Kids

Extra! Extra! Heterosexuality in peril!

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Dear Readers:

I’m kind of pretty

and pretty damned smart

I like romantic things like music and art

and as you know I have a gigantic heart

so why … don’t I have a boyfriend?

— Kate Monster, "Sucks to be me" from Avenue Q

Sucks to be Kate Monster, and it sucks just as much to be my many friends of similar description — not monsters but smart, pretty, funny, adventurous, and moderately level-headed young women of great heart, who are caught in an endless cycle of dating to no (desirable) purpose and no end in sight, at least out here on the coasts. One friend actually moved to the Midwest to get away from the evil scene and was promptly rewarded with an actual boyfriend, the type who proudly introduces you as his girlfriend and can discuss a future together without smirking. I’ve developed a kind of semi-vicarious hate-on for the coastal guys — what gives them the right to treat my friends like instantly replaceable consumer objects of dubious value? — so I’ve been reading with interest some of the recent glut of articles and books on the state of young manhood, First World Problem version.

Most of these come down to "men are just big boys/no they aren’t," the argument currently raging, or at least smoldering, pretty much anywhere you find people discussing the current social climate and where we seem to be heading, love-and-marriagewise.

On the "no wonder you can’t find a boyfriend" side, you find innumerable lifestyle articles, most notably and recently Gary Cross’s Men To Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity, in which the historian blames the immaturity he sees in modern Western males on three decade’s worth of cultural shift, starting with a rejection of the old, unquestionably masculine and often admirable but also frequently rigid and authoritarian paternalism of the "Greatest Generation," which left men wandering, lost and fatherless, for lack of a better role-model to replace the castoff, too-dadly Dad. This is nothing startling — we’ve heard it before — but he does present a decent argument and does so without too much blame, some hope for the future of heterosexuality, and none of the (admittedly rather entertaining) snottiness of our next example, the recent articles by Kay S. Hymowitz in City Journal.

City Journal is the organ of conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, but so what? It has lively cultural commentary and even if you don’t want to be a conservative yourself, it isn’t (I think) contagious, so why shouldn’t readers of leftish news weeklies read out of their comfort zones occasionally? And its authors, apparently, aren’t afraid to say they were wrong, which is always cheering. The first of the two articles, "Child-man in the Promised Land" was another of the "men suck" pieces. The man-child (whom the writer contrasts with the man, who has or wants a wife and kids and actually seeks out responsibilities and then discharges them rather than avoiding ever acquiring any) has tastes both formed and reflected by Maxim and [adult swim]. He likes video games and junk food and sex but not women, really, and he doesn’t call when he says he will because he never intended to — why should he when there’s always another girl who, not having met him yet, expects even less from him than you do?

That was the first article. The current piece has Hymowitz exploring the (really rather startling) not-so-underground Man Web and finding that a lot of these guys are treating women like trash because the women (they feel) are trashing them right back. Nobody’s acting very mature here, so she could just as well have titled her piece (actually called "Love in the Time of Darwinism") "She Started It!"

Women, say the young men, want it all and switch the rules on you without warning. They want equality except when they don’t, and then you’re in trouble for not bringing roses. Plus, they’re attracted to jerks, they sneer at nice guys, and then they blame you for acting like a prick.

This state of affairs, the shifting rules and roles, may have brought us to this point, writes Hymowitz (and others), where the gulf between male and female mores and modes of expression is wider than it has been since before World War I, and a certain amount of aggression, contempt, and rude gamesmanship (see both The Rules and Rules of the Game ) is both expected and to some extent accepted. I leave it to Hymowitz to troll the gamier recesses of the Web for sites like AlphaSeduction and Eternal Bachelor ("Give modern women the husband they deserve. None."), but you shouldn’t be too surprised to hear that this stuff is out there.

Are these dispatches from the new war correspondents accurate? Somewhat. As much as can be expected from lifestyle journalism, anyway, which by definition requires a phenomenon, the more disturbing the better (would you read weekly articles in The New York Times titled "All Well in Pleasantville?"). Is this state of affairs universal? Certainly not. Is it inevitable? I think not. What’s that everyone’s been saying about hope and change?

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

The Morning Benders ditch tin cans, talk live

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By Chloe Schildhause

The Morning Benders, a collection of groovy kids from Berkeley, have been working hard to make a name for themselves in the music world. After the release of their first record, Talking Through Tin Cans (+1), they’ve been busying touring, but for their last show of the year, the Cal alums are returning to the Bay Area for a performance at the Rickshaw Stop tonight, Dec. 5. Their poppy love grooves are yummy, and their image is as enchanting as their music. Seriously, they dress well, and I am digging lead vocalist Chris Chu’s pastel pink Ray-Bans. I spoke with Chris Chu on a sunny East Bay day to discuss the band and life.

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Srsly bent. Photo by Timothy Norris

SFBG: I saw you guys at Treasure Island this summer. There was a lot of blood involved in that show. Do you guys bleed at every show – what’s with that?

Chris Chu: Joe bleeds a lot, yeah. I don’t know why – it’s just his style. He just hits the strings hard, and he kind of keeps going after the first time, and so he just keeps bursting it open.

SFBG: Does this happen at every show?

CC: It happens a lot, yes. We’re trying to figure out how to get it to work better. At that show I burst my finger, too, so I was bleeding. But that doesn’t usually happen. I’m pretty healthy.

SFBG: You have Britney Spears stickers on your guitars. Why?

CC: Joe’s actually distant relatives with Britney Spears.

SFBG: What’s the connection?

CC: I don’t know what it is – second cousins or something. But the stickers were just sort of a fluke, we just got them. Someone was handing them out on the street – some crazy person. That was on tour in the East Coast, and since there was a little connection there, that’s why we put them on.

Morning Benders, “Dammit Anna”

SFBG: Was it intentional to have your last concert of the year be in your neck of the woods?

CC: Definitely yeah. It’s actually weird – we’ve been touring, and we ended up playing a lot of places more often than we get to play here. It’s been a fluke that when the record came out we didn’t have stops in San Francisco.

SFBG: When you first came to Berkeley, what was your intention in life? Was it to become a member in a band?

Sensational trans-bashing at SF Weekly

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OPINION SF Weekly published an article Nov. 26 with the headline "Border Crossers." The subhead explained the thesis: "Long rap sheet? No problem. Transgender Latina hookers in SF are successfully fighting deportation by asking for asylum."

The title successfully encapsulates the Jerry Springer-like journalism masquerading as a feature article in an alternative weekly in San Francisco. While I would normally just dismiss this as another example of how SF Weekly is turning into the National Enquirer, the article is important in that it reveals the intense discrimination transgender immigrant women who do sex work face in San Francisco — and unfortunately, quite possibly jeopardizes an incredibly essential legal protection.

The writer, Lauren Smiley, apparently believes she has unearthed a shocking secret: that transgender women may receive asylum in the United States based on intense discrimination in their home countries. So trans immigrants can avoid deportation even when they have been arrested for prostitution and have rap sheets.

As Smiley notes, immigration judges and asylum officers have the discretion to grant asylum when a transgender woman presents a showing of a well-founded fear of persecution based on gender identity. Even Smiley admits that transgender women face violence and intense discrimination in their home countries; however, what Smiley finds the most egregious is that some small subset of the asylum-seeking women have been prosecuted for sex work.

What Smiley single-mindedly ignores is the astonishing statistics that show an unemployment rate of more than 50 percent for transgender women of color, and perhaps even higher statistics for undocumented women in San Francisco. Instead of pointing to the well-documented obstacles transgender women face in employment, Smiley interviews one transgender woman who was able to get a job as evidence that transgender women really do not have to be "hookers" to survive. (Yes, she really did use the word "hookers".)

Without any context or analysis, Smiley quoted Dan Stein, president of the "Federation for American Immigration Reform" (FAIR) as a credible critic of the practice of granting asylum to immigrant transgender women. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently officially designated FAIR as a hate group, but nowhere in her article does Smiley mention that the organization is considered one of the least trustworthy, if not laughable, sources for information on immigration.

What concerns me most is not the cheapness of the shot, but rather that — like so much sensationalist journalism — a piece like this gives fuel to right-wing activists like FAIR. Even Smiley notes that the Republican Party has included in its platform an end to the practice that has literally saved many lives.

What is even more astounding is that last year, Smiley received an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for an article about how doctors were using a new treatment for transgender children so that they wouldn’t develop into their biological sex until after puberty — which would give those kids the choice to transition later.

Yet in the Nov. 26 piece, when describing the landmark case of Geovanni Hernandez-Montiel, who was the first to get asylum based on gender identity, this award-winning writer frequently refers to Giovanni using the male pronoun "he." While I would not expect most journalists to give a nuanced perspective on Giovanni’s gender identity, I do expect a journalist who has received an award from an LGBT media watchdog group to allow for a more fluid understanding of Giovanni’s gender. I called Smiley and she acknowledged that she should have better described FAIR. When I asked her about the other problems, she simply said I should write a letter to SF Weekly.

In San Francisco, can’t we expect and demand better?

Robert Haaland is co-chair of SF Pride at Work, a LGBT labor organization. Alexandra Byerly is program coordinator, EL-LA Program Para Trans-Latinas. Nikki Calma is a member of the Commission of the Status of Women. Cecilia Chung is chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission

I want to be a porn star when I grow up: Meet Lorelei Lee

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Intrepid reporter Justin Juul hits the streets each week for our Meet Your Neighbors series, interviewing the Bay Area folks you’d like to know most.

Remember that anti-drug commercial from the mid-eighties where the college kid is running in slow-motion as dark, ominous music plays in the background? “When I grow up, I want to be a track star,” says an invisible toddler. Then the scene starts to change. The camera zooms out to show that the kid isn’t running toward victory at the finish line like it seemed; he’s running from a cop. At this point, a deep and serious voice says “Nobody ever says, ‘I want to be a junkie when I grow up.’” The message is obvious: kids don’t choose to do drugs; they just fall into it because nobody ever told them that jogging is better. That’s the kind of thing porn stars have to deal with all the time: not the cop-chase stuff, but the idea that whoever participates in “deviant” behavior must be the victim of bad parenting or psychological malfunctioning. These commercials suggest that to shun societal norms is to doom yourself to a life of addiction and incarceration. But that’s not always the case.

I mean, my grandmother has been smoking weed for thirty years and she’s healthy and kind-hearted and free. In fact, I know lots of people who sell, do, and talk about drugs on a daily basis, and you know what? They’re awesome too. Some of them have good jobs, kids, nice houses — all that shit. Well, it’s the same with porn stars.

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Nubostubalgubiuba!

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FREE TO BE TV If you were a kid in the late 1960s and early ’70s, you were an integral part of the counterculture’s trickling-down influence. Hitherto square as a toddler’s puzzle peg, children’s TV programming radicalized not long after various sexual and social revolutions liberated their parents from larger strangulations.

Displacing innocuous slapstick pacifiers, shows were redesigned to educate and empower. Or simply be groovy, like the Sid and Marty Krofft Brit-popping Bugaloos or then-teen idol Rick Springfield’s Mission: Magic! Kid Power stressed multiculturalism. Schoolhouse Rock made homework fiendishly catchy. Fat Albert brought the inner-city ghetto to Saturday mornings.

But the most innovative stuff came from PBS, at its peak of funding, popularity, and adventure. Beyond Sesame Street, there was "Laugh-in for kids," The Electric Company, ingenious labors of grownup performers, puppeteers, child psychologists, and so forth.

ZOOM was something else — a show exclusively performed and largely created by kids themselves, with the adult staff credited as mere "helpers." From 1972 to ’78, the original ZOOM (excluding its 1999-2005 revival) was all about participation, on and off-screen. "Who are you? Whaddaya do? / How are you? / Let’s hear from you /We need you!" the cast sang before trilling the post office box that jokes, games, stories, poems, and whatnot could be sent to.

Producer WBGH Boston has just released two-disc ZOOM: Back to the 70s. This DVD flashback — encompassing a documentary overview as well as four complete episodes — remains very DayGlo Me Decade. But it dates surprisingly well.

The seven grade-school cast members were no Mickey Mouse Club lil’ pros but ethnically diverse, Boston-accented reg’lar kids who line-stumbled, improvised, sang, and danced without polish. They had unscripted "rap sessions" to discuss interpersonal dynamics. They quarreled over jacks. They performed viewers’ submitted mini-plays, recipes, and science experiments. "ZOOMguest" segments profiled other kids’ interesting lives — as a violin prodigy, expat Cubana, budding claymationist, girl hockey player, ham radio enthusiast, or developmentally-disabled student.

ZOOM imprinted popular culture in enjoyably silly ways, from Zoomer uniforms (loud striped soccer jerseys) to gibberish language Ubbi Dubbi. What still refreshes, however, is how the show treats pre-adolescents sans condescension, as people whose opinions and questions aren’t just cutely immature but worth respect and encouragement. Even the increasingly slick, disco-funky presentation by season six couldn’t render ZOOM showbiz-as-usual.

"Confidence in yaself … that’ll help you a lot" says a hereditarily reading-challenged teen in Back to the 70s‘ final 1976 full episode. ZOOM not only portrays him sympathetically, but as a role model — someone whose handicaps inspire him to excel wherever he can. Pity such positive-messaging rings so nostalgic.

www.shop.wgbh.org/product/show/48031

Irresistible ODC

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PREVIEW Some traditions are just too good to give up. I can forgo most holiday customs, except for singing carols, The Nutcracker, and a Tom and Jerry with lots of nutmeg and rum, preferably drunk from properly labeled china cups. Another, a peculiar San Francisco tradition is ODC/Dance’s The Velveteen Rabbit. It has proved remarkably sturdy and remains quite irresistible.

You’d think at a time when kids are growing up with anime and Nintendo games, there would be little interest in a story about a sawdust-stuffed rabbit and 10-foot-tall nanny who brooks no nonsense in the nursery. Yet KT Nelson’s 22-year-old adaptation of Margery Williams’ 1922 classic,with its whiff of upper-class British propriety, has not lost one iota of its charm. Nelson choreographed it when her son was young. Maybe that helped with the inspiration.

Another reason is that right from the beginning, ODC went for top quality in its choice of its collaborators. They could barely afford children’s author Brian Arrowsmith’s costumes and design, but what an investment that turned to be. The combination of Geoff Hoyle’s narration, Benjamin Britten’s score, and Rinde Eckert’s voice was inspired. By now ODC’s dancers may be able to dance their roles in their sleep — but it doesn’t show. They don the parts like a second skin and seem to enjoy themselves. Daytime performances, at 90 minutes, in a relatively small theater, should make Rabbit accessible even to the younger crowd.

THE VELVETEEN RABBIT Fri/28-Dec. 14, call for times, $15–$45. Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org, www.odcdance.org

Czech it out

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REVIEW An attractive 30-something woman with a face hardened by rough times — most recently the 2002 Prague flood pretty much ruining her Prague home — Marcela (Anna Geislerova) is raising two children under precarious circumstances. Marriage to Jarda (Roman Luknar) is discordant, despite their volcanic sex, in large part because she objects to his paying the bills by running a chop shop. She’s already left the with the kids — albeit due to her son’s severe allergy to their digs’ post-flood moldiness — when Jarda steals the wrong guy’s car and gets his whole operation busted by police. With the breadwinner in jail, what’s Marcela to do? Move in with her crazy religious mother in-law (Emilia Vasaryova)? Nope. Stay with her own mother (Jana Brejchova) and the latter’s very creepy diabetic boyfriend (Jiri Schmitzer) in their cramped apartment? Yes, until something better comes along. Which, surprisingly, it does in the form of Czech-Italian vintner Benes (Josef Abrham), whose stolen car triggered Jarda’s arrest. He’s that staple of 1930s screwball comedies so seldom encountered since, in real or cinematic life: the suave older man who’s single, rich, lonely, and genuinely concerned over our underclass heroine’s welfare. This conceit might seem overly contrived in lesser hands than those of director Jan Hrebejk and scenarist Petr Jarchovsky (of prior foreign-language Oscar nominees 2000’s Divided We Fall and 2004’s Up and Down). But their excellently crafted and performed seriocomedy — with its frank yet funny sexual randiness — never feels less than credible. In a classically warm yet ironic, ambitious yet intimate, absurdist yet realistic Czech cinema fashion that Hrebejk and Jarchovsky will hopefully torch-carry well into the 21st century.

Beauty in Trouble opens Fri/28 in Bay Area theaters.

Obamas choose private school

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By Tim Redmond

It should come as no surprise, but the Obamas have decided to send their kids to Sidwell Friends, a $21,000-a-year private school in DC.

It shouldn’t bother me, but it does.

And I can’t believe how many comments and letters I’ve gotten about my last column on this. Most of the people writing in say that (a) it’s the Obamas own damn business and I shouldn’t criticize them for where they choose to educate their kids and (b) only a private school like Sidwell, which is used to handling the children of celebrities, could provide the security necessary for the daughters of the president.

The first point is true, as far as it goes. It’s their business. But Barack Obama is also the (incoming) president of the United States, and what he does has major implications. Imagine the message he would have sent if he’d decided that his own kids should go to public schools, just like the kids of most of his (less fortunate) constituents. The school he chose would instantly become the most desirable school in DC — and imagine, a public school becoming the most desirable school in the nation’s capitol.

It would also instantly become the safest school — in fact, that public school would probably be about the safest place in the entire city. The Secret Service pays for security for the president’s family, so there would be no cost to the district. And while it’s always a challenge protecting presidential kids, the secret service is pretty good at its job. I don’t buy the safety and security argument.

(The argument also assumes that rich people are necessarily less dangerous than poor people. Osama Bin Laden, for one, comes from a very wealthy family.)

Anyway, I’m still sorry he shafted the public schools. You’d expect that from a Bush but not from someone who has promised a new way of doing business.

Oh and by the way: Am I really the only person who’s bothered by this?

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Is anyone else appalled that the Obamas are not even considering sending their kids to public schools? Seriously. This may not seem like the most important issue on the president’s agenda, but I think it’s a big deal.

According to The New York Times, Michelle Obama has toured Sidwell Friends, the pricey private school where Chelsea Clinton was educated. She’s also looking at Maret School and Georgetown Day, two institutions that cater to the children of the rich and powerful. There are no public schools on the list.

Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, DC has urged the Obamas to consider the schools that most DC kids attend, but he has little moral suasion: Mayor Fenty’s twin sons go to private school.

I’m a public school parent, and this really bothers me. What the Obamas are saying, in essence, is that there is no public school anywhere in the district good enough for their kids. They’re saying that if you’ve got the money, you should flee for the safety of private academies. Those lowly public places are just for the peasants.

That sort of statement matters. It matters when you think about the new president’s priorities. It matters when you think about the role he wants to play not just as a chief executive but as an agent of change and a moral compass for the nation and the world. In a way, it’s his first test, and he’s flunked it.

I’m sorry: the children of the president should go to public schools. The children of mayors, and city council members, and county supervisors, and city attorneys should go the same schools as the kids of the majority of their constituents. And if those schools aren’t as good as they’d like, well then, join the team. The rest of us are working like hell to make the under-funded, over-stressed public schools better. You can, too.

And by the way, Mr. President-elect, my public school in San Francisco is giving my son and daughter a great education. And they’re growing up with kids who aren’t just like them. That’s worth way more than your fancy $21,000 private school can ever offer.

* * * *

The election of Sup. Ed Jew two years ago gave ranked-choice voting a bad rep. This year, however, I think we saw how the system can work.

I understand the critics who say that old-fashioned runoffs — second-round elections held a few weeks after the general — are more fair and allow for excitement, like Tom Ammiano vs. Willie Brown in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez vs. Gavin Newsom in 2003. But they also create a problem, particularly when one side has a lot more money than the other.

Downtown had almost endless resources to try to defeat Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos. The Democratic Party, thanks to the progressive takeover this summer, was supporting the three progressives, as was labor, the Sierra Club, and the Tenants Union. And while party chair Aaron Peskin raised a sizeable sum for slate cards and labor spent cash on organizing efforts, that was dwarfed by the landlords and developers.

Mar, Chiu, and Avalos had the advantage of a high-turnout election. If they’d been forced to run again three weeks later, downtown would have again dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the races — and at some point, the good guys would run out of money. Plus, RCV gave the candidates an incentive to make alliances.

Not a perfect system, but better, I think, than the obvious alternative.

Behind “the Twinkie Defense”

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This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who wanted to decriminalize marijuana, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to be elected to public office in America. November also marks the release of a film about the case titled Milk. Although a former policeman, homophobic Dan White, had confessed to the murders, he pleaded not guilty. I covered his trial for the Bay Guardian.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I said “Thank you” to the sheriff’s deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However, this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass.

Defense attorney Douglas Schmidt did not want any pro-gay sentiment polluting the verdict, but he wasn’t allowed to ask potential jurors if they were gay, so instead he would ask if they had ever supported controversial causes–“like homosexual rights, for instance.” One juror came from a family of cops — ordinarily, Schmidt would have craved for him to be on this jury — but the man mentioned, “I live with a roommate and lover.”

Schmidt phrased his next question: “Where does he or she work?”

The answer began, “He”–and the ball game was already over–“works at Holiday Inn.”

Through it all, White simply sat there as though he had been mainlining epoxy glue. He just stared directly ahead, his eyes focused on the crack between two adjacent boxes on the clerk’s desk, Olde English type identifiying them as “Deft” and “Pltff” for defendant and plaintiff. He did not testify. Rather, he told his story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they repeated those details in court.

At a press conference, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as “a disguised form of hearsay.”

* * *

J. I. Rodale, health food and publishing magnate, once claimed in an editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He concluded that Oswald was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused. He was a “sugar drunkard.” Rodale, who died of a heart attack during a taping of The Dick Cavett Show — in the midst of explaining how good nutrition guarantees a long life — called for a full-scale investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

In a surprise move, Dan White’s defense team presented a similar bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely accidental attack. Dale Metcalf, a former member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters who had become a lawyer, told me how he happened to be playing chess with Steven Scheer, an associate of Dan White’s attorney.

Metcalf had just read Orthomolecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He questioned Scherr about White’s diet and learned that, while under stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinka. Metcalf recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row.

During the trial, one psychiatrist stated that, on the night before the murders, while White was “getting depressed about the fact he would not be reappointed [as supervisor], he just sat there in front of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies.” In my notebook, I immediately scribbled “the Twinkie defense,” and wrote about it in my next report.

This was the first time that phrase had been used, and it was picked up by the mainstream media.

In court, White just sat there in a state of complete control bordering on catatonia, as he listened to an assembly line of psychiatrists tell the jury how out of control he had been. One even testified that, “If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the homicides might not have taken place.”

* * *

The Twinkie was invented in 1930 by James Dewar, who described it as “the best darn-tootin’ idea I ever had.” He got the idea of injecting little cakes with sugary cream-like filling and came up with the name while on a business trip, where he saw a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes. “I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids,” he said.

In the wake of the Twinkie defense, a representative of the ITT-owned Continental Baking Company asserted that the notion that overdosing on the cream-filled goodies could lead to murderous behavior was “poppycock” and “crap” — apparently two of the artificial ingredients in Twinkies, along with sodium pyrophosphate and yellow dye — while another spokesperson for ITT couldn’t believe “that a rational jury paid serious attention to that issue.”

Nevertheless, some jurors did. One remarked after the trial that “It sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia.”

Doug Schmidt’s closing argument became almost an apologetic parody of his own defense. He told the jury that White did not have to be “slobbering at the mouth” to be subject to diminished capacity. Nor, he said, was this simply a case of “Eat a Twinkie and go crazy.”

When Superior Court Judge Walter Calcagno presented the jury with his instructions, he assured them access to the evidence, except that they would not be allowed to have possession of White’s .38 special and his ammunition at the same time. After all, these deliberations can get pretty heated. The judge was acting like a concerned schoolteacher offering Twinkies to students but witholding the cream-fillng to avoid any possible mess.

Each juror originally had to swear devotion to the criminal justice system. It was that very system that had allowed for a shrewd defense attorney’s transmutation of a double political execution into the mere White Sugar Murders. On the walls of the city, graffiti cautioned, “Eat a Twinkie — Kill a Cop!”

* * *

On the 50th anniversary of the Twinkie, inventor Dewar said, “Some people say Twinkies are the quintessential junk food, but I believe in the things. I fed them to my four kids, and they feed them to my 15 grandchildren. Twinkies never hurt them.” A year later, the world’s largest Twinkie was unveiled in Boston. It was 10 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches high, 3 feet 8 inches wide, and weighed more than a ton.

In January 1984, Dan White was released from prison. He had served a little more than five years. The estimated shelf life of a Twinkie was seven years. That’s two years longer than White spent behind bars. When he was released, that Twinkie in his cupboard was still edible. But perhaps, instead of eating it, he would have it bronzed.

In October 1985, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. He taped a note to the windshield of his car, reading, “I’m sorry for all the pain and trouble I’ve caused.”

I accepted his apology. I had gotten caught in the post-verdict riot and was beaten by a couple of cops. My gait was affected, and ultimately, as a result I now walk with a cane. At the airport, I have to put the cane on the conveyor belt along with my overnight bag and my shoes, but then I’m handed another cane to go through the metal detector. You just never know what could be hidden inside a cane.

Paul Krassner is the author of Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today, to be published by City Lights Books in July 2009.


Click here to read Krassner’s original coverage of the Dan White Trial from the Guardian in 1979.

>>Back to the Milk Issue

Holiday Guide 2008: Graphic gifts

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› culture@sfbg.com

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that the last few years have seen an impressive flowering of graphic novels and comic book art. These days, every self-respecting, well-read person should have a graphic novel or two on the shelf — and that makes this the perfect moment to give your fave loved one a comic as a holiday gift. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a present with both?

FOR THE SMARTY-PANTS IN UNDEROOS


Watchmen changed the world of comic books when it debuted in 1986, ushering in an era of more serious and ambitious storytelling. Written by the revered Alan Moore, Watchmen uses the trope of superheroes to examine American culture. It won the Hugo Award that year (the first time a comic book had ever won a major literary award in America), was later named one of Time Magazine‘s "Best 100 Books of All Time" (the only comic book on the list), and is now being made into an movie. Watchmen dissects the superhero, revealing the elements of fascism, nihilism, and sexual obsession inherent in the genre, while always maintaining a sense of empathy for its characters’ humanity. It is beautiful, incredibly dense and intricate, and profoundly moving.

Watchmen: The Absolute Edition (DC Comics, 2008, 436 pages, $39.99) is a magnificent large-format reissue that beautifully shows off illustrator Dave Gibbon’s meticulous art, is completely re-colored, and has plenty of additional material. This is something that any geek would be proud to own.

FOR THE TWEEN WHO STILL BELIEVES IN MAGIC


Forget Harry Potter, Bone (Cartoon Books, 2004, 1300 pages, $39.95) is the bomb! Jeff Smith’s magnum opus is something truly rare in comics — a fully realized, all-ages fantasy story that balances thrilling adventure, humor, and lovable characters that develop and grow.

Three cousins stumble into a new land complete with dragons, a super-strong grandma, a princess with a destiny, a terrifying lord of locusts, and stupid rat creatures. As in the Harry Potter series, Bone becomes darker and more serious as the story progresses, but it never loses a delightful playfulness, both in the moments of comic relief and in Smith’s light, masterful brushwork. Bone can be found either as a single volume in its original black-and-white form, or as a set of color books from Scholastic Press.

FOR SCI-FI FANS WITH POST-APOCALYPTIC DAYDREAMS


Perhaps the best science fiction comic book ever produced starts off the way the best sci-fi stories do, with a simple premise that creates a ripple-effect of expanding consequences. In Y: The Last Man, all the males on the planet except for two die off from a sudden, horrifying plague, leaving poor Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand the last creatures alive with Y chromosomes.

Writer Brian K. Vaughn, one of the best of a new generation of comics writers and one of the principle writers for TV’s Lost, cut his teeth creating the Y saga, which has been seeping out in one-volume installments since 2003. He imagines a world without men in fascinating ways, but never lets the setting get in the way of a gripping, fast-paced story. Pia Guerra’s art is competent and engaging, and propels the story along at the same clip as the writing. The entire breathtaking story comes in 10 soft-cover volumes from publisher Vertigo for around $13–<\d>$15 each. A just-published comprehensive deluxe edition (Vertigo, 2008, 256 pages, $29.99) comprises the first five volumes, with the second installation scheduled to come out in May 2009.

FOR TORTURED, BEAUTIFUL SOULS


There is a long, venerable history to comics biographies and autobiographies, from Art Spiegleman’s Maus to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (fabulous gifts all). I want, however, to point out an often-overlooked book that deserves its place in the canon, Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl (Frog Books, 2002, 312 pages, $22.95), which is one of the most compelling accounts of a troubled childhood that I’ve ever read.

Diary is not just a comic book. It weaves together graphic chapters with diary-form prose and illustrations to tell the story of Minnie Goetze, a 15-year-old girl who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend before spiraling downward into drugs and abusive relationships.

It all takes place in 1970s San Francisco, and the city is an integral part of the story, from Minnie’s home in a Victorian flat in Laurel Heights to the world of gay hustlers and runaways on Polk Street.

FOR ROCKET-POWERED LOVERS


Have someone on your gift list who loves the magical realism, multigenerational storylines, and fantastic characters of Gabriel García Márquez? How about someone who can’t get enough of cool-ass, punk-rock dykes? Well, I have the perfect graphic novels for you: Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (Fantagraphics, 2003, 512 pages, $39.95), which chronicles the adventures of the denizens of a fictional Central American village, and Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories (Fantagraphics, 2004, 712 pages, $49.95) by Jaime Hernandez, which centers around two punk girls in the Mexican barrios of Los Angeles.

Both collect stories originally serialized in what is arguably the greatest American comic ever produced, Love and Rockets (and yes, that’s where the band got its name), which has been published somewhat consistently since 1981.

FOR EPIC MEDICAL DRAMA QUEENS


Ode to Kirihito (Vertical, 2006, 832 pages, $24.95) will blow your mind. Created in 1969 by the stellar Osama Tezuka, godfather of manga and anime (Japanese comics and cartoons), it was markedly more sophisticated and accomplished than anything coming out of the United States at the time. In fact, American popular culture is only now catching up to Tezuka — we’re just now getting translations of his works. Luckily, the new American versions are well designed and nimbly translated.

Kirihito tells the story of a plague that turns people into doglike creatures, and reads like a combination of a medical drama (Tezuka was trained as a physician), a panoramic 19th-century novel, and an existentialist treatise à la Albert Camus. Maybe your loved ones think that manga is all melodramatic kids with big eyes, spiky hair, and cute pets that shoot lightning? Ode to Kirihito will expand their view.

FOR YOUR FAVORITE PERVERT


Best Erotic Comics 2008 (Last Gasp, 2008, 200 pages, $19.95) is trying to fill an important, ahem, hole in the world of alternative comics. As the current comics renaissance gains steam, it is becoming curiously less and less sexual. Compared to the wild antics of the underground cartoonists of the 1960s, today’s indie comics tend to be flaccid fare.

BEC 2008 aims to change all that, as the first of an annual series of anthologies devoted to showcasing the best of comics erotica and restoring sexuality as a centerpiece of the indie comics sensibility. Last Gasp, a venerable San Francisco–based comics and alt-media publisher and distributor, is putting out the series.

Impressively diverse on all levels, BEC 2008 features a young dyke’s first encounter with a vibrator, a dominatrix who hires a gay masseur to fuck her boyfriend, King Kong and Godzilla getting it on … there’s a little something here for every proud pervert to treasure. That’s the magic of the holiday season! 2

WHERE TO GET YOUR GIFTS

Isotope Comics 326 Fell, SF. (415) 621-6543, www.isotopecomics.com

Al’s Comics 1803 Market, SF. (415) 861-1220, www.alscomicssf.com

Whatever 548 Castro, SF. (415) 861-9428, www.whateverstoreonline.com

Comix Experience 305 Divisadero, SF. (415) 863-9258, www.comixexperience.com

Comic Relief 2026 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-5002, www.comicrelief.net

Justin Hall is a San Francisco–based comics artist and owner of All Thumbs Press (www.allthumbspress.com).

More Holiday Guide 2008.

Holiday Guide 2008: The game room

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› culture@sfbg.com

The holidays have always been a time for toys. Back in the day, it was board games, baby dolls, and Rubik’s cubes. Then came Nintendo, Dance Dance Revolution, and The Sims. And now? The world of gaming is exploding, with something for everyone — from sci-fi-loving kids to sports-fanatic adults. Here are a few of our favorite new releases, which are sure to please everyone on your list (except maybe Grandpa):

Spore

Maxis (EA Sports); PC/Mac

"Playing God" just took on a whole new meaning. From Maxis, the people who brought you The Sims, comes the genre-defying Spore, a game designed for people who are tired of creating boring ol’ humans. In its captivating metaverse, gamers create a unicellular organism which must evolve into a social, cognizant creature. Explore the game’s expansive, interstellar landscape while developing a whole new species that can live and thrive in a brave new world. If that isn’t enough, it features ambient soundscapes by avant-garde composer and producer Brian Eno.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2009

Konami; PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, PS2, Wii, PC

The Pro Evolution Soccer series, also known as Winning Eleven, has long been the "Beautiful Games" best-kept gaming secret. While enjoying rampant global popularity, stateside it has long been the Don Swayze to Electronic Arts’ FIFA series’ Patrick Swayze. Its underwhelming sales in the United States are due to EA’s publicity machine and its name recognition. But PES 2009‘s staggering fluidity, graphics, and realism leaves FIFA‘s in the dust. While it features the international and club matches we expect, this year’s version exclusively features UEFA Champion’s League mode, which allows you to navigate through soccer’s preeminent club competition that decides the best team in Europe. A majestic sport demands a majestic game, and Pro Evolution Soccer ’09 best captures the nuances and gravity of the world’s most beloved sport.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Blizzard Entertainment; PC/ Mac OS X

If you can control an insatiable appetite for the destruction of your social life during the 42 days between its release and St. Nick’s World Tour, No. 1 on your shopping list should be the latest installment of the soul-sucking, hypnotic genius of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. While its global fans’ limitless dedication risks the ire of parents, teachers, and psychologists (read: party poopers), who confuse persistence and attention to detail with addictive behaviors, Blizzard has simply achieved every video game maker’s wet dream. It’s crafted a game intriguing and enjoyable enough that both hardcore and weekend warriors want to get in on the action.

Shaun White Snowboarding

Ubisoft; PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP, PS2, PC

Not since Tony Hawk has an athlete been able to seamlessly transition from extreme sports star to bona fide sports hero and A-list celebrity like Shaun "the Flying Tomato" White has. He’s appeared on countless magazines and talk shows, and is now pulling his own "Tony Hawk" by fronting a big-budget, mainstream video game franchise. While time will tell if Shaun White Snowboarding will be as successful as the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, but early returns have been overwhelmingly positive. The game features four mountain settings — Alaska, the Alps, Japan, and Park City, Utah — with seemingly endless runs and backcountry trails to get lost on. The game flows well, and there are countless opportunities to do hair-raising tricks and twists. White wanted the game to capture the freedom that made him fall in love with snowboarding, and Ubisoft has captured that perfectly, constantly pushing the user to discover the road less traveled without the possibility of death by hypothermia.

Rock Band 2

Harmonix/ Pi Studios; PS3, Xbox 360 (PS2/Wii releasing December 2008)

I’ll be honest with you. There is nothing, but nothing, that can kill a night out quite like Rock Band. Speaking from experience, it usually strikes around 11 p.m., when you and your friends are, theoretically, having your last drinks and preparing to brave the San Francisco nightlife. You may have high hopes for the evening. Maybe you’ll find a cool new bar, meet some new people, or even engage in a hazy dalliance that hopefully leaves you disease- and child-free in the morning. Then, disaster strikes. Someone asks, "Hey, who wants to play a little Rock Band before we go out?" Three hours later, you are wasted, singing "Wanted Dead or Alive" at the top of your lungs, and surrounded by the same four mates you started the night with. Good-bye cool bar, new friends, and Ms. or Mr. Right (Now). The latest version promises even more lost evenings and new opportunities to show off that falsetto, with almost 100 songs from nearly every genre, including classic rock standards (Fleetwood Mac, the Who), a double helping of ’90s grunge (Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains), and ’80s metal jams (Ratt, Bon Jovi).

Mirror’s Edge

Electronic Arts; PS3, Xbox 360

First-person adventure games are the Auto-Tune (T-Pain Effect) of video games, with seemingly every major video game manufacturer using this über-realistic, up-close perspective. That said, Mirror’s Edge looks likely to revolutionize first-person shooters with its unparalleled gameplay. Players control Faith, the game’s tragic hero, on her quest to save her sister from a web of deceit woven by a corrupt communist government. The game’s gorgeous, illuminated metropolitan setting demonstrates its elite graphics, but the real attraction lies in Faith’s ambitious journey. While fighting is involved, the user must navigate the expansive urban labyrinth and find ways to infiltrate the totalitarian regime. Though it boasts more action (read: combat) than most RPG’s, Mirror’s Edge is not a game for the unreceptive, lazy gamer who simply wants to blow shit up. But if you like using your brain as well as your bullets, you will rejoice in its complex storyline, nuance, and overall gameplay.

NBA Live ’09

Electronic Arts; Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PS2, PSP

Without the mighty Baron Davis, how are the hapless Warriors going to make the playoffs? Easy. Pick up a copy of EA’s new installment of the NBA Live juggernaut, make a few shrewd trades such as swapping Al Harrington and C.J. Watson for Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams (that’s fair, right?), start up your season, and voilà! The Warriors go 73-9, break the Bulls all-time record, cruise into the playoffs, and crush the overmatched Boston Celtics to bring the Bay Area their first title since 1975. Meanwhile, the villainous Utah Jazz are sent tumbling to an abysmal 5-77 mark (guess who’s still bitter about the ’07 playoffs?). Along the way, enjoy graphics clear enough to make out Kenyon Martin’s impressive array of neck tats, high-flying dunks more exciting than a moped ride with Monta Ellis, and gameplay so realistic that while playing as the Knicks, you’ll be too lazy to get back on defense. *

More Holiday Guide 2008.

I die

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

TV EYED Can’t live with ’em, can’t turn on the glass teat without spying a rerun. Still, the wasteland boasts a few reality TV characters worth studying.

THUS SPAKE ZOE-THUSTRA


Kill me now, club me with a Balenciaga handbag, drive a stake through my heart, and kick me into a coffin in a fabulous Ossie Clark caftan and a Biba head-wrap. Yes, you are driven bananas by the stylist-to-the-starz Rachel Zoe’s cute-speak, which rivals TV’s other Rach, namely Rachael Ray. But you found yourself surrendering to the too-easily-ridiculed, unrepentantly shopaholic Zoe-ster, who mostly resembles a heavily lashed, butterscotch Pekinese in vintage. The killer combo of her tearful, puffy, well-vaselined makeup-time confessionals to her adorable Prince-ling of a hairdresser and makeup artist Joey and her not-so-latent mothering of her feuding, odd-couple assistants (self-described "psycho bitch" Taylor and not-quite-perfect prepster Brad) made me want peer all the harder behind those bug-eyed sunglasses and those fluffed-up efforts at boring ole branding. Too bad the brief, campily cartoonish docu-reality series Rachel Zoe Project has been shut down — with Bravo yet to announce its renewal or demise. I know, "I die."

MYSTERY MEET


Credit goes to the Guardian’s Johnny Ray Huston for wingmaning me toward VH-1’s The Pick-Up Artist 2 and host Mystery, whose howlingly lame pimp-styley fake-fur hats and man-bejeweled talons make him the cheesiest burger yet to be tossed on the Barbie. And Barbies are the bait for the geeks, freaks, never-kissed, and outright virgins salivating gratefully for any insight into Mystery’s hottie-pulling technique. Are Mystery’s secrets simply common sense strategies on how to charm, bedazzle, and influence others that at one time dads or mentors might have showed these social misfits? I have a hard time believing a Criss Angel-like corn-meister like Mystery is the new Casanova. In the meantime I’m enjoying all the dated ’90s-rocker ensembles and guyliner abuse that happens along the way.

BEST SERVED QUIRKY


The fifth season of Top Chef — this time set in the Big brunoise-able Apple — fires up tonight, Nov. 12, and I already have at least two toques to watch: Richard, the cuddly bear from San Diego on Team Rainbow, the show’s petite LGBT contingent. He slices through his thumb during the first challenge, yet keeps on paring, and calls Tom Colicchio a "cutie," which will doubtless win the hearts of everyone crushed out on our angry Mr. Clean. And there’s Carla, the cafe-colored caterer with the soignée yet goofy demeanor and physique of a Saturday morning kids’ show giraffe. She issued my fave quip so far: "I want to be led to do this dish, basically, by my spirit guide." Yep, a Euro invasion amps up the competition — and challenges the language juggling abilities and skill sets of the American chefs. I sense the contest coming down between the hard-bitten — and bald — purveyors of seemingly effortless sophistication and the work-horses who knuckled down to scrape their way out of dishwashing. But it’s the quirkies that bring much-needed seasoning to the newly sped-up series, already on pace with the city that never sleeps.

Editor’s Notes

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The Castro District on election night was filled with joy and excitement as people poured out into the streets to celebrate the Obama victory. Three nights later, the streets were filled with people protesting, not reveling. That was the weird thing about being a San Franciscan this past week: we won a world-changing victory in the presidential race, and won most of the key races locally — but on same-sex marriage, we lost.

There are plenty of reasons for that, and we talk about some of them in this issue. There have been protests at Mormon churches and at some Catholic churches, as there should be, since those two religious groups raised most of the Yes on Proposition 8 money. (And can you imagine how many low-income Catholic-school kids could have been educated and how many hungry people could have been fed for the more than $25 million these folks spent trying to keep people from getting married?)

But if San Francisco really wants a poster boy for the attack on same-sex marriage, a local symbol of bigotry, he’s right in front of us: Archbishop George Niederauer.

Now, if you’re a Catholic archbishop, you kind of have to accept the church’s dogma, which says that marriage is a sacrament that can only be bestowed on a man and a woman. Whatever — he can believe and preach what he wants.

But if you’re the archbishop of San Francisco, you don’t have to mount a major political campaign against same-sex marriage. You could decide to use the church’s influence and money helping the poor, for example, which is pretty much what Jesus did. I might have missed that lesson in Catholic school, but I don’t remember the Big J ever saying a word about gay marriage.

Instead, Niederauer and his colleagues made Prop. 8 a huge issue. A flyer produced by the archbishop and handed out widely contained some glaring, inaccurate homophobic crap, including this: "If the Supreme Court ruling stands, public schools may have to teach children that there is no difference between traditional marriage and ‘gay marriage.’"

That infuriated Matt Dorsey, a gay Catholic who is active in Most Holy Redeemer Church. "Far worse than mere falsehood," he said, "is that the claim deliberately plays to the most hateful, vicious stereotypes and fears about gays and lesbians — that they are out to recruit (and perhaps even seduce) children."

Dorsey told me that this was part of a clear political campaign. "I would argue that the Catholic bishops in California made a cold, calculated, Karl Rovian decision that they were going to put a lot of skin in the game, so to speak, to beat gays and lesbians," he said, "even to the exclusion of prevailing on, say, Prop. 4 about parental notification for abortion. One would assume abortion is still opposed by Catholic bishops, right? Well, one would hardly have known it by this election. Gays and lesbians were the archbishop’s enemy this year, and abortion got a pass."

Again: I don’t expect the Catholic church to change its position and start marrying same-sex couples, not any time soon, anyway. And Niederauer can’t be expected to openly break with the Vatican. But for the archbishop of a city like San Francisco — a church leader who has a surprising number of queers and same-sex couples in his flock — to put so many resources into going after people with such an un-Christian hatred was over-the-top unnecessary. And by the way, this guy never talks to the press and won’t return my phone calls.

The good news, of course, is that the archbishop and his colleagues are on the losing side of history. Catholics voted for Prop. 8 by a 64 percent margin — but people under 30 (of all faiths and ethnic groups) voted against it by about the same percentage. Same-sex marriage is going to be part of the nation’s future, whether Niederauer likes it or not.

Lucky Dragons

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PREVIEW Los Angeles’ Lucky Dragons make music that’s not very musical: many of the sounds Luke Fishbeck and Sara Rara use could come from faked field recordings or electronic noodling, and these ethnographic forgeries are further subjected to intense sampling that reduces the sense of space or regular pacing that usually marks sounds as music in our brains. Still, listening to the chirping, loop-happy compositions found on the pair’s recent album, Dream Island Laughing Language (Marriage), without the aid of Fishbeck’s peculiar brand of new-primitive modern dance or the duo’s stuttering, gentle videos, you only get part of the story.

Lucky Dragons don’t make music to prove that making music is foolish or to exaggerate its narcissism. Their work is radical because it encourages connections between show-goers over the standard-issue connection between a band and their creation and the audience’s emotions. Lucky Dragons’ music may convey a sense of pastoralism, but it works here as a conduit for a futuristic kind of sociability, upsetting the standard band–audience interaction by establishing fragile, temporary human networks that stand in stark contrast to obligatory social networks.

If there were a way to describe the disarming piece that YouTube calls "Make a Baby" without getting into technical details, it would go something like this: in the middle of a rock concert, you suddenly find yourself on the floor with strangers, touching their skin, creating shorts and flows that change the course of a fizzing, neon synth drone. When I saw Lucky Dragons perform at 21 Grand last year, I remember the tentative then bold ways kids’ bodies inched towards each other, this organic sculptural mass of flesh and fabric and finally, at the end, the way those bodies unstuck from one another, not unsweetly and not without some regret. You came to receive and ended up creating, came to stay in your bubble and ended up drawn into a strangely open, nascent community.

LUCKY DRAGONS With Hecuba and Pit Er Pat. Sun/16, 9 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com. Also with Hecuba, Pit Er Pat, and Chen Santa Maria. Mon/17, 8 p.m., check site for price. Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell, Oakl. www.lobotgallery.com

Teach your children well

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By Tim Redmond

The baby boom generation — and I am at the tail end of it — has been a disappointment. When I was a kid, we figured that when we were in charge, pot would be legal and war would be a crime and we’d tax the rich to feed to the poor/til there aren’t no rich no more … and all that.

And our two boomer presidents have been Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush. I rest my case.

In fact, after the burst of creativity and political ideology in the 1960s, the boomers have been, to a horrible extent, a selfish generation, a group of people who overall have been unwilling to accept sacrifice for the common good, who have, overall, been hostile to tax increases and government programs .. I could go on talking ’bout my generation.

But there’s on thing we’ve apparently done right: We’ve taught our children well

Boomer kids have (again, by and large) grown up in an environment of racial and gender tolerance and acceptance. They are, to a great extent, a multi-ethnic group willing to ignore or bend gender roles with abandon. And guess what? Young people — the boomer kids — were overwhemlingly opposed to Prop. 8

Here are the numbers, which I took from an excellent Kos piece on this

CNN exit poll
Vote by Age
Yes No
18-29 (20%) 39 61
30-44 (28%) 55 45
45-64 (36%) 54 46
65+ (15%) 61 39

So while I am so personally disappointed in Prop. 8 that it kind of runined the Obama victory for me, it’s nice to know that we’ve lost the battle but won the war. This is only going in one direction, and while I’m not always proud of my boomer-mates, I’m proud as hell of our kids.

Trackademics

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"You have different buzzes in different circles," Trackademicks says. "But when everyone’s talking, it sounds like one big noise."

Few know this better than the 27-year-old rapper and producer born Jason Valerio. In San Francisco and Berkeley, the Alameda native is known as a conscious hip-hop performer whose sound embraces electronica,’80s R&B, and new wave. In Oakland, where we’re chatting in his Cool Collar Scholar Productions studio, Trackademicks is perhaps better known for production, making beats for hood rappers like J-Stalin and Mistah FAB.

"FAB put me on," Tracks says. "I gave him a beat disc. He called back hella juiced. I started running around with him, meeting everybody out here." FAB, however, disputes this account.

"He put me on," FAB says, laughing. He used six of the beats on Son of a Pimp (Thizz, 2005). "He gave the album that twist where people will always remember it."

"He reminds me of the Neptunes," Stalin says. "He ain’t the average hip-hop producer. He produces techno."

Though he finds it imprecise, Trackademicks is used to the "techno" tag.

"I don’t do techno," he says. "But people aren’t sure what to call it. What I produce for myself I don’t give to people. I match what I do with what they do. I won’t give someone a track like, ‘Go rap on this,’ and they’ve never rapped over 160 BPM. There’s a right way to do everything."

This approach is evident on Track’s midtempo number on Stalin’s new Gas Nation (Livewire/SMC), "Millionaire Status," which highlights futuristic soundwaves atop the ’80s-style 808 drums that characterize Stalin’s music — a perfect blend of what they do. Like Tracks says on his own song "Grocery Bills," "I get mob when I make instrumentals."

Even as he’s branched out nationally, producing for Kid Sister and Phonte of Little Brother, among others, Trackademicks is primarily an artist, working solo and with his crew, the Honor Roll. While shopping for an album deal, he’s about to drop his first official solo release — a 12-inch, "Enjoy What You Do"/"Topsidin’" — on the Fool’s Gold label. With its improbable throwback chorus — from Wham’s "Wham Rap" — and an electronica/go-go-style groove, "Enjoy" is one of the most original hip-hop tunes I’ve heard lately. Its quotation of Digital Underground’s "Doowhutchalike" is apt: like DU, Tracks combines streetwise knowledge with more uplifting themes.

"My aim is to build bridges," he says. "I’m black and Filipino. I feel at home in a lot of places.

"My goal is to have every kind of people at my shows," he continues. "Not just every race — let’s go deeper. It’s about class, about culture. People say they want everybody, but how are you speaking to them? I’m taking steps to speak to different audiences." Part of his success has been avoiding preachiness in favor of celebrating the typical joys of rap — girls, cruisin’ around, looking sharp, having skills.

"Kids believe the hype," he says. "You should let them know — you need a job to live. We have a responsibility as artists to report the truth, all sides of it. The important thing is to articulate, to communicate all facets of a person as opposed to one thing."

As for his own multifaceted artistic life, Trackademicks is content. "I don’t worry anymore. Real recognize real, game recognize game — that’s how it’s going to be."

www.trackademia.blogspot.com

Kamau Patton

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At the cacophonous intersection of Sun Ra’s wheeling jazz cosmology, P-Funk’s psycho-disco logorrhea, Clarence 13X’s alpha-beta-culto Five-Percent Nation, the early ’90s vainglorious hip-hop of X-Clan, Isis, and Blackwatch, and The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (1950-64), that sprawling, tinfoil-bedazzled outsider masterpiece by Washington, DC, handyman James Hampton, lies a crazy-ass aesthetic of African American visual and performance culture — the culture of flash. 36-year-old Kamau Amu Patton taps directly into this interstellar shine-on-shine look and feel, jettisoning — or maybe out-transcending — the quasi-theological messages in order to dazzle the mind’s eye blackwards.

Consider Patton’s Talk Show (2007). Two archetypal afrocentric public-access cable hosts, both played by Patton, decked out in on-point dashikis and shells before a pixel projection of Hampton’s Throne, dissemble circuitous phrases. "Knowledge is the foundation of all that is existence … You must respect the thing you observe as being real!" one declaims, while the other sighs loudly and eggs him on: "Ah, damn — that’s the truth." A little silver prayer bell is rung and a 1-800 number flashes across the screen. Telephone message: "Behold, the light has come! Speak on!"

Talk Show‘s blank parody should dead-end in hilarity for anyone familiar with these types of folks. But the dreamlike accumulation of gaudy signifiers, as well as the sense that this is a completely unexplored cultural trope, rockets the video into more thoughtful realms. "I wanted to point up the tautologies of that kind of discourse, to capture the exact aesthetic while highlighting the circular rhythms of delivery, the language of persuasion," Patton says. "But at the same time I felt a responsibility to perfectly perform these characters, the kind of people I grew up with in Brooklyn, who were on my street corner preaching like that. I really freaked out over getting the sunglasses exactly right."

That will to performance perfection, evidenced in several of his other live works, is grounded in Patton’s educational background. He holds a sociology degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed field coursework at the London School of Economics. "I grew disillusioned with sociology because it seemed the opposite of what I felt I was interested in," says Patton, who educates Bay Area kids on the artistic legacies of their particular communities. "I wanted to start with something tangible, or several things, and use them as a jumping-off point to continuous abstract revelations. It’s a generative aesthetic kind of thing. To keep going down a certain illuminated hallway in my work. At the same time, I’m a black man in America, so I have a certain perception or set of experiences that I can draw on as well. I’m definitely drawn to the shamanistic and the kingly — especially African American representations of the kingly. I can go off on what Eric B. and Rakim were wearing on their first album cover for hours."

Other Patton confluences of the statistical and the flashy: his performances as part of the hip-hop and fashion collective Official Tourist; this year’s gorgeous self-published book Edge Theory of Dematerialized Consciousness, a wiggy, chthonic numerical-poetic tract punctuated by eerie nature photographs; and an unnamed retro-digital-video assemblage, viewable at www.kamau.org, in which Patton, as a voodooistic priest, writhes around a hissing explosion, whose glitchy "digital dropouts" and color-balance freakouts are meant to be Cézanne-like portals into other dimensions. Currently, the Emeryville-based Patton is artist-in-residence at Southern Exposure. He’s represented there by a retina-searing collaboration with photographer Suzy Poling called "Glasshouse," which uses e-wasted CRT screens to bend light into hallucination. Behold the warp of truth, infinite.

www.kamau.org

Can have

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Me and Boink at the counter, aprons on, hands washed, ready to go … "I’ve been looking forward to this all week," I said. "You’re my new favorite person to cook with."

He looked up from his step stool with all the earnestness in the world, which seems to be his for the asking, and asked, "Do you love me?"

"I do, Boink," I said. And I kissed him on the head. "I love you very much."

He said he loved me too, and asked if he could kiss me. (So polite!) I said that he could, and he gave me a cute little peck on the cheek.

You were expecting what? Diarrhea? Well, I did get sick again. The thing about working with kids is that you wind up with every communicable disease in the world, on a daily basis, especially if you kiss them and eat food right out of their mouths, like I do. Gotta stop that. I’m getting sick of being sick.

On the other hand: I, your chicken farmer truly, bought a new (as in new new) car. Thanks to Boink, and Popeye the Sailor Baby, and Big Chunk and Little Chunk de la Cooter, and all their various and sundry parents, I can now afford to make me a monthly payment or two, or 60. And, yes, for the first time in my farmerly life, I am the proud driver of an actually reliable motor vehicle.

All the gears work and everything! Horn … Check this out: it has seatbelts that actually lock when you get in an accident. And, most meaningfully to me, what with winter coming, you don’t have to pop the hood and leave the vehicle to turn the headlights on!

How stylin’ am I?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re going to miss my little tales of sitting on the side of the road for exactly 52 minutes, waiting for my old pickup truck to start, aren’t you? I know I’m going to miss all the colorful people one meets in such a manner. Tow-truck drivers, police, drive-by mechanics, and so forth. Yesterday, out of habit, or nostalgia, or both, I stopped at my local car parts store. I bought a roll of paper towels.

My new pickup, which I named Alice Shaw after my hero, Alice Shaw, is the ever-popular Honda Fit pickup truck. Light blue, almost silvery. It’s so beautiful I cold lick it, and often do.

Now I’m not a car reviewer, I know, but this Fit is the damnedest thing on four wheels. A miracle of modern engineering, it’s the first car ever to be twice as big inside as out. Even more cargo capacity than my old Chevy Sprint! You can carry two bales of straw at once, and still have room prolly for a sack o’ feed and a little load of scrap wood.

First thing I did, before I even drove it off the lot, I folded the back seats down. "Pickup truck mode," I said to the dealer, who nodded unknowingly and handed me my balloons, for the kids.

Then I drove around town looking for Dumpsters, playing with all the buttons, and just generally showing off.

"Wait till you put your first ding in it!" all my friends keep saying.

I don’t know what they’re talking about. I dinged the dang thing at the dealership, I was so nervous. I’ve never been in debt before, not even a credit card debt. Are you kidding me? I had to scratch the driver’s door with my key just to get myself to sign my name.

The idea here, so you know, is to teach myself that I can have and might even deserve something nice in this world. Because I didn’t grow up knowing that. You get so used to can’t have that you forget how to even want. I thought of this a lot, last few months, dating married men, creepy redneck couples, and other unloveables.

My new blue beautiful car = can have.

And I tell you this now so I can say I told you so when you see me, one day, walking around the world with a loving, shiny, and reliable man. With a ding in one cheek.


—————————————-

My new favorite restaurant is Hometown Donuts #7. It’s in Richmond, off the same exit I take to go to my favorite Dumpster. So I needed a haul for my new car, and a haul for me. Check it out: two things, plus rice for under five bucks. Chinese. Fried and barbecued. I got spicy pork and a fried chicken thigh hot out of the fryer. Yum! A pretty plasticky place to eat, but I’ll take it. And a donut to go, please.

HOMETOWN DONUTS #7

2315A Cutting, Richmond

(510) 237-2652

Mon.–Sat., 5 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., 6 a.m.–7 p.m.

No alcohol

Cash only

Going topless

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

(Andrea’s on vacation! Check out this oldie but goodie, originally published in the Guardian 7/5/06).

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend is really into BDSM. At first I tried and played a convincing (I think) top/dom, but it just wasn’t hot for me, so I looked some stuff up to get inspired. As I was reading/watching, I would really get off on it, but the sex with my girlfriend still wasn’t hot. Then I realized that when I was masturbating to all this, I was fantasizing about subbing. Oops. I am way in love with my girlfriend, but she is a bottom, period. She might switch it around if it meant a lot to me, but I would know that it wasn’t really making her happy. I don’t know what to do. Can I become a top? Can I teach myself to like it? I’m going to do it either way, but I really want to get into it, so please help! I want us to be good in bed together, but two bottoms don’t make a top. Help!

Love,

Topless

PS: We’re lesbians, if that matters.

Dear Tops:

It sure doesn’t, but thanks for the info!

I was just thinking about this last night when a friend was catching me up on her latest dating adventures. She was lamenting that some potential dates seem to come equipped with a set of kinks perfectly matching her own, and although that sounds good, it is, of course, no use at all.

As you have discovered to your frustration, one wants a date with a complementary set of kinks, not a matching one. It’s not an uncommon problem, and its most common manifestation is exactly the one that’s driving you nuts: there are too many bottoms in this world and nowhere near enough tops to keep them satisfied. Why this is (beyond the fact that topping is hard work), I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I bet any number of eager grad students are currently proposing theses on the subject to bored advisors who have read enough similar stuff already.

Here’s my theory. There are people for whom BDSM is a core part of their identity, running as deep as, say, homosexuality or monogamy. Some may always have recognized this element in themselves, even before they had the language to express it (these are the kids who always want to play pirates or whatever game involves somebody getting tied to something or the intentional infliction/receiving of pain, even when the other kids are long since ready to move on). Others don’t realize it until they’re exposed to S-M in some more adult context, but then it just clicks in, key into lock, and they know. Your girlfriend sounds like one of those BDSM lifers, who tend, in my experience, to be pretty set on their preferred role even if they do switch experimentally on occasion (a good idea, if only to find out how painful/exhausting it is to experience/produce any particular sensation).

Then there are the "anything goes" people who are happy to pick up a flogger or don a dog collar, what the heck, as long as it’s fun. This type of player may not identify as an S-M person per se, but may enjoy a little power exchange on the occasional Friday night, no biggie. You may fall more on this end of the spectrum, but even "what-the-heckers" usually discover some sort of preference, as you have. The perfect 50-50 switch is almost certainly as rare as the perfect 50-50 bisexual.

Plenty of people find something to like in either role, and I think you can develop an appreciation for topping and get some satisfaction out of a job well done (there are resources like The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, to help you). But you can enjoy and get good at it without ever really becoming a top the way both of you are currently bottoms. Be careful about taking on a role that isn’t really "you." Nobody loves a martyr, and you’re still going to want to bottom sometimes. I worry about you starting to resent your girlfriend for getting to have all the fun.

I have a suggestion that might save your relationship or might strike you as all sorts of wrong and make you hate me, but here goes: you two find a willing top, maybe somewhere in your social circle, maybe online or in a BDSM social organization, and bottom together sometimes. This kind of shared adventure can be hot, hot, hot and very bonding, sort of like getting lost in the woods together and surviving through mutual trust and inter-reliance — but a lot more fun. I think if you do that sometimes, and play top sometimes, and stick with the vanilla sometimes, you’ll probably be OK, provided you both take care of getting your itches scratched. Love conquers … much.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Halloween 1951: Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa

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The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I noted the news accounts of all the civic effort going this year into making Halloween “safe” in San Francisco. City Search website even said that, “Despite what you’ve read in the news, Halloween isn’t over just because you won’t be experiencing the fun, debauchery, and occasional gunfire in the Castro.”

Well, there wasn’t any known or admitted debauchery and no gunfire in the Halloweens of my youth back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community in northwest Iowa. But we did have some fast times and created some almost famous urban legends on Halloween. I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.

The booness

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Happy Slutoween, librul terrorists. Now that the Castro Street celebration has been officially buried, there’ll be more terrific parties than tired Sarah Palin costumes haunting Halloween night. Below are 13 batshit surefires, all taking place Oct. 31, night of the living-undead pro-life governor of Alaska. Trick or trick!

ALL HALLOW’S EVE


Goth equals deathly perfect — insert exhausted "every day is Halloween" joke here — as 18-plus clubs Death Guild and Meat team up to paint it black with DJs Decay and Melting Girl and "techno opera singer" Diva Marisa.

9 p.m., $13. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

BITTEN


A French bordello Halloween masquerade ball seems right up any horny black cat’s alley — especially with an acrobatic performance by the ever-sexy Vau de Vire Society and lofty tunes by DJ Ean Golden.

10 p.m., free with costume. Harlot, 46 Minna, SF. (415) 777-1077, www.harlotsf.com

BLOOD PACT


An 18-and-up, gayish underground "dark places" extravaganza with vampiric DJ vamps Honey Soundsystem, Rchrd Oh?!, and Lord Kook, and promoters Homochic and Tantra, plus a slashing guest spot by Los Angeles’ A Club Called Rhonda.

10 p.m., $15. SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 552-2131, www.homochic.com

BLOW UP HALLOWEEN


Those gorgeous 18-plus electro hipsters will never settle for anything less than horrifyingly bangin’ style — with terrific, terrifying rap trio HOTTUB, and evil genius DJs Richie Panic and Jeffrey Paradise.

10 p.m., $15. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

CHARLIE HORSE HALLOWEEN THING


Two whole hours of the trashiest drag performances the nether regions of Polk Street have to offer? Sounds heart-stopping, but hostess Anna Conda will pump you back up with the cheapest drinks — and "outfits" — in town.

10 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF. (415) 776-4162, www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch

COOKIE’S HAUNTED HALLOWEEN


Ecstatically kooky drag princess Cookie Dough hosts a night of haunted whores, with ghoulish electro-goth duo Ejector live, DJ MC2, alarming numbers by Landa Lakes, Glitterella, and more.

8 p.m., $8. Octavia Lounge, 1772 Market, SF. (415) 863-3516, www.cookievision.com

HALLOWEEN: A PARTY


This one’ll be pure crazyboots, as Heklina of Trannyshack literally rises from the dead to join Midnight Mass’ Peaches Christ in hosting a dark diva drag extravaganza, with bloody insanity from Kiddie, Fauxnique, Renttecca, Raya Light …

9 p.m., $20. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. (415) 703-8965, www.peacheschrist.com

HAUNTED TEMPLE


Unholy deeds will abound in cavernous club Temple’s sacred spaces, with insane décor on two levels, howlin’ DJs Paul Hemming, IQ!, and Jaswho?, plus a $500 costume contest.

10 p.m., $20. 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

MONSTER HALLOWEEN


Ghoul’s night lip-sync battle-a-thon! DJ Scottish Andy and glamazon hostess Juanita More exhaust the hipsteratti queens and friends on the mic at the manly Truck bar for exotic "prizes" (i.e., drunk sex).

9 p.m., $5. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-0306, www.juanitamore.com

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BASS


Burner faves Opel get with Evil Breaks for an endless night of sheer funky drum ‘n’ bass madness, with a little techno freak-out on the side. With DJs Meat Katie, the Rogue Element, and Kid Blue.

10 p.m., $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

RE:CREATION


A hip-hop, old-school electro, and freak beats spectacular, as ArtNowSF and Euphoric Conceptions present a platter’s worth of head trip performers like Mochipet, the New Deal, Pleasure Maker, and Sleepyhead. 9 p.m., $20. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. (415) 531-6953, www.clubsix1.com

STILETTO: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE


No San Francisco club is sharper fashionista-wise than theme-driven Stiletto. Gasp as too-cool zombies arise from the depths of loveliness with DJs Mario Muse, Eric Sharp, and runway madness from Flock, plus photo booth!

10pm, $8, AsiaSF, 201 Ninth St., (415) 255-4752, www.myspace.com/stilettosf

Z-TRIP


The inexhaustible mix-master must have some sort of magic potion in his vinyl cauldron, because the mash-up and intel hip-hop kids still flock to his politically oriented, mind-blowing shows after several centuries. Scary!

9 p.m., $22.50. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, www.blasthaus.com

Chickens and the egg

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The scene along a quiet, dead-end road in Lathrop — just 90 minutes east of San Francisco — is classically pastoral: a cloudless sky, a few small ranch houses scattered among small plots of farmland, a tractor humming in the distance.

But thanks to Olivera Egg Farm and its 700,000 chickens, country life is not all sunshine and butterflies. With a quick turn of the wind, the pleasant breeze suddenly sours to the sickening, fetid stench of ammonia from the nearby "lagoon" — a 16.5-acre cesspool of chicken manure that lies 370 feet from the nearest house.

"It takes your breath away," said Janice Magaoay, who has lived in a house neighboring the egg farm since the early 1970s. Magaoay is one of 10 residents who filed a civil lawsuit against Olivera in US District Court last week. Led by a legal team from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the lawsuit alleges that Olivera has been emitting up to 18 times the lawful amount of toxic ammonia gas without reporting it — a violation that could cost the farm a maximum of $32,500 per day in penalties.

The lawsuit against Olivera — whose owner, Edward Olivera, did not return our calls for comment — is one of a constellation of HSUS-led claims against the egg industry that tie into California’s Proposition 2. If passed, Prop. 2 would ban the use of farm animal confinement methods that do not allow animals to stand up, lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs.

Facilities like Olivera, which currently keeps only one of its 12 active hen houses cage-free, would have to thin their flocks significantly, said San Joaquin County Environmental Health Department program coordinator Robert McClellon.

Swarming with seagulls and flies, Olivera’s primary manure lagoon and adjacent overflow pond has a total volume equivalent to nearly 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to company records filed with local environmental regulators. Despite its close proximity to a residential street with kids, the lagoon has no solid fence around it — perhaps because the unbearable stench acts as its own repellent.

Thirty-year resident Larry Yepez, 60, a retired firefighter and plaintiff in the case against Olivera, has passed by the lagoon on his jogging route for many years.

"I used to carry a towel around my face to keep the smell out of my nostrils," Yepez told the Guardian. "There were times when there must have been massive kill-offs because there were carcasses of dead chickens everywhere. It got to a point where I said, ‘I don’t think this is very healthy,’ so I started running away from that area."

Ten-year resident and plaintiff Gloria Avila, 60, often works outside growing produce for farmers markets in San Francisco. On some days, the ammonia is so strong she can barely open her eyes and has trouble breathing.

"It’s very, very bad," she repeats, grimacing, an open palm pressed against her chest.

She is not alone; the plaintiffs allege that their numerous health conditions — upper-respiratory problems, nausea, chest pains, as well as sinus, throat, and eye irritations — could be the result of ammonia exposure.

Nearby, a box of a dark purple fruit sitting on Avila’s porch crawls with a thick blanket of flies — another major issue for Olivera’s neighbors, who say the flies bite.

"We are told that because we live in an agricultural farm community, we have to accept it," Larry Yepez said.

Some local residents feel the odor comes with the territory.

"The egg farm has been there a long time," said Jerry West, a 15-year resident. "If you move out here, you should expect it."

Olivera has contributed $12,000 to support the No on 2 campaign, Californians for Safe Food, which is primarily funded by The United Egg Producers, a trade association of 250-plus of the country’s big egg producers — Olivera among them. The campaign argues that Prop. 2 poses a threat to public health by making eggs less safe, but it declined comment on the lawsuit against Olivera.

"Prop. 2 opponents have as little concern for the neighbors whose lives they are destroying with their pollution as they do for human health and animal welfare," Yes on Prop. 2 campaign manager Jennifer Fearing responds. She describes their claims about food safety as "scare tactics" and "the height of hypocrisy."

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian’s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Sue Lee and segregation

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1028SKL.jpg

By Tim Redmond

I find it hard to believe that D1 supervisor candidate Sue Lee is allowing her supporters to resort to this sort of pandering, but here it is: Fliers from the landlords are going out attacking her main opponent, Eric Mar, over “neighborhood schools.”

That’s a buzzword for re-segregation. I hate to be that harsh and blunt, but it’s the truth. THe pro-neighborhood schools people may be well-meaning, but if they get their way, and school assigment is done primarily on the basis of where you live, the schools are going to face some ugly problems.

Eric Mar’s been on the school board. He understands this better than most. Sue Lee ought to understand it, too.

I get the frustration that some parents in the Richmond feel: After all, there are quite a few good schools in that part of town, and their kids won’t necessarily get into those schools. But there’s a very good reason for that: If every kid went to a school in his or her neighborhood, we’d have a lot of segregated schools. That’s not only terrible for the kids, it’s against federal law.

Imagine: All the Asian and white families in the Richmond could keep their kids in schools that were almost entirely Asian and white — and the kids in Bayview Hunters Point would go to schools that would be almost entirely African American. Where do you think the resources are going to go?

My kids go to McKinley Elementary in the Castro. Their classmates are a picture of San Francisco — black, white, Asian, Latino, Pacific Islander; kids from single-parent families, kids from traditional families, kids from gay families … not all of them can walk to school (we commute from Bernal Heights), but it’s a wonderful educational situation. It’s what public schools ought to be.

And it’s tricky in a city like San Francisco, where we still, sadly, have some hihgly segregated neighborhoods. But it’s worth the effort.

Frankly, I can’t believe anyone in this liberal city really thinks the schools would be better off if we didn’t have policies that seek to integrate the classrooms.

Besides, San Francisco parents have made it very clear, over and over, that they want school choices. They don’t want to be forced into one neighborhood school (especially if they live in a poor neighborhood or one where the local public school isn’t very good). Why can’t kids from Bayview go to Rooftop and Clarendon?

I’ve been through the San Francisco school assignment process, and it isn’t perfect. And every time someone complains to me about it, I ask them the same question: How would you make it better? It’s a tough one; either you accept that some schools are going to be segregated and some kids denied the opportunity to attend the best schools in town and all kids denied the value of learning in a diverse environment — or you accept that fact that not everyone can go to the neighborhood school.

Of course, you can insist that San Francisco provide excellent schools in every neighborhood, and we should — but really, that’s a copout. It isn’t happening now, and it’s not going to happen in the next five years, and unless the state spends a lot more on education, it’s not going to happen at all. Look: My school has some fairly well-off parents with organizing skills and time on their hands. We can raise money for special programs, and we have an active PTA and lots of volunteers. We just got a new playground built.

In a school that serves almost entirely a low-income community, the parents don’t have money to pour into special programs, they’re working two jobs to pay the rent and don’t have time to spend on the school — and it’s not fair. Clarendon parents raise $200,000 a year, because they can. So Clarendon gets programs that other schools don’t. If the state doubled education spending, we’d be better off, but it won’t, and we’re not.

So you simply have to let parents choose to send their kids to schools out of their neighborhoods — and you have to accept the fact that some kids from richer parts of town won’t be able to attend their local school.

Sue Lee ought to know that. It’s a disgrace that she is allowing this to happen in her name.

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