Jobs

‘I’m just doing my job, ma’am’

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Almost every San Francisco car owner has had this experience at least once: you parked at a metered or timed spot, and now you’re running late. You rush back to your vehicle only to find a uniformed official already filling out your parking ticket. Now you’re pissed — at yourself, your car, the city’s rules, and the person holding the notepad. On some level you know the parking official is simply doing her job — it’s nothing personal. But on a more visceral level, you’re seething with resentment, and it’s directed squarely at her. Glancing at the ticket that’ll cost you more than this week’s groceries, you want to ask, "How can you sleep at night?"

I recently went through this experience twice in one week. And once I got past the automatic hatred of all uniforms, three-wheeled vehicles, and notepads with carbon copies, I began to wonder what it would be like to have a job most people don’t want you to do.

I got to thinking: not everyone can be an urban hero — those professionals who, because of the nature of their jobs, are considered benevolent and necessary. They put out our fires, save our lives, and teach our children how to read. No, some people are urban antagonists. They call during dinner time. They interrupt your picnic at the park. They write parking tickets.

I wanted to talk to some of these people, to find out not only just how badly they’re treated, but also why they continue to show up for work, day after day. It turned out it can be so hard to have these kinds of jobs that most parking control officers wouldn’t even talk to me. And none I interviewed would give me a real name.

But they did give me some insight.

‘SORRY, I ALREADY STARTED WRITING.’


With their uniforms, handheld ticket-gadgets, and ubiquitous three-wheeled vehicles, there are few professionals more recognizable on San Francisco streets than the Parking Control officers. And with 44 recorded incidents involving angry motorists threatening or assaulting officers in the course of performing their duties over the past two years, few professionals are subject to such acute on-the-job stress.

"It’s tough sometimes," acknowledged B., a PCO writing tickets near the intersection of Valencia and César Chávez streets, "because you’re doing your job and a lot of the time people see you as the opposition — like an enemy, not as someone who is doing a service to the city." People forget that by writing tickets, PCOs crack down on double-parkers who block traffic, space-hoggers who stay in one spot all day, and sidewalk-parkers who obstruct walkways for pedestrians such as mothers with strollers, B. said.

But not all PCOs take comfort in that rationalization. K., another anonymous PCO, said, "You just need to find your niche. I respond to complaints — blocked driveways, construction zones, fire hydrant obstructions — I’m happy. It’s cool."

"It’s not for everybody, but I would say it’s a fine job," he continued. "It pays well. It’s secure. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I’ve never had a problem. If you’re cool about it, if you’ve got the right demeanor, then the saying is true: you get what you give."

Judson True, a spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, added that PCOs conduct traffic during special events and congested hours, help motorists around accident sites, and even conduct undercover stings to prevent the abuse of disabled parking placards. Most of all, though, PCOs — like others with less-than-lovable jobs — are still people.

"No one likes to get parking tickets. That’s an obvious reality," True said. "But people need to remember that the parking control officers are their neighbors, their friends, their family — people who are doing an important job for the whole city."

‘CAN YOU SPARE A MOMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?’


Yes, those clipboard jockeys scanning for eye-contact outside Whole Foods or approaching you at Dolores Park have a name. They’re called canvassers, and their job is to solicit votes, subscriptions, opinions, or something similar — and often they’re paid by the signature. These days canvassers are talking about everything from orphans to Obama, gun control to global warming. But most people aren’t interested in what they’re called or what issue they’re representing.

"I’ve been called pariah, douchebag, whore, woman of the night," said Valerie, who recently canvassed at Market and Powell streets for an international charity. "I’ve had coffee poured on me. I’ve had people scream ‘Get the fuck out of my face!’ and yell ‘It’s a scam! It’s a scam!’ while I talk with other people."

Dave, a canvasser for Progressive Political Solutions who worked further down Market, agreed the job can be challenging — but worth it.

"There are going to be days that people are totally against everything you do," Dave said. "But then there’s someone — one person — who makes the day worthwhile, someone who I would have never been able to talk to in an office."

Dave was enthusiastic about the skills he has developed working the streets. He not only credited canvassing for PPS with enhancing his verbal and interpersonal skills, but also with learning industry-specific skills like how to do press calls and conferences, and understanding the political process. Within months of taking the job, he said, he had risen to staff supervisor, helping to advise and manage new hires.

"I like this job in the sense of the big picture," Dave said, before heading into a crowded UN Plaza, clipboard in hand.

Valerie confirmed that for canvassers, the big picture is what it’s all about. Valerie, no less positive for being verbally assaulted and doused with coffee, added, "At the end of the day — no matter how many times someone calls me a douchebag or a bitch — I am making someone’s life better. That’s what really matters to me."

‘SORRY TO CALL YOU AT DINNERTIME, BUT … ‘


Kurt Stenzel, vice president of sales at Tactical TeleSolutions, was one of the few people I interviewed who gave me a full name. Then again, he swears his salespeople aren’t the same ones interrupting your primetime TV hour — and he credits telemarketing for his meteoric rise to success.

"I took the Greyhound bus from New York City with $200, got a telemarketing job, and one thing led to another and now I’m selling to big tech guys [Apple, IBM, Sprint] every day," said Stenzel, who runs the call station downtown.

Though TTS mainly does business-to-business work, Stenzel explained, most telemarketers do make cold calls to homes at some point. His was in New York, where he worked in a windowless room calling people who didn’t want to hear from him.

Their attitude, he says, was, "You’re trying to rip me off — now prove otherwise."

"It’s a tough go," he admitted. "People will curse you out or be crazy."

So what’s good about this job? According to Stenzel, it’s how egalitarian the hiring process is. Call stations aren’t interested in padded resumes and flashy degrees. They want people who know how to talk, plain and simple.

"If they’re articulate, it doesn’t matter so much if they’ve got the right degree," he said. "In that sense, call center work is one of those genuine equal opportunity situations. If people have dropped out of school or come on a tough time, people can come here, build up some skills, and really build their way up."

Though these interviews were enlightening, I can’t say I want to do any of these jobs any more than I did before. And I can’t promise to be less annoyed the next time a canvasser butts into my private conversation or a PCO ruins my morning. But I do hope I’m at least a little more compassionate.

Of course, compassion would be so much easier, officer, if you just let me go. Just this once.

Diving for dollars

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Perhaps it’s because I have my basic scuba license, but the idea of diving for profit has always held a certain mystique for me. It’s one thing to look at fish on vacation, but quite another to do something so dangerous and physically demanding every day.

I’ve always wondered: what kind of person chooses such a job?

The earliest commercial divers were salvage workers, roving the alien ocean floor in search of sunken treasure. At that time, when little was known about the physical effects of the frigid, high-pressure environment of the deep ocean, only men of a certain build could do it successfully.

Divers in old-fashioned canvas suits and huge round brass helmets (remember Red Rackham’s Treasure?) laid the foundations for the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in 90 feet of chilly, turbulent water. Now pretty much anyone can take a simple course, strap on a scuba tank, and get acquainted with a coral reef. Still, it takes a particular mixture of recklessness, humor, and grim determination to do it every working day, at depths where no recreational diver is certified to go, in temperatures that would have most us running for a blanket and a cup of sugary tea.

Dean Moore, operations manager at Underwater Resources, a San Francisco firm specializing in marine construction, has one of those old-fashioned suits hanging in his office. Although the suits were massive and heavy, the brass and copper helmets were so buoyant that divers had to wear lead-weighted boots to keep from shooting to the surface. Moore has a pair of the boots as well, thought they’ve long been replaced by equipment made of Kevlar and Neoprene. Moore admits that being immersed in this world has soured him on recreational diving. When not working, he says, "I wanna stay high and dry. I think you lose a bit of the love of the sport."

Moore and his lead diver, Chris Moyer, showed me around their office and gave me a rundown of the day-to-day operation. The two are frequently called on to do some pretty nasty and unsafe work: crawling into narrow pipes, diving straight into raw sewage, or containing a pollution bloom near an oil refinery. If some politicians get their way, divers like Moyer could be getting a lot more work in the next few years building and maintaining massive offshore drilling platforms, vessels, and pipelines.

I was intrigued by all the equipment, of course — the hazmat suits and tiny robot submarines — but what really interested me is what makes these guys tick.

When asked to describe the diver’s typical personality, Moyer laughs. "Take your average motorcycle gang biker, mix in a little bit of astronaut, and a little bit of, say, a chimpanzee or a lowland gorilla, and that compilation gives you a commercial diver," he said. "I’m partial of course, but I think we’re the sexy fighter pilots of the construction world."

For Moyer, it was an ad in a scuba magazine. Like many divers, he was in the military first. When his enlistment ended, he saw the ad. "There’s this guy climbing up this ladder out of the water, and he’s wearing this neat helmet I’ve never seen before — it’s got like a light and a laser gun on it, and it says ‘Come up a winner,’<0x2009>" he explained, sitting in a small conference room with a whiteboard covered in equations and drawings. "And I’m, like, hmm, yeah."

Inspired, Moyer enrolled in the College of Oceaneering in Wilmington, where he was trained to work in cold water, low visibility, and extreme depths. He specialized as an advanced dive medic, qualifying him to recognize and treat that most notorious of divers’ ailments: the bends. Surfacing too quickly results in a sudden change of pressure, causing dissolved nitrogen in the blood to form bubbles that can lead to stroke. Moyer explains that each dive to a certain depth requires about an hour of decompression in the water, done in a series of "stops," where a diver hangs out a certain depth, allowing the nitrogen to dissolve slowly and naturally. "That buys you a few minutes when your head breaks the surface of the water before you start turning into a shaken up pop bottle," he said. Divers immediately hop in a pressurized chamber to breathe pure oxygen for a couple of hours. The sealed, all-oxygen environment carries its own hazards, and horror stories of fires and explosions abound.

After dive school, Moyer headed to the Gulf of Mexico, where 80 percent of the world’s commercial divers work, maintaining the massive oil platforms that float miles out to sea. He dove for a company whose main business was laying and repairing pipelines between platforms. Unlike Bay Area divers, workers in the Gulf aren’t unionized, so private firms regulate the industry and pay divers whatever they feel like — which, according to Moore, is sometimes a third of what a union diver can make in the Bay Area. Moore explains that though Underwater Resources can’t outbid nonunion firms for big contracts, most ambitious divers will eventually switch to unionized companies because that’s where all the interesting public-works jobs are. "Certainly in the Bay Area and up and down the West Coast, it’s expected that any decent diving company will be in the union," he said.

Maybe it was the promise of better pay that led Moyer to leave the Gulf for the Bay Area after a year. He recalls calling around looking for employment. "I’m, like, hey, I’m here and I’m ready to dive, and they’re, like, oh, that’s nice, so are all the other guys who call me every day," he remembered.

Moyer was surprised to learn that he was expected to join Pile Drivers Local 34, a division of the Northern California Carpenters Union, and start a pile-driving apprenticeship right away. With dive school and a year’s work under his belt, he didn’t like the idea of driving pile for a living. At the same time, he discovered that diving work wasn’t as consistent in the Bay Area as it had been in Louisiana, and realized it would help to have something to fall back on. As long as a member is working, Local 34 will sponsor apprenticeships, provide excellent medical benefits and, after 20 years, a handsome pension. Part of Underwater Resources’ agreement with the union is that the divers get paid for at least an eight-hour day, no matter how much time they actually spend in the water — good news in a profession where weather, complications, and injuries can cut a dive short.

Because divers are freelancers who often work offshore on drilling vessels for months at a time, the trade tends to attract outsiders, people who have difficulty conforming, and people without families. This, in addition to the close quarters that commercial divers on an offshore job have to live in —sometimes spending weeks in a small, pressurized chamber called a "dry bell" that enables them to dive to depths of 400 feet without time-consuming decompression — may partly explain why few women are in this trade. When they do work in marine construction, it’s often topside, supervising or operating the small, remotely operated ROV robots that go where it’s too deep or dangerous to send divers. Moore laments the lack of women in the industry. "We’ve never employed any. I don’t know why. It’s unfortunate — I’d be into it."

As for me? I think I’ll stick to coral reefs for now.

Editor’s Notes

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I didn’t expect much from NBC’s prime-time Olympics coverage, but Jesus, it’s bad.

Forget the all-America, all the time, which is only to be expected. Forget the fact that only the sports that have prominent American contenders get much attention. It’s the reporting and commentary that’s making me sick.

I don’t watch the Olympics on TV to hear for the 12th time about Michael Phelps growing up with a single mother and a driven coach. I buy trashy magazines to learn that kind of stuff. I want to see the games. (I don’t watch football on TV to learn about Brett Favre’s emotional unretirement; I want to see him throw the ball. And if they interrupted the game to give me an "NFL moment" I’d stop watching altogether.)

There are hundreds of events going on, and with the tape delay, we could see all kinds of stuff. The network could be switching from swimming to gymnastics to boxing to swimming … but no: more than half the prime-time show is devoted to truly awful little video clips about the lives of the players, or the age of the Chinese gymnasts (now there’s a hot new story) or someone’s personal tragedy.

Folks: I don’t care. Like most of us, I want to watch sports. Save your trashy specials for 60 Minutes.

And the comments, overall, are just horrifying. Did you know that the Romanian women’s gymnastics team just isn’t the same now that they don’t brutally abuse the children? I mean, look at those errors, that sloppy attitude! The athletes were actually smiling and talking to each other before they took the balance beam, and when one woman fell, she still got a hug from her coach. Back in the days of Nadia Comaneci, that would never have happened. Tragedy what’s happened to that team.

(I’ll give Bob Costas a break — if you get an interview with the president of the United States, you break away from the gym to air it. And he actually asked some professional questions. But watching Bush there, grinning like some kind of nervous idiot with a caffeine twitch, was so creepy it was almost unbearable.)

IN OTHER NEWS: Police Commission member David Campos is making a big stink about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s willingness to violate the Sanctuary City law. His point: if immigrants won’t contact the police for fear of getting deported, the cops can’t do their jobs. That, by the way, was one of the reasons San Francisco became a sanctuary city. He’s asking for a special hearing on this, and I hope it leads the commission to stand up to the mayor and say that it’s more important for SF cops to be able to work with immigrant communities than for Newsom to look tough on immigrants in his campaign for governor.

The Democratic County Central Committee is preparing to endorse candidates for supervisor, but so far, there’s little indication the panel will adopt ranked-choice voting recommendations. In District 9, that seems a shame — there are three good candidates (Campos, Mark Sanchez and Eric Quezada), and two (Quezada and Campos) are Democrats. Voters can choose up to three candidates in ranked order; the DCCC ought to consider doing the same.

PG&E grantees: Revealed

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By popular demand, here’s some highlights from PG&E’s 2007 charitable giving. If you want to see the complete list, look at pages 58-90 of this PDF. That document also includes the dues they pay to belong to certain organizations which tend to have certain sway with certain politicians and voting blocks. Example: a whopping $325,000 to belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Who shows up at the first public hearing on the Clean Energy Act, to argue — with PG&E talking points — against putting it on the ballot? The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

PG&E also paid $90,000 to the Committee on Jobs, $92,500 to the Bay Area Council (on top of the $40,000 gift they also gave the group — which has also shilled for them at public meetings), and $26,500 for BOMA

There are some other interesting grants to note. For example, Slide Ranch got $5,000. Who’s on the board of Slide Ranch? Francesca Vietor, who’s up for possible appointment to the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Most of the grants are pennies to PG&E, but a couple nudge up into significant chunks of change. Over a million each went to the Foundation for Environmental Education and the National Energy Education Development Project.

See some other familiar faces, after the jump:

Hard as an anvil

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Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, USA, 2008) Screw you if you compare Anvil to Spinal Tap. Yeah, there are moments of eerie similarity (and Anvil’s drummer is named Robb Reiner — how’s that for a coincidence?), but this heartfelt doc at the Jewish Film Festival doesn’t mock. Friends and bandmates since the early 1980s — when Bon Jovi–level success seemed nearly possible — Reiner and vocalist–lead guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow have been chasing the rock god dream their entire adult lives, toiling at day jobs and raising families but leaping at every chance to capture glory, be it a poorly planned European tour or an emotional trip back to the recording studio. Even if you scoff at hair bands, it’s hard not to get wrapped up in this tale of success, failure, and power chords. And with no less than Lars Ulrich calling Anvil "the real deal," there’s no need to, uh, smell the glove. (Cheryl Eddy)

Anvil! The Story of Anvil Castro Sat/26, 10 p.m.; Roda Aug 9, 10:15 p.m.

Testimonies

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Italy seldom figures much in Holocaust studies, as its Jewish population was relatively small (just under 50,000) and only about one-fifth failed to survive the war — even after far more anti-Semitic German occupiers and policies wrested power from Benito Mussolini in 1943.

But statistically limited evil is still evil. Italian (even papal) complicity in crimes against Jewry has weighed more heavily on the national conscience lately, if a recent spate of meditations on the subject in various media is any indication. This year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the 28th, includes a program of films devoted to the subject. Titled "Italian Jews During Fascism," it presents a mix of documentary, historical drama, and contemporary fiction.

As elsewhere, the history of Jews in Italy has run a gamut from bad to worse to tolerable and back again. Propelled by basic racism as well as that "Christ-killer" concept favored by early Biblical-text revisionists and Mel Gibson, sacred and secular powers-that-were targeted Italian Jews (among others) during the Crusades and the Inquisition, then literally walled up their Roman populace in a ghetto for 300 years. By the time the extreme ghettoization was abolished, in the mid-19th century, Italian Jews (at least outside Rome) were fairly well integrated into society. They certainly were by 1938, when Mussolini announced a slew of anti-Semitic laws after years of appearing indifferent to Hitler’s particular racial obsession. ("Il Duce" hadn’t been impressed with the Nazis until his own empire-building ambitions required an alliance.)

Italian Jews were abruptly barred from serving in the military, and from attending or working at schools and universities. Thousands lost their jobs due to knee-jerk reactions from employers anxious to toe the repressive party line. These hard times got much worse when the weakened nation ceded primary control to the Nazis, and "Il Duce" became a mere figurehead for the "Republic of Salo." Mussolini rubber-stamped the mass arrest of Jews, mostly in the occupied north. Nearly 7,000 were shipped off to concentration camps. The question of what ordinary Italians — let alone the Vatican — did to oppose this murderous sweep remains a blot on the country’s 20th-century history.

The Jewish Film Festival’s quartet of related features offer various perspectives on these events. Most direct is Mimmo Calopresti’s 2006 documentary Volevo Solo Vivere (I only wanted to live), a compilation of latter-day testimonies assembled from interviews recorded for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. Focusing on survivors (mostly female) of Auschwitz who were between the ages of four and 30 at the time, it provides first-person stories that range from poignant to hair-raising. Meeting a life love on the train en route to the camp, enduring Mengele’s "medical experiments," being forced to walk one’s father to the gas chamber. These precise recollections are illustrated not just by brutally familiar footage of starved prisoners and piled corpses, but also by earlier photo-album glimpses of family life.

Dubbed "the Italian Schindler" when his deeds first won recognition, Giorgio Perlasca was a Paduan former soldier and disillusioned ex-Fascist working abroad to procure supplies for the Hungarian army in Axis-occupied 1944 Hungary. Posing as a Spanish diplomat, he bullied and bluffed his way into rescuing and hiding thousands of Budapest Jews despite a Nazi policy of deportation and extermination. This extraordinary tale is dramatized in Perlasca: An Italian Hero. With an Ennio Morricone score and Luca Zingaretti in the title role, Alberto Negrin’s 2001 made-for-TV film is compelling. Yet it’s also overworked, painting Perlasca as a one-dimensional superhero — albeit a balding and pudgy one. The result lands somewhere between the harshness of Schindler’s List (1993), the hysterical melodrama of Black Book (2006), and the maudlin treacle of Life Is Beautiful (1997).

A fascinating footnote, the 2007 hour-long documentary Tulip Time: The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano tells the story of three Dutch sisters who became enormously popular in Italy as harmonizing swing vocalists. Mussolini was a fan, though even that couldn’t save them from abrupt career termination and poverty once their Jewish background was discovered. The 2003 novelistic drama Facing Windows, which had a theatrical release, finds Turkish Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek departing somewhat from his usual gay themes. Giovanna Mezzogiorno stars as an unhappy working-class Roman woman whose husband brings home a disoriented older man (the late Massimo Girotti, a screen veteran since 1940) who turns out to have concentration camp numbers on his arm. *

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24–Aug. 11 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk.; CineArts @ Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real, bldg 6, Palo Alto; and the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $12) and additional information are available at www.sfjff.org

What the candidates need to tell us

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EDITORIAL The traditional kick-off date for fall campaigns is Labor Day, but in San Francisco, the candidates for supervisor have been in full campaign mode for months now, and some of the races are beginning to take shape. As political groups start making endorsements, it’s worth looking at what’s at stake here — and what the candidates ought to be talking about.

For starters, it’s going to be a crowded fall ballot, and there’s the potential for a broad progressive coalition to come together around a clear agenda for the future. Among the proposals headed for the ballot are an affordable housing plan, a green energy and public power measure, two new tax plans that focus on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, and a huge bond act to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital. All of the progressive candidates should be backing those measures and working together for their passage.

But the candidates also need to offer long-term solutions to the serious problems facing San Francisco. This is a city under enormous pressure, and unless some dramatic policy changes take place, San Francisco will continue its rapid slide toward becoming a city of and for the very rich.

A few items that ought to be on every progressive candidate’s platform:

•<\!s>The city’s energy future. The fall ballot measure, the Clean Energy Act, will lay the groundwork for a sustainable local energy policy, although the supervisors will have to aggressively push the key element: creating a city-run electric utility. As long as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. controls the local grid, San Francisco will never meet its environmental goals. Rates will remain high, conservation will be an afterthought, and PG&E will resist any type of renewable program it doesn’t control. The candidates need to make clear that they’re committed to a full-scale public power system and tell us how they will move the goals of the Clean Energy Act forward.

•<\!s>The housing crisis. San Francisco’s housing policy today is utter insanity. If it continues, the city in 10 years will look nothing like it does now. The middle class will be gone. Families with kids will be a vanishing species. Tens of thousands of people who work in this city — and keep its economy going — will be forced to live far away. Fancy new towers filled with millionaires will destroy entire neighborhoods and displace the city’s remaining blue-collar jobs.

The affordable housing ballot measure is a good first step, but much more is needed. Solutions aren’t easy, but they start with one premise: the city doesn’t need any more housing for the rich. Affordable-housing programs that set aside, say, 20 percent of new units for non-millionaires are a losing game because they accept as reality the prospect of a city where 80 percent of the residents are millionaires.

San Francisco needs a comprehensive policy that forces the city to meet its General Plan goals, which call for 64 percent of all new housing to be available at below-market rates. We need to hear how the candidates would make that happen.

**The structural budget deficit. San Francisco is a wealthy city, but there’s never enough money in the budget for the level of services residents want and need. With the exception of the rare boom years, the city has always had a revenue shortfall. Sup. Aaron Peskin’s two tax measures could bring in another $50 million per year — no chump change by any means. But the city needs about $200 million more per year to make the numbers balance. The candidates need to talk about where that will come from.

**The Muni meltdown. You can’t have a transit-first policy without effective transit, and Muni’s in trouble. Budget cuts are a big part of the problem, but the city needs a modern transit program — and that’s barely even on the drawing board. How are the candidates going to fix one of the city’s most important services? Will the candidates support the long-overdue completion of the city’s bicycle network and other bold efforts to decrease reliance on the automobile?

**The war on fun. As the city gets richer, it gets more uptight. Street fairs are under attack. Clubs are facing police crackdowns. Permit fees and red tape are making it almost impossible to hold events in Golden Gate Park. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has a ballot measure to make some of the permitting easier, but what are the candidates going to do to end the Gavin Newsom–era attack on arts and entertainment?

There’s much more: The police aren’t solving homicides. Small businesses feel utterly ignored by City Hall. The Planning Department is run by developers. The list goes on. And the next Board of Supervisors will need to address all those issues. Over the next few months, the candidates that want the progressive vote need to give us some clear explanations of where they stand.

Dangerous jumpers

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"We’re not just late ’90s scientifical backpack revivalists," says Ian "Young God" Taggart, one-half of production duo Blue Sky Black Death.

It’s a reference only a hip-hop head could appreciate. The "super-scientifical" tag comes from a verse in Jeru tha Damaja’s 1994 classic "Can’t Stop the Prophet," a bizarre drama in which the Brooklyn MC battles thugs who represent the seven deadly sins. The term has come to represent an influential wing of ’90s hip-hop culture, evoking yin-yang flights of lyrically ornate action fantasy and pre-millennial dread.

But with its fourth album, Late Night Cinema, Blue Sky Black Death has distilled its essence into something more original than Wu-Tang Clan homage. Released on independent hip-hop label Babygrande this spring, it blends live instruments — by Young God and various musician friends — and samples into a dense tapestry of themes, from the antiwar epic "Ghosts Among Men" to the yearning romance "The Era When We Sang." The disc expertly evokes the group’s namesake, a skydiving term for snatching ecstasy from oblivion.

"Probably the most beautiful thing when you’re jumping out is all the blue sky, but it’s the most dangerous thing you can do at the same time, you know?" explains Taggart by phone from his Upper Haight District home. "That’s the black death. I thought it went well with our music because I thought it could be really dark or really pretty."

The 23-year-old Taggart doesn’t earn a living from music yet. Instead, he lives a journeyman’s existence sustained by a hodgepodge of retail and restaurant gigs. Meanwhile his Seattle musical partner, 30-year-old Kingston Maguire, has more stable employment as an apartment complex manager. "I feel like I’m attracted to bullshit jobs so I can focus on my music," Taggart says.

Since joining forces in 2005, Taggart and Maguire have worked hard to expand their audience beyond a small but appreciative following of hardcore rap fans. Their label has a — sometimes unfair — reputation for issuing angry, conspiracy-obsessed rap epics. Its flagship artist is Jedi Mind Tricks, a Philadelphia group whose ’90s-style beats and verbal assaults against organized religion and the government have become a controversial subgenre unto itself.

Blue Sky Black Death has expertly mined this niche with wintry street dreams such as 2007’s Razah’s Ladder, an album recorded in conjunction with Hell Razah from former Wu-Tang affiliate Sunz of Man. But Taggart’s afraid his group is being dismissed as a JMT acolyte. "Honestly, I don’t want to be lumped in with them," he says. "That’s not a diss towards any of those artists, and it’s probably our fault because of the people we’ve worked with. But we try to drift away from that with our instrumental music because we don’t want to be pigeonholed with our sound."

Blue Sky Black Death wants to break out of the super-scientifical ghetto without forsaking its roots. Upcoming projects range from Slow Burning Lights, a San Francisco downtempo band with Yes Alexander from the Casual Lights, to an album with rappers Ill Bill from Non-Phixion and Crooked I. "As far as when we’re making actual beats and we have rappers in mind, I guess we’re definitely influenced by the ’90s sound," says Taggart. "But we take it a lot farther."

Campaign pain?

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November’s presidential election already looms on the horizon like a herpes outbreak, promising nothing so much as a painful, shame-filled denouement to a drunken and ill-conceived flirtation with someone you thought you knew. So it’s refreshing that the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s seasonal offering of free, rabble-rousing political theater is an election-year special in which the opposing candidates from the two monopolizing parties are conspicuously absent. Instead, Red State, which opened by tradition July 4 in Dolores Park, focuses on the screwed-if-you-do/screwed-if-you-don’t quandary of voting itself, and does so with populist gusto tinged with a reddish hue — a thematic color imbuing everything from the design scheme to the pointedly funny dialogue’s New Deal–style social-democratic slant. It also reflects the rising blood pressure that results from underlying but palpable frustration and outrage.

Reclaiming red from the dusty color wheel of history, Mime Troupe head writer Michael Gene Sullivan’s smart and consistently funny script — brilliantly delivered by a uniformly sharp and charismatic cast and fueled by composer–band leader Pat Moran’s eclectic set of apt and catchy songs — posits FDR’s small-town America as marooned at Francis Fukuyama’s end of history. Set in a puny Kansas ‘burb named Bluebird, Red State casts November’s "Countdown to Armageddon" (as the play’s CNN reporter colorfully advertises his network’s election coverage) in the screwball style of Depression-era comedies as Bluebird becomes the unlikely tiebreaker in an electoral dead heat.

Suddenly the nation’s eyes are riveted on an otherwise microscopic microcosm of average American life at the beginning of the 21st century. This focus on the lives of the town’s humble and much abused citizens throws everyone for a loop, not least the government’s smarmy and ambitious election official (Velina Brown), who is so obsessed with thoughts of a cush Washington, DC-based promotion that she has difficulty remembering which state she’s even in.

For its part, Bluebird feels like a town under siege, but just who the enemy is remains initially hard for the inhabitants to fathom, or agree on, anyway. Is it the wrath of God? The communists? It all depends on whom you ask among the locals, a population whose representative eccentrics include a God-fearing, Jesus-toting fundamentalist (Noah James Butler, bearing cross and life-size Christ) and a rabid (and equally anachronistic) anticommunist named Eugene (Robert Ernst).

What is clear enough is that jobs have dried up (the local pencil factory — the onetime pride of the town, which liked to promote itself as "the Number 2 pencil capital of North Central Kansas" — just relocated to the cheap labor environs of Uzbekistan), public services have dwindled to nil, and the dilapidated sidewalks and roads are a physical menace (nearly undoing a local soldier, played by Adrian C. Mejia, who’s just returned in one piece from Afghanistan).

If that wasn’t enough, the town’s only electronic voting machine is on the fritz. But this little debacle, in the context of an electoral tie, ends up being an opportunity that gets the town thinking and the earth trembling beneath Washington, DC. Deciding to withhold their votes until the proper share of their tax dollars gets re-diverted back to their community where it belongs, and away from endless war-making and corporate welfare, Bluebird manages (in the most unlikely but coruscating of Capra-esque scenarios) to hold a corrupt and hubristic system at bay, spotlighting the government–big business alliance that for decades has fleeced towns like Bluebird of their taxes, able-bodied military-age youth, and everything else not nailed down. Or so to speak: before the town turns the tables on the system, even Bluebird’s fundamentalist is driven in desperation to ask the Antiques Roadshow host, "How much for Jeezus?"

RED STATE

Through Sept 28, free

Various Northern California locations

Visit www.sfmt.org for schedule

Newsom and the Clean Energy Act

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EDITORIAL A progressive measure that would make San Francisco one of the greenest cities in the nation will be on the ballot this fall. It’s designed to lower energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote green-collar jobs. It has all the elements that Mayor Gavin Newsom has been talking about in his high-profile speeches, press conferences, and celebrity appearances. It’s a perfect vehicle for a mayor who wants to stand out as a candidate for governor of California. It has the backing of some of Newsom’s close allies, like state Sen. Mark Leno.

That’s why Newsom ought to support the Clean Energy Act.

The charter amendment, sponsored by Sups. Aaron Peskin and Ross Mirkarimi, seeks to make San Francisco more energy independent. It sets ambitious goals for renewable energy and would put the city on track to create its own public power system. It’s not a radical measure — in fact, it’s milder than we would have liked. It doesn’t mandate an immediate takeover of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s facilities. It doesn’t turn the Public Utilities Commission into an elected body. And no matter what lies PG&E puts out, it won’t raise electric rates or cost the taxpayers money.

It does, however, mandate that the PUC look at the best ways to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city comes from renewable resources. By 2040, that number should be 100 percent. And the evidence from across the nation shows that the best way to promote renewable energy is to shift from private control of utilities to public power.

Again, that’s hardly a radical notion: more than 2,000 cities in the United States have public power. Palo Alto is among them; so are Alameda and Santa Clara. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides reliable service to Sacramento County at rates 30 percent below what PG&E charges customers in adjoining areas — and SMUD has one of the best records in the nation for promoting conservation and renewable energy.

Of course, the very existence of any sort of plan to consider energy alternatives for San Francisco seems to terrify PG&E. Already the giant private utility is pulling political strings and retailing outrageous lies to try to scare the supervisors away from placing the charter amendment on the ballot. And we expect to see a savage, multimillion-dollar campaign against the measure this fall.

That’s because PG&E wants no hint of competition, no chance that the city might actually consider the benefits of public power. It’s no secret why. When you look at the facts, compare how public and private systems have fared in the past decade, and line up the financial figures and the prospects for sustainable energy policies, public power wins.

The biggest misinformation PG&E is putting out these days involves the cost of creating and running a public power system in San Francisco. The company is throwing out numbers like $4 billion, and suggesting that the taxpayers would be on the hook for all of it if the city tried to take over the company’s system.

For starters, there’s nothing in the Clean Energy Act that requires a takeover. It might turn out to be more prudent, for example, to slowly build a new city-owned infrastructure. More important, if the city did decide to buy out PG&E’s wires, poles, and meters, the cost would be nowhere near what the company is claiming.

How much is the system really worth? Well, one way to find out is to check the assessed value, the figure the state uses for property-tax purposes. And as Amanda Witherell reported July 2 (see "The dirty fight over clean power"), the state says all of PG&E’s property within San Francisco city limits is worth only $1.2 billion — and that includes the company’s downtown office complex, which is worth at least several hundred million. So the actual cost of the system might wind up at less than a quarter of what PG&E claims.

And none of that money — none — would come from taxpayers. The PUC could issue only revenue bonds, backed by future electricity sales, to finance any buyout or construction. No tax money would ever be in play. And our past analyses have consistently shown that the city could buy out PG&E’s system, cut electric rates, and still wind up with a sizable surplus every year.

Newsom is aware of all of this, and has said that he’s willing to consider supporting public power. Now there’s a measure heading for the ballot that would also mesh with all of the mayor’s environmental goals. The only argument against it is that PG&E — in the past a backer of the mayor — doesn’t want it to pass.

Newsom needs to support the Clean Energy Act. If he doesn’t, it will demonstrate that he lacks the backbone to stand up to special interests — and has no business running for governor of this state.

A kickoff press conference on the Clean Energy Act will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 22 on the steps of City Hall.

I’m for PG&E, at 50 bucks a head

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If public power can work in Rock Rapids, Iowa, why can’t it work in San Francisco?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

When I came into yesterday’s public hearing at City hall on the emerging clean energy act initiative, I wasn’t surprised to see the room stacked with people obviously rounded up by PG&E for the occasion. After 42 years of covering PG&E, I know how private utility operates.

I asked the man sitting next to me, obviously not a
City Hall regular, why he was attending the hearing. His answer was vague but he was obviously agitated about the clean energy act initiative. Was he going to testify against the initiative? Yes, he said. Was he paid to attend the hearing?
He mumbled a bit and then said, yes, $50 bucks. But, he pointed out, he hadn’t been paid yet.

The word got around the hearing room that PG&E’s going rate for this hearing was $50. Julian Davis, the chair of the clean energy campaign, was first up to testify and promptly mentioned the going rate.
He then said that he considered it “cynical and tragic” for a corporation like PG&E to take advantage of communities of color into advocating on behalf of an agenda that ultimately does not serve their interests. (Many of the members of the audience were persons of color. Davis is black.)

Many of them testified, arguing that the initiative, which calls for setting renewable energy goals and making San Francisco the nation’s greenest clean energy city, would be too expensive and burdensome and ought to be killed forthwith. They testified that they couldn’t afford higher electric rates, higher taxes, higher anything in the city’s tight economy. Several said they were living on fixed incomes and simply could not afford another penny on anything.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, sponsor of the bill, and Sup. Chris Daly, chair of the rules committee meeting, Sup. Bevin Dufty, and many pro-clean energy speakers pointed out the many advantages of clean energy and public power. Cities with public power across the state and country had lower electric rates, better service, and extra money for their general funds. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is a national leader in renewable energy and conservation efforts, while still keeping its rates far below PG&E rates in adjoining communities.

After hearing the clean energy speakers, several people came up to Davis after the hearing and said they were confused and annoyed that they had been misled by PG&E. They were interested in the arguments for clean energy and the initiative and wanted to know more.

Davis said he told them, among other things, that “one of the essential components of the clean energy act is a mandate to offer the kind of jobs and job training in the clean energy industry that PG&E is not currently offering to the very communities they are willing to exploit to promote their status quo agenda.” The jobs idea was of particular interest, he said.

And, yes, I testified at the hearing. I sometimes do this to counter the time worn PG&E line that, gosh, golly, gee, electricity is so complicated, city workers are so lazy, dumb, and incompetent, how in the world can they run an electrical company if they can’t make the muni run on time. Wheeze, wheeze, and wheeze again.

And so I pointed out that in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, population 2,800, a bedrock conservative Republican farming community way out in the northwestern part of the state,
the town has successfully operated a public utility since l896, and it’s doing just fine. It provides good, reliable, hometown electricity, has good low rates and excellent service, makes money for the general fund and subsidizes projects such as the local swimming pool, and doesn’t gratuitously cut off service with no way to appeal or complain, as is PG&E policy. And the public utility is locally accountable to a local board of directors composed of local townsfolk, such as my old friends Dave Foltz, a local real estate man, and Eugene Metzger, a local banker.

To this day, I told the supervisors, II always carry in my pocket a little blue coin purse that eloquently makes the local point. And I pulled the purse out of my pocket and read the inscription to the supervisors: “Call before you dig, Rock Rapids Municipal Utilities, (7l2) 472-2513.)”

And so my central argument is unbeatable: If public power works in Rock Rapids, Iowa, why can’t it work in San Francisco, California? PG&E has yet to get back to me on this one. Meanwhile, I’ll keep you posted throughout the campaign on public power in Rock Rapids. On guard, stay plugged in for the duration, the fun has just started, B3

McGoldrick’s privatization betrayal

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OPINION This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Most politicians break promises. That’s the nature of politics. But when someone signs a pledge — twice — saying he won’t privatize city services, when he holds himself out as a champion of anti-privatization and then goes directly against that stand —well, it kind of makes you wonder.

That politician is San Francisco Sup. Jake McGoldrick. In the past, he stood against privatizing services. He has fought for golf courses, for the Internet; heck, he even fought for horses when Mayor Gavin Newsom threatened to privatize the stables. During the Service Employees International Union endorsement process, he signed a pledge that he would not privatize work currently done by city workers. We endorsed him and even fought against the effort to recall him. But when the rubber hit the road for people, he screeched out of there.

Newsom has proposed contracting out the work of the Institutional Police, a group of workers represented by SEIU Local 1021. Institutional police officers work primarily at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda hospitals, but they also provide security at health clinics throughout the city. That security — not only for the workers, but for the community that these institutions serve as well — might soon be gone.

If you have ever been in SF General’s emergency room during a violent incident, you know exactly how bad a decision that would be. A nurse who met with McGoldrick described how bad it got on her shift one night. A man who had been shot was being transported to the ER, and the shooter was following closely behind, hoping to finish off the job. When the victim and assailant pulled up to General, the institutional police were there waiting with guns drawn. They disarmed the shooter and arrested him.

The nurse who told this story looked McGoldrick squarely in the eye and told him that the community would know immediately when the ER was staffed by private security officers, and that would endanger the workers and the patients there.

Even the union that represents the private security officers — whose members would get the jobs — told McGoldrick the work should remain with the institutional police.

Training for private security officers is minimal and inconsistent. Turnover is rapid. When private security officers are transferred to new buildings, they’re often not trained on its specific emergency procedures. There is little oversight to enforce existing state training requirements.

This shouldn’t be about money. A couple of weeks ago, during public hearings on the budget, the Controller’s Office reported on the exponential growth of six-figure salaried executive positions in the past few years; 55 new management jobs were created this year alone. McGoldrick, who heads the Budget and Finance Committee, could easily have moved some of that money around, as SEIU 1021 advocated, rather than leave the city’s health care facilities at risk. But he didn’t.

Unfortunately, it only takes one bad incident to expose the false "savings" of contracting out security to inexperienced and less-trained guards. Six supervisors appear to agree. What happened to Jake McGoldrick?

Robert Haaland

Labor activist Robert Haaland works for SEIU Local 1021.

Clean Energy Act excites supervisors

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At today’s Rules Committee, Supervisors Bevan Dufty, Tom Ammiano, and Chris Daly, all expressed enthusiasm for San Francisco’s Clean Energy Act. Daly and Ammiano even broke into chants of “victory, victory” during discussion of approving the measure for November’s ballot.

“In 2002 I supported Prop D and I look forward to supporting this measure,” said Dufty during his comments on this new public power ballot initiative. “I think PG&E has not held the public trust in San Francisco well,” he added, citing the smear campaign PG&E launched against Mark Leno during his bid for State Senate.

The measure, known as the “San Francisco Clean Energy Act,” would amend the city charter to require that, within 120 days of passing the legislation, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission must “produce a comprehensive plan for providing clean, secure, cost effective electricity for city departments and residents and businesses.” This may include construction city-owned transmission lines, as well as procuring the resources to advance the Community Choice Aggregation plan of 51 percent renewables by 2017.

It actually goes one step farther and says if CCA falls through, the city must still get 51 percent of their energy from renewable and clean sources, 75 percent by 2030, and 100 percent by 2040. A green jobs workforce development must also be part of the plan, and if it’s determined that public ownership of the grid and resources is the way to go, any employees fired by PG&E, the private company that provides our power now, will be hired by the PUC.

Sup. Ross MIrkarimi, who introduced the measure, rattled off figures from Alameda, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, and Sacramento, all of whom have publicly-owned utilities and all of whom charge the average household rates far below PG&E.

His figures, for a 500 kilowatt hour household:

Clean Energy — tomorrow!

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The Board of Supervisors Rules Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow (Friday) to discuss the new clean-energy charter amendment. It’s a long-overdue measure that would give San Francisco control of its own energy future and set aggressive mandates for sifting to renewable resources for electricity.

The measure is sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, and includes the following:

1. A mandate that 51% of the city’s electricity is generated from renewable resources by 2017, 75% by 2030, and 100% by 2040. This would be one of the few laws in the country that requires a city to move toward a 100 percent renewable portfolio. It also requires the Public Utilities Commission to issue a report every two years explaining how the city is meeting those goals. This would be a model for cities around the nation (and around the world), and would put San Francisco in the forefront of the movement to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. Since state and federal governments are moving far too slowly on the most important environmental issue of our lives, cities are going to have to take the lead, and San Francisco – one of the most progressive communities in the nation — should be showing everyone else how to do to that.

2. A mandate that the city move toward acquiring its distribution system for the sale of electricity. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which now supplies the residential and business customers in San Francisco, is spending a huge amount of money on a greenwashing campaign to convince residents that it’s moving away from fossil fuels. That’s a big lie: PG&E’s current power profile is 44 percent fossil fuels, 24 percent nuclear, 20 percent large hydro, and only 12 percent renewable – and the utility admits that it will not even make the state’s mandate of 20 percent renewable by 2010. . The only way this city is going to have a truly environmentally sound energy program is if we run it ourselves.

Of course, a publicly run utility has other big advantages. Public-power agencies all over the country have lower electric rates and many bring in huge amounts of revenue, which the city desperately needs. And public-power is good for the economy

3. Mandate green jobs and job training for San Franciscans. There’s a lot of money in renewable energy, and thousands and thousands of good jobs. The measure mandates that the PUC as part of creating a public power agency create job-training programs to help San Franciscans build careers in green energy.

The hearing is at 10 am. Be there and support this crucial legislation.

Frameline: Project Runway’s Jay and the perils of PR

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By Jason Shamai

Part of what makes Project Runway so good is that it loves its clever queers. By no means is the show light on standard-issue drama, but one thing its producers and editors don’t abide is bullshit fabulousness comedy routines. They love their bitchy overcompensators (Christian) and their angelic peacekeepers (Danny V.) and their hyperbaric chambermaids (Austin Scarlett, and Malan Breton from Taiwan) and their everything-but-the-sodomy queens (Vincent Libretti), but they would not put up with a Carson Kressley. Or at least they wouldn’t give him much face time.

The producers and editors, of course, are the master tailors behind all the sartorial pageantry. Their jobs seem pretty similar to the trials imposed upon the designers:

Production team, your challenge was to take the painfully young, dumb, and talented Christian Siriano and craft his insecurities into a compelling dramatic arc. You perhaps overplayed your hand in the beginning by setting him up as Machiavelli’s pet rat, but the disarming late-arrival accents of warmth and anxiety brought the whole together boldly if not seamlessly.

And so on.

You sense they are really sweating the final product, resenting the challenges that are comparable to designing ice-skating outfits or fitting teenagers for prom dresses and reveling in the opportunity to make top-notch originals with quality materials.

If the judges aren’t voting solely on craft (and if you think they are, I have a Saturn Astra to sell you at bluefly.com), they don’t just handicap for drama queens—the dry editorialists are always given high consideration. When Chris March and Steven Rosengard were on the chopping block last season, my loins voted for Steven to stay but the rest of me knew Chris was the wiser choice. The show needed his class more than it needed Steven’s lips. It knew he was that season’s color bearer of wry, thoughtful faggotry. And in Season Two, Santino’s Tim Gunn impersonations were an inspired collaboration with the editors. His Red Lobster bit, generously featured as it was, instantly made the world a better place.

jay2.jpg
Jay McCarroll and hot air balloons in Eleven Minutes

Jay McCarroll was just such an object of appreciation on Season One, and possibly the most worthy of the series. More power to him, then, that he’s got himself a proper documentary, which is showing this Wednesday as part of Frameline. Eleven Minutes, directed by Michael Selditch and Rob Tate, follows McCarroll as he prepares to show at New York’s Fashion Week—his first not under the auspices of Project Runway. In the film, McCarroll worries that any success he might have as a designer will always be thanks to an alloy of aptitude and personality. He’s well aware that the cameras continue to roll because he entertained us way back when on Bravo and he’s ambivalent about it at best.

The problem with city planning

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I’m always intrigued when civic-improvement types talk about the problems with city planning in San Francisco — and harp on the fact that it takes too long to get anything done and that the same old naysayers are too powerful. The latest is a piece by David Prowler, former planning commissioner, that appeared on BeyondChron.

Among the Prowlerisms:

Forget about consensus. We’re not going to get it, and too often the planners or the Board of Supervisors delay decision-making while waiting for it. But it gets farther away. We need leadership, not consensus.

TRANSLATION: Who cares what the community thinks; leave the big decisions to elected officials who the developers can effectively lobby.

Let’s be frank and clear about what land-use planning can and cannot do. It doesn’t by itself create buildings or good jobs. The City is trying to preserve blue-collar jobs by zoning to prevent housing (It’s been characterized as “zoning for gold mines and expecting gold”). But how about linking zoning with a strategy to create these jobs?

THE PROBLEM: No, land-use planning can’t always create good things, but it can sure as hell destroy things, and has done so for decades in San Francisco. Redevelopment didn’t create much in the Western Addition, but it destroyed a community. No, good zoning won’t create blue-collar jobs — but bad zoning will destroy them.

Reconsider CEQA. We discuss projects and plans within the framework of the California Environmental Quality Act, best known by the acronym CEQA, which mandates addressing only how much damage can a proposal do to the environment, not how can it help the city meet goals or help the regional environment by concentrating growth where there’s infrastructure. Here in San Francisco, we hold up even small-scale projects, such as the 17 residences and retail uses proposed at the empty lot at 19th and Valencia streets by the longtime residents and owners of a popular Mexican restaurant. Really, in a built-up city, along a transit street where just about every other spot is housing over stores, how much environmental damage could a project like this do?

TRANSLATION: Get those pesky project foes out of the way and take away any tool they have to preserve their neighbhorhoods.

This kind of stuff infuriates me. The problem with city planning is very simple, and I can phrase it in one sentence: Planning in San Francisco is driven almost entirely by private developers and exists to serve their interests and needs.

And of course, although it doesn’t say so in his piece, David Prowler is a developer.

“Chop Shop”

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REVIEW Ramin Bahrani’s first feature, Man Push Cart (2005) — about a struggling Pakistani service worker selling coffee and bagels from a midtown Manhattan pushcart — signaled the arrival of a genuine talent for atmospheric and absorbing realist drama, and an unpreachy champion of America’s disregarded immigrant working-class. Like a New York City Ken Loach with the anxious psychic interiors of a Cassavetes, Bahrani’s portraits (using nonprofessional actors and an ambient soundtrack) prove so highly attuned to character and evocative of place that you might overlook what a good storyteller he is. Chop Shop, his second feature (cowritten with Bahareh Azimi), delves further into the social terrain limned by the first, while relocating to New York’s urban periphery — the industrial sprawl of Willets Point in outer Queens, a teeming maze of auto shops and chain-linked yards ringed by turnpikes, erector-set bridges, and Shea Stadium. Here 12-year-old Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), alone in the world but for his sister (Isamar Gonzales), works jobs in and around the auto body shops to save money for a dilapidated food van he hopes will be the economic foothold that will keep them together. Admittedly lacking some of the sureness of Bahrani’s debut, Chop Shop‘s nevertheless compelling exploration of everyday drama on the harried, often undocumented margins of immigrant life has never felt more timely or deserving of attention.

CHOP SHOP opens Fri/27 at the Roxie Film Center. See Rep Clock.

Newsom’s backwards budget

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco city employee union that represents front-line workers has come up with a remarkable document. It’s an analysis by the city controller, requested through the office of Sup. Aaron Peskin, that shows how many jobs have been added or cut in the past 10 years, broken down by bargaining group.

Since almost all San Francisco employees, including managers, are unionized, and different categories of workers have different unions, the analysis paints a clear picture of where hiring has taken place and where job cuts have hit hardest. It is, in many ways, a snapshot of the budget priorities of Mayor Gavin Newsom. And as Sarah Phelan reported this week on sfbg.com, here’s what it shows:

As direct public services have been hacked up and eliminated, as homeless shelters close and nursing services for elderly shut-ins vanish, the city has hired a whole lot of new high-paid managers.

In fact, in the past decade, the city has added 334 high-level jobs, paying an average of $140,000 a year. That’s a 45 percent jump. Under Newsom’s administration, during tough budget times, 166 new managers have been added. In this year’s budget alone, Newsom is calling for 52 new managers.

Professional and technical jobs increased by 781 positions, a 23 percent rise.

Front-line jobs, on the other hand, have grown by less than 10 percent.

Of course, the city needs managers and technical staff. Some of the new positions are entirely legitimate and justified. But these high-level jobs are also where political cronies are placed, and management jobs in this city have always had a political patronage element. And when the budget is deeply in the red, it doesn’t make sense to lay off the people who are doing the day-to-day work and hire more people to supervise a reduced staff.

Let’s look at the numbers. The total tab for new managers amounts to about $46 million a year. The increase — just the increase — in management positions in this year’s budget would total $7.8 million. That would save a lot of services: Newsom shut down Buster’s Place, the city’s only 24-hour drop-in center for the homeless, to save $300,000. Keeping public health nurses to serve sick seniors would cost only a few hundred thousand more.

The daily newspapers have ignored this story so far, but it’s the blockbuster of the budget season. It shows where the mayor puts his priorities, what he really cares about. He’s got exotic positions like a director of sustainability, in his own office — which is a wonderful idea, but with a budget deficit of more than $300 million, is it really worth $160,000 a year? (Don’t we already have a Department of the Environment?) He’s got people out at the airport who collect six-figure salaries and do very little visible work. And yet he can’t manage to keep basic services for the needy — services that can make the difference between life and death on the streets — from vanishing in a whirlpool of red ink.

Peskin has made some noise about cutting high-end jobs instead of rank-and-file positions, but with the budget coming to a head soon, that ought to be one of the top priorities. In fact, the board’s Budget Committee ought to issue a challenge to the mayor: before another homeless program is cut, before another public health service is eliminated, before another city agency that does on-the-ground work to help low-income people is gutted, Newsom should demonstrate, job by job, why so many $140,000-a-year positions are critical to the city.

The other glaring problem with the budget is that it includes no plans for increased revenue.

Newsom is happy to blame Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for terminating aid to cities, but let’s face it: with Republicans in Sacramento and Washington DC, San Francisco is going to have to solve most of its problems on its own. This is nothing new; Newsom should hardly be shocked by it.

If the mayor wants his budget to be taken seriously, he should immediately announce that he’s supporting Peskin’s two revenue-generating measures on the November ballot and do all that he can to help them pass. Then he can add another $50 million or so to his budget, based on the projected revenue, and save a lot of crucial services that are now facing the ax.

The commissioner’s conflicts

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Before the June 5 special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission got underway, Michael Antonini had an announcement.

Dressed in a charcoal suit and red-checked tie, with his white hair combed back over his skull, the longtime commissioner disclosed that he was a part owner of a condominium in the eastern neighborhoods, where a years-long rezoning effort is nearly complete. That means Antonini is among the people who could benefit from increased land values due to zoning upgrades.

As a result, Antonini begrudgingly declared that he would have to recuse himself from hearings involving the eastern neighborhoods until the potential conflict is dealt with.

"Hopefully this can be resolved in the next few weeks and I’ll be able to participate at later hearings," Antonini said at the meeting.

But it was a bit late to be complying with the state’s conflict-of-interest laws: Antonini had already actively taken part in meetings in which the plan was discussed. And Antonini also neglected to mention that after he and his son purchased the condo, he voted on two other projects that appear to be within steps of it.

Public records show that Antonini bought the $515,000 condo at 200 Townsend Street in 2003 with his real estate agent son, John. Commissioner Antonini and his wife own a 25 percent stake in the property through a family trust the couple created in 1997. His son holds the majority interest.

Antonini worked hard to play down his stake in the condo at the June 5 meeting. It’s not an investment property, he made clear to the commissioners. There’s no rent generated from it. He’s a mere minority holder in a family trust that controls the condo, and it was purchased as a residence for his son and his wife.

"Because I did not believe our fractional interest in John’s condo represented a conflict, I did not consider reclusing [sic] myself from projects near the condo," Antonini wrote to the Guardian.

But the laws on this are pretty clear. The state’s Political Reform Act of 1974 prohibits public officials from participating in decisions that will have a "foreseeable material financial effect on one or more of his/her economic interests." It also states that any "direct or indirect interest" worth more than $2,000 poses a potential conflict, for which a 25 percent stake in a half-million dollar condo would seem to qualify.

RECUSE ME


Other public officials in similar situations have recused themselves long before the issue became a potential political liability.

Sup. Bevan Dufty bought into a three-unit residential property on Waller Street with two co-tenants in December 2006. He immediately sought advice from the city attorney, who told him he no longer could vote on the Market-Octavia Plan, a series of land-use changes in Hayes Valley, Duboce Triangle, and elsewhere that was similar in scope to the current rezoning efforts in the eastern neighborhoods. The supervisor also couldn’t vote on a major Laguna Street redevelopment project or on legislation making it easier for seniors to convert rental units to condos.

Antonini told us that "only in the last month" did the city attorney warn some officials involved with plans for the eastern neighborhoods that if they held property in the area, there could be a conflict of interest.

"We’ve been working on [the eastern neighborhoods] for the whole six years I’ve been on the planning commission," he said at the meeting. "It’s a little troubling that this issue of conflict is raised now rather than at the very beginning."

The law does make an exception when the economic interests of the "public generally" could also be enhanced by a government decision such as those that have an impact on a large section of the city like the eastern neighborhoods. But the city attorney’s office concluded for now that the condo indeed may pose a conflict. And in the meantime, Antonini told us that the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento, which helps enforce the state’s Political Reform Act, is being consulted to determine "whether our fractional interest in the condo truly represents a conflict of interest."

The eastern neighborhoods planning process isn’t the only legislation that created a potential conflict for Antonini. The commissioner voted in January 2007 to approve construction of 26 new single-room occupancy units at 25 Lusk Alley, not far from his property at 200 Townsend. The project’s sponsor, Michael Yarne, is a land-use attorney who today works for the mayor’s economic development office. The project was approved, according to meeting minutes.

The project itself relied on a contentious legal loophole in which developers claim their units are "single-room occupancy," a necessity because the area permits residential efficiency hotels where the poor and working-class used to live. Allowing such SRO hotels in areas zoned for light industrial uses enabled the city to preserve some forms of affordable housing. But builders can turn around and lease the opulently large units such as the ones at 25 Lusk, which bear little resemblance to genuine SRO rooms, to well-heeled clients.

"They are allowed where normal residential units are not allowed, because historically SROs were always extremely affordable housing," community organizer Calvin Welch said. "The whole notion of market-rate SROs is a new invention, and that’s why they’re controversial. They’re basically the new version of live-work lofts."

In November 2006, Antonini also voted to approve a liquor license for a new full-service restaurant and wine bar at 216 Townsend, even closer to his son’s condo.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT


State ethics laws say that a public official has a conflict if his or her property comes within 500 feet of a project the official will be scrutinizing and voting on.

Conservatively measuring from the furthest corners of each property, Google Earth puts both the proposed restaurant and SRO within 500 feet.

Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles–based Center for Governmental Studies and co-author of the state’s Political Reform Act, said a public official could face $5,000 in civil penalties for each conflict-of-interest violation. But it’s not common for the chronically under-resourced FPPC to go after local officials, he said.

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard wrote in an e-mail that "we take any allegations of conflicts of interest seriously" but added there is a disagreement over whether the "public generally" exception applied to the eastern neighborhoods and that the City Attorney’s Office was seeking additional input from the FPPC.

As for the two projects he voted on near the condo, Antonini apparently told the mayor’s office he had looked into whether 25 Lusk fell inside 500 feet. "Based on his understanding at the time," Ballard wrote, "they didn’t."

That’s a stretch, at best. The projects are in the same block. We walked them off and found that Antonini would have to be splitting hairs to argue that they are outside the boundary — and even in that case, it would be only by a few feet. The rusty red paint job, black trim, and stylish, outsize windows of 200 Townsend are easily viewable from the backside of 25 Lusk.

"If there is a legitimate argument that they did fall within the 500-foot radius, this should be clarified," Ballard stated. "However, given the relative insignificance of the two projects cited in your e-mail and Antonini’s long-standing reputation as an ethical and hard-working commissioner, we don’t have any reason to believe that he would have knowingly and/or willingly violated the state’s Fair Political Practices Act."

But the Lusk Street project was by no means insignificant. "They are highly regulated," Welch said of SROs. "You cannot convert them to tourist hotels without going through a very long and cumbersome process. They are valued for affordable housing so highly that the city regulates their conversion to tourist uses." So instead, the "corporate suites," as Welch calls them, masquerade as SROs. The project was approved in the end, but two commissioners — Christina Olague and Sugaya Hisashi — voted against it.

Antonini told us that he believes 25 Lusk is more than 500 feet away, and as for the restaurant, planning staff recommended approval.

The commissioner told us, "I was the one who brought public attention to the issue of my possible conflict. I believe it is a small issue when compared to my body of work on behalf of San Francisco over the last six years."

The June 5 meeting where Antonini made the disclosure about his son’s condo was part of a long and detailed process that will determine the fate of vast sections of Potrero Hill, SoMa, the Mission District, and Dogpatch. The official planning process for the targeted 2,200-acre area began back in 2001, and the commissioners could approve new zoning plans next month before sending the proposal to the Board of Supervisors.

For much of San Francisco’s history, the city sections poised for rezoning have been home to light industry and blue-collar jobs. But housing has encroached over the last 15 years, and the planning commission is prepared to allow between 8,000 and 10,000 new units over the next 20 years. That will almost certainly increase the value of land in the area.

Residential developers built thousands of pricey condos in the SoMa District during the 1990s, exploiting another divisive zoning loophole that created waves of animosity across the city and aided in a takeover of the Board of Supervisors by a progressive bloc of candidates.

Live/work lofts, as developers called them, were built in areas zoned for light industrial commercial purposes. Wealthy buyers would ostensibly operate businesses out of their homes or live in them as working artists as the zoning required, but few have complied with the letter or — having found ways to narrowly abide by it — the spirit of the law.

"The city turned its head," housing attorney Sue Hestor said. "We have 3,000 units that are supposed to be occupied by artists and probably 90 percent of them are not occupied by artists at all. It’s blatantly illegal."

Antonini has managed to maintain friendships with local moderate Democrats over the years despite being an elected member of San Francisco’s Republican Party County Central Committee. Willie Brown first appointed him to the powerful planning commission in 2002, and he’s been a reliable vote for developers and other large business interests. Mayor Gavin Newsom reappointed him in 2004 and earlier this year tried to engineer Antonini’s election as president of the commission.

Arctic Monkeys/Rascals spinoff Last Shadow Puppets tugs our heartstrings

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THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS
The Age of the Understatement
(Domino)

By Todd Lavoie

Side projects tend to be met upon arrival with more than a bit of held-breath trepidation and Doubting Thomas cynicism. So it’s always nice when one shows up that not only turns out to be a rousing success, but also ends up raising the bar for the artists concerned in the process. Such is the case with the recent Last of the Shadow Puppets collaboration between the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner and the Rascals’ Miles Kane. Their opening introduction, The Age of the Understatement, should come as a great big “who knew?’ to those who have followed the pair’s respective day jobs thus far.

Specifically I am speaking of Turner; while Kane’s Rascals hold plenty of promise, they have thus far only released an EP, with an album expected this summer. As for Turner, however – well, who would have expected that the charming leader of the exuberant pop-punkers Arctic Monkeys would follow up two such gloriously careening albums of post-Buzzcocks delights (2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and last year’s Favourite Worst Nightmare, both Domino) with a collection of lushly orchestrated ’60s pop? And that it would be so successful in paying homage to that era, for that matter?

The album should be considered a turning point for the vocalist. As effective as the Arctic Monkeys’ pint-raising anthems have been in getting bodies in motion, here we are seeing a whole new depth to his songwriting. Not only did he and Kane – the two share songwriting credits – fully embrace and absorb the string-laden pop of the likes of Scott Walker, but they’ve penned a whole new set of riveting melodramas which surpass rote re-creation and mere mimicry and instead strive for achieving similar heights. Overall, they succeed enormously, which leaves me quite anxious to hear the Rascals’ forthcoming debut, to be sure, and feverishly praying away that the next Monkeys disc can’t be much further around the bend.

Free glam lashings at Shu Uemura, all summer long

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Color me impressed: the source (water) color palette from Shu Uemura‘s limited-edition summer collection, Hana-bi.

I had too much sake to steer last night – the Muni was just the ticket after the fab lil’ get-together at Shu Uemura‘s Fillmore Street boutique. Shopping Spy dug the Osaka sashimi and sushi and admired the diamond-lined lash jobs going down at the store’s Tokyo Lash Bar.

But even if you didn’t make the soiree last night, you can taste the pleasure of the (faux) lash as well. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first Shu Uemura boutique in Tokyo, the store is offering complimentary eyelashes and lash application every Thursday beginning today, June 19, and continuing through July 31. Make an appointment for a spot between 5 and 7 p.m. Will your life – or your gorgeous peepers – ever be the same?

Shu Uemura
1971 Fillmore at Pine, SF
For reservations, call (415) 395-0953

Three Internet myths that won’t die

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Since I started writing this column in 1999, I’ve seen a thousand Internet businesses rise and die. I’ve watched the Web go from a medium you access via dial-up to the medium you carry around with you on your mobile. Still, there are three myths about the Internet that refuse to kick the bucket. Let’s hope the micro-generation that comes after the Web 2.0 weenies finally puts these misleading ideas to rest.

Myth: The Internet is free.

This is my favorite Internet myth because it has literally never been true. In the very early days of the Net, the only people who went online were university students or military researchers — students got accounts via the price of tuition; the military personnel got them as part of their jobs. Once the Internet was opened to the public, people could only access it by paying fees to their Internet service providers. And let’s not even get into the facts that you have to buy a computer or pay for time on one.

I think this myth got started because pundits wanted to compare the price of publishing or mailing something on the Internet to the price of doing so using paper or the United States Postal Service. Putting a Web site on the Net is "free" only if you pretend you don’t have to pay your ISP and a Web hosting service to do it. No doubt it is cheaper than printing and distributing a magazine to thousands of people, but it’s not free. Same goes for e-mail. Sure it’s "free" to send an e-mail, but you’re still paying your ISP for Internet access to send that letter.

The poisonous part of this myth is that it sets up the false idea that the Internet removes all barriers to free expression. The Internet removes some barriers, but it erects others. You can get a few free minutes online in your local public library, maybe, and set up a Web site using a free service (if the library’s filtering software allows that). But will you be able to catch anyone’s attention if you publish under those constraints?

Myth: The Internet knows no boundaries.

Despite the Great Firewall of China, an elaborate system of Internet filters that prevent Chinese citizens from accessing Web sites not approved by the government, many people still believe the Internet is a glorious international space that can bring the whole world together. When the government of a country like Pakistan can choose to block YouTube — which it has and does — it’s impossible to say the Internet has no boundaries.

The Internet does have boundaries, and they are often drawn along national lines. Of course, closed cultures are not the only source of these boundaries. Many people living in African and South American nations have little access to the Internet, mostly due to poverty. As long as we continue to behave as if the Internet is completely international, we forget that putting something online does not make it available to the whole world. And we also forget that communications technology alone cannot undo centuries of mistrust between various regions of the world.

Myth: The Internet is full of danger.

Perhaps because the previous two myths are so powerful, many people have come to believe that the Internet is a dangerous place — sort of like the "bad" part of a city, where you’re likely to get mugged or hassled late at night. The so-called dangers of the Internet were highlighted in two recent media frenzies: the MySpace child-predator bust, in which Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen discovered that a registered sex offender was actively befriending and trolling MySpace for kids; and the harassment of Web pundit Kathy Sierra by a group of people who posted cruelly Photoshopped pictures of her, called for her death, and posted her home address.

Despite the genuine scariness represented by both these incidents, I would submit they are no less scary than what one could encounter offline in real life. In general, the Internet is a far safer place for kids and vulnerable people than almost anywhere else. As long as you don’t hand out your address to strangers, you’ve got a cushion of anonymity and protection online that you’ll never have in the real world. It’s no surprise that our myths of the Internet overestimate both its ability to bring the world together and to destroy us individually. 2

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who is biased in favor of facts.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Ask any elected Democrat in San Francisco about the governor’s budget, and you’ll get an instant answer: it’s awful. It’s brutal. It sucks. Education, housing, the environment … everything we care about is being gutted because the governor and the Republicans in Sacramento won’t raise taxes.

Which is absolutely correct.

Now ask those same Democrats what they think about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget. In too many cases, the answer’s a little slower, and a little softer. Gee, it’s too bad that the economy, and Washington and Sacramento and all of these other forces out of our control leave us no choice but to tighten our belts and do things that none of us really wants to do. Gee, Gavin doesn’t like cutting either, but he has to balance the books. Gee, it’s certainly not the mayor’s fault.

Which is absolutely wrong.

The governor of California is not the only chief executive who can look for revenue solutions to a budget shortfall. The mayor of San Francisco can do that too. In fact, Newsom wouldn’t have to look far: Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced two measures that together could bring in a minimum of $30 million per year and, in good years, $80 million or more. That’s about a quarter of the budget deficit, enough to save a whole lot of city services, city jobs, and city resources for the needy.

Both tax measures are aimed at the wealthier end of the spectrum. One would raise the transfer tax on real estate sales of more than $2 million. Few first-time homebuyers would see any impact at all, and the ones who do … well, if you can afford a $2 million house, you can pay a reasonable transfer tax. The biggest revenue would come from major downtown commercial property sales: when the Bank of America Building is sold for $1 billion, none of the investors are paupers and the corporations, real estate investment trusts, and financiers involved have all done quite well under the George W. Bush administration’s tax cuts. This is, for the most part, a tax on the rich.

The second measure would eliminate a loophole in the business tax law that allows some partnerships, like law firms, to avoid payroll taxes. See, if you’re a partner in a firm and you earn "profits" in the form of a partnership payout as opposed to a "salary," then the money you make doesn’t get taxed by the city. Most of these outfits are big firms that can afford to pay the city’s business tax. It’s only fair: companies that don’t operate on the partnership model have to pay taxes, and so should everyone else.

The two measures need a vote of the people, and passing any tax is hard. It would help immensely if the mayor endorsed these progressive taxes — and I guarantee that if a Democratic legislator in Sacramento introduced a statewide tax bill hitting the exact same group of people for the exact same amount of money, Newsom and all his Democratic allies would support it (and if the governor vetoed the bill, those same Democrats would denounce him).

The measures would take effect in the middle of the next budget year, and the income could make Newsom’s river of red ink a good bit smaller. He could, in theory, endorse the measures, work for them, and include the revenue in his proposed budget. But so far Peskin hasn’t heard a word from Newsom’s office on this. Neither have I.

Gavin? Hello? *

And so it begins

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom chose a telling site for the June 2 release of his budget: the San Francisco Police Department’s Special Tactical Operations Center at Hunters Point Shipyard. And if its relationship to Proposition G, the mayor’s plan to let Lennar Corporation develop the southeast part of the city, wasn’t clear enough, Newsom made it explicit.

"You’ll have the opportunity to support Proposition G and reject Proposition F, the one that is getting in the way," Newsom told department heads and the press as police, who warned budget protesters that it is illegal to campaign on city property, looked on in silence. It is also illegal for the mayor to campaign for ballot measures on city property.

In his speech, Newsom labeled as the "heroes" of this year’s budget the unions that have agreed to unpaid days off, including the Laborer’s Union, the Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Firefighters Local 798, and the Municipal Executives Association. Conversely, he vowed to remember that the police, nurses, and lawyers unions wouldn’t amend the contracts Newsom negotiated last summer.

Sounding more like a gubernatorial candidate intent on winning over Orange County voters than the leader of the most progressive city in the nation, Newsom said, "We are living within our means and being fiscally prudent, without out-of-control borrowing and without tax increases. But we still have a $338 million shortfall."

But there has been widespread criticism of the mayor’s plan as details emerge of its massive cuts to health and human services, while increasing the city’s budget for street repaving, pothole repair, and police academies.

"It’s the least democratic, least transparent budget process in many years, in terms of lack of information from the Mayor’s Office to the city departments and the community-based organizations that are affected," said Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth organizer Chelsea Boilard. "In the past, programs were given a heads-up. This year it continues to be a frantic scramble."

According to Boilard, city departments were still finding out the extent of the cuts even after Newsom made his presentation, including the news that the budget addbacks approved by the Board of Supervisors last year are not being continued in the 2008-09 budget.

"A nightmare," was how Debbi Lerman of the San Francisco Human Services Network described the budget.

"If we listen to mayor’s presentation, everything is rosy, revenue-wise. It’s just a spending problem. But from the community’s perspective, it’s shocking," Lerman said, citing $15.5 million in cuts to the Department of Public Health, $3.5 million in cuts to the Human Services Agency, and a 20 percent cut to domestic violence programs.

"And [the cuts] have been a constantly moving target," Lerman added. "We’re mere weeks away from the implementation of this budget, but no one knows which clients, programs, or services will be lost, though we are sure that there will be a lot of layoffs in our sector. The mayor should not balance his budget on the backs of the poor."

She believes the city needs to look at some non-essential services during a bad budget year and see what can be deferred to the future — and find ways to increase its revenue.

"The mayor is not a stone. He does get it to some degree. But it’s unfortunate that he’s not chosen to put forth revenue measures at this point," Lerman said.

Robert Haaland of Service Employees International Union Local 1021 agrees that the city has a revenue problem. He also believes that it’s not OK to ask the city’s lowest-paid workers to make concessions, again and again: "[SEIU 1021] has repeatedly stepped up to the table, we’d like to see some others do it."

Jonathan Vernick, executive director of Baker’s Place, which is facing the prospect of having to close one floor of its medical detox program, argues that many of the mayor’s proposed cuts are in conflict with Newsom’s stated goal of getting the homeless and inebriated off the street. "Ironically, this budget seems to fail to meet a simple criteria — that the proposed cut actually saves money," Vernick said. "All I can see is cuts that by end of fiscal year will have dismantled a system that’s been working for 35 years."

John Eckstrom of the Haight Ashbury Clinics believes the budget cuts will decimate the model of integrated services. "These are very deep cuts," said Eckstrom, who expects to lay off 40 to 50 of his 170 employees.

"It’s a testament to the willpower of the nonprofits that we are able to stay alive," Eckstrom said. "But what are the mayor’s priorities? There’s his rhetoric that says it’s not a revenue problem, and then there’s the reality."

With the Board of Supervisors set to conduct public budget hearings throughout June, Board President Aaron Peskin sees Newsom’s proposal as a "law and order budget."

"Domestic violence programs have lost $750,000 in funds, substance abuse programs have been taken to the woodshed, and mental health programs are being cut by 25 percent," said Peskin, criticizing the mayor for "introducing and extolling new programs while failing to protect the safety net of human and health services that San Francisco has put together over many years."

"Last time we had a budget like this, Mayor Willie Brown was much more forthright and honest about its disastrous impact on the poor," Peskin added. "This administration has cloaked this disaster in a press blitz. But any way you dress it, it’s a pig."

As chair of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee, Sup. Jake McGoldrick was equally blunt in his criticisms as he set about deciphering the details of Newsom’s proposal

McGoldrick refuted as "a deception" Newsom’s claim of having cut 1,085 jobs. "The real number is 99.08 positions," McGoldrick said, factoring in preexisting vacancies, Newsom’s three proposed police academy classes, and the 26 staff positions for Newsom’s 311 program, not to mention other new proposed programs and initiatives.

Upset that Newsom has budgeted $500,000 for a Community Justice Court that will divert people to the kinds of programs that Newsom’s budget is undermining, McGoldrick told the Guardian that he "aims to identify at least $30 million to $40 million in deceptions and redirect these funds to top priority human needs and services that are already woefully underfunded."

"The mayor is trying to pump all the problems over to the Board of Supervisors," McGoldrick said. "It’s going to be a labor of love to figure out how to direct money to folks who are hurting now."

Peskin said he expects the supervisors to discuss three new revenue proposals in the next month in order to avoid another slash-and-burn budget next year. These proposals include a property transfer tax, closing a payroll tax loophole on partnerships, and preserving the city’s 911 fee, which is under legal attack.

As of press time, the Mayor’s Office had not returned calls about revenue creation. Maybe Newsom’s handlers were busy figuring out how to deal with a budget protest slated for 6 p.m. June 11 outside the his residence in the Bellaire Tower building, 1101 Green St.

Organized by Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, the protest aims to draw attention to what Friedenbach calls "Mayor Newsomator’s plans to terminate the poor."

These plans include closing the Ella Hill Hutch Homeless Shelter as well as the Tenderloin Health Homeless Drop-in, and the almost total elimination of the SRO Families United Program. The Board has until July 31 to adopt a revised budget.

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