Kids

Careers and Ed: The language of learning

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› culture@sfbg.com

Perhaps the best thing my parents ever did for me was to raise me as a Persian in America. I hated this at the time, not understanding why I needed to learn how to perform Persian dances, eat Persian food, or speak Farsi if we weren’t actually in Iran. I now realize I was lucky not only to find a cultural identity but also to experience living in two cultures — and with two languages — at once.

Not all children have a built-in culture base at home, though. But they can have the next best thing if they’re enrolled in language immersion programs, particularly if they start early.

"Language is a natural phenomenon within us, and the earlier we open it, the better," says David Fierberg, the events and communications manager of the French American International School. "It’s an important tool in a child’s development and opens up new pathways of thought, creating a stronger cultural awareness."

That’s why schools around the Bay Area are increasingly embracing this method of schooling. Some are already established in the city, such as the FAIS, which was founded in 1962. Others are just getting started, such as Starr King Elementary School, where a Mandarin immersion program for kindergarten students just finished its first year.

And such programs are available at all levels. The Scandinavian School, for example, is a preschool that uses the educational techniques of its eponymous region, while the FAIS has extensive prekindergarten–to–eighth grade and high school programs. In most cases the experience isn’t just about teaching a particular language or culture but also about presenting a different kind of education.

PARLEZ-VOUS ALGEBRA?


At the FAIS the demand for a rigorous education starts young, and admission is competitive. Those accepted are sent straight on the full-immersion pathway, with a curriculum developed by the French Ministry of Education. Grades K to three are taught 80 percent in French and 20 percent in English, while third grade through middle school is split 50-50. From then on French is a large part of the high school student’s education, with certain classes taught only in French or only in English.

"There is sort of a natural flow," Fierberg says. "The students learn both French and English history and culture, government. Drama is taught in French, as is sports, while music classes are held in English. And French and English math is taught."

French and English math? But isn’t math a universal language?

Yes, Fierberg says. But the methodologies are different. In France, math is more process oriented, focusing on formulas and word problems. American math is more answer oriented. In other subjects the FAIS places a French-method emphasis on oral presentation, memorization of poetry, and dictées, wherein teachers read a paragraph and students write what they hear.

HÄR OCH NÅ


Though the Scandinavian School only teaches preschool students, its educational methods are still clearly different from American — and French — traditions. In fact, director and teacher Mimmi Skoglund finds the Scandinavian method often challenges the expectations of her students’ American parents, who ask questions like "Why doesn’t my child come home with things done at school every day?"

"We try to clarify that it is not the product that is important, it’s the process," Skoglund explains. "That, I think, is very Scandinavian. I have never had that question in Sweden. Another question that always comes up is discipline. [We] try to solve problems, figure out what happened, and come up with a solution — and most of the time, the children are involved. Never do we use time-outs."

Another big difference, Skoglund says, is the emphasis Americans place on preparing kids for the next step in life, whereas Scandinavian education focuses on the here and now.

"It is important to just be and enjoy whatever you have. We try to create a place where children can be children," she says. "We believe we are academic, but through play and the children’s own interests."

AND THEN?


The practical implications of this type of schooling are varied, but most people agree that a bilingual education is an asset in the global economy. Furthermore, Bay Area immersion programs seek not to divide children from their American culture but to broaden their understanding of it.

"FAIS adheres to an educational methodology that has been around since the mid-1800s," Fierberg says. "Students are receiving a broad range of education that isn’t held hostage to politics and societal conventions. But it is held in the US, so it does incorporate what is going on around the kids into the English curriculum so that they have an idea of the changes in society."

It’s also important to note that the FAIS is accredited by the California Association of Independent Schools, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and the French Ministry of Education, allowing students to transition uninterrupted to other schools in the United States and in France.

But one of the greatest goals of the program is to help participants enhance a sense of self as they learn about fellow students, their teachers, and the families they meet during homestays in Normandy in their fifth-grade year.

While all this makes immersion education sound idyllic, it can also be overwhelming for young students. FAIS alumni profiles are open, candid, and complex, revealing such a program’s potential drawbacks. Some drawbacks are merely annoying, as shown in 1974 FAIS alumna Karen Heisler’s memory of adults incessantly asking her to "say something in French" when she was too shy even to say something in English. Others are more serious.

"I remember the solitary struggle with a curriculum that none of my ‘at home’ friends shared and the lonely uniqueness of going to a school nobody had heard of," she says.

Francis Tapon, a 1988 alumnus, agrees, adding that it was often hard to relate to other people. "We were in a cocoon, sheltered from the real world, where people are proud if they can say, ‘Una cerveza, por favor.’<\!q>"

And for many, the value of bilingual education didn’t sink in until much later, just one of the trade-offs parents and students are forced to make. The others? It can be frustrating for students new to a language to be in a class with those who are already fluent. Parents often have the extra job of carrying on language immersion through home activities. And teachers say building interest in a culture completely outside themselves is difficult with children, who are the center of their own worlds. But inherent in a commitment to an immersion program is the expectation of roadblocks and challenges.

And Fierberg says it’s worth the result, the creation of well-rounded adults who understand their roles in a changing world, whether they use French in an international career or simply to order a bottle of wine at a restaurant. "We’d like for them to see difference as something that’s attractive," he says.*

Careers and Ed: Working for play

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› culture@sfbg.com

Who says you have to leave the days of building forts and wearing play clothes behind just because it’s time to "grow up" and get a "real job"? Not Barbara Butler, play professional.

The Bay Area artist makes her living building fanciful castles, pirate ships, and tree houses for kids all over the world. And she says her work is just as much fun for her as the results are for her clients. Plus: her office wear? Faded jeans, hiking boots, and a purple T-shirt that says, "Go Outside."

So how exactly does someone end up designing miniature lighthouses and two-story play sets as a career?

Butler’s fascination with the architecture of play began during her "uproariously fun" childhood in Watertown, New York, where she lived in an eccentric turn-of-the-century house complete with speaking tube, secret hiding places, and seven brothers and sisters (she’s number six) with whom to explore.

Much later her two contractor brothers introduced her to the construction trade. And in 1986 in San Francisco she and a friend founded Outer Space Design, a business specializing in creative landscaping and deck design. But it wasn’t until Bobby McFerrin (of "Don’t Worry, Be Happy" fame) commissioned her to build a unique playhouse in his Noe Valley backyard that Butler’s true path became clear.

Butler so enjoyed creating a space for McFerrin’s two children — an endeavor that combined her love of sculpture, building, color, play, and the outdoors — that she decided to do it for a living.

"Everyone said that I was crazy thinking I could turn this into a real business," she says.

But with the help of her family, she has indeed transformed the art of play into a profitable endeavor. Her sister Suzanne is a company partner and the business manager. Her husband, Jeff, whom she met on the job, coordinates materials, deliveries, and installations. Her brother James does all the drafting, and her niece Gabriella is the resident bookkeeper. With this team behind her, she’s now building 60 custom residential commissions a year, plus two or three public-use projects.

Originally, Butler and crew built everything from scratch and on-site. But they’ve since streamlined the process. Butler now has several standard designs for castles, forts, and theaters, as well as play features such as secret escape hatches, jailhouses, two kinds of slides, fire poles, zip lines, climbing walls, and a clubhouse with a mail slot and a who-goes-there peephole. She also has a "template wall," which is filled with irregular shapes and cutouts for achieving her trademark "wicky-wack" look. "Carpenters and builders are great at making right angles — but it drives me crazy," she says. The modular redwood and metal structures are assembled by Butler’s team in her 9,000-square-foot South San Francisco studio before being broken down and shipped in flat-panel packs all over the world.

The process starts when Butler meets with her pint-size clients (and their generous parents). She likes the experience to be fun from start to finish, so initial meetings tend to be lively and exciting, with everyone talking at once. "No idea is too wild or crazy at this point," she says.

Families discuss whether they’d like extras such as a drop table and bench, a double-barrel rotating water cannon, a ship’s wheel, a pulley bucket, a secret safe, or a flagpole with three different flags. One of Butler’s favorites is a wiggly bridge with boards at off angles so you feel like you could fall through (even though you can’t). "It takes some nerve to walk across," she says. "A lot of my designs are about creating illusion and disorientation, which are key to kids."

Next the family chooses one of 60 shades of nontoxic stain to be used on the structure. And finally Butler takes a closer look at the space and budget and begins to prioritize. "It’s a very collaborative process," she says.

Butler also keeps in mind that kids won’t stay kids forever. She encourages clients to consider a structure with an enclosed clubhouse, for when kids outgrow the slides and swings and enter the "hangout" stage. She’s also designed the playhouses to be bolted into the ground for easy installation and — when the kids are gone and the parents want to reclaim their backyard — removal. (Though Butler’s team refurbishes, sells, and delivers used play structures to recipients on a long waiting list, most of the playhouses are passed from generation to generation.)

Of course, not all of Butler’s structures are just for the kids. She recently built a tree house 18 feet off the ground in Santa Barbara, a commission from a grandfather who confessed to Butler that while it was for his grandkids, he also wanted to be able to read his newspaper up there. "The whole time I was designing, I had this image of an overstuffed leather chair in the corner," Butler says.

And as a way of making sure that every structure is as safe as possible, Butler builds according to the same code she once used for decks. "I always say that whatever I build should be able to handle a bunch of drunk adults at night," Butler says. Still, her real joy is in making autonomous, safe play spaces that kids can call their own. "It’s amazing how little interest I have in building adult structures," she says. "If they wanted things like good lookouts and secret passageways, I might consider it."*

BARBARA BUTLER

(415) 864-6840

www.barbarabutler.com

The devil’s bargain at the Transbay Terminal

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ba_transbay0701.jpg

By Tim Redmond

If you don’t like the notion of a 1,200-foot tower scarring San Francisco’s skyline — and I don’t — then maybe you ought to read this fascinating piece on Calitics, and stop for a minute to think about what this city, and this state, is doing.

Why do we have to live with a giant highrise office tower near the Transbay Terminal? Because if we don’t, there won’t be any money to build what should be the central transit link for the Bay Area, a landmark bus and train station on the scale (we’re told) of Grand Central in New York. It’s an essential part of the city’s future.

But the project costs a lot of money, almost a billion dollars — and nobody wants to pay higher taxes to fund this sort of thing. In fact, nobody in California wants to pay higher taxes for anything. So the folks at City Hall have decided that the only way we can have a new transit terminal is if we hock a piece of our city and our skyline to fund it. So we take some of the land on the terminal site and let a developer build a monstrosity of a highrise on it — and that will bring in the money that we can’t get any other way.

It ‘s the same reason we have that god-awful RIncon Tower sticking its ugly head into the sky: The developer offered to pay for a fair amount of affordable housing and other community amenities that the taxayers won’t fund because local government can’t raise taxes in California without reaching extraordinary lengths that are almost politically impossible. So here’s the deal: You want affordable housing? Give a big developer the rights to do something awful, and in exchange, we’ll get a few dollops of cash for civic needs.

Imagine, for a moment, what the state might look like if we’d had to cut this kind of deal to build the University of California system. You want nice colleges? Okay — sell off the coast and let it become a giant Miami Beach. You don’t want to do that? Too bad — no world-class university system for your kids.

This is the devil’s bargain we have agreed to settle for in 2007, and it sucks.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

There’s a new move afoot, this time through a lawsuit, to change the way taxicab permits work in San Francisco. Rachel Stern lays out the story on page 14, but allow me to offer a bit of political background:

The San Francisco cab industry works as a medieval class system. There are members of the landed gentry — people who have medallions, or operating permits — and there are serfs, people who drive cabs but don’t have permits. The serfs fork over a significant portion of their income every day to the gentry in the form of lease fees, the same way the peasants used to fork over much of their income for the right to live near a castle or hunt or farm on the gentry’s land. See, you can’t drive a cab without a permit, and if you don’t have one, you have to lease one from someone who does.

Drivers are all independent contractors, so they get no health insurance or disability and retirement benefits.

In this particular economic world, even the permit holders aren’t getting rich. The only ones who really make out are the top royalty, the cab companies themselves. But the gentry do a lot better than the serfs.

What’s interesting, though, and wonderful in its way, is that thanks to a 1978 law backed by that well-known Marxist former supervisor Quentin Kopp, you can’t inherit your way into the landed gentry. You can’t buy your way in, borrow your way in, or marry your way in. The only way to become a medallion holder is to put your name on a list and wait, along with all the other serfs, until, after 15 years or so, a permit opens up.

And the way a permits opens up is that someone who has one quits driving.

That’s the deal Kopp put together: only active, working drivers are supposed to get the benefits of the medallions. No corporations, no partnerships, no trusts, no relatives…. You personally drive a cab 800 hours a year, and you’re eligible to lease your permit out during those shifts when you’re not using it.

Of course, once a driver becomes a member of the landed gentry, he or she never wants to give up that permit. It’s free income, maybe worth $2,000 a month. The Medallion Holders Association desperately wants its members to be able to keep their permits when they retire, or be able to give them to their kids, or somehow cement them as property that a person can own, just like the forests and fields of the landed gentry of yore.

The latest issue is disability. Suppose you wait patiently for 15 years, suffering in serfdom, and your number finally comes up, and you get that golden ticket — and then you get in an accident and lose the ability to drive a car. I get the point; maybe there ought to be some transition program or something. But every time a nondriver gets to keep a permit, a serf waits even longer in line, forking over hundreds of dollars to a member of the gentry who doesn’t want to play by the rules anymore.

The bottom line is, cab permits belong to the city, and they aren’t supposed to be someone’s retirement fund. I don’t like any sort of rigid class system, but if you’re going to have one, the serfs deserve fairness too.<\!s>*

Curious and curiouser

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My straight (?) man who loves women and their curves and smiles and butts and legs, who loves me and my mom and his mom and all the pretty girls who pass us on the sidewalk, also really, really likes looking at transsexual porn. He likes really feminine-looking guys who have long pretty hair and soft girly curves. He tells me he has no interest in following through with what has been for him a very, very long-term turn-on. This fetish doesn’t really play itself out in the bedroom, where we are basically old-fashioned. Since he looks at this porn often enough for it to be more than curiosity, could you give me some information on it?

Love,

So Curious

Dear So:

What can I tell you? There is a huge market for porn featuring shemales, young, pretty pre-op or nonop transsexuals, a.k.a. "chicks with dicks." The answer to what I assume is your underlying question, meanwhile, does not exist, and I can prove it. I was feeling kind of bored with my own standard answer to similar questions and, in a fit of ennui, entered "he looks at shemale porn" into a search box. I got eleventy million porn sites and this, from the archives of the late and, I guess, occasionally lamented Google Answers:

Q: Why would a man in a committed, loving, sexual relationship use shemale and transgender porn?

A: There is no answer at this time.

So there you have it.

More seriously, there really can’t be an explanation for what all those straight guys are getting out of all that shemale porn — if you asked them, you’d get various answers, including "I dunno, I just like it." A lot of "I dunno, I just like it." The most obvious and, to the wives and girlfriends looking on anxiously from the sidelines, most troubling answer is, of course, "They’re gay, gay, gay," but honestly, it isn’t likely. Gay men tend to be attracted to men — sometimes little, slim, smooth-bodied men, sometimes big, hairy, muscle-bulgy men, but men just the same. There are, of course, exceptions — there are always exceptions — but most of the audience for this stuff (and the vast majority of customers for the vast selection of shemale-type sex workers out there) are as straight as you are. Some are obviously penis curious but, not being gay, would not be turned on by porn featuring big muscley guys named Rod or Steel or Steel Rod. Some just like stuff that feels forbidden or dirty. Some, I suppose, may be fantasizing that they are the shemale (a term, by the way, best reserved for sex workers and porn models, while just-regular-folks male-to-female transsexuals generally think of themselves as trans women of various op or nonop sorts).

Actually, I know an even better way to piss off a well-educated, politically aware trans person than to call her a shemale: use the word autogynephilia. Then duck. No, don’t call her a duck — I mean duck and cover, since she will want to punch your throat out.

Autogynephila is part of an alternative (in this case, alternative to the correct one, if you ask me) model of transsexuality in which male-to-female transsexuals are not women of any sort but merely gender dysphoric males or, if postop, men without penises, and in which those trans women who aren’t attracted to men (lots, in my experience) are not lesbians, bisexuals, or asexuals but autogynephiles, men who are turned on by the image of themselves as women. In other words, they spent masses of money, went through surgeries, changed their entire lives, and often lost family members, spouses, and jobs, all for a sexual thrill. This model seems too stupid to have gained any currency at all outside the crabbed little hearts of its three or four well-known proponents, but apparently you can still find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, the most up-to-date version of the standard reference your psychiatrist or therapist uses to figure out what the hell is wrong with you.

So what does this have to do with your question? Oh, nothing much, I just thought it was an interesting — if slightly nongermane — footnote, and if you don’t like interesting if slightly nongermane footnotes, you probably don’t read this column.

I think your man who loves women and moms and fluffy lavender bunnies (I’m sorry, but you inadvertently made him sound a bit like, oh, remember that unaccountably heterosexual Peter Pan guy, the one with the Web site and the large collection of jerkins who’s forever looking for his Tinkerbell? That guy) has a fetish, plain and simple. The Web exists to give such people an outlet, and I may be naive, but I truly believe that a guy who loves you and is happy with you can easily satisfy his yen for exotica in the privacy of his home office and need never stray. You’ve already asked him about that. He’s already answered. I’d be inclined to shrug and believe him.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

MIA way

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "This sucks."

Nope, we weren’t talking about Kelly Clarkson’s pandering public apology to Clive Davis — there’s an American idol to kowtow to. Or the minisnippet of the new Britney Spears single, "Get Back," all over YouTube, its title alluding oddly to a song by Paul "Latte Rock" McCartney’s old beat combo. Or Spears’s hoochie-widow getup for the tune’s video or her now widely reported dissolving personal boundaries, as she allegedly went pee-diddy with the bathroom door open, allegedly used designer fashion as an impromptu pooper scooper, and then allegedly absconded with enough borrowed photo-shoot finery to inspire the feel-good tab OK! to declare the pop star’s comeback moves totally "NOT OK!" in print. Get back? Why not get weirder and make like Cock ESP or Iggy Pop and start rolling around in glitter, broken glass, and mayo onstage?

Nay, sucking was the vibe as one MIA head nodded to the other, crunched in the aisles at Berkeley’s Amoeba Music, trading grime, and losing the buzz that had been building since fans started milling around the store the afternoon of July 28. MIA was in the house, but only a portion of the approximately 400 tanned, big-earringed, curly-headed baby Maya Arulpragasams, newsboy-capped dudes, arms-folded indie kids, and bobbing clubby-kins could see the Tamil Tiger spawn’s lavender cap bob in the distance — or even hear Arulpragasam’s politely low-volume raps skating over samples of the Clash’s "Straight to Hell" in Amoeba’s jazz room.

I’m straining to make out words, which are drowned out by the girl behind me, who’s complaining about the sound to a friend on her cell, and before you know it, four or five tunes and 15 minutes later, it’s all over, sent softly into the simmering Saturday sun with a toned-down little sing-along "Yah, yah, hey!" — a glance back to her first single, "Galang." Time for one of the most ethnically diverse audiences you can imagine in this, one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world, to queue up to have MIA sign their 12-inch or CD single of "Boyz," her new frenetic diss-ode to boy soldiers, stylish swashbucklers, and wannabe warlords.

About 15 minutes later, the beauteous Arulpragasam slips quietly behind a table. Her unruly pageboy is streaked blond — a far cry from the bright blue wig sported in the promo pics for her forthcoming album, Kala (Interscope), the playful new wave counterpart to Gwen Stefani’s Scarface coke-ho look of late — and her enormous eyes are open way wide, ready to take in her people, though she still needs periodic "Let’s give it up for M-I-A!"s to keep her signing hand strong as the line snakes through the aisles.

How relevant is MIA two years after her acclaimed Arular (XL/Interscope) emerged with its highly combustible, overtly politicized fusion of hip-hop, baile funk, grime, electro, and dancehall, seemingly unstopped by visa issues and MTV’s censorship of her "Sunshowers" video thanks to its PLO reference?

While Spears and Clarkson threaten to transform pop into one of the most embarrassing exercises in public self-flagellation imaginable, artists like MIA issue genuinely imaginative responses to the daily news, beyond dropping trou and racing into the surf. We actually need her voice — as slammed as it gets for clunky flow — more than ever now. And we need it for the masses who showed up at Amoeba rather than reserved for the few who managed to jump on the Rickshaw Stop tickets early on. Props to the store and MIA for making this brief appearance possible and free, but isn’t Arulpragasam breaking beyond club-size confines?

Because MIA’s appearances have been so scaled down, you have to wonder about Kala, as I did when I learned that previews have been kept for the few who can hear it at the Interscope offices in New York City or Los Angeles: does it suck too? A quick cruise online yields a clattering and polyrhythmic, wittily clucky "Bird Flu," a driving "XR2," and her infectious collabo with Timbaland, "Come Around," as well as the not-bad "Hit That," now trimmed from the disc. So why the secrecy? I thought the point of this revolution was to make it available to the people. And they continue to get it out there, regardless of the gatekeepers. *

TRUE SCHOOL

True West founding guitarist Russ Tolman ain’t bitter about the route his old Paisley Underground band took back in the day: breaking up and then re-forming without him, which is never a nice trick. He’s just happy the ’80s UC Davis combo can fire up its duel-guitar glory once again, fueled by the release of Hollywood Holiday Revisited (Atavistic). "I think some of the stuff is a little timeless," demurs Tolman, now the director of content programming at BitTorrent in San Francisco. "I’ve heard some people say, ‘Oh, is this a contemporary band?’ "

The reissue and the reunion took root last year when, Tolman says, "on a whim" they decided to play some shows. "The other guitarist, Richard [McGrath] — I thought he’d be the last guy who’d want to play with me again. He’s a great player, and I’m an OK player. But I think my role was to be the bee in his bonnet…. [Later] he said, ‘When Russ was out of the band, I was so glad that terrible guitarist was out, but then we sucked. All the chaos was gone.’ "

TRUE WEST

Sat/4, 9 p.m., $29.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

LEAVE HOME

PAGE FRANCE


Suicide Squeeze sweethearts make tender indie pop on their new Page France and the Family Telephone. With Bishop Allen and Audio Out Send. Wed/1, 8 p.m., $12–$14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

PTERODACTYL


Ushered in by bird chirps, these critters protest extinction with a flurry of noise on a recent self-titled Brah LP. With TITS, Big Nurse, and Ettrick. Thurs/2, 8:30 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

HIGH PLACES


Radness happens with the Brooklyn experimental twosome, backed by the fiery Lucky Dragons, Black Dice alum Hisham Bharoocha’s Soft Circle, and the Bay’s Breezy Days Band. Sat/4, 9 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

MIKA MIKO


All-girl punk fury barely contained by a cute moniker. Sun/5, 8 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TWIN AND LESBIANS


Once King Cobra, now a two-piece progressive metal combo with the Need’s Rachel Carnes on vocals and drums, Twin come to Frisky for a once-a-year visit. Erase Errata vocalist Jenny Hoyston also unleashes her latest feminist band of exes, Lesbians. Tues/7, 8 p.m., $5. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.elriosf.com

Man vs. room service?

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On the Discovery Channel show Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls parachutes into remote wildernesses, from the swampy Everglades to the freezing Scottish Highlands, and finds his way out, seemingly on his own. However, in an article posted on the BBC News Web site July 24, survival consultant Mark Weinert alleged that Grylls spent some nights in a hotel during the Hawaii episode, among other solo-survival no-no’s. Whatever the case, Man vs. Wild is, in my opinion, the greatest nature-survival show since Marty Stouffer’s Wild America. The following is an abridged version of an e-mail interview with Grylls, which took place prior to the controversy:

SFBG How helpful do you think being a regular viewer of your show would be in a survival situation?

BEAR GRYLLS Well, hopefully it is pretty helpful! Really, the best survival advice is always to sit tight and wait for rescue. But having said that, the whole series is full of survival advice, with most of it quite out-of-the-box stuff, like using shoelaces to climb tress or drinking the fluids from elephant dung for water. I do get quite a few letters from people saying that they used something they saw me do on a show and it saved their lives. Whether they are making it up or telling the truth, I never know, but it is encouraging to read. When we first started filming, I used to think, "Will anyone ever watch this?" So it’s nice that they do!

SFBG What’s the one thing you’d recommend as indispensable training for anyone in terms of being able to survive in the wild?

BG Understand that survival is all about strength of mind, not body — hence in so many survival epics it has often been the ladies in high heels with no skills who have been victims of airplane crashes, etc., who beat the odds, whereas their fellow male survivors with all the gear and gung ho have crumbled. Why? Because their reason for staying alive was bigger — it drove them further, it made them think laterally, made them keep making decisions, never giving up and doing whatever it took to stay alive long enough to be found or get lucky. Those who stick it out are those who win.

SFBG What would you say was the single most challenging survival situation you’ve ever been in?

BG Losing my father when I was still young.

SFBG In this season of the show, what was the most difficult environment to survive in?

BG Scotland, ironically, was tough — classified as an Arctic landscape. I was there in winter in minus-40 degrees in a storm, with very little clothing. I would have been in real trouble if I had not found a deer carcass that I could gut and sleep inside. I have just returned from the Sahara for season two, where it was 140 degrees. I definitely was on the outer limit of my endurance, I felt.

SFBG Have you ever been close to throwing in the towel and asking for assistance?

BG Well, when it has been raining for 24 hours torrentially, I am lost, with limited food and water, no tent or mosquito net, in the Amazon, and I miss my family and two boys, it is okay to have the odd moment of "What the hell I am doing here?" I am not a robot. Being away from my wife and kids is the hardest part of all this for me.

SFBG Obviously, people are fascinated by the foul things you ingest in order to stay alive. Do you have a list of the most disgusting?

BG The top list is: goat testicles, raw (just wait for the new season!), sheep eyeballs (exploding goo of gristle and blood), grubs as big as fists (yellow ooze), and raw zebra neck. But that’s all for my work life. When I am home, I just love home cooking! (Duncan Scott Davidson)

To read the complete interview, go to dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/manvswild.html

Mo’ MIA, Daft Punkette…and prime time musings from Berkeley

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By Robert Bergin

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A rather old photo of MIA.

Two nights ago, a dear friend and I walked around campus. Our states were altered, and we talked to things that don’t usually talk back to people. Very good listeners, those things. Needless to say it was a sissy-sentimental sort of evening, so when we walked past our campus’s beloved campanile at 11:57 p.m., what else to do but sit down and wait for the bells to bong? We’d be the first to welcome in Thursday – that was the idea. So we sat. And sat.

Yep. Sittin’ sittin’ sittin’. Nice night. Oh, yes, very nice. I wonder where Thursday is? Oh, he’ll be here. Strange, I’ve always known him to be quite punctual. Yes, me, too.

(Thursday is, of course, a man. Thurs Day. Say Thurs. A very ugly name for a woman, but it works great for a dude. He’s probably in one of those ESPN Ironman things, pulling big rigs.)

After what was assuredly more than three minutes, I checked my cell phone. 12:03 a.m.! All this time we’d been waiting at the front door, and he’d snuck through the garage. Called him a trickster at the time, but in retrospect, he was just being polite. Not waking the neighbors.

It’s a good time be young in Berkeley. A while back Jon Carroll wrote a very nice column about the summer of love. If all this feels a bit like a Carroll knock-off, well, I can’t help it. He writes very well, and if his experiences are as honest as his prose, then he lives very well, too. So, my apologies.

Anyways, a while back Carroll wrote a very nice column about the summer of love. I can’t find it online, but the gist of it was that no one really thought of it as, y’know, the Summer of Love. It was just a bunch of people sitting around in a park, welcoming each coming moment. Sort of living out Person Pitch, 40 years before that album’s time. And while Berkeley has had that blissed-out vibe for the past couple months, at least from my perspective, there’s been a tangible air of anticipation as well.

Y’know that episode of Pete and Pete where Big Pete waxes eloquent about how the Fourth of July marks the summer’s apex? For a lot of us kids, tonight’s Daft Punk concert feels like that. All the hikes, the road trips, the feet out the shotgun window, the fire escape sunsets and the People’s Park basketball games, it’s all been a prelude to tonight.

We are going to dance a lot.

And MIA’s playing at Amoeba the following day? Which one, yours or ours? Ours?? Shit. It’s good to be young in Berkeley. You should probably come over – this weekend is going to rule.

What’s that you say? A YouTube video? I got your YouTube video right here, buddy.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Yeah, man, I was there: I saw the Grateful Dead play "Dark Star" on New Year’s Eve. Heavy.

Only it wasn’t 1967. It was 1981, becoming ’82, and we were at the Oakland Coliseum, not the Panhandle. The Summer of Love was long gone; Haight Street was at war, not over drugs but over gentrification, and the cops were cruising up and down, looking not for hippies selling pot and acid but for the self-proclaimed Mindless Thugs, who were throwing bricks through the windows of upscale stores and fancy bars.

Everybody falls in love with San Francisco the way it was the day they arrived, and mine was a distinctly anarchopunk scene. The soundtrack wasn’t Scott McKenzie and flowers in your hair; it was Jello Biafra, "California über Alles," and the kids were getting all bloody and bruised from slam dancing in clubs with black walls instead of mellowing out and digging the colors of the trippy light show.

But the spirit of the 1960s was still very much alive. The Summer of Love gets a bit glorified in the retelling, but in the end the part that survived was a spirit of community and rebellion. We were here because we didn’t feel like we belonged anywhere else, and as quickly as we could set down roots, we decided it was our city and we wouldn’t let the greedheads take it away from us.

And it’s been an endless battle for the past quarter century, but the bad guys still haven’t won; though much is taken, much abides … and every year we celebrate the best of the world’s best city with the original, first-in-the-nation Best of the Bay.

This year’s issue is in part a tribute to that summer 40 years ago when a new kind of politics, music, and culture was emerging in a city where Bruce B. Brugmann and Jean Dibble were helping create a new kind of journalism. Our local heroes this year are all people who were part of the Summer of Love — and are still doing cool stuff today.

It’s also a tribute to everything sensational in San Francisco. And now and then and forever, there’s plenty. *

Bound

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have been reading you forever and you are awesome! I have been too intimidated to write but decided to break the silence. I’m a 36-year-old single bisexual woman who is beautiful (or so I’m told). I’ve been attracting more than my fair share of inappropriate dudes and women. This past year, my cousin’s boyfriend came on to me, a married guy begged me to be with him, and a possessive Scorpio threatened suicide over me. I dated a 55-year-old who had eczema, a Buddha belly, and a flaccid penis after three pumps; a lesbian rage-aholic (my first); and a 32-year-old who nearly bit off my nipple (clumsy) and came after two seconds but who wants to marry me and have kids.

Part of me just wants to have some fun, get taken out to dinner, and be left to be free. Part of me wants a committed relationship, but every one so far has led to people wanting to control me. I believe that I can have it all — fun, freedom and commitment.

I notice I attract men who are in shit marriages, and I empathize and listen (which for some reason turns them on). Sometimes I think the most compassionate thing to do is to lay them. Other times I remember the pain my father’s cheating caused and feel they should make a real choice and leave, not default to me. Should I lay them or leave them alone? Is there a hormonal rage that happens after 35? Do you think that I’m attracting these sorts of people because, on some level, I don’t want a relationship?

Love,

Bad Girl

Dear Bad:

Wow, girl, you are one big messy mess. I’m seriously tempted just to sum up all your behaviors and all your questions with one big "Quit that" and go back to bed, but you were so nice to tell me I intimidate you (I never get to intimidate anyone anymore!), I feel I owe you a little more than that.

I don’t think your problems have a thing to do with being "beautiful" one way or the other, so put that part right out of your mind, if you can. (Covering the mirrors might help but might also attract lovelorn vampires, which is probably the last thing you need right now.) Also, when you said "inappropriate partners," I was, frankly, kind of expecting something sexier than the bunch of sad-sack suicidal needle-dicks catalogued above. Where are the drunken, occasionally abusive Irish poets? The girls who look like Gina Gershon did in "Bound" but throw violent fits if you so much as mention a long-ago ex? The guys who are cute and funny and fantastic in bed but refuse to meet your friends? You know: the hot, sexy, bad-for-you people? Surely if you’re such hot stuff yourself you can find a better class of losers to waste your time on.

I have a few new rules for you, since you seem, toddler-like, to be acting out rather brattily in hopes that someone will step in to set some limits and make the world make sense again. First, no sleeping with people you have no respect for. ("Buddha belly and flaccid penis"? OK then, don’t fuck him. Certainly don’t fuck him and then make fun of him.) Second, no married men (or women), period. Just because they "default" to you does not mean you must make yourself available. Third, even with better prospects than these, sorry, you cannot have it all, and not just because of where would you put it. You can’t have both complete freedom and complete commitment because, hey, they’re mutually exclusive. Once bound (note the word) to another person, even polyamorously (if you must), you will have to accommodate his-her-its needs and wants sometimes, even at the expense of your own. Anyone who does not understand this really is still operating as a sort of giant (albeit in your case very physically attractive, I’m sure) toddler. You need to grow up a bit, after which you may begin to attract more suitable partners — or at least learn, as toddlers must, that you don’t have to pick up every random thing, no matter how unsuitable, and put it in your mouth.

As for attracting whoever because you want or don’t want whatever, I think there’s a fallacy we all tend to fall for that is, like so many things, simply not as true as it sounds. I suppose that the most popular version — the one about how desperation is not attractive, so stop wanting a boyfriend or girlfriend, and one will magically appear — has a certain truthiness going for it, but it also both blames the victim and promises more than it can deliver. Personally, I believe neither that you’re attracting yucky people because you don’t want nice ones nor that the universe will deliver someone really neato as soon as you deserve him or her. It would be nice if things worked out that equitably for everyone, but in my experience, the universe is kind of shiftless and lazy and just doesn’t bother.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

BoBs over Bay-ghdad: Best of the Boy… I mean, bands

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By Robert Bergin

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Ghost Boobs, kids love ’em! Gravy Train!!!! strikes a munchy pose. Courtesy of nyc.metblogs.com.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a lot more bated breath among your neighbors. More expectant glances at calendars and watches, perhaps. Well, there’s a logical explanation for all that anticipation. The Guardian‘s “Best of the Bay” issue drops next week.

But you can’t wait! You’ve gotta have those value judgments! In your hands! In your computer’s hands! In your brain! Now!

Enter the RIPs (Rejected Intern Pitches). I’d say something like, “Consider this an appetizer to next Wednesday’s main course,” but I think you and I both know this is just a silly blog post filled with random stuff. So on with the awards!

Best Band of All Fucking Time: Fall Out Boy, no duh. Or should I say…Fall Out BAY. Oooohhhh.

Best Shamelessly Hip Music Video that You Are Watching While Living in the Bay:

Best Initiation into Gravy Train!!!! culture:

I think I’m a little too much of a corn-fed heteronormative frat boy to truly appreciate this band. Not that I actively dislike them or anything: hypersex just isn’t really my thing. Still, even though I went to their Bottom of the Hill show a couple weeks ago mostly to check out the opener, Experimental Dental School, I thought it’d be interesting to bring along a companion that didn’t know anything about the headliner.

So I sent an e-mail to my fraternity’s listserve saying I had an extra ticket, and I get a response from a friend we’ll call Biff. Biff, in addition to having a heart of gold, fulfills a few of the requisite external qualities of your prototypical frat boy: sandals, muscles, a strong affinity for Sublime, et cetera. I told him it’d be fun and internally prepared myself for a night of awkward vibes and incredulously raised eyebrows.

Of course, we weren’t even there five minutes before I came back from the bathroom to find Biff slovenly making out with some girl in a velvet dress in the middle of an already sexed-up crowd. (I’m not sure what was better or worse, the instance itself or his shrugging explanation, “She didn’t even give me her name. She just said ‘I’m from LA.’”). Sleazy? Yeah, but what’s the point in turning your nose up at smutty thrillseekers? Fiery loins…just another thing Gravy Train!!!! and my fraternity have in common.

(Ed.: And if you’re curious about that sexy GT, check out the cute animated video for “Burger Baby.”

Seeing Red

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By Sarah Phelan

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Red is for children: a color coded map shows where most kids (the red patches) now live in the City,

For all the crowing about the passage of Newsom’s budget (we’ll get to that soon), the progressive majority remains in the driving seat when it comes to setting priorities and making decisions at City Hall.

Consider two key votes that the progressives won at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting.

First, Sups. Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, Ross Mirkarimi and Geraldo Sandoval voted for a charter amendment that will require the mayor to show up for monthly policy discussions at the Board. Their vote gives San Francisco residents the opportunity to clarify whether they really want to require that a monthly mayoral appearance be mandatory for anyone and everyone who holds the Mayor’s job.

In case you thought you’d already voted for this requirement last fall, the answer is, yes and no.

In 2006, 56.36 percent of San Francisco voters approved Measure I. But this was only a policy statement that asked, but did not demand, that the Mayor attend. And shortly after Prop. I passed, and with the progressives on the Board driving the policy on all the important issues of the day, like more foot patrol, more access to health care and a ban on plastic bag, Newsom sidestepped the will of the people, by declaring that he’d hold townhall meetings, instead.

Lest you are thinking, well, couldn’t the Board simply show up to these town halls and discuss policy there, the answer is, No, actually, they can’t. At least not without being guilty of massive violations of the Brown Act.

Give a hoot (or else)

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WILD WILDLIFE Had director Davis Guggenheim attempted to explore all the creative possibilities that lie behind such a name as Al Gore (get it?), An Inconvenient Truth would have been a much more interesting and way scarier film. Not that turning a pressingly threatening environmental issue into unforgettably blatant propaganda isn’t frightening. It’s just that if the former vice president had played some kind of freakish, global-warming-afflicted mutant — roaming the world, secretly planning to take his revenge by literally boring people to death with his clip show — the movie would have been closer to the truth and a lot more alarming.

Fortunately, the curators at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive have created a film series that gives environmental concerns the exact twist that Truth lacks and the depth that it persistently avoided. The major theme shared by all the earth-friendly flicks in "Eco-Amok! An Inconvenient Film Fest": the antagonistic relationship between science and nature, with the latter always the triumphant victor. Science is responsible for the destruction of the environment and the birth of many mutations, but it’s also the means by which people try to save the ecosystem.

"Eco-Amok!" ‘s selections also display admirably artistic inventiveness. Frogs (1972), Prophecy (1979), and Meet the Applegates (1991) all present the unstoppable power of nature, but they also reveal the reasons why we stay so apathetic to the danger we are facing. In Frogs the members of a wealthy family whose greed overcomes their environmental sensitivities are picked off, one by one, by the croaking (and hissing, and creepy-crawling) inhabitants of the abused swamp on their estate. In Prophecy the cheapskate owner of a lumber company uses mercury to process wood; as a result, the tainted water supply spawns a nasty-looking mutant bear that devours kids while they dream in their sleeping bags. And in Meet the Applegates, Brazilian cockroaches disguise themselves as a middle-class American family to carry out a nuclear explosion but are corrupted by capitalism’s lure.

Phase IV (1974), a film with extraordinary insect photography and many avant-garde qualities, presents nature’s revenge on a whole different level. Instead of getting rid of humans, hardworking and devoted-to-their-cause ants create a new Adam and Eve — a comment on the mutations that might take place in us if the ecosystem keeps changing at a rapid pace.

But even more troublesome is the obsession with creation that’s present in The Mutations (1974), Silent Running (1972), and Habitat (1997). In these three films, mad scientists are credited with the ability to create life. In The Mutations crazed Dr. Nolter (Donald Pleasence) forges humans from plants. In Silent Running delusional botanist Lowell (Bruce Dern) produces forests while floating in space. The wackiest of them all, Habitat‘s microbiologist Hank (Tchéky Karyo), turns into a higher form of energy after he transforms his house into a living "accelerated evolution" rain forest with the ability to kill.

What those three movies make crystal clear is the same thing that all the other films in the series more or less imply: science, even when used with the best of intentions, can only bring into existence abominable forms of life. Luckily, some of the time, no matter how horrid and gruesome these creations are, nature has better plans, including them in its survival scheme. But in a less fortunate and more frequent variation, these grim new species’ sole objective is to spread mayhem and introduce humans to their messy and abhorrent deaths — which some may argue isn’t so bad either.

ECO-AMOK! AN INCONVENIENT FILM FEST

Through Aug. 29

Wed., 7:30 p.m., $4–$8

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-1124

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Sweet Youth

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It was a period where you thought anything could happen," Thurston Moore once told me, talkin’ ’bout the early ’90s alternative rock scene spawned by Sonic Youth’s widely regarded masterpiece, Daydream Nation (DGC, 1988).

One might say the MTV-coined catchphrase "Alternative Nation" went as far as to take its cues from SY’s double disc, which was self-aware enough to dub a track "The Sprawl" and heady enough to venture into the big-statement two-LP turf also being hoed by once–SST kindred Minutemen and Hüsker Dü. Honestly, back in those hazy days, I recall giving it a handful of spins, sensing the distinct odor of a masterpiece, and immediately stopping playing it. Daydream was much too much, too rich for my blood, too jammed with the brainy, jokey pop culture ephemera that had riddled Sonic Youth’s LPs up to that point — positioned as the polar opposite of a hardcore punk 7-inch, which was short, sharp, and built for maximum speed. Yo, you’d never catch Minor Threat doing a double album. Instead Daydream thumbed its nose at the closeted cops in the mosh pit and unfurled like a dark banner announcing: We can’t be contained by your louder, faster, lamer rules. We’re gonna speak to a imaginary country — off Jorge Luis Borges’s and Italo Calvino’s grids — of naval-gazing, candle-clutching misfit visionaries looking for clues in trash cults, Madonna singles, and the burned-out butt end of the Raygun-era ’80s.

Now nearly 20 years old, Daydream — recently given the deluxe reissue treatment with an additional disc of live tracks — brings back memories of prophesy and triggers reminders of mortality. Around the time it first came out, I recall ranting to kindred record store clerks — and anyone who stumbled into my predated High Fidelity daydream — how everything will change when Sonic Youth meets Public Enemy. And it sort of did on Daydream, coproduced by Nicholas Sansano, who engineered PE’s ’88 masterwork It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam).

Apparently we were also talkin’ ’bout nation building back then, finding a face and a place for a generation still living at home and struggling for an identity. Imagining a meeting of the most powerful forces in American rock and hip-hop seemed like the next best thing to moving out — and it foreshadowed Goo and touring collaborations to come. Little did I — or Moore — realize that a dozen years after Daydream Nation, the meeting of rock and rap would degrade into what Moore described as "negativecore" and rap-metal units like Limp Bizkit and debacles like Rapestock 2000. Daydream Nation offered a whole other, embracing view of a youth revolution with its opening track and college radio hit "Teen Age Riot." Sonic Youth had dared to write an anthem for a new age of kids, tagged with Kim Gordon’s "you’re it!" — and everyone was on the same page, stoned on Dinosaur Jr.–style Jurassic distortion and thinking-Neanderthal riffs and racing as fast as they could through dreamlike pop pastiche, as embodied by the accompanying video, a kind of decades-late Amerindie response to "White Riot" or "Anarchy in the UK."

On Daydream pop hooks emerged for the first time alongside the ever-coalescing SY aesthetic, with euphoric, charging chord progressions seemingly unrooted to the blues, and the way the group would open into intentionally pretty passages, flaunting the delicate uses of distortion and a feminized rock sensibility. We were all dreaming of Nirvana, a fringe seeping into the pop marketplace. Honestly though, listening to that Daydream again, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Its brute approach has become a part of ’90s rock’s wallpaper — as Moore confesses in the reissue notes, black metallists have even owned up to copping licks from " ‘Cross the Breeze" — and therefore perhaps sounds more pedestrian. The triptych of "Hey Joni," "Providence," and "Candle" now sounds more charged than "Teen Age Riot" and "Silver Rocket," and I can’t help but think that Sister may be a stronger, more concise album. Perhaps we’re still too close to the stalled staling of the Alternative Nation, though maybe the faded nature of Daydream Nation is tagged to its very status as a classic — how does one pump life into, say, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

It does help, however, to play it loud. *

SONIC YOUTH DOES DAYDREAM NATION

Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $35

Berkeley Community Theatre

1900 Allston Way, Berk.

www.ticketmaster.com

HOT TO TROT: THE LOVEMAKERS

There was a time when the Bay’s Lovemakers looked like they were going to get all the love nationally — an Interscope deal tucked neatly into their back pocket and a heavy-breathing following around town. So what happened?

"Interscope asked us if we wanted to do another record," vocalist-guitarist Scott Blonde says from Oakland, "and we said no, because our A&R guy was obviously really into us and he and his assistant worked really hard for us, but it didn’t seem possible to get Brenda Romano, who runs the radio department, to get into it enough to put it ahead of 50 Cent and Gwen Stefani." He chuckles.

These days, the band members are focusing on making love on their own terms: their Misery Loves Company EP comes out July 24, the first release on San Francisco’s Fuzz label.

"Obviously we got more cash dollars’ support on Interscope," vocalist-bassist-violinist Lisa Light adds from the Mission District. "But the thing is the way it gets spent. Interscope would spend $5,000 doing stupid things — in bad taste a lot of times too. Not only were you embarrassed by the dumb posters they did, they weren’t in the right places. We’ve been able to hire a radio promoter and a cool PR company. It’s all about finding the people who actually care. You cannot pay for that at all."

"We’re looking at the future of music a lot, and selling CDs isn’t really part of the future seemingly," Blonde continues. "So it’s kinda about coming up with really innovative ways of getting our music out there in the biggest way possible." He says the Lovemakers have already gotten more radio ads on stations like Los Angeles’s KROQ for the first single off Misery than anything off their major label release: "We thought Interscope was going to be our ticket."

LOVEMAKERS

Sat/21, 9 p.m., $18

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

www.bimbos365club.com

MUSIC TO GO

EDGETONE MUSIC FESTIVAL


Are more listeners seeking out music’s edgier tones? Edgetone New Music Summit mastermind Rent Romus believes that’s the case. "I’ve been running the Luggage Store series for five years now — last night we had 70 people," he told me. "It’s not about the hit song but about performance and performers." His fest has that critical mixture of daring performers: SF trumpeter Liz Allbee and bowed-gong player Tatsuya Nakatani, Wobbly, Darwinsbitch (sound artist–violinist Marielle Jakobsons), instrument inventor Tom Nunn, High Vulture (with MX-80 guitarist Bruce Anderson), Hammers of Misfortune vocalist Jesse Quattro, Eddie the Rat, and the Gowns. July 22–28. See www.edgetonemusicsummit.org for schedule

PUSSYGUTT


The noisy Boise, Idaho, bass-drum duo waxes darkly on Sea of Sand (Olde English Spelling Bee). Wed/18, 9:30 p.m., $5. Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary, SF. (415) 885-4074, www.castlenews.com

SHOUT OUT LOUDS


Sept. 11’s Our Ill Wills (Merge) is unveiled by Sweden’s shouters. Wed/18, 9 p.m., $15. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

LET’S GO SAILING


Rilo Kiley keyboardist Shana Levy charts a sweet indie pop course with her debut, The Chaos in Order (Yardley Pop/GR2). With Oh No! Oh My! and the Deadly Syndrome. Wed/18, 8 p.m., $12–$14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

YOU AM I


Three number one albums strong, the tuneful Aussie rockers muscle onto the US scene with Convicts (Yep Roc). Wed/18, 8 p.m., $13. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

JOHN NEMETH


The blues vocalist and harp player bubbles up with Magic Touch (Blind Pig). Fri/20, 8 and 10 p.m., $15. Biscuits and Blues, 401 Mason, SF. (415) 292-2583, www.biscuitsandblues.com

SHOTGUN WEDDING QUINTET


The Mission’s Jazz Mafia collectivists bring out the big guns for their CD release get-down. With Crown City Rockers. Fri/20, 9 p.m., $15–$18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

RED MEAT


Love Jill Olson’s "I’m Not the Girl for You" off the SF C&W combo’s new We Never Close (Ranchero). With Big Smith and William Elliott Whitmore. Sat/21, 9 p.m., $15–$17. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. $15-$17. www.gamh.com

Lonely enough

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I don’t even know the name of this river. Three, four, maybe more years in a row we’ve been coming here, and the women bring magazines. My brother and Wayway and Jolly Boy go fishing and don’t catch fish. I sit on the rocks with a pen and don’t catch poetry.

At the bottom of the river, on a slimy rock, sits a barrel-shaped bug with four black legs sticking out of its head, an off-center orange dot, and — I swear — barnacles …

Nature is so punk! Here’s a duck with a Mohawk, and eight cute little ducklings, then the next day seven. Then six … The river speaks for itself, no fish, no poetry, all rocks and swirl, and yesterday a young woman from the campground wandered downriver to us, on something and full of questions. Where are you from? Are you white? Do you have kids with you? Who here don’t you like?

Dogs lick toads to hallucinate. Cats like catnip. Nature uses. Our "innocents" high on s’mores and we in our various states of adult intoxication decide, sitting around the fire, that the young upriver woman is a serial killer. This distracts us temporarily from the very real fear of bears, who have been knocking over our bear boxes, breaking into cars, and sniffing our tents in the middle of the night.

If the campfire is town square, or San Francisco, then I pitched my tent in Sonoma County, in a dense, dark cluster of pine trees. Why? I’m lonely enough. Do I still need distance? Seclusion? I’m not brave. I have nothing to hide, even less to prove.

But when I get up to pee the stars comfort the fuck out of me. And when I curl back into my warm, soft wrappings, I am surer than ever that I am dead. The adamant meat eater’s comeuppance: to play the juicy part of a bear’s burrito. I lie awake and breathless, listening to pine cones decompose, and seriously consider just sitting outside until morning. On a rock. With a pen.

The river speaks for itself, but Taqueria San Jose needs me. One tiny shrimp taco has 10 times as many shrimps on it as Papalote’s. But the salsa’s not great.

But no line. In fact, no one at all. A newspaper clipping on a post says San Jose’s are the best tacos in the world. I wouldn’t know, but I can tell you it’s my new favorite taquería.

My companions barely touched their food.

The Maze, just back from New York and St. Louis, couldn’t believe that his chicken was chicken. Anyway, it wasn’t the way he’d wanted it. And his friend from work didn’t seem too thrilled with her quesadilla. I tried to interest them in tasting my tiny taco, or side-order ceviche, but they weren’t biting. I think they were put off by the place’s unpopularity.

I don’t know why I love empty restaurants. Maybe it’s the same impulse that makes me pitch my tent where no one else is. And maybe it will be the death of me, by mauling, exposure, broken heart, food poisoning, serial-killing camper chick … One thing: I won’t die of starvation.

The Maze, who might, asks as many questions as our campfire killer. Although, admittedly, his make more sense. I’d wanted to hear about his adventures in New York and St. Lulu, but mostly we talked about the usual: ethics, spirituality, chickens. I’d missed the tangling tree roots of his forehead and tried to keep him perplexed with my goofball philosophies.

At the bar I mostly talked to her. We had the same favorite restaurant in New Hampshire! I didn’t know if they were on a date or what, but she left first, and he walked her out, then came back and walked me home. Not that he meant to; we just couldn’t stop talking. He had a million questions and it was a beautiful night. I don’t think he knew if he was on a date either.

Something had happened between them, and he seemed wracked with amazement and uncertainty. "How do you know …," he asked, rhetorically, and before he could finish the question I said, "You don’t."

My stomach growled. We were standing outside of Sockywonk’s, whispering, so as not to wake her neighborhood’s dogs and babies.

I already knew the answer (no), but anyway I invited the Maze inside. I wanted his burrito, and never have I meant a thing more literally. He had most of his rejected dinner with him, in a bag. If he didn’t want it, I did.

Does my longing speak for itself? Does it have a name, or fish in it, or poetry? It kills me how few people have ever even heard of Richard Brautigan. *

TAQUERIA SAN JOSE

Daily, 8 a.m.–11 p.m.

2830 Mission, SF

(415) 282-0203

Beer

MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Cooties roundup

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I get cold sores on my lips. Since I don’t want to infect my wife with the herpes virus when I have an outbreak, I don’t kiss or go down on her. Am I being too cautious? Is it safe to go down on her while I have cold sores?

Love,

Careful Hubby

PS I like the way you always end your responses with "Love."

Dear Hub:

Me too, thanks. And of course you’re not being too cautious. The mouth kind of herpes (herpes simplex one) prefers mouths and the other sort (simplex two, natch) prefers the other places. But like so many of us, it can be persuaded to switch sides under the right circumstances. Keep doing what you’re doing, since it seems to be working. The bad news may be that one can spread herpes even in the absence of obvious sores, but the good news is that you probably haven’t, and it looks like you probably won’t.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

What’s the deal with the transmission of HPV? Is it spread by contact with the blisters themselves or the area in which the blisters appear, or is it blood-borne and spread by contact between uninfected orifices? Could a man with warts on the ween transmit warts through his mouth to an uninfected vadge? What about the inverse of that scenario?

What is the safe sex protocol for genital warts?

Love,

Just a Weency Question

Dear Ween:

Um … which goes in the what now? I got lost somewhere between ween and vadge. When my kids are ready to start learning body parts, remind me to teach them the proper terms plus one cute but recognizable and also not too cute euphemism each (each kid or each part, whichever) for use in public places. And remind me not to put ween or — seriously, I mean this — vadge on the list of options while I’m at it.

OK, this part is important: HPV stands for human papilloma virus, a.k.a. genital warts. The blisters-causing thing is herpes, a.k.a. HSV, which is similar in a lot of ways (caused by a virus, treatable but incurable, and spread by contact) but not at all the same thing.

The quickie answers to your questions would go something like this: it’s spread by contact with the infected area or something that’s been in contact with same; it is not blood-borne; and the safe-sex protocol is "Don’t touch uninfected partners with your affected bits or with other body parts or random objects which have recently rubbed up against your affected bits." Since HPV is very complicated, confusing, common, and potentially deadly, I strongly urge those who know as little about these things as you do to go from here to someplace like www.ashastd.org or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site and read more before rubbing anything much of yours against anybody else’s anything, really.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend just got diagnosed with HPV after an irregular Pap. We’ve been having tons of unprotected sex for about two years. This may sound stupid, but should I start wearing a condom every time? Can’t I just assume that I’m already carrying HPV, like 75 percent of the country? Neither of us wants to go back to protected sex.

Love,

Resigned

Dear Sign:

You know, that’s actually a really good question. The truth is, you and your girlfriend going about your business condom free, knowing all you know (assuming that you know that HPV can cause cervical cancer, for instance, and that you will carry it and be able to spread it forever) is pretty much the definition of "informed consent." There’s nothing stopping you from proceeding as is. Another thing at least 75 percent of the population has in common at some point, though, is that they have girlfriends or boyfriends and then they break up and get new ones. Call your attitude fatalistic, nihilistic, or just plain realistic, but your next girlfriend may not share it and may choose not to share your virions either, assuming you have any.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Importing injustice

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› news@sfbg.com

More than 100 tractor trailers were lined up at 6:30 a.m., inching toward the Port of Oakland’s Terminal 7, waiting for their next load. Against the backdrop of the San Francisco skyline, a mammoth freight ship emblazoned with the name Hyundai glided toward the port, pregnant with multicolor shipping containers.

A driver told the Guardian that he expected to be in line for at least two hours waiting to drop off the empty container attached to his big rig. His 1989 truck lacks air-conditioning, so the windows were rolled down, allowing diesel exhaust to pollute the air he was breathing.

It’s the same scene at many of the port’s other terminals: long lines of ancient trucks slowly snaking toward their destinations, their primarily immigrant drivers performing the essential and thankless task of transporting cheap clothes from Asia to the nation’s big-box retailers or helping to export California’s agricultural goods to Hawaii.

The fourth-busiest container port in the nation, the Port of Oakland is the economic engine of the region, providing thousands of jobs and more than $1 billion in revenue. But activists say that the port system has also led to sweatshoplike conditions for truckers and created a health crisis for the surrounding community.

On their poverty-level wages, truckers are usually able to buy only the oldest, most polluting trucks. Their diesel pollution is a major factor driving asthma rates through the roof in the neighboring, primarily African American neighborhood of West Oakland, where, the American Lung Association says, one in every five kids has asthma.

A new national coalition of labor, environmental, and community activists has advanced a proposal that would make all drivers employees with benefits, radically changing the way work is done on the waterfront and possibly heralding the return of the Teamsters to the ports for the first time in more than 20 years. In the process, the proposal would make the port’s biggest customers responsible for its environmental problems.

The coalition places the blame for the current situation squarely on giant retail shippers such as Wal-Mart and Target and is calling for them to be held accountable for the full environmental and labor costs of the cheap goods they sell — a call the corporations are strenuously resisting. The American Trucking Association, whose members contract directly with the corporation, has threatened a lawsuit if the change is adopted. But port officials have voiced a willingness to seriously consider implementing the proposal.

Having long claimed that the trucking industry is outside its control, the Port of Oakland could embrace the proposal as a means of satisfying community, environmental, political, and business concerns. With impending directives to clean the air coming from Sacramento, trade planned to almost double by 2020, two new Port Commission appointees representing labor and environmental concerns, and a federal antiterrorism tracking plan slated for this fall, the port is poised to play a leadership role that could reverberate up and down the West Coast and across the country.

THE TRUCKER’S LIFE


The Port of Oakland’s estimated 1,500 to 2,500 drivers are a far cry from the middle-class, long-haul Teamsters and the Smokey and the Bandit–<\d>style freewheeling rebels who have long been engrained in the American imagination. Instead, they are at the bottom of the port’s food chain and are the most exploited trucking sector in the country, consisting primarily of recent immigrants struggling to make ends meet.

Dawit Fre, 39, immigrated to Oakland from the small nation of Eritrea two years ago. "I wanted to see a better life," he told us. Fre was a driver in Africa and went to work for the Port of Oakland after his cousin told him people start their trucking careers there. He said he works up to 60 hours a week for one company, making the equivalent of about $8 an hour after expenses.

Fre arrives at work every day no later than 6:30 a.m., waits for dispatches from his company, and spends a minimum of two hours in line for each container he picks up or drops off. He is paid $42 for each load by the company. He doesn’t know how much the trucking companies make but has heard that some get $200 per load. He returns home around 6:30 at night.

"The whole time I’m at the port, I’m thinking about my family," he said. "I got children. The only thing I’m thinking inside the terminal is, how many moves am I going to do? Am I going to do four or five or three or two?"

On a good day he can get four, on a bad day as few as one, depending on the length of the lines and the generosity of the dispatcher. Then there are his expenses. As an independent operator, Fre is solely responsible for a tankful of diesel that costs him up to $250 a pop. DMV registration is $178 a month, and 12 percent of his weekly earnings goes to his boss for insurance on his truck, not to mention annual federal income tax.

He receives no benefits, no overtime pay, and no health care coverage at a time when his wife, a diabetic, is suffering from severe stomach complications. "I’m taking her to Highland Hospital," he told us. "If it’s easy for them to fix, they can do it. But if she has a big problem, they can’t do it."

Fre has his own health problems. "Most of the drivers, we have old trucks," he said. "You don’t have AC, your windows are down, and you get sick in the truck" from the diesel. Fre’s remedy for his persistent coughing and the burning in his throat is several glasses of milk after each day of work.

A 1998 study published in the Journal of Independent Medicine found that truck drivers face a risk of cancer 10 times greater than Occupational Safety and Health Administration–acceptable levels, and a 1990 study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that truckers face nearly double the average lifetime lung cancer risk.

Fre has little money to invest in his truck, a ragged 1987 model that he said needs $5,000 in repairs. He doesn’t trust it on the freeway, so he’s asked his dispatcher to send him only from pier to pier, not outside the port, further dipping into his earnings. "I came here to see a better life," he said. "When I got here, I found it is different. Here we don’t get paid for the overtime. We don’t get benefits. When I get into the terminal, there is no respect."

His experience is typical of those of port truckers across the country. A study by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, a labor-affiliated think tank, found that the average Port of Oakland trucker makes as little as $8 an hour after expenses, works 11 hours a day, and spends two and a half hours in line per load. Almost none of the truckers reported receiving benefits on the job, and 66 percent don’t have health insurance.

This is consistent with data from a 2004 survey of port truckers in Los Angeles and Long Beach, conducted by a professor of economics at California State University Long Beach. That report found they had a median income of $25,000 a year after expenses and an average workday of 11.2 hours, with up to 33 percent of their time spent waiting in line.

Port truckers generally drive only the oldest, most polluting trucks because that’s all they can afford. An industry adage is that ports are "the place trucks go to die," a reality that has dire impacts on the surrounding communities.

POLLUTING THE COMMUNITY


West Oakland has long been a dumping ground for the Bay Area’s toxic waste. The community has one of the five highest asthma hospitalization rates in California, with an estimated 20 percent of its K–<\d>12 students suffering from the disorder, according to the ALA. Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that children living within a few hundred meters of freeways leading out of ports not only are more likely to suffer from asthma but also actually develop smaller lungs.

Margaret Gordon, a 60-year-old community health activist who has lived just blocks from the Port of Oakland for 15 years, told us that she and four of her grandchildren living with her all suffer from asthma. When one grandchild was born with severe asthma and her own asthma worsened after she moved to West Oakland, Gordon, then a housekeeper, started reading about the causes of asthma and made the connection to the port. Like many in the low-income neighborhood, she cannot afford to move elsewhere in the Bay Area.

Gordon has been fighting for clean air for more than a decade, and in April she was inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame for her work. In 2001, Gordon formed the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, which she now cochairs. The project has released more than half a dozen studies related to air quality. A 2003 report showed that trucks traveling through West Oakland in one day produce the same amount of toxic soot as 127,677 cars, leading to indoor air in some neighborhood homes that is five times more toxic than that in other parts of the city.

Still, Gordon told us that port officials are "only starting paying attention." Last year the California Air Resources Board passed a resolution related to air quality at ports and announced that it was developing a regulatory mechanism. A 2006 CARB report found that truck diesel exhaust accounts for the majority of the estimated 2,400 deaths related to freight transport each year and 70 percent of the state’s air pollution–<\d>related cancer risk. Freight transport will cost California residents $200 billion in health costs over the next 15 years. Most of this is borne by low-income communities of color near freight transport hubs.

The combination of state mandates and local community concerns is starting to spark a change. "They would sit down and talk with us before that, but there was not anything concrete done," Gordon told us. The port is now in the early planning stages of an air-quality-improvement program, working with Gordon and other activists.

That movement is getting vigorous new support from the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, a national partnership of labor, environmental, and community activists organizing at the country’s major container ports: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Miami, Oakland, New York–New Jersey, and Seattle.

"Every one of those ports has the same environmental and labor problems we have in Oakland," Doug Bloch, the coordinator for the coalition in Oakland, told us during a tour of the port’s heavy industrial landscape. Virtually all of its 900 maritime acres are covered by concrete and asphalt, monster cranes that inspired Star Wars‘ Imperial Walkers, and 20-foot steel containers stacked up like Legos behind chain-link fences.

The Port of Oakland has no direct relationship with its truckers at the present. Shippers take price bids from among roughly 100 trucking companies at the port, then contract the work to the independent-contractor truckers. The CCSP says bidding wars lead to poverty wages for truckers, older trucks and more pollution, and a chaotic port full of inefficiencies like long pickup waits.

Under the proposed system, ports would call on their ability as landlords to set standards for the trucking and shipping companies. They would require trucking companies to hire drivers as employees, shifting maintenance costs from the drivers to the companies, which would retrofit or replace all port trucks with more environmentally friendly rigs. The ports would allow only new, cleaner trucks to enter. The companies could then, in theory, pass the costs on to shippers and end users.

If drivers were paid as employees by the hour instead of by the trip, the coalition expects the market would reduce inefficient truck wait times and air pollution.

"When you rent an apartment you sign a lease," Bloch told us. "If you trash the place, you get evicted. Corporations are trashing this community, but they’re not being evicted."

A test case could soon be under way at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two largest in the United States, and the situation is being closely watched by ports and industries across the country. Port commissioners there had hoped by the end of this month to approve the coalition’s program, which they expect to reduce diesel truck emissions by as much as 80 percent over the next five years. But growing opposition and the threat of lawsuits by groups like the California Trucking Association, which represents the owners of truck companies, and the Waterfront Coalition, a consortium of major retailers, led the ports to delay their decision. The commissioners now expect to vote in September after completing an economic impact survey.

At the center of the storm is the fact that as employees, truckers would be able to organize and form a union. As independent contractors, they are barred from doing so because of antitrust laws originally created to oppose vast enterprises that dominated industries. (A further irony is that giant retail steamship companies have experienced incredible consolidation and enjoy a limited antitrust immunity.)

If passed by LA port officials, the plan would be implemented there starting Jan. 1, 2008, and could result in a domino effect at the other, smaller ports across the country. "The industry is fighting like hell in LA," Bloch told us. "They know that if they’re going to have to pay, the party’s over."

Meanwhile, Bloch told us that more than 1,000 truckers have signed a petition asking the Port of Oakland to pass a version of the coalition’s proposal, and it will be presented to the Port Commission, the seven-member body that would eventually vote on the proposal. Spokesperson Libby Schaff told us that the port "agrees with the coalition that the port can and should have a more direct relationship with its truckers" and is "very seriously considering the coalition’s proposal."

Because the proposal "constitutes a major overhaul of the way trucking is done today," Schaff said the port is currently holding stakeholder meetings with residents, truckers, terminal operators, elected officials, the business community, and labor to consider it in the context of a more comprehensive port plan. Schaff said a comprehensive plan could be crafted in less than a year.

The port has not taken a position on granting truckers employee status. It is also looking into other funding mechanisms for a clean-truck program, including money from a pending state bill that would impose a $30 fee on every 20-foot-equivalent unit passing through the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland port complexes, to be used for improvements in road and rail infrastructure and for clean-air programs.

The legislation, Senate Bill 974, by Alan Lowenthal (D–Long Beach), would generate more than $525 million annually. But it faces tough opposition from some very powerful interests.

RESISTING CHANGE


Bill Aboudi, president of Oakland’s AB Trucking and a member of the CTA, told us truckers are "treated like second-class citizens," and he believes long lines and trucker asthma are serious problems. But he strongly opposes the coalition’s proposal. Instead, he told us, state regulations like those forthcoming from CARB and other piecemeal reforms are the answer.

"The coalition’s main goal is to unionize the drivers," Aboudi said. He was wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with two American flags and the words "Oakland Trucker." An immigrant from Israel, he has been at the Port of Oakland since 1992. "If these guys choose to be owner-operators, why are you rocking the boat? You can’t be playing with my livelihood just because you want to get union dues," Aboudi said. "Truckers want to own a piece of the American dream. They want to own their own truck."

It’s an appealing image to many. Kevin Leonard, an owner-operator trucker who contracts with Aboudi and others, told us he doesn’t want to give up his independent status. "I have the freedom to work when I want," he said. "I don’t see how the Teamsters can represent me better than I can."

The trucking industry as a whole says the coalition plan will force away trade and drive out small trucking companies, which will have to maintain the trucks and start paying benefits such as health insurance and workers’ compensation.

Yet Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D–Oakland) brushed aside those arguments. "I’ve been involved in Bay Area politics for more than 30 years," he told us. "I’ve seen these same claims made against farmworkers as they were organizing for better conditions. I’ve seen these arguments made when we were raising the minimum wage. I think the opposite is true. If you have a workforce with a livable wage, it’s a more productive workforce, and I think everyone benefits. Truckers deserve more, and we’re going to do what we can to help them."

Oakland City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente, who drafted and helped pass a minimum-wage law for port employees, told us he supports the right of truckers to unionize but labor and environmental concerns must be balanced with economic growth. "You can’t ignore the fact that you have the port of Oakland competing with other ports," he said. "I support the fact that the Teamsters are going to bargain collectively on a national level. This port competes with other ports, and you cannot be put at a disadvantage."

Bloch says the coalition’s target is the shipping companies, not the trucking companies. "The shippers are hiding behind the trucking companies," he told us. "On the one side there are the giant shipping companies, like Wal-Mart and Target, huge global companies that demand low prices from trucking companies. On the other side are tiny trucking companies, immigrant truckers, and communities of color. Wal-Mart’s slogan is ‘always low prices,’ but ‘always low prices’ means one out of five children in West Oakland with asthma and drivers making $8 an hour who can’t support their families."

Oakland mayor Ron Dellums may be signaling his support for reform with two new appointees to the Port Commission. Even before he took office, Dellums was working to influence the Port Commission; as mayor-elect, he requested that outgoing mayor Jerry Brown hold off on appointing a new nominee so Dellums could appoint someone working on environmental and community impacts. He lost this battle when a majority of the city council voted to appoint Mark McClure, the director of marketing at a business technology company focused on security.

Dellums’s latest appointees, announced earlier this month, are a marked contrast to the business-oriented appointees of the Brown era: Victor Uno, a financial secretary with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Gordon, the longtime resident and environmental activist in West Oakland.

"The port’s policy has been all about business and not about the people," Gordon told us. "The mayor really wants someone there to talk about health issues. I have never known a mayor to put someone on the commission and one of their engagements is to talk about health." She would also like to see a public participatory-process policy built into the port. "This is about sharing the power," Gordon said. "I don’t think West Oakland residents know they have power." She has "no problem" with truckers unionizing but also wants to find a way for drivers to remain independent contractors if they prefer.

Uno told the Guardian that he is highly supportive of the proposal. "I think that if the whole commission takes the lead of Mayor Dellums that this proposal will be very seriously considered," he said. "I’m very optimistic." Asked if he thought a proposal could succeed without requiring trucking companies to hire truckers as employees, he said, "I do not see how that is possible, given the lack of regulations in the trucking industry. It’s a dog-eat-dog world among independent truckers."

DEREGULATION HISTORY


The ports were not always structured as they are now. Before the 1980s the Interstate Commerce Commission regulated trucking, and most truckers at California ports were members of the Teamsters. They had health care, pensions, and workers’ compensation insurance and were paid a middle-class wage.

As part of a national push toward deregulation in the late 1970s, Congress, spurred by President Jimmy Carter, deregulated the trucking industry in 1980. In the following few years, a flood of new trucking companies entered the ports, with shippers choosing between a growing number of companies for each job. As small trucking companies undercut one another in bidding wars, the falling rates translated into declining driver pay, the bankruptcy of Teamster-organized companies, and increasing reliance on independent contractors whom companies could hire without spending money on payroll taxes, health care costs, or other benefits that unions might try to extract.

Trucking expert Michael Belzer, an economics professor at Wayne State University, has shown that long-haul truckers now earn less than half of prederegulation wages and work an average of more than 60 hours a week, while retailers like Wal-Mart have thrived. "The low rates paid to truckers in this global-trade game acts as a subsidy for increasing the amount of trade," Belzer told us. "Pollution and safety hazards are the negative externalities." If all ports on the West Coast required employee drivers, he said, "the market result would be that cost and safety would go up, and pollution would go down."

There have been a handful of Teamsters-related or trucker-led rallies and work stoppages at the Port of Oakland since deregulation, including a technically illegal strike in 2004 protesting the soaring price of diesel fuel, which virtually shut down the port for eight days. Many of the same complaints of today’s port truckers were aired at that time — long waits in lines, poor pay, long hours, and no benefits.

"This business is like the Mafia," Lorenzo Fernandez, 36, said, standing in front of two metal taco trucks glinting in the noon sun, along with about a half dozen other truckers on their lunch break. "They’re doing whatever they want with us, between the [truck companies] and the shippers. There is so much competition between the companies, and they know that we need the job. They know that our kids will go hungry."

Muhammad Khan, 33, said he’s sometimes forced to make up for long wait times by driving dangerously fast on the freeways. "We have our families. We have to take care of them. We all risk our lives because we have to. We don’t make enough money if we don’t make a load," Khan told us.

"We’re all immigrants here," Fernandez said. "We make it possible for the economy to grow up, but they’re stepping on our faces…. We have to work together. Otherwise we are going to be slaves for life."

A sign on a chain-link fence near the taco trucks reads, "Got an old truck? The Port of Oakland can help! Replace your old truck today!" Call the number at the bottom of the sign, and a recorded message issues an invitation to an informational barbecue that took place four months ago. The message explains that the port will provide qualifying owners with up to $40,000 to replace trucks dating from 1993 or before with a 1999-model truck. But Schaff told us, "Due to overwhelming demand, new applicants are currently not being accepted."

Money for the program came from a $9 million settlement of a lawsuit West Oakland residents filed against the Port of Oakland in 1998, alleging that their health was being harmed by port operations. The port says it will replace a total of 80 of the estimated 2,500 port trucks with those funds. When asked if the port had a responsibility to truckers, Schaff said it was "consistent with the port’s commitment to social responsibility…. We’ve done a lot, and we’re going to do more."

But the only specific programs the port could point to were the truck replacement program, a trucker access committee and working group started after the 2004 strike, and new GPS cell phone technology that is being touted as a solution for bottlenecks. Chuck Mack, the Teamsters’ Western Region vice president, isn’t impressed. "They’re a joke," he said of the programs. "Very few independent contractors have utilized them."

The recent purchase of the GPS system particularly irritates Mack. "Here is a quasi-governmental agency supplying services to the trucking companies," he told us. "It’s bizarre that we’re using taxpayer money for this. Any other industry would buy the devices themselves."

"We don’t disagree with using this money" for truck replacement, Mack said, "but what you’re doing is blowing $2 million in taxpayer money. Years down the road they’re going to need a new truck and another million in taxpayer money. For Wal-Mart and Target it’s great because they can have the taxpayer pick up the bill. Without changing the model, it’s just a short-term fix at the expense of the taxpayer."

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS


Beyond the environmental and economic benefits of making truckers employees of the companies, the change also might improve port security. The federal Transportation Worker Identification Credential program, expected to be implemented in the fall, will check the identities of the nation’s 750,000 port employees, 110,000 of whom work as truckers. Under the present system, there is no way to track the independent port truckers.

Employees are easier to track, and they are also better for port security in other ways. Among low-paid port truckers, turnover rate is extremely high, according to the ATA. "We all know that having a stable, well-trained, reliable workforce only leads to more security," Bloch said. "If they’re trained, they can be the eyes and ears of the port."

Well-paid truckers also would lead to safer ports. In a 2005 report, Belzer showed that "a substantial fraction" of independent operators actually loses money each year, resulting in "a high risk of unsafe operations among those earning the least money." The low compensation also "presents a national security risk," his report read, "since those who desperately work to break even might be at risk to engage in activities that put the nation at risk, whether intentionally or unintentionally, just trying to find a way from not going under."

Driving past another long line of trucks idling outside a gate after lunch break, Bloch pointed out one truck. A placard on the back of the rig read, "End sweatshops on wheels."

The current port system "just heaps abuse and abuse on these truck drivers and this community," Bloch told us. "The big businesses like Wal-Mart don’t pay the cost of polluting Oakland. It’s the truck drivers and the community that pay the cost. People pay with their lives."

"You can’t fix the environmental problems without fixing the problems of the driver," he said. "And now you have labor and the community coming together, and that’s powerful."*

Frenemies with benefits

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I recently broke up with my girlfriend (I’m a woman). Everything had started out peachy and remained so until about a month and a half before the breakup. It seemed that our growing emotional intimacy triggered her childhood issues (neglect, abuse, you name it … followed by addiction; she’s now thankfully in recovery), and she started pushing me away, then moved on to heavy criticism and blaming. As an abuse survivor myself, I know the signs and can empathize, but I feel that I’ve worked through most of my issues with intimacy, whereas she is, in her own words, "scared of loving." Anyway, our sex life suffered greatly. I felt that I was giving a lot and not receiving much. I tried talking with her about all this, but she insisted that I was the one at fault for everything. Finally, drained and heartbroken, I left her. Since then, she’s apologized and told me that she’s working on changing her patterns (through therapy, support groups, etc.). And she wants a second chance.

I feel relieved to be out of a tense and draining relationship, but I also miss the good stuff we had (hot sex — most of the time — and friendship, if not emotional intimacy). I know I can get over this and find love (though right now sex is first on my agenda) with someone else. That said, could her willingness to heal (and treat me with respect) make it worth taking another stab at it? Also, if the sex and friendship worked for us but not the relationship, what are the odds that we could be lovers but not partners (we’re both nonmonogamous)?

Love,

One from Column A …

Dear One:

Oh, eek, I’m a little scared of your ex, to tell you the truth. I’ll probably get in trouble for this but she immediately put me in mind of stories a friend of mine tells of working at an extremely PC community nonprofit and the way interns and other untested newbies would respond to a request that they do some — oh, I dunno, I think they call it work? — with a trembling lip and a defiant stance and a declaration that "I find that really triggering." "Oh, I’ll trigger you, all right," my friend would think, but of course you can’t say that sort of thing to that sort of person, you can only try to gently redirect them, like toddlers or puppies, if you don’t want to be accused of being abusive and hierarchical and tool of the patriarchical and end up having to endure lengthy sessions with a mediator wearing chunky ethnic jewelry and many complicated but unstructured garments woven from colorful twigs and berries.

I can’t really answer your last two questions, of course, because even if I had actual statistics to give you ("Blah percent of couples attempting friendship with benefits following a breakup ends up throwing kitchen implements at each other within six weeks, while only bleh percent of couples attempting friendship without benefits throws plates …") they would still just be statistics: interesting to read, but more descriptive than predictive.

Just going by the fairly small amount of info I’ve got, I have to admit I’m doing a little preemptive cringing and ducking myself. Things just sound a little too fresh and volatile to go trying any tricks as death-defying as getting back together but not really, which is a pretty dangerous stunt no matter where in a relationship’s history one attempts it. So while I won’t lay odds or place bets, I’m happy to make a wild prediction based on nothing more than having a good head for these things: attempting to reassemble your former relationship minus what are arguably the most important elements (emotional intimacy, not to mention luv) is doomed to failure. Before you know it you will be "triggering" her again, this time quite possibly on purpose (I was tempted to add "and with a real trigger this time," but it wouldn’t be tasteful). I think you’d do best to look elsewhere for sex and attempt friendship, cautiously if at all, with your ex. If you’re meant to be together (by which I don’t mean "fated," but merely "suited," in case you were wondering) you will find yourselves shifting back in that direction when you’re ready. It’s nice and all that she’s "willing to heal," not to mention treat you with respect, but frankly, all you have is her word on that. She hasn’t actually done either one so far, has she? And also frankly, you sound neither so hard up nor so desperately pining for her as so make it worth the probable unpleasantness. Exes are in some way the easy choice — you don’t have to go out and meet anyone, which for some of us anyway can be a powerful draw, but on the other hand you don’t get anything better than what you already had and gave away, and usually with good reason.

I just wouldn’t.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Award tour

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO I’m not one to get jealous when people I know get famous. Never. As Shakespeare once wrote, "You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying … in sweat." Alas, I’m flat broke — and haven’t perspired a drop since I gave up Dexatrim in ’03. But my pores are flawless, like tiny alien baby mouths. So I can only grin demurely while my Page Six homeys flash their hairless beavers from rehab. Shakespeare again: "If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."

Hooray, especially, for Kiki and Herb, the blowsy, boozy, tune-slinging duo who exploded into Broadway history last year with their Tony-nominated extravaganza Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway. (They narrowly lost in the Best Theatrical Event category to a multipuppet tearjerker about a ventriloquist.) Tipsy yet full-throated chanteuse Kiki (Justin Bond) and her nimble-fingered pianist Herb (Kenny Mellman) are local club kids made good, proving that a lot of talent and a steady Scotch diet can launch a drag queen and her "gay Jew ‘tard" accompanist into the big leagues. Lemme tell ya, you haven’t heard the Wu-Tang Clan or the Cure until you’ve heard these two dust ’em up onstage.

Now, as part of their Year of Magical Drinking Tour, Kiki and Herb are bringing their big show to the American Conservatory Theater. Posh! I leaped on the opportunity to dish with them long-distance from their New York City home base.

SFBG I can barely recall, back in the blurred mid-’90s, both of you appearing at the legendary Josie’s Juice Joint and Cabaret in the Castro. But I was on a lot of crystal then and probably shouldn’t have been in the light booth …

HERB We were recently watching old videos of us and stumbled upon one of a show we did at Josie’s called Not Without My Napalm. This was pre–Kiki and Herb — Justin led me in on a leash, and I was wearing lederhosen! Jesus, we were young. Gay Pride of that year, we were booked at Cafe du Nord and knew we were going to be exhausted. Justin had been doing Kiki at parties, so we decided we’d just perform our material as Kiki and Herb. We got a standing ovation. We began performing every weekend at Eichelberger’s, across from Theater Artaud, and it all developed there.

KIKI The funny thing about us performing at the gorgeous ACT is that when I lived in San Francisco I never got to go there. For one, I couldn’t afford it, and then the ’89 earthquake knocked the whole thing down! So our show will be the first one I’ve ever seen there.

SFBG And now you’re Broadway luminaries. What are some of the things you miss about San Francisco and the life you led before the slavering tumult of paparazzi overtook you?

HERB San Francisco burritos. And Cafe Flore. And the Hole in the Wall. I remember spending a Thanksgiving there, and they had a suckling pig on the pool table. At some point an older leather daddy ripped the ear off and just started gnawing on it. That’s what I miss.

KIKI I miss my friends there terribly — the creative excitement and community. I can’t wait to get back, and I hope all you queens can forgive a drunk who can’t remember anyone’s name.

SFBG I wept when the dummy won the Tony. Yet both of you seemed so gracious when the camera zoomed in on you immediately after the award was announced. What were your thoughts at that moment?

KIKI I told myself beforehand, "Whatever happens, just look happy to be there." So my thought right then was "Hold face." But being there was so amazing, I just left my body through the whole thing.

HERB My thoughts were that we really needed to get out of there and get a drink! Which we did!

SFBG What’s next?

KIKI After this tour, we’re off to perform at the Sydney Opera House for three weeks. Then a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall, and then we’ll be putting on a show in Shepherd’s Bush, London, called — this is so stupid, but it makes me hysterical — Kiki and Herb Put the Yule Log in Shepherd’s Bush. Next year I’m doing a Carpenters tribute — but without any anorexia jokes.

HERB My other show, At Least It’s Pink, which I wrote the music and lyrics to, will be getting an off-Broadway run this fall. Also, my friend Neal Medlyn and I are going to resurrect our show Kenny Mellman Plus Neal Medlyn Equals R. Kelly. Busy, busy …

BONUS KIKI Join immortal club kids Javier Natureboy and DJ Junkyard and the gang from ’90s rock ‘n’ roll queer club Litterbox for a special Kiki and Herb look-alike contest, judged by Justin Bond himself, at the fab new monthly Glitterbox on July 20. It’s a reunion, baby! Go to www.myspace.com/glitterboxtheparty for the low lowdown. *

KIKI AND HERB: ALIVE FROM BROADWAY

July 18–29 (previews Fri/13–Tues/17), $20–$60

See Web site for times

American Conservatory Theater

415 Geary, SF

(415) 749-2ACT

www.act-sf.org

www.kikiandherb.com

“Transformers” without irony

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying truck commercials. Enjoying truck commercials can even be a politically innocent act — it does not signify that you secretly lust after fossil fuels. Plus, there’s a payoff to admitting that such pleasures can be had guilt free: you can enjoy watching Michael Bay’s latest sci-fi actionfest, Transformers, on its own terms. If you’re one of the people who helped the flick earn more than $100 million during its opening week, you may not need my help. For those still fighting the urge to cheer for shiny trucks, I offer a few arguments to persuade you.

The first, most obvious case in favor of this movie is that it just looks neat. There are giant robots that turn into, among other things, SUVs, tanks, fighter planes, scorpion things, race cars, and yes, trucks with flames painted on the sides. It shouldn’t be too surprising that computer-generated imagery is the perfect tool for demonstrating how cars morph into robots. Haven’t you always wished that one day your boring old Prius would twist itself into a gigantic alien robot from the planet Cybertron?

Ah, Cybertron. This brings me to my next argument, which is that Transformers is one of those rare action movies about incredibly silly things that take those silly things dead seriously. No doubt you are as heartily sick of knee-jerk irony as the next chump who shelled out cash to see Ghostrider (OK, so I liked Ghostrider, but you know what I mean). There are no great actors in Transformers showing us how distanced they are from the trashy source material by "acting" à la Nicolas Cage. In Transformers, characters discussing the robots refer to them, with straight faces, as Optimus Prime and Megatron. The good guys are Autobots and the bad guys are Deceptacons. They are all trying to find a giant, unexplained box called the All Spark. Nobody raises an eyebrow at the total goofiness of this scenario. The film’s straightforwardness is downright refreshing.

Like other kid-friendly action films, Transformers is low on bloodshed and high on "Wow, that’s cool!" Even the film’s worst bad guy, a government secret agent played with snarky relish by John Turturro, never kills anybody. Instead of murderous mayhem, the movie offers us rampaging teenage hormones, packing the dialogue with cute but groanworthy double entendres about asses and dicks and humping. Not since E.T. has a movie aimed at tweens been this honest about how kids really talk: there’s a lot of creative cursing, and main character Sam (Shia LaBeouf) spends the entire flick trying to snog his hot pal Mikaela (Megan Fox). Thank you, Michael Bay, for removing rampant death from the action-movie genre and replacing it with dumb masturbation jokes.

What truly surprised me about the movie was that Bay did a fairly good job updating the concept for the 2000s. The film’s plot hinges on something Sam is selling on eBay, and there are a few good jokes about how the Autobots learned English on the Web (surprisingly, this does not mean that they yell "LOL" or "OMG" all the time). I was deeply amused when the evil Deceptacons hunt Sam down via his eBay listing, ambush him, then grab him in their giant metal fists so they can scream in his face, "Are you user LadiesMan217?"

Another way Bay updates the Transformers premise is by connecting the Deceptacons with the Middle East. The film has this sort of murky, inexplicable opening sequence that takes place in what we’re told is "Qatar, Middle East," where good US soldiers encounter mean, scorpion-shaped Deceptacons who smash the crap out of them. The Middle Eastern ‘bots look bizarrely like improvised explosive devices come to life; made of scrap metal and old tires, they hide in the sand and strike at unwary troops who are trying to be nice to the native folks. This is possibly the only part of Transformers in which Bay attempts to grasp feebly at political relevance and make something other than a zoomy truck commercial. Of course, he fails miserably. If you want to enjoy this flick without guilt, you will have to ignore the whole Middle East issue. Of course, one could say the same thing about living in the United States. Maybe Bay has succeeded in pulling off some social commentary after all: welcome to the United States — ignore the Middle East stuff, but stay for the masturbation jokes and cool special effects. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose battle cry is "All hail Megatron!"

Hyphy and its discontents

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Hyphy is here to stay because hyphy was created in the streets and the streets will be here forever."

E-40 in an e-mail, June 28

Send a 911 to the 415 and 510: does hyphy have a pulse? Several articles in recent months have suggested the answer is no. A May 13 San Jose Mercury News article, "What Happened to Hyphy?" by Marian Liu, for example, insists that a year ago, "the Bay Area seemed poised to become the center of the hip-hop universe," when, we are told, the genre "was ubiquitous at clubs, on the streets and on local radio stations." Now hyphy is "listless, with even local popularity beginning to dissipate."

This account of the rise and fall of hyphy is exaggerated to the point of fiction. Bay Area hip-hop has, of course, been cracking for at least two and a half years, following a long post-Tupac period of commercial decline now referred to as "the drought." But while the amount of local spins Bay Area music received increased, hyphy was never anything like ubiquitous on the radio. The small number of major-label signings never threatened to displace any presumed center of hip-hop’s stubbornly regional universe nor does such an image convey what’s been at stake in the Bay’s struggle for recognition.

According to the Arbitron radio ratings system, San Francisco is the fourth-largest market in the country, after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. This figure includes Oakland but not Sacramento or San Jose, which are classed as separate markets but are considered by everyone from the rappers to the media and the listeners as part of the Bay Area in terms of hip-hop regions. All Bay Area artists want is to be treated like other rappers in similar areas of the country. Rappers from smaller markets like Houston (number six), Atlanta (number nine), Miami (number 12), and even St. Louis (number 20) routinely receive local airplay, major-label deals, and national exposure.

Only the Bay is denied such opportunities. While the publicity of E-40’s 2005 signing with BME/Warner Bros. scored hyphy coverage in national media like USA Today and secured the Bay its own episode of MTV’s region-oriented rap show, My Block, the music hasn’t had a chance to blow up. With the exception of E-40 — whose gold-selling 2006 album My Ghetto Report Card (BME/Warner Bros.) ensured a Warner Bros. release of his upcoming The Ball Street Journal — no Bay Area hip-hop artist has been permitted to drop a big-label full-length in the past two years. Albums by the Pack on Jive, Mistah FAB on Atlantic, Clyde Carson on Capitol, and the Federation on Warner Bros./Reprise have all experienced frustrating delays, fostering the notion that hyphy is foundering. But not everyone agrees with this impression.

DEAD OR ALIVE?


"How can hyphy be dead when the key players are still there?" 19-year-old producer extraordinaire and Sick Wid It Records president Droop-E asks. It’s a good question, for if the short history of the hyphy movement has proved anything, it’s that there’s no lack of hot Bay Area acts, from vets like Keak Da Sneak to new artists such as FAB to rappers who came up during the drought and didn’t get to shine, like Eddi Projex (formerly of Hittaz on Tha Payroll) and Big Rich (once of Fully Loaded). Carson, the Jacka, Beeda Weeda, J-Stalin, the Federation, Turf Talk, Kaz Kyzah, San Quinn, Messy Marv: the list of major-label-level talent only begins here, and the extent to which any of the above identify as hyphy hardly matters, inasmuch as for the rest of the country, hyphy stands for Bay Area hip-hop.

Many of these rappers predate hyphy, and while the word definitely has musical signification — it’s a fast, club-oriented sound inspired by crunk but transformed by electronica and techno flourishes — its most important function has been as a marketing tool to direct national attention back to the Bay. To write off hyphy as a passé trend is, in this sense, to write off the region, leaving the Bay back where it started.

Further complicating any so-called postmortem analysis of hyphy is the fact that the term also refers to the Bay Area culture of disaffected hood youths known for white Ts, dreadlocks, and ghost riding. "Hyphy is part of the street," Droop-E affirms, noting that the culture emerged before the name was attached or the music drew attention to it. The merging of this culture and a particular hip-hop sound in a single term is what makes hyphy so potent a concept, functioning in a manner akin to the word psychedelic in the late ’60s. This union between a lifestyle and an aesthetic is the chief justification for considering hyphy a movement, however vaguely articulated.

"The hyphy movement reflects what’s going on in the streets," Federation producer and national hitmaker Rick Rock says. "That will never die, as far as that goes. The kids are going to be hyphy. But the music — you don’t have to say ‘hyphy’ to do a hyphy song. If people are saying ‘go dumb’ on 10 different songs on the radio, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot."

Traxamillion — another architect of the hyphy sound and producer of Keak’s local number one hit "Super Hyphy" — agrees the music could be "losing its edge due to oversaturation of the same topics: scrapers, purp, pillz, shake ya dreads, and stunna shades," underscoring the tension between hyphy and a region whose rappers pride themselves on originality. Yet if hyphy’s lyrics often suffer from an overreliance on now-established slang, the limitations of its subject matter hardly seem greater than that of mainstream rap; the high-fashion emphasis of East Coast rap is infinitely more tedious.

In any case, Rock’s response has been to reinvigorate hyphy through the innovative impulse that led to its current form. "That hyphy sound I blueprinted, I don’t have to stay with it," Rock says. "Hopefully people will gravitate toward the new music, and that’ll be the new hyphy."

NEW SICK SOUNDS


Rock is leading the way with the Federation’s thrice-delayed It’s Whateva — finally to be released by Warner Bros. on Aug. 14 (see sidebar) — and his production on "I Got Chips," the guitar-driven first single off Turf Talk’s West Coast Vaccine (Sick Wid It), released in June. One of the year’s most anticipated Bay full-lengths, Vaccine more than fulfills its buzz. Besides the excellence of its composition as an album, it displays Turf Talk’s tremendous artistic growth in the number of flows he adds to his characteristic bark, from a whisper to a lazy drawl to a hyperactive bellow.

While Droop-E confirms that several major labels expressed interest in Vaccine, ultimately none pulled the trigger. Yet deals of various sorts keep trickling in, most recently for Keak, whose camp confirms his recent signing to national independent Koch. Tha Mekanix production squad is negotiating a rerelease of J-Stalin’s On Behalf of the Streets (Zoo Ent., 2006) through one of the biggest independent distributors in the States, Select-O-Hits. And more major-label ice has begun to thaw, as the Team member Carson reports that Capitol is leaning toward a mid-October release of his solo debut, Theatre Music.

"It’s going to be real good for the Bay," Carson says of his ambitious project, originally conceived as one continuous track, à la Prince’s Lovesexy (Warner Bros., 1988), though Capitol has nixed this risky idea. Yet Carson insists the album "will still be one body of music." Cobranded by the Game’s Black Wall Street Records and boasting appearances by the multiputf8um rapper, Theatre Music finds Carson busting over big-time beatmakers like Scott Storch and Wyclef Jean, and it’s hard to imagine Capitol squandering such resources.

SO HARD ON THE FUNKY RADIO


Another symptom of hyphy’s alleged demise, offered in the Merc and elsewhere, is its lack of current radio play. Yet if there’s been no recent hit on the level of Keak’s "Super Hyphy," it’s because KMEL and other hip-hop stations have withdrawn support for local music.

"The radio play on the hyphy movement has definitely slowed down," Traxamillion says. "They play a few Bay joints here and there, but overall I feel a lot of the radio play is coming to a halt."

Mistah FAB, for example, has a pair of new singles, "Goin’ Crazy," highlighting Too $hort and D4L of "Laffy Taffy" fame, and "Race 4 Ya Pink Slips," with Keak and Spice 1. But you’ll never hear these on KMEL, as the station has stopped playing FAB.

"It’s the politics of radio," says FAB, who claims that since he accepted his Friday-night radio gig at KYLD, he’s been subject to an unofficial ban at KMEL, courtesy of musical director Big Von Johnson — though both stations belong to Clear Channel. "As an artist, I find this hard to accept," FAB confesses. "As a businessman, I realize why." Nonetheless, FAB was surprised that ending his radio show had no effect on the ban.

"It hurts the movement," he says, and he’s right. His 2005 radio hit "Super Sic Wit It" was one of the catalysts of hyphy, bringing other local music in its wake. "If we can’t get the support here at home, how can we expect to break nationwide?"

FAB has a point: local rap needs radio to generate sales, which in turn generate label deals. At press time, Johnson hadn’t respond to several requests seeking his side of the story, yet the Arbitron ratings speak for themselves.

In summer 2006, when it was playing hyphy, KMEL was the number two station in the market, after KGO-AM talk radio. That winter, when it began slacking off, KMEL finished at number seven, tied with KYLD. (Spring ratings aren’t yet posted.) This is difficult to reconcile with the claim that hyphy’s popularity has dissipated. Yet while hyphy — and by extension, Bay Area rap — may never break nationally if KMEL doesn’t support it, even fewer people will tune in to KMEL if the station doesn’t play it.

Nearly every Bay Area rapper I’ve met seeks what Messy Marv once called "that major label shine." Yet the lack of hyphy-era major-label-deal flash — or rather follow-through — thus far may stem more from the general decline of the corporate music system than from the strength or weakness of local hip-hop. Fewer major-label albums are being released now compared with earlier periods of pop, and those imprints are generally taking fewer chances and are often unable to move fast enough for rap. Radio, moreover, has lost at least a portion of its audience to Internet alternatives like MySpace and YouTube, both of which FAB credits with mitigating the impact of absent radio play. Given the fact that a popular independent artist can potentially make more money — at the price of much glory, perhaps — than many bigger names, it’s hard not to wonder if the major labels do hip-hop more harm than good. It’s something to consider as we wait to see if the Federation’s new album, whateva its final form, keeps hyphy’s momentum alive.*

Needed: a campaign against privatization

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EDITORIAL Of all the cities in the United States, San Francisco ought to be most aware of the perils of privatization. Much of the city burned down in 1906 in part because the private Spring Valley Water Co. hadn’t kept up its lines and thus was unable to provide enough water for firefighting. A few years later, in one of the greatest privatization scandals in American history, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. stole what was supposed to be the city’s publicly owned electricity, costing the local coffers untold hundreds of millions over the past 80 years.

This is a city that votes 80 percent Democratic and has always opposed the Ronald Reagan–George H.W. Bush–George W. Bush agenda. A large part of the local economy depends on public employment (the city, the state, the federal government, and the University of California are by far the largest employers in town, dwarfing any of the biggest private-sector companies).

And yet Mayor Gavin Newsom, who likes to say he’s a progressive, is pushing an astonishing package of privatization measures that would shift public property, resources, and infrastructure into the hands of for-profit businesses. He’s talking about privatizing the golf courses, some city parks, and even Camp Mather. He’s promoting a tidal-energy deal that would give PG&E control of the power generated in a public waterway. He hasn’t lifted a finger to stop the ongoing PG&E–Raker Act scandal. And he’s determined to hand over a key part of the city’s future infrastructure to Google and EarthLink (see Editor’s Notes, p. 1).

This nonsense has to stop.

It’s hard to fight privatization battle by battle. Every single effort is a tough campaign in itself; the companies that want to make money off San Francisco’s public assets typically have plenty of cash to throw around. They’re slick and sophisticated, hire good lobbyists, and generally get excellent press from the local dailies. And it works: even board president Aaron Peskin, who generally knows better, is now talking about accepting the private wi-fi deal.

So what this city needs is a unified, organized campaign against privatization.

When Reagan arrived in the White House in 1981, the single biggest item on the agenda of his political backers was an attack on the public sector. The way the right-wingers saw it, government took money from the rich and gave it to the less well-off. Government regulated business activity, costing major corporations a lot of money. Government — "the beast," they called it — had to be beaten back, demonized, and starved.

So the Reaganites used their top-rate public relations machine to make the public sector appear riddled with waste and fraud. They cut taxes, ran up record (for the time) deficits, and forced Congress to eliminate a lot of social programs. More and more of what the government once did was turned over to the private sector — the way the radical right liked it.

That political agenda still rules Washington, D.C., where even a fair amount of the war in Iraq has been privatized, turned over to contractors who are making huge profits while Iraqi and American kids die.

The attack on government has worked so well that even a very modest plan by Bill Clinton to create a national health care system was killed by the insurance industry.

But privatization doesn’t work. Private-sector companies and even nonprofits don’t have to comply with open-records laws and can spend money (including taxpayers’) with only limited accountability. Most private companies are about making money first and serving the public second; that means when private operators take over public services, the prices go up, worker pay goes down (and unions are often booted out), and the quality of the delivery tanks. Look at the real estate development nightmare that has become the privatized Presidio. Look at the disgrace and disaster that the privatized Edison School brought to the San Francisco Unified School District. Look at the glitzy café and the pricey parking lot that have replaced good animal care at the privatized San Francisco Zoo. Look at what has happened around the world when Bechtel Corp. has taken over public water systems — rates have gone up so high that some people can’t afford this basic life necessity.

Look what’s happened to the American health system. Look what’s happened in Iraq.

Government isn’t perfect, and the public sector has lot of management, efficiency, and accountability issues. But at least the public has some hope of correcting those problems. San Francisco ought to be a place where a major movement to take back the public sector is born and thrives.

Almost everyone in town ought to have an interest. Labor, obviously, opposes privatization. So should neighborhood advocates (who care about public parks and open space), environmentalists (because the entire notion of environmentalism depends on a healthy public sector), progressive community groups, and politicians. Even more conservative groups like the cops and firefighters ought to see the need to prevent their jobs from being outsourced to a private vendor.

A campaign against privatization could link wi-fi, PG&E, tidal power, and the golf courses. The campaign could force anyone running for office to address a no-privatization pledge. It could appear any time one of these rotten schemes pops up in town — and send a message that San Francisco doesn’t accept the economic agenda of the radical right.

Who’s going to call the first meeting? 2

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I don’t think anyone except Gavin Newsom’s inner circle and the folks who run Google and EarthLink really likes the mayor’s wi-fi contract, but it now appears at least possible that the Board of Supervisors will approve some version of it.

Board president Aaron Peskin wants the service improved a bit and is demanding some written guarantees that it will actually work the way it’s supposed to. Some opponents of the deal are arguing that it ought to be treated as a franchise, not a simple contract, and they want more legal hurdles. The serious techies say it’s the wrong technology anyway and will be outmoded and worthless in just a few years.

But there’s something bigger going on here.

A high-speed broadband system for San Francisco isn’t a hot dog stand and boat-rental shop in Golden Gate Park. It isn’t a restaurant lease on port property. It isn’t the naming rights for Candlestick Park or a permit to operate a taxicab or deliver cable TV.

Those are contracts and franchises. This is a piece of municipal infrastructure; it’s more like the roads that cars and Muni buses use to carry people around town or the pipes that bring water to our houses or the public schools that educate our kids or the emergency communications system that takes the call when we dial 911.

This is part of the city’s future, part of its economic development, part of how its citizens will participate in the political debate, part of how we will all learn and think and talk to each other. This is the new public square, the new commons.

Why in the world would we want to give it to a private company?

I don’t care if EarthLink and Google are offering 300 kilobauds per second of download time or 500 or 1,000. I don’t care if they promise to give free laptops to anyone who can stand on their head and shout "search engine." I don’t care if they promise to paint every light pole in the city green. They are private outfits set up to make a profit for investors. They have no business owning what will soon be the city’s primary communication system.

San Francisco has kept private operators from controlling its drinking water. This water is considered a basic part of life, and it’s available at low cost: San Franciscans pay less than one one-thousandth the price of bottled water for the stuff that comes out of the tap, and it’s almost certainly better. Same with roads and bridges, police and fire protection, and basic education (although that’s still a struggle).

I don’t get why broadband is any different.

I don’t think this would ever have been an issue 50 years ago. The generation that survived the Depression (with massive public-sector investment and ownership) and World War II (with huge excess-profits taxes on big corporations) and built things like the interstate highway system and the University of California didn’t see government as evil and inherently dysfunctional. The public paid to invest in public services.

It was Ronald Reagan and his ilk who took a generation disillusioned by Vietnam and Watergate and turned it against the public sector (see "Needed: A Campaign Against Privatization," page 5). Now we’ve even got a privatized war (and look how well that’s going).

The supervisors should get beyond the wi-fi deal’s little details and think about what it really means. This is San Francisco. We know better.<\!s>*

Who’s following the money?

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Part two in a Guardian series
Click here for part one

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

David Duer is proud of the volunteer work he’s done with the West Contra Costa Unified School District. He graduated from the area’s school system, as did his kids.

So despite what was sure to be a burdensome responsibility with no pay, Duer, a development director for the UC Berkeley Library, accepted the chance to serve on a committee formed under a state mandate to monitor how the district spent $850 million in bond money authorized by voters in three elections since 2000.

"There are schools all over the district that have been renovated," Duer beams today.

The committee initially proposed meeting every quarter but soon realized that wouldn’t be nearly enough to do the job right and chose to meet monthly instead. Since 2003 it has received full-blown management audits of the school system’s performance every year, with biannual updates from independent professionals not beholden to district bureaucrats.

The story of San Francisco’s Community College District could not be more different.

The oversight committee that’s charged with monitoring $560 million in bond spending has never seen an expansive performance audit, just basic financial reports that show community college officials here seem to be obeying their most fundamental fiduciary duties. The panel meets three times a year for more than an hour and a half each time, and for three years it didn’t even report to the public on City College’s handling of the money, which it’s required to do annually by the state’s Education Code.

The community college committee is hardly made of Rotary volunteers and bored retirees: the list includes San Francisco treasurer José Cisneros and former San Francisco Chronicle publisher Steve Falk, now head of the local Chamber of Commerce.

But even members say the panel has fallen down on the job — and that City College officials are freely shifting around the taxpayers’ cash with little or no accountability.

The mostly decipherable performance reports that West Contra Costa citizens receive, though lengthy, track all of that district’s bond expenditures and give the area’s oversight committee of taxpayers a vivid portrait of how well the school system and its administrators are managing hundreds of millions of dollars in building improvements. Any wonkish jargon in the reports that might mystify the committee is translated in "frank" terms by the outside inspectors, Duer says, without interference from school officials.

If a contractor were to double-bill the district or demand too much in change orders after promising completion within a set price range, Duer and his colleagues would know about it, and they could make suggestions on how to fix it. If the district was doing a stellar job, that would be clear too.

"I don’t see these performance audits as punitive," Duer said. "I see them as a confirmation that the process and systems in place are working."

MORE MONEY PROBLEMS


The Guardian reported last week ("The City College Shell Game," 7/4/07) that City College’s bond projects are running an astounding $225 million over budget. As a result, school officials have returned to the Board of Trustees five times in recent years to request that a total of $130 million be reallocated from one project to another to cover the overruns, leaving some projects promised to voters with little or no funding at all. We reported on a number of examples last week, but there are plenty more:

•<\!s> The construction of a new Mission campus was supposed to begin in 2002 but didn’t get under way until well into 2005. The project is now $30 million over budget, an increase of 50 percent, and the school recently requested another $6 million diversion from other bond projects. City College originally planned to build the campus where a shuttered theater currently stands on Mission Street but later moved the site to avoid a showdown with preservationists.

•<\!s> Since 1997, City College has asked voters for a total of $61 million to renovate and remodel existing buildings and meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. In November 2005 it asked voters for $35 million to perform such work, but just weeks after the election, $20 million of the money was reallocated to a planned Chinatown–<\d>North Beach campus that’s now running $50 million over budget, an increase of 60 percent. That project’s ever-changing design has been heatedly challenged by everyone from the Chronicle‘s editorial board to Sup. Aaron Peskin to state senator Leland Yee.

•<\!s> Two projects for which voters authorized a combined $71 million won’t see the light of day unless the college returns to the ballot a fourth time, which school officials have discussed. The projects — a biotech learning center and a one-stop administrative shop for new students — have been drained of $42 million to save the Mission campus and an overdue Performing Arts Center, which will cost $75 million more than expected, an increase of 152 percent.

HUNTING AND PECKING


All of this irks Mara Kopp, who was appointed to City College’s oversight committee in late 2005 as a representative of the San Francisco Taxpayers Association. She’s complained openly that the school long ago should have hired auditors for the kind of far-reaching work West Contra Costa gets.

"If we received ongoing management reports, then we’d have something of substance," Kopp said. "We wouldn’t have to hunt and peck in a kind of naive, elementary way."

She is all but alone in her criticism, however, save for a small group of allies including former committee member John Rizzo and Milton Marks, one of the few voices on the independently elected Board of Trustees willing to apply tough scrutiny to Chancellor Phil Day’s office at board meetings. Green Party pol Rizzo recently became a trustee after closely beating longtime incumbent Johnnie Carter in the November 2006 board race.

Day has long argued that the school’s attorneys don’t believe such audits are required under Proposition 39, a 2000 state ballot measure that lowered the threshold for passing local school bonds. Prop. 39 required the formation of local citizens’ bond oversight committees.

Marks has questioned the strength of City College’s oversight committee and the lack of performance audits since at least 2005, but not until earlier this year were he and Rizzo able to force a resolution demanding the inspections, and now Day claims to welcome a management review. The school will bid out its first audit soon.

"The bottom line is, a performance audit as opposed to a financial audit would determine whether or not funds are being expended in the most efficient, effective, and economical manner instead of just adding up these funds and saying, ‘Here’s how much we expended and for what,’<\!s>" said Harvey Rose, a respected local auditor who’s reviewed city agencies and analyzed San Francisco’s annual budget for 35 years.

West Contra Costa concluded that Prop. 39 does require extensive managements audits. The committee even decided to include a $150 million bond election in 2000 in the scope of its work, although that wasn’t required, to ensure all the money was still being spent efficiently.

Duer said it doesn’t matter to him what the letter of the law requires. "It was always assumed with our work that this is something we had to have," he said.

The Los Angeles Community College District made the same assumption. Other districts statewide, however, appear to have interpreted Prop. 39 the same way City College has. And the Attorney General’s Office has never issued an opinion clarifying the matter.

Meanwhile, City College officials blame the millions of dollars in outsize project costs on inflation, a globally increased demand for steel and concrete, and slow-moving state regulators who must approve architectural designs.

"I understand both the college as well as the community would like to see us complete every single project we’ve proposed," Vice Chancellor Peter Goldstein told us recently. "We absolutely share that desire. The reality of cost increases has forced us to go back and look at our resources and reallocate in order to keep major projects going forward."

But Kopp and company argue that much earlier performance inspections would have revealed to the oversight committee and trustees where the increase in expenses came from with absolute certainty. That way, no one would have to rely exclusively on the glitzy project presentations made by Day and Goldstein that are often little more than slide shows with quotes from prominent business journals decrying the rising cost of construction materials. Trustee Marks has moaned repeatedly at board meetings that he doesn’t feel informed enough to vote on major reallocations, and his constant questions haven’t always made him popular.

"I think there’s this feeling that the board should not be adversarial," Marks said. "But I think by the nature of how things are set up, we have to be…. We have to look out for the best interests of the public at large."

Not everything’s rosy in West Contra Costa, of course. Anton Jungherr, a former San Francisco Unified School District official, sat on the West Contra Costa oversight committee for four years and fumed in an interview that the district didn’t take seriously the committee’s regular recommendations. He wants to form a statewide association of oversight committees to arm citizens with the information they need to track bond expenditures.

"There are legitimate reasons for change orders, but you have to analyze them and understand what the reasons are and then take the appropriate oversight action," Jungherr said.

But cost overruns in West Contra Costa still pale when compared with those at City College. Jungherr said that district has experienced about $100 million in unexpected costs on $850 million in projects undertaken since 2000, substantially less than what City College faces despite hundreds of millions of dollars more in bond projects.

Kopp still hopes City College’s oversight committee will build more muscle.

"If they were to show us documents they used themselves in monitoring all these things, that could substitute as long as the information was relevant and honest," Kopp said. "But it’s really been quite shallow all along."<\!s>*

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