Xavier took over FITP 10 years ago, and he teaches a flagging class at Gold’s Gym in the Castro every Wednesday, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. He’s also several thousand degrees of hotness, yowza. I wanted to know more about how he got involved, and some of the spiritual aspects of the art. His story is below — and you should drift on by this Saturday afternoon to see for yourself. Xavier provides plenty of free flags to borrow, and flagging really is a bit of good exercise, I discovered. 

XAVIER CAYLOR: “I picked up my first set of flags from a friend of a friend at a party on Will Rogers Beach in 1997. I was hooked and we proceeded to flag everywhere we could: at home, in clubs and circuit parties. I heard about FITP from a fellow that I met at a circuit party in Palm Springs; he told me of a community of good friends that met during the summer months at a park in SF. I managed to contact someone and planned a weekend getaway from So. Cal. to attend in July of 1998.

“In 1998 the recently dedicated National AIDS Memorial Grove was young, the flaggers met in the then newly planted fern grove and gravel circle on the far West side. Twenty people gathered on what was a truly magical day for me; I was amazed with the variety of people, flags, and energy there – like a kid in a candy store. I not only left my heart in San Francisco but gave it freely to a tie-dye artist that became the catalyst for me moving here in just three short months. For the next few years he and I co-produced the event, popularity soon crowded us out of the circle and into the meadow. I have been producing the event since 2001 less two years that a friend took it and moved it to Dolores Park. Originally the events were planned a few days in advance around a sunny weather forecast. In 2002 this changed, acquiring permits and making these outreach events for charity brought a whole new dimension to our gatherings.

“What does the event mean to me? It was and is a magical space where love was born and flourishes, where flaggers can come out of the clubs and into nature. Held in a place that was built out of grief, mourning, and reflection by something that devastated our community and for a few hours we pour color, love, celebration, and heritage carefully back while raising consciousness by giving back. It is the place that our tribes come together to socialize, bond, and strengthen community. It is also a place that people walking through the park can happen upon a surreal event, take it in for a minute, and leave having had the opportunity to try something new or just stop and take in the music and visuals before moving along to where ever it is they are going. I usually plan 3 or 4 FITPs per year between May and October — the last one was supposed to be the final one this year, but we had such a great crowd and great vibe that we decided to have one more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3pX-Ys1wI

“If you’ve picked up flags you’ve most likely been asked by someone to show them how to do “it.” I’ve been showing friends since day one, taught at workshops in SF, NY, SD, and Dallas. I’ve been involved with group and solo performances, led people in tie-dye, and given away hundreds of flags while traveling to parties in Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Spain and the UK ,not to mention many cities around the US.

“About my class at Gold’s Gym: When I moved to San Francisco Club Universe, 177 Townsend, on Sundays was known as Pleasuredome and was a venue with a huge stage that flaggers flocked to weekly to play and share their art. It was a beacon to flag dancers on the West coast and beyond, introducing a steady stream of club goers weekly to the glowing fabric twirling in the U.V. flooded stage. It’s close in 2002 was a blow to the dance and flag communities. In 2007 I approached the management at Gold’s and asked if I could hold a weekly space for flaggers to come and practice – I was envisioning a free space that I would hold for a year with the purpose of re-energizing my tribe and reviving that weekly space. Troy at Gold’s Gym enthusiastically offered me a position and added the class to their Group X fitness program – I’ve been teaching Wednesday nights since. It is a place that people that have never flagged can come and learn – I have flags for use and set up black lights to make them come to life. The community comes to practice, play and socialize. I support new and old flaggers at the gym and outside of the gym by leading tie-dye classes/open studios so people can make their own flags. Weekly pre class discussions are opportunities to share history, personal stories and current events. Other flow toys (like poi and fans) show up from time to time and I support them if and when I can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4qFjeSTvg

“The group of guys that started FITP in 1996 shared a common experience, they had all gone to a week long experience in consciousness building in San Diego called the Miracle of Love which used active meditation techniques developed by Osho Rajneesh. Those flaggers came together in 1998 to bring those techniques to the gay community through a weekend seminar that is still going strong called the ‘Men’s Inner Journey.’ It was through delving deep into the techniques of active meditation that I realized what a spiritual event flagging is. Though people don’t usually make the connection between flagging and meditation, there is a point when the body and mind are so engaged that in the exuberance of the dance the mind is set free to a place of stillness. I believe that meditation something lacking in our lives and something we need to recharge our spirit and connect with our soul.

“Flagging is a visually appealing dance that has lived primarily in the gay community for the past 40 years. It touches on spirituality by being an alternative form of meditation palatable for people on the go. I am proud to be one of the many that keeps this art form flourishing by holding the space to pass it to the next generation of artists. www.flaggercentral.com is a great resource for our community.”

Arlington & Santa Clara join SF in requesting S-Comm opt-out

Mary Magee
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Arlington & Santa Clara join SF in requesting S-Comm opt-out

The County Board in Arlington, Virginia and the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors both voted unanimously September 28 to opt out of S-Comm, a controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data-sharing program also known as Secure Communities.

This means San Francisco is no longer the only municipality requesting to opt out of ICE’s S-Comm program. (Washington, D.C’s metropolitan Police Department is the only jurisdiction to date to successfully terminate its S-Comm Memorandum of Agreement with ICE.) The program automatically shares fingerprints with ICE that are taken by local law enforcement immediately after individuals are arrested, even if criminal charges are eventually dismissed or were the result of an unlawful arrest.

The opt-out resolutions in Santa Clara and Arlington came a day before 578 national and local organizations delivered a letter to President Barack Obama condemning the merger of criminal justice and immigration systems and demanding an end to practices that harm diverse communities throughout the country.

S-Comm has already met with opposition from civil rights organizations, law enforcement, and city officials from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, over concerns it is being forced on hundreds of counties without oversight or accountability.

As a result of this opposition, ICE issued a statement in August that confirmed that local jurisdictions have a right to opt out by sending a written request.

And recently, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also confirmed in writing that local jurisdictions can opt of S-Comm by requesting to do so in writing.

San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey has already submitted this request in writing on at least two occasions, most recently on August 31st. And on May 18, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a resolution to opt out of S-Comm.

And Angela Chan, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, repeated her request that ICE comply with its own opt-out procedure for all requesting counties.

“SF has done everything required of us to opt out,” Chan said in a press release. “Sheriff Hennessey and our Board of Supervisors have voiced our request to opt out of S-Comm loud and clear. It’s now ICE’s turn to follow through on their word and allow counties to do what has been within our right all along. Only then will we be able to focus our local resources back on local law enforcement. S-Comm has no place in our counties because it makes immigrant victims and witnesses afraid to come forward and cooperate with local law enforcement.”

In response to Santa Clara’s opt-out request, ICE’s Assistant Director David Venturella sent a letter to Santa Clara’s legal counsel Miguel Marquez in which he sought to clarify how S-Comm works:

“Secure Communities is ICE’s comprehensive strategy to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States,” Venturella wrote. “As part of this strategy, ICE uses a federal biometric information sharing capability to more quickly and accurately identify aliens when they are booked into local law enforcement custody.”

“ICE uses a risk-based approach that prioritizes immigration enforcement actions against criminal aliens based on the severity of their crimes, focusing first on criminal aliens convicted of serious crimes like murder, rape, drug trafficking, national security crimes, and other “aggravated felonies,” Venturella continued.

But critics of S-Comm have noted that the majority of folks identified by this program are not criminal aliens at all. These critics argue that the program is undermining community policing efforts, since a person who has not committed a serious crime can now be referred to ICE simply because they were arrested (perhaps falsely) of a crime—and ICE can initiative deportation proceedings before that person can prove that they aren’t a felon.

And as Venturella acknowledges in his letter to Santa Clara, “Under this strategy, ICE maintains the authority to enforce immigration law.”

But Venturella confirmed that local municipalities have the right to request that their jurisdictions S-Comm program not be activated. And he clarified that ICE won’t be requiring local jurisdictions to sign statements of intent, or any other document to participate in S-Comm.

He also explained that ICE defers to the California State Attorney General on how state, county and local law enforcement agencies within California will share biometric data.

Venturella clarified that the purpose of local law enforcement receiving a fingerprint “match message” is to provide any additional identity information about the subject, including aliases, from the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric database. This database stores over 100 million records that, according to Venturella’s letter, “may not have been available based only on a criminal history check.”

But he noted that “receiving a ‘match message’ does not authorize or require any action by local law enforcement.”

“ICE views an immigration detainer as a request that a local law enforcement agency maintain custody of an alien, who may otherwise be released, for up to 48 hours (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays),” Venturella explained. “This provides ICE time to assume custody of the alien.”

Venturella noted that ICE is not responsible for the incarceration costs of such individuals and does not reimburse localities for detaining any individual until ICE assumes custody.

But he points out that there is no statutory requirement that localities notify ICE if a subject is to be released 30 days in advance of any release or transfer.
‘The notification of ICE of inmate transfer or release within 30 days is pursuant to ICE’s request for such information,” Venturella stated.

Venturella clarifies that there is a legal basis for requiring ICE officers to conduct inmate interviews “to determine alienage and any possibilities for relief or protection from removal.”

But he also points out that local officials are not required to assist the feds in acquiring information about detainees.
“Assisting ICE in acquiring detainee information is not a legal requirement,” Venturella states.

Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim talks “Waiting for ‘Superman'”

Sue Vaughan
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Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim talks “Waiting for ‘Superman'”

Where do you go from global warming?

Director Davis Guggenheim won an Academy Award for 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth. His latest film, Waiting for “Superman”, takes on the United States’ failing public education system. In some ways, the documentary represents a return to Guggenheim’s first subject. “The very first documentary I made followed first-year teachers, because I believed that teachers were the answer to our schools,” he says. “And I still believe that. Now I wanted to talk about the kids and their families, and what’s at stake for them.”

The kids and families in question are the subjects of Waiting for “Superman”, which follows five young people in search of a better education. While the scope of the film is large — covering the history and bureaucracy that has created this national epidemic — Guggenheim is careful never to stray far from the victims of the crisis.

“The really hard part about it is how complicated this issue is, and it’s hard to simplify it,” he explains. “And I wanted it to be understandable to everybody. Whenever I got lost, I would always bring it back to the kids. It’s a very simple story: five kids, all they want is to go to a great school.”

In the film, Guggenheim looks at the complex situation from several different angles. Some of his targets are predictable — budget cuts and lack of accountability. But he also focuses on areas that might be less familiar to audiences, such as the detrimental effect teacher’s unions can have on schools. While Guggenheim asserts that he is a pro-union liberal, he suggests that teacher’s unions create contracts that make it difficult to deal with many of the problems public schools face today.

“I’m a member of the Directors Guild of America,” he says. “They make sure I get paid properly. They make sure my rights are taken care of. But they don’t tell Hollywood how to make movies, and they don’t protect bad directors.” Guggenheim’s analogy is apt. These unions push for tenure, which most teachers receive automatically after two years. Once they have tenure, it’s very hard for them to be let go — even if they are performing poorly at their jobs.

“I think teachers should get even stronger and demand more pay,” Guggenheim continues. “But they should not have these contracts that keep reform from happening.” Some of the fixes Guggenheim proposes seem like no-brainers. As he points out, the drive behind Waiting for “Superman” is one most people can relate to, whether they’re parents of students directly affected by the situation, or simply compassionate people.

“What’s amazing about public education is that everyone wants great schools,” Guggenheim notes. “It’s not like you’re going to argue that. With global warming, maybe you could argue about whether it’s real or not. But in America, everyone believes in great schools.” On the other hand, we’ve become cynical. We see president after president enter the White House with the promise of education reform. And yet, as Waiting for “Superman” documents, for the most part we’re no better off than we were before. In some areas, we’re worse.

“The problem is, people over time, they give up, because they feel like it’s too complicated, or it’s impossible to fix,” Guggenheim reflects. “And I tried to make a movie to get people to start to care again, and to believe that it’s possible, and to fight so that every kid can get a great education.” Guggenheim sincerely believes in his cause — he sees the documentary as just a jumping-off point for a larger movement. And while it’s easy to feel daunted by the magnitude of the problems our nation faces, he’s confident that things can get better, provided we have the motivation.

“Change can happen really fast,” Guggenheim says. “Before World War II, we could only make a couple planes a year. When we all got excited and committed, we made a thousand planes a year.”  He hopes that Waiting for “Superman” will inspire that desire for change. Guggenheim believes that it’s something we all feel, and that education may simply be something we’ve ignored for too long.

“We’ve been not wanting to deal with our schools,” he says, “and I think we could jump right in. The solutions are there.” But he’s also clear about what it takes: “We’re not gonna fix our schools unless everyone is outraged, and everyone demands that all of our schools work.”

Waiting for “Superman” opens Fri/1 in Bay Area theaters.

Crusader of the cables: Fannie Mae Barnes

Andrew Lam
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Whoever said a cable car couldn’t be operated on woman power alone clearly had never met the steam engine on this grandmother. Fannie Mae Barnes of Oakland, California was the first woman ever to operate a cable car grip – not because it was a higher paying position, or an easier gig, but because she was told that women didn’t have the strength to do the job right.

Barnes started pumping iron, passed the 25-day grip operator training program notorious for its 80 percent drop out rate, and became a source of civic pride. She even drove the Olympic torch up the Hyde Street hill en route to the 2002 Winter Olympics. A documentary about her achievement, “Getting a Grip,” will be shown tonight at Lunafest, a traveling film festival that screens movies made by and about women to benefit the Breast Cancer Fund. We caught up with Barnes for a phone interview about knocking down one of the city’s diehard gender divisions of labor.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What made you want to be a cable car operator?

Fannie Mae Barnes: It wasn’t about being a conductor, it was the grip up front, which is totally different from the conductor. In ’98 I went up front and became the first female ever to be certified as a grip. 

 

SFBG: What’s the difference?

FMB: The difference is this: on the cable car it takes two people to operate, you have the person in the rear that does the back break at any given time it’s needed and collect the fares. Up front you have the gripman that controls the cable car. There’s a huge device that weighs about 375 pounds and it’s called the grip and it grips the cable that’s underneath the ground that’s moving at nine and a half miles per cable speed. It’s a ITAL job. It’s very different from conducting.

 

SFBG: So you’re lifting a 375 pound weight to operate the cable car?

FMB: As far as pulling back, yeah. The cable car itself weighs eight tons, empty. It’s a miniature train. A lot of guys will try to muscle the grip, but it’s really more a finesse thing – you have to leverage it with your body weight. 

 

SFBG: How did you become the first woman to operate the grip?

FMB: Well they had said that they always need gripmen because it’s a difficult job. They had mentioned that it was a job that woman could not do because we lacked the upper body strength. So I said hey, come on now, you know, there’s absolutely nothing a woman can’t do. I mean if you can take care of a family, I mean, come on. This was in ’97 that this article came out. So in ’97 I decided I had to step up to the plate and be that woman, so I did it. I worked out extensively for six months to a year. I couldn’t let the year 2000 come into existence without a woman up front. So I did it, February 14th, 1997.

 

SFBG: What were you doing before you started working at the cable cars?

FMB: I was driving buses. I drove buses for 11 years. Some of my friends who had drove buses had left and were over in the cable cars division, so that’s what I did. And once I started working there I loved it. It’s a totally different scene, you know, you have a lot of tourists and they just want to ride and have fun.

 

SFBG: What kind of reaction did you get from the other cable car grips?

FMB: Well a lot of the guys were betting money against me that I would not make it. But then I had positive input too from some guys, so I went with the positive side. I knew that I was going to make it because I was training hard for it and it was something that I felt that I could do, and anytime you really apply yourself and it’s something that you want to do, you can do it.

 

SFBG: What gave you that conviction to know you could be that first woman? Is that something your family taught you?

FMB: Yeah, more or less. My mom always taught me growing up that whatever you want to do hon, you can do it, you just have to set your mind to it and go for it. 

 

SFBG: So what are you doing with your golden years of retirement?

FMB: I work with an organization, Ghana Women and Children of North America. We’ve only been existence for a year, we do non-profit work with organizations in Africa. We put electricity in a primary and secondary school, we bought them two computers, a printer, and we opened up the Internet for them. 

 

Lunafest

Featuring films Getting a Grip, Top Spin, and Tightly Knit

Thur/30 6 p.m., $20

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.lunafest.org

 

Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 2

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Highlights of SF Cocktail Week, part 2

That fizzy, magical week during which cocktails take over our fair city has just washed over us. Here are more highlights — check out part 1 here.

9/26 – Cocktail Cookout on the Island  

 Though it’s a toss-up between the Cocktail Carnival and the St. George/Hangar One cookout for best event of the week, sheer fun and beauty was unrivaled on the stunning Sunday boat cruise to and from Alameda (entire boat for Cocktail Week attendees only). None other than Scott Beattie served cocktails for the scenic boat ride. It was a hot, over 80 degree day so Beattie’s creations topped with Thai coconut foam and apple chip or dotted with edible flowers cooled us off in the most gourmet of ways. Massive navy ships in Alameda’s port made for a dramatic unloading point.

At the ever festive St. George/Hangar One distillery, there was BBQ (pulled pork from Fatted Calf), East Bay bartenders shaking up ice-cold cocktails, umbrellas and wading pools in the massive lot with views of the city across the Bay. Claire of Claire’s Squares served seductively lush dark chocolate squares which she hand-filled with St. George brandy in a caramel sauce and topped with sea salt. Damn. Tours of the distillery, a DJ spinning reggae and hip hop and bright sun made for a cookout to trump all cookouts.

But nothing could top that ferry ride home… pristine horizons, a rosy orange sunset illuminating our fair San Francisco with a gentle glow, warm air and rounds of Firelit Coffee liqueur. Amidst much laughter with friends, I leaned over the side of the boat letting the spray of the waves caress my face as city lights begin to ignite before me. I knew, once again, the grateful wonder and privilege of living in a place so magically stunning. 

9/25 – The Return of Absinthe at Comstock 

 Absinthe distillers Peter Schaf of Vieux Pontarlier, Lance Winters of St. George, and Ted Breaux of Lucid, formed the panel for two hours of all things absinthe. Their expertise and knowledge is dizzying. It was a crucial intro for those who dabble in the green fairy, clarifying the difference between real absinthe distilled from herbs and the unnaturally colored and flavored “absinthes” that flood the market.  Absinthe’s history, art and paraphernalia, as well as “terroir” and sourcing of herbs, were all discussed… with occasionally rowdy laughter from comments such as the one about syphilis (don’t ask).Comstock Saloon was the perfect setting, serving us three impeccably-prepared (and in gorgeous classic glassware) absinthe cocktails, including a Sazerac and Brunelle, as well as savory snacks from their kitchen.

9/26 – I-talian I-ranian Spaghetti Feed

Negronis, Sangiovese, antipasti, spaghetti and meatballs (traditional Italian from Long Bar chef Erik Hopfinger, as well as Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap‘s – famed Iranian meatballs), ending with tiramisu and grappa. This was Sunday night (plus red-checkered tablecloths) at Reza Esmaili’s Long Bar for the I-talian I-ranian American Spaghetti Feed. Some took the tip, wearing velour tracksuits or elastic-waisted trousers: trashy and tacky, ready to fill up after a long day in the sun at St. George. It was all delicious – a special kudos to Hoss’ decadent surprise meatball stuffing of foie gras, duck, fig and date.

 

Getting our rocks off: a historical perspective

Andrew Lam
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Getting our rocks off: a historical perspective

San Francisco is waiting for its Boogie Nights. Unbeknownst to Hollywood, our fair berg was the infant creche of hardcore pornography, spawning a subculture of porn theaters that thrived despite police harassment and political pressure.

We were number one! Luckily, a few brave men are resurrecting our porn golden age money shot – read on for a first look at documentary The Smut Capital of America and an interview with the director himself, Michael Stabile.


Smut Capital is by no means Stabile’s first porn rodeo. The co-editor of Gay Porn Blog, he and Smut Capital editor-cinematographer Ben Leon are both mainstays in the SF gay porn scene. The two were researching their upcoming doc on the life of gay smut powerhouse Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes when Stabile came across a New York Times article that inspired the title of their new project, which is a work in progress for which the team is fundraising in order to release the finished film in 2011.

“Until then I’d always thought of it as an industry that emerged from LA, but San Francisco was actually the city that birthed the porno theater. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution, and in a lot of ways these directors were documenting this newly found freedoms.” Stabile attributes the renaissance to hippie women “with really no hangups,” a progressive zeitgeist that had seized the city in the late sixties and early seventies, and film processing studios that were willing to develop sexually explicit material. By the era’s zenith in 1972, there were porno film theaters in neighborhoods across the city.

Not that everyone was down to get all that action on screen. Dianne Feinstein, first in her post as the city’s first female president of the Board of Supervisors and then as SF’s first female mayor, led a crusade focused on cleaning up the Tenderloin, which incidentally included sweeping the neighborhood free of its supply of adult movie houses. What ensued was an orchestrated harassment policy that different porn theaters dealt with in different ways.

Established theaters, Stabile says, actually benefited from the police and media persecution. “They’d come in with cameras, it’d be on the five o clock news and it would be great for them,” he says. “Advertising was very limited at the Chronicle. Feinstein would come in with her troops and would detail everything that was going on. Suddenly there was a way to talk about it, so people would flood into the theaters.” The Mitchell Brothers grew so adept at playing the cat and mouse game, he says, that they would post Feinstein’s office number on their marquee under the words “call for a good time.”

But not everyone prospered. Smaller theaters that depended on a few workers to operate, like Alex DeRenzy’s Screening Room, suffered when police would take key staffers on pointeless joyrides around town before booking them on charges of vice crime. Eventually factors like these, and more importantly the advent of video porn in the 1980s pulled the adult film business down to Los Angeles.

The move shifted the purpose of sex films away from their original role in the Sexual Revolution. Says Stabile “People were doing it here because they enjoyed it, because they wanted their own sexualities represented. It’s not like that in LA for the most part, where even a lot of the gay studios are owned by straight men looking to turn a profit.”

But don’t worry, the party’s not over. One of Stabile’s main goals with the film is not just to highlight good sex gone by, but that which cums and goes even today. When asked whether SF is still a presence in the world of porn, he had no equivocation. “Its one of the great untold stories in the local media – San Francisco has a huge porn presence. Raging Stallion, Falcon, Hot House – seven of the top ten gay porn studios are located up here, there’s Kink.com, porn writers like Violet Blue,” he says.

It appears that the tech savvy and sexual freedom that led to our capital crowning are still alive and well on these city streets. Phew! Now you may now go back to your regularly scheduled local porn browsing.

False witness

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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False witness

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Documentaries that “tell” the Holocaust tend to employ archival footage generically as a kind of historical flavoring. It’s rare that we are asked to contemplate either the provenance of the images or the individual lives depicted. Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished simultaneously confronts both of these gaps with a taut historiography of several reels of Nazi propaganda footage. Even in the German film’s inchoate form, we easily apprehend the propagandistic moves to further manipulate an already constructed reality (the Warsaw Ghetto) for objective “proof” of the necessity of Hitler’s Final Solution. Yet here before us, flowing at the speed of life, are the faces and places that would be destroyed within months of the filming.

Hersonski attempts to extricate the documentary value of this footage using frame-speed manipulations and edits that call attention to telling movements. She also films elderly survivors watching the footage alone in a darkened theater. In their capacity for recognition and incredulousness, they unravel the German point of view. By weaving these live responses with diary entries of those consigned to the ghetto along with the deposition of a German cameraman, Hersonski draws a fragmentary, highly specific account of the Holocaust’s crisis of representation. We discussed the film during a recent e-mail exchange.

SFBG The question of how to use archival footage responsibly is one that haunts the great Holocaust-themed films — Night and Fog (1955), Shoah (1985), and the films of Péter Forgács all find very different solutions. Can you describe the way your own attitudes regarding the appropriation of this archive developed during the time you worked on A Film Unfinished?

Yael Hersonski During the last decade I became more and more preoccupied with the thought of the near future, when no Holocaust survivors will be left to remember — the time when the archives will be the only source of witness. I’ve tried to examine the possibilities of exploring the image like an archaeologist analyses a palimpsest and to excavate, by cinematic means, new layers of reality from beneath the known imagery. I admit that [at one] time I felt that Night and Fog and Shoah were all that a filmmaker could express facing such an inconceivable, unprecedented event. For [Shoah director Claude] Lanzmann, the Holocaust lies firmly outside the archive as the ultimate Other, a black hole that threatens to swallow every visual witness, and thus resists the film archive and its raptures.

Forgács faces the impossibility of bearing witness exactly by confronting the contemporary viewer (who knows how it all ended) with private documentation that was abruptly stopped when the photographer himself was no longer capable of documenting, nor his dear ones of being documented. Forgács’ films introduce me again and again to the immense capacity of footage to reveal, in the form of a private history, the traces of an inconceivable past. My aim in showing the Warsaw Ghetto footage (for the first time in its entire length) and confronting the images with many points of view about the filmmaking itself was not to tell “the true story” of the Warsaw Ghetto, nor to expose the evil of Nazi propaganda (which was obvious even to the German filmmaker who discovered the reels in 1954), but to make the viewers question the way they see these images, and through them, perceive the past.

A FILM UNFINISHED opens Fri/1 in Bay Area theaters.

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